About the RPG Codex
Founding - 2002
Originally conceived of during a series of IRC discussions between Deathy, Saint_Proverbius, Ibbz, Shagnak, Xerophyte, Calis and a handful of others, the Codex was born during an era where basically everyone involved wanted to whinge about Computer-Based RPGs (cRPGs).
At the time, companies like Interplay (the king of RPG developers at the time) ran their own forums - however kept a strict lid on any criticism of their games. Fan run sites like No-Mutants Allowed existed but were only focussed on the Fallout series, while places like Terra-Arcanum focussed on the efforts of Troika Games.
RPG Dot existed but they covered everything RPG, including console games and MMORPGS, things the founders of the Codex weren't keen on covering - expressing a strong preference for single-player, PC based RPGs.
And so, RPG Codex was conceived as a place where any cRPG could be discussed - and more importantly criticised - without over zealous fan bois coming in to silence dissent or locking topics for getting "too heated".
Calis built the original site in PHP running on a MySQL database and the rest is history.
Online since 16 June 2002 while various features were designed and implemented, the site didn't really officially launch. At all really. We kind of just ran with it and here we are today...
Still running with it.