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Roleplayer's Timeline

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Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Remæus on Tue Jun 13, 2006 8:55 am

1978
Roy Trubshaw writes the very first MUD (multi-user dungeon) in MACRO-10 (the machine code for DEC system-10's). Although originally little more than a series of locations in which you could move and chat, Richard Bartle takes an interest in the project and the game soon has a good combat system. Roughly one year later, Roy and Richard, at Essex University in the UK, are able to connect to ARPANET in the USA to conduct an international, multiplayer game.

1985
Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar at Lucasfilm develop Habitat, a multiplayer online adventure game, for QuantumLink. The client runs on a Commodore 64, but the game doesn't make it past beta in the US because it is too demanding for the server technology of the time.

1986
The National Science Foundation creates NSFNET with a backbone speed of 56 Kbps. This allows a large number of institutions, especially universities, to get connected.

Jessica Mulligan starts Rim Worlds War, the first play by email game on a commercial online server.

1988
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is introduced by Jarkko Oikarinen.

AberMUD is born at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth.

Club Caribe, a derivative of Habitat, is released on QuantumLink.

1989
James Aspnes writes TinyMUD as a simple, compact multiplayer adventure game and invites fellow CMU graduate students to play on it. Adaptations of TinyMUD remain in use on the Internet to this day.

1991
Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web, a system by which words, pictures, sounds, and hyperlinks can be combined and formatted across different platforms to create digital pages quite similar to word processor documents. From CERN in Switzerland, he posts the first HTML code in a newsgroup called "alt.hypertext."

Stormfront Studios' Neverwinter Nights, a game based on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, launches on America Online.

The Sierra Network launches and brings a variety of parlor games such as chess, checkers, and bridge online. Bill Gates is said to have played bridge on the service.

1993
Mosaic, the first web browser, is created.

~Freestyle RP tears itself from the realm of MUDs, spread around IRC

1994
After 4 years as a dial-up game in the UK, Avalon MUD starts offering a pay-to-play service over the Internet.

1995

~AOL brings about chat, speed fighting is popularized in the form of freestyle.

1996
T1, in a rudimentary form, attributed to Jacmus Prime.
Work on Everquest Begins.

1997
Yahoo! Chat released to public. Freeform roleplay becomes popular in the "Arts and Entertainment", or A&E, channels.
~Kellindil creates Angelfire site, attempting to create a structured style of roleplay. He calls his style T2, with only four simple rules.
~Aglaranna, member of Kellindil's site, popularizes "Ayenee" as a short version of A&E.

1998

1999
March 1st - Everquest released.
July - Metawerx Chat is founded by Shinji

~GundamWing.com Chat (GWC) community created
~MSN vs GWC war.
~Paragraph RP begins to rise on MSN and Yahoo chats.
~TRBS (Thrall Ryne Battle System) is created by Third Godheval on Meta.

2000
~TRBS brought to GWC/AM by Akido Myato
~AnimeMetro forums replace the GWC
~Eden Era started, revamping the T2 ruleset for speed fighting, originally created by Kellindil. This was a significant push for T2, giving it a very clear and defined set of rules.

2001
~ Fighter's Guild created and run by a council, with representatives from each genre present

2002
~ Council of the Fighter's Guild collapses, and is now run by one person.

2003
~ Gaia forums and online community founded, paving the way for "doll type" avatars that were customizable by buying items using gold earned for each post or action on their site.

2005
Tue Aug 09, 11:20 am - GWing created to commemorate the GundamWing.com Community

2006
~(Moderators: I need dates for this? And link to the war timeline?) Wing City War
~The first annual Grand Tournament begins with 128 fighters in the brackets from over 50 different sites and chats.

June 16th, 2006: Gaia Online Gets $8.93M in Venture Capital Funding for their Anime community ( 1 )

December: Quickhand becomes the undisputed Best Speed Fighter of 2006, winning the Grand Tournament's speed division.
December: The GT League starts its first season.

