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Dev Diary: Winter 2026

· 5 min read
Anx
Anx
Author of OrbRPG, Game Master and Software Engineer
OrbRPG

Greetings, Guild!

As the winter ends, we want to share the progress we made over the last few months. Originally, our big plan for this release was to introduce Virtual Guilds. However, as we started, we realized that to make Guilds a true home for tabletop events, they needed a strong chat system first.

So, we changed our focus. We spent this quarter entirely rebuilding our chat platform to make sure it is ready for Guilds in our next release. Along the way, we added new booking tools and text features to make running games easier than ever.

💬 A Brand New Orb Chats Platform​

Communication is very important for tabletop games, so we completely rebuilt the messaging system for OrbRPG. The new Orb Chats platform brings modern features to your tables:

Real-Time Messages and Read Receipts: It isn't an e-mail system anymore. Messages are delivered in real-time, and you can see when your players have read them.

Edit Your Messages: Made a typo while talking about the requirements? You can now edit your messages.

Game Booking Chats: When player books a game, a direct chat is automatically created between the GM and the player. OrbChat Bot automatically sets the topic to Game with links, making it easy to keep track of conversations about the game.

Group Chats Are Coming: We are already working on group chats! The server side is ready, and we just need to add the player-management features to the screen. You will see them very soon! (I think with Guilds release)

New Chat Platform

🛡️ Take Control with Player Bookings​

Game Masters need simple tools to manage their tables. This quarter, we improved how you organize your players right from the game page.

Easy Player Management: You can now see exactly how many open seats you have in your game. From the game edit screen, you can see list of players added to game and remove them if they step out. Free places will be managed automatically.

Booking from the Game Chat Topic: GMs can now add players to the game directly from the chat topic (see details above) and you can see whether a player is in the game or not right it the chat.

Booking Tools

📝 Rich Text Formatting​

We want your game pages and chats to look better and be easy to read. So, we added a new text formatting feature!

Using our custom OrbMarkdown flavour of markdown, you can now use simple symbols to make text bold, italic, add code, create lists, and insert links. This formatting works perfectly in Game Descriptions, Player Requirements, and Chat Messages.

Note that small Game Cards will still show plain text. This keeps the main search page looking clean and simple. You can read more about how to use these styles in our Text Formatting guide.

OrbMarkdown Example​

📚 Welcome to the Orb Library​

You might have noticed a small name change. We have combined our Guides, Q&A sections, and this blog under one name: the Orb Library.

This change puts all our helpful resources into one cozy, easy-to-use home.

Help Us Translate: We really want to translate the Library into more languages, but we cannot do it all by ourselves. If you want to help translate guides for your local community, please reach out! We are always looking for people to try helping with translations.

Orb Library

🔧 Under the Hood​

This winter we created new systems to make OrbRPG faster, more reliable, and much easier to find on the web:

  • Real-Time Engine: We fully moved our chat back-end to Server-Sent Events (SSE) and connected it to our database change streams. We also added health indicators to make sure real-time messaging is fast and stable.
  • Lazy Chat Creation & Optimistic UI: Previously, a chat was created as soon as a player clicked to book, which left empty rooms if they changed their mind. Now, chats and their topics are created "lazily" only when the first message is sent. We also added optimistic UI updates to make the interface feel instantly responsive while messages are settling on the server.
  • Search Engine Visibility: We did a lot of SEO work. OrbRPG fully updated Open Graph pre-rendering process, making our GM profiles and games much easier to find on Google and other search engines.

What's Next​

Looking ahead to spring, our big goal is Virtual Guilds! We will also keep watching the new chat platform and polishing it based on your feedback.

Thank you for being part of this journey. Join us in Discord, follow us on Instagram, and let's keep building together.

Welcome to the Guild.