I might have just uh... randomly started farting around with FastAPI and websockets and made a MUD that communicates entirely over websocket using a web page instead of telnet or needing a purpose built client that farts everything out in the clear.
And from there started braining on "Wait I own both ends of this data channel and the data channel, why do I need to limit myself to telnet behavior"
And I dunno, something may come of this but I think it's old tech enough to be disinteresting to most people and limited to new-tech idioms enough to exclude the people who'd otherwise be into it.
I could write a localhost telnet->wss gateway to allow those clients to be used though... hmm...
@trysdyn as I understand it this is basically what every MU* still active started doing once people started pointing out maybe it's not so great to let nosy hackers snoop on your textfucking.