2007
RPGateway and GWing merge to form RPGateway.
Circ from Metawerx takes the title of Turn-Based Champion as he wins the Grand Tournament's TB division.
Last edited by Remæus on Mon Apr 02, 2007 7:28 am, edited 3 times in total.

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Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Remæus on Wed Nov 01, 2006 10:38 am

Hrm, I really wanted to include parts of my post in the war discussion, but that still doesn't quite fit. And we are still far from 101 tips.

Anyone have any further suggestions?

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Roleplaying Resources

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Remæus on Sun Nov 26, 2006 10:29 pm

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Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Remæus on Mon Mar 05, 2007 12:11 pm

This timeline is open to review, and I'm always looking for people to fill me in on things I've missed.

What I'm looking for right now is anyone who remembers the occurrences in Char31 (I think that's what it was?) and TuxedoMask, and any significant wars there.

Feel free to PM me or post here to add resources, and I'll edit them into the main topic. :)

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Panther on Sat Jun 02, 2007 2:44 pm

You have AOL bringing about chat.. maybe that was the UK? AOL in the US had chat from it's inception... as did the predecessor, QLink.

Before that, CompuServe had chat (called CB), and while I was on there, I'm not sure if any RP took place.

You can get info on history of QLink and AOL, at least in regards to an area I know keep up and how it is part of our history here...

http://rdi.dragonsmark.com/history.php

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Kouketsu on Sat Jun 02, 2007 2:55 pm

Panther wrote:Before that, CompuServe had chat (called CB), and while I was on there, I'm not sure if any RP took place.


By all verbal accounts CompuServe did have RP for quite some time, well before most other chat clients and media even existed, and likely before AOL.

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Eymber on Fri Sep 14, 2007 5:59 pm

Wow.. thats a lot information that I didnt know! I had no idea that IRC was 19 years old! That's almost as old as I was. I was still in dipers when IRC was created.
-=sighs=- I'm so young.
...Arise and be all that you dream....

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Grimbold Theoman on Sat Sep 15, 2007 1:44 am

It's a surprisingly long history. All this time and I was blissfully unaware of the existence of on line role play. Having been involved in table top role play since the early 1980's I have missed a lot.

And Eymber, to me you are all so damn young -=grins=-

Grim

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Dionysus on Fri Sep 21, 2007 12:45 pm

Thank you, Ramaeus... Thank you... This means a lot to me.
DIONYSUS THE TWICE BORNE
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THE HUMAN BEING WHO DIED TO BECOME THE IMMORTAL GOD
VETERAN ROLEPLAYER AND GUARDIAN OF TEXTUAL COMBAT SINCE 1998

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Re: Tuxedo Mask & Chars31

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Dionysus on Sat Oct 06, 2007 12:20 pm

Remaeus wrote:This timeline is open to review, and I'm always looking for people to fill me in on things I've missed. What I'm looking for right now is anyone who remembers the occurrences in Char31 (I think that's what it was?) and TuxedoMask, and any significant wars there. Feel free to PM me or post here to add resources, and I'll edit them into the main topic.


Tuxedo Mask was my favorite chat at one time. Although they had their own server, many roleplayers from Tuxedo Mask were also affiliated with the roleplayers from Charmander31's chat, and also with the roleplayers of the many Multicity chats. Multicity is where I began, and I shall tell you this story almost as if it's a legend.

Multicity was my mother, Comicity was my father, I usually say. Multicity was my birth-place as a roleplayer, and it was in Multicity that I became familiar with real-time chats, and speed-based textual combat. I started roleplaying in 1998 back when Dragon Ball Z was popular. Auto was the common noob-style back then, which had existed ever since Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was invented. The intermediate style was Advanced Auto (AA), invented by Brian Morgan (CWRias) in 1998 for the purpose of eliminating Auto by adding a word-limit and hit-points. The typical AA standard was 4-words to attack, 4-words to connect an attack, and 4-words to dodge or counter. 20-hits to win the match.

