I just went ahead and logged in to a machine where I had slrn installed, then signed up for an account with http://www.eternal-september.org/ and configured my .slrnrc with

   set force_authentication 1
   nnrpaccess news.eternal-september.org [user] [password]

then ran something like

  slrn --nntp -h news.eternal-september.org --create

and

  L*nethack

to select rec.games.roguelike.nethack

then do

  s "happy to ann"

to do a subject search going forward, then read the message.

Page down and up with space & b, etc.

It's been a little while since I used a newsreader and I didn't use to slrn, so took a few minutes to get used to.

For text groups, there is AIOE and Eternal September.

There's at least one free Usenet server for the text hierarchies. You only need to pay if you're wanting binaries (i.e. an alternative to torrenting).