Because of its simplicity, many intermediate roleplayers started using AA to train for the even more advanced popular style of T2, which had been brought to Multicity by the edenites. T2 was invented by Blake Hardman (a friend of Kellindil) in 1998, around the same time as AA but with harder rules. I usually say Kellindil invented T1, though really it was Jessica Mulligan who started the idea. The basic T2 rules were 7-words to attack, 10-words to connect, 7-words to block or dodge, and 12-words to counter an attack with your own. Because of the popularity and structure of T2, it became the style of masters in Multicity before anyone heard of TRBS.

I learned the 3 methods (Auto, AA, T2) from Dark Saiya-jin Vegetto at Kad'S DBZ/GT RPG Battle Chat in Multicity, and made a name for myself as Judah Avious (Juvious), the noob who fights amongst the oldies. The two popular races of that time were saiyans and maijins, but I always played the role of a human being, and that is how I got my reputation. People started hearing rumors about this human who fights amongst the saiyans, refusing to use energy attacks, and so people started looking for me and challenging me to duels. Back then I had a 85-wpm average, which was pretty good at the time. On a good day I could type 90-wpm, so I beat most of the competition. Even though the saiyans could fly, teleport, and use energy, I faired just fine as a human being simply because of my overall typing speed. I could beat people down before they even had a chance to fight back, and that made me popular.

It was in the year 1999 that the Saiyan-Maijin War took place. The saiyans tested their ki-energy against the maijins magick to see who was the better race. My character was married to Queen Serenity at this time, who was the ruler of Tuxedo Mask and another Multicity chat called Usagi & Mamoru's (U&M). Those two chats were in turn linked to the Castle of Dragons (CoD) ruled by Queen Thalia, through a mutual alliance. All of them were protected by the Mavericks of the Falling Mists, led by one Keiyin Mitshuura-ken who was Dark Saiya-jin Vegetto's friend. Thus, through diplomatic alliances and friendships I became involved in the Saiyan-Maijin War of 1999.

This multi-chat conflict took place on many different servers, extending all the way from AOL to MSN, and lasted almost the entire year. The saiyans were victorious, as the last maijin leader (Maijin Buu) was soundly defeated at Chars-31 during the summer. At last there was an era of peace, but not for long, since two other clans had started to rise. This time it was the Yakuzan Zaibatsu and their Chinese counterpart (The Triads), who terrorized Multicity by killing everyone and claiming to be the best. The Triads were led by Cloaked Warrior Rias (CWRias), the founder of AA. The Yakuza were led by Legendary Scias (Max Cook), the founder of T3. Dark Saiya-jin Vegetto joined the Yakuza, along with many others, who felt it would be better to serve them rather than try and fight them.

One of the ideas Scias had in mind was popularizing T3, and forcing everyone in Multicity to learn that style. I refused to conform to their rules, and left Dark Saiya-jin Vegetto to find a different master. I continued my T2 training under Keiyin Mitshuura-ken at the Castle of Dragons, and made some new alliances. That's around the time I met Eric Kane (Seraphim) and many others, and we began to train in freestyle (freeform). Queen Serenity sent a messenger named Melkor (Matt Bell) telling Queen Thalia (Alex) that U&M (Usagi Mamorus) and T&M (Tuxedo Mask) was under attack, so Keiyin (Jason) and his girlfriend Watcher (Sarah) gathered the knights we had and led them into battle. The conflict known as Y2K took place in the year 2000, and was the greatest battle in Multicity.

The War of 2000 can be considered like a conflict between the east and west. On the one side, you had all of these Asian characters with their martial arts and Anime personalities. On the other side, you had us Viking characters with our heavy weapons and D&D personalities. It was a great battle, and I miss it. After defeating Titus, Scias, Rias, Amas, and the leaders of the eastern clans at U&M, Multicity converted into a pay-service and roleplaying declined. Hundreds of roleplayers were split up and scattered, while many alliances were broken, and the golden age was lost.

I continued to roleplay at the Castle of Dragons (CoD) up until the year 2001, when people started to abandon Queen Thalia and join Shin Gouki Z (Eric Kane) at his new Castle of Blackfyre (CoB). There, we continued the tradition of the Z-senshi by using shin-freestyle. That's when Hidoshi Nobunaga (Mark) invited me to Metawerx along with several others. This is where most people know me from, as the freestylist who never followed the TRBS rules. I had by that time already given up word-limits and written guide-lines, and started practicing freeform textual combat. I was training with the RPG veteran §hin Gouki Ž (Kenshiro Maruyama) of Comicity, not to be confused with Shin Gouki Z (Eric Kane) of Multicity, who was his mortal enemy. To differentiate between these two characters and their styles, I spell §hin Gouki Ž's name the same way Kenshiro spelled it in Comicity's IRC room. I also call his style freeform, as opposed to Eric's shin-freestyle. Although it is true that I did train with both of these characters, I was more in conflict with Shin Gouki Z (Eric) and more in alliance with §hin Gouki Ž (Ken).

§hin Gouki Ž was one of the original founders of the legendary Ž-senshi from Comicity chat, the Elite fighters who protected their chat from outsiders through a very old tradition that can be traced back to Jarkko Oikarinen himself. §hin Gouki Ž was a friend and follower of Dai Kiaou §hin (Andy Oedo), who came on the scene in IRC and distinguished himself as a legendary character. Andy was one of the first freeformists, and possibly the person who brought Freeform to AOL from IRC back in 1995. There is very little distinction between Auto and Freeform apart from their tradition. Both styles can be traced back to the beginning of chat-based textual combat, but Auto is generally considered a noob-style whereas Freeform is considered the elite-style.

Auto does not use a word-limit, and neither does Freeform, but autoers (noobs) generally use 2-3 words while freeformers (elites) use anywhere from 5-15 words per action. Autoers also do not generally use indicators, or asterisks to show their actions. Freeformers always indicate their actions by using dashes or asterisks. Now here's the tricky part that confuses most people. Both styles use auto-connects (autoing), which is different from every other form of textual combat. Most styles such as AA, T1, T2, T3, T4, T5, TRBS label autoing as an illegal form of cheating. But this is not true with Freeform or Auto, as you will learn. Auto gets its name from autoing, and to me is a cheap way to fight. Freeform, however, requires that a defender must protect against autoing attacks. For example:

Most Speed-Based Styles:
Thrall Ryne: *brings his blade in an upward slash towards Blake's exposed shoulder* (proper attack)
Blake Hardman: *steps beside Thrall to avoid having his arm sliced open* (proper dodge)
Thrall Ryne: *watches as the cold steel slices through Blake's arm like warm butter* (void late response)
Blake Hardman: *sends his elbow straight out in a sharp blow aiming for Thrall's ribcage* (proper attack)

Comicity Freeform:
Dai Kiaou §hin: -slices Gouki's shoulder open with the edge of his blade- (proper autoing)
§hin Gouki Ž: -steps beside Kiaou to avoid having his arm sliced open- (proper dodge)
Dai Kiaou §hin: -turns and stabs Gouki in the stomach with his sword- (proper autoing)
§hin Gouki Ž: -spins around Kiaou's sword and kicks him in the spine- (proper counter)

Auto Noob Style:
Noob: *punches Char (improper autoing)
Char: blocks (lame)
Noob: *stabs Char (improper autoing)
Noob: *does so (lamer)
Char: dies (lamest)

Now you see the difference. Freeform traces its origins all the way back to Dai Kiaou §hin (Andy Oedo) who won the Mortal Kombat tourny on IRC in 1994, before winning the King Of Fighters tourny on AOL in 1996, and eventually settling in Comicity chat where Street Fighter was popular. Dai Kiaou §hin and §hin Gouki Ž (Kenshiro Maruyama) met in 1997 and founded the Ž-senshi, Comicity's elite dedicated to preserving freeform textual combat. Only seven people were ever admitted into the Ž-senshi, and Eric Kane was not one of them. I was the last person to be inducted into the Ž-senshi by Kenshiro Maruyama in 2003, and I have not initiated anyone since. My elite name was Kanretsu Ž. My friend Kao Vegeta (Eric Clow) is also from Comicity, he can verify this information. Kao Vegeta was a long time rival of §hin Gouki Ž, but he is known as Ryu No Ansatsuken here on the Roleplay Gateway forums. Anyway, I know I kind of got off topic with this post but hopefully this helped somewhat with your interest in Chars31 and Tuxedo Mask. I also want to thank you Ramaeus for taking an interest in RPhistory and allowing me to share what I know. Take care and God bless.

The Human Being who died to become The Immortal God.
- Dionysus

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby d3t on Sun Nov 04, 2007 6:46 am

Wow... this really puts perspective on my "heydey" if you like, of chat-RP. It was roughly between 2002-2005, not long ago by many people's standards, but it feels like an eternity to me.

I started off in BeSeen, specifically the Unlimited Dragonball GT chat, and seeing as there is no real reference to any BeSeen chats, let alone that one, in your timeline, I imagine it was a place of no great import.

TRBS was the system of choice amongst the elite fighters, or "oldies" as they were commonly known, and I had a love/hate relationship with it. I despised the oldies, with their elitist ways - most of them hailed from Metawerx, and thus held themselves aloof from us GT folks - and associated TRBS with them. However, TRBS was the only system offered within that context besides what Dionysus refers to as Auto, but which was known as freestyle or newbstyle at GT.

Therefore I enjoyed the structure and form of TRBS, whilst hating those who used it. Anyway, I've somehow lost my train of thought, and I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this now.... I shall soldier on.

BeSeen eventually closed down, and I migrated for a short period to Metawerx, where I found people's attitudes to be even ore elitist, and thus gave up since then.

Earlier this year I felt a hankering for chatting once more, and signed up to TeenSpot.com, where I have been frequenting the Roleplay rooms, although I have done little, if any, serious roleplaying there so far.

And, um, yep. That's about it. Not sure exactly what the point of this post was, except to let me reminisce a bit. Maybe someone'll find it interesting...

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Remæus on Sun Nov 04, 2007 9:21 am

Thanks for your notes, d3t. I'm familiar with your frustrations with elitism; it's a problem that plagues the entire community (on the net in general) these days. Roleplay in these environments was inherently egocentric, which seeded our current state. People became enthralled with being more experienced, and ultimately established a large class of 'elites'. They're shortsighted, close-minded, and egotistic; and they've effectively killed any hopes of bringing this sort of environment back for the new generations.

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Tina on Thu Mar 13, 2008 9:30 pm

I love history myself, particularly history that I was involved in so thought I would point out a couple of descrepencies.. Eden-era in Yahoo which played in the games directory didn't form until mid-2000. Prior to Eden, was another gaming community which went by the name of Jacmus. Jacmus originally supported the t2 (Type 2) fighting style while Ayenee or A&E which played in the arts and entertainment directory of yahoo chat supported the t1 (Type 1 fighting style). Eden-era still exists in some capacity and you can read its history at its site: Eden-era.com.

Sorry for posting and rehashing such an old thread but I came across this thread when searching something else up on Google and since I recently became a member here, thought I would correct the timeline.

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Remæus on Thu Mar 13, 2008 9:34 pm

Oh no - thanks a ton! The more people we have who can contribute, the better! Thanks a ton, I've corrected the timeline. I'd nearly forgotten about Jacmus, I never participated there.

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Fractal Resonance on Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:02 am

Greets,

From a technical prospective, this is all pretty great, except this:

Remæus wrote:2003
~ Literate RP becomes popular on Gaia, lagging greatly behind the rest of the RP world

Now, I appreciate you all seem to have a fond dislike for Gaia, but this is a wee bit... I don't know... biased, don't you think? Furthermore, Gaia wasn't even founded until 2003, so it wasn't lagging behind so much as not previously existing. Plus, it just looks ugly and sticks out.

Also, I know some fragments of the history of roleplaying in computer games. I don't have an extensive knowledge of the history of roleplaying, so I don't know the relevance of the facts I'm relating, but it's worth a shot, no? Hopefully this is the kind of stuff you're looking for, otherwise, my apologies.

I saw roleplaying popularized for the first time outside of forums, chatrooms, and roleplaying games during 1999 in first-person shooters. This may or may not be the first widespread occurrence of this, but I've never traced anything back before the release of some major Half-Life modifications. I believe if you install Half-Life and download the mod "The Specialists," you can still find people roleplaying there. Though, that's not first-hand knowledge.

Past that, I think it's worth noting that Neverwinter Nights was re-released as a fully three dimensional roleplaying game in 2002, developed by BioWare. It wasn't a MMORPG like its predecessor, but it supported roleplaying from its release, with a specific channel of servers dedicated to roleplay.

If I can remember anything else worth anything, I'll try to put it up here.

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby LRW on Sun Dec 26, 2010 5:51 pm

www.rp-chat.org .. posted everything I could dig up from posts and from Rias Blight.

I have been searching high and low, and even found a old group on facebook which had Kellindil on it. I am still awaiting for a reply from him, hasn't been on in almost forever.
'In time Lance, your name shall spread around as either a fighter, or a washed up slob. Now go, and get out there.' - Vasheen

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Blake Hardman on Mon Apr 23, 2012 3:54 pm

I just ran across this timeline while surfing around and noticed a few mistakes, specifically regarding the founding of Jacmus as well as the invention of T2 and how they were named.

Jacmus was founded in late '97, not in '96, by a guy named Jim (who we called JimBo). He came out of the Teen section of Yahoo! Chat (Tenaria, which was named by me--Blake Hardman--as a play on the words "Teen Area").

I had created "T2" long before the cite you give, as I had been distributing my original draft of the style to friends as early as 1995 in several other chat sites before Yahoo! Chat took off. It was not referred to as T2 at that time, nor later when I introduced to Teen RPG in Yahoo! Chat. It was simply known as the "Rules for Combat" when it was posted on the Deathmage of Hell website as the rules source for Tenaria. There was no conversation about "other" styles at this time.

It was only later, when a handful of Teen RPG founders got fed up with situation in Tenaria and left to form Ayenee, that the styles we refer to as T1 and T2 today get their names. Kellindel John delineated the difference between the two distinct styles of combat, thus naming them so players could distinguish which they would use and when. This is how we got what we now know as T1 and T2.

As for how and why I came to the idea of what we now refer to as T2, it really had to do with the problem of people refusing to take hits in the traditional free-form turn-based style that was popular in the chats before rules were structured and posted. In fact, the only true guideline that seemed to exist at the time was simply "No Auto-Hitting". This was frustrating for a variety of reasons, not the least of which had to do with the fact that it was almost impossible to kill an enemy character. I needed a way that I could declare damage on an opponent fairly without breaking the spirit of the "No Auto-Hitting" rule. This is where I came up with the concept of a "Preparation Phrase" followed by a "Connection Phrase". The original document of what is now referred to as T2 only requires two preps before declaring lethal damage with a connection. And the word limit, or "flavor" requirement as I called it, was very loose, and I believe had a floor of seven words for each of the two preps and at least fifteen words for the Connection Phrase. There were no hit requirements so long as the nature of your connection and the type of damage you declared was in line with the type of attack you launched.

There were obviously a lot of problems with this system. So I came up with some alternative solutions which do not seem to be mentioned here. Tenaria even experimented with several of these alternate styles I created as their official combat rules -- TS (Type Superior) and TL (Type Logistics).

Type Superior (TS) was simply a more refined version of T2, requiring more "flavor" for each preparation phrase and also scaling the amount of preparation phrases one needed to perform various severities of damage to an opponent: 1 prep for minor damage, 2 preps for moderate damage, and 3 preps for severe or lethal damage. I had even incorporated a "post-effect" rule, which effectively allowed a player to use past-tense phrasing to essentially negate a connection or declaration of damage, so long as the action was in line with the attack that was launched against him/her. This style of combat was used in Tenaria for roughly two years, 1998 - 2000.

Later, Tenaria adopted Type Logistics (TL), which was an enhanced, free-flowing version of T1. TL was unique in that I broke down the different kinds of phrases people use in combat and built rules around them: (Preparation Phrase, Action Phrase, Initiation Phrase, Building Phrase, Completion Phrase, Response Phrase, Additive Phrase, Effect Phrase, Damage Phrase, and Revision Phrase). TL generally did not allow for connecting with an opponent or declaring damage, except in rare, specified circumstances. Also, players could freely type as many phrases as they wanted, so long as their character did not make more than three-seconds worth of action between their opponent's post. Furthermore, certain types of phrases known as Supplemental Phrases (Preparation, Building, and Additive) could be used to enhance the power of an action or spell. Likewise, if an action or spell had been enhanced via a Supplemental Phrase, the defender had to include Supplemental Phrases in his/her Response Phrase in order to complete/effectively dodge/block the attack. There were even certain phrase requirements depending on the type of action/spell you wanted to commit. Suffice to say, this rule set was popular among the hardcore roleplayers in the realm but many newbies found it daunting as it required a rather intimate knowledge of the rule set.

As for the order of the Yahoo! Chat realms, the Teen section was the first to be populated and popularized by roleplayers, followed by Ayenee, which eventually became the largest, (and to some extent "Mance"), then Jacmus. Jacmus would later be transformed into Eden, where the founders of that realm created their own variations of T2.

I could go on, but I'm afraid I'd either only bore you or make you question my sanity. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at blakehardman@yahoo.com or find me on Facebook.

Thanks for your time.

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Michael Schofield on Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:47 pm

Blake Hardman wrote:I just ran across this timeline while surfing around and noticed a few mistakes, specifically regarding the founding of Jacmus as well as the invention of T2 and how they were named.

Jacmus was founded in late '97, not in '96, by a guy named Jim (who we called JimBo). He came out of the Teen section of Yahoo! Chat (Tenaria, which was named by me--Blake Hardman--as a play on the words "Teen Area").


Hi. Recently, this timeline has been challenged even further by a little bit of Googling, the Internet Archive, and a lot of anecdotes in a conversation involved with a podcast oriented around Tenaria and other Yahoo! RPGs. Basically, it looks as if we might be able to bump Blake's corrected timeline ahead by a whole year. Even though this inherently feels wrong, we can't really refute the claims.

For instance, Blake, myself, and others inwardly believe Yahoo! Chat began in 1996, but the earliest reference to Yahoo! Chat is as late as January 10, 1997, where it appears as a footer link on the Yahoo! homepage viewed through a snapshot taken by the Wayback Machine. We can also definitely place some players integral to early storylines as without their first computers until mid-1998. Since Jimbo's character "Verbatim Delecose" (who "discovered" Jacmus) was created for the Dark Hunters, we can assume that this didn't happen until mid to late 98 either.

From what I can remember (I played the first character to follow Verbatim into Jacmus), he didn't name Jacmus until closer to the end of his tenure with Tenaria, which would probably bump its creation to mid-1999. We know that Eden was created from a relatively abandoned realm in 2000. In my memory, the first instance of Jacmus didn't make it a full year, but I could be mistaken.

Just musing!

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Remæus on Mon Apr 30, 2012 8:51 am

Thank the both of you for your efforts! I've gone ahead and posted the source of the timeline for editing, so if you'd like to make modifications I'd be happy to update it. Let me know!

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Re: Roleplayer's Timeline

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Blake Hardman on Mon May 07, 2012 7:42 am

I am forming a Facebook group for the sole purpose of establishing a historical record of chat-based roleplay in general, but more specifically as it applied to Yahoo! Chat roleplay. This is in part due to the fact many of the modern chat-based roleplay conventions and traditions originated in Yahoo! Chat, but also because it is that aspect that I (and the many other chat-based roleplayers I know) came from those realms. Once we come to a concensus on the order of events and when they occurred, I'll offer it up to you for consideration. Hopefully, there will be enough contributors to this effort that its veracity will be beyond reproach and that you will be willing to apply the changes as reflected in our research to your own timeline. That said, I'm going to create this group when I get home, and I'll post the name of the group once I've got it going. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

blakehardman82@gmail.com

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