Questions for the History (Set #1)

[Slawbug]

Things I could use some help with:

 

1. This one is for anyone who was around in the 1999-2000 period, either on the Lyceum or elsewhere. I have pretty good lists of the community figures from the first year of BoE (1998) as well as people on the Arena and some early webmasters. But who were the big names there as far as general community members, people who hung out on the Lyceum, or who designed scenarios? My sources from this era have very fuzzy memories of that subject, and the lists of major scenarios I have mostly include scenarios designed by those 1998 figures -- Bixler, Stareye, etc.

 

2. The 2001-2003 period has been much easier to deal with, thanks to cross-referencing UBB's join dates and postcounts with PPP's archives and the Wayback Machine.

 

However, there were a HUGE number of active users in this era. I've already pulled out the Lyceum types, the Despers, the Polarans, all the mods and the Room 3 folk, and I still have a huge list of community members-at-large. Does anyone see any obvious groupings I could pull out of this list?

 

Click to reveal.. (2001-2003 members-at-large)

iambobsushi Enraged Slith

Archmage Alex Robinator

Seletine Dorth Hanoy

Miriam Alex

csours The Inquisitor

UA Zxquez

Chaldrath bleusoul

Corey (VCH) Drizern

Misc Staple Ouroboros

Brave Sir Robin Undine

X Kakashi

FBM (Rupert) Yatta

Wise Man Silverchat

NaCN Commodore Mango

Eldibs Mindspark

stranger Icshi

spy-there Andraste

Rowen JtD

Toast Demonslayer

Suspicious Vlish Rache

Mystery Man Zephyr Tempest

Micawber ef

wz. As Fort

Btl

Ford Prefect Frahhamn

Black Wombat Murder She Wrote

 

3. Was there a user on Polaris called "mef" and if so was this the same person as "ef"? Or is "mef" just a typo of "ef"?

 

4. Regarding the period around 2004-2005. Who was active in the transitional design community that began using BoA? This is a few years before Shadow Vale, so I'm not very sure. Kelandon and TM, clearly, maybe Ephesos, and I think Jewels and BainIhrno would fit in that community as well. Who else?

 

5. What in the world was OMGJeremy?

 

6. And what was the Tims fad? This is another very early one.

 

Thanks folks!

[Thousand]

OMGJeremy... was a pseudo article site? I know Scorp did some writing for it, but didn't start the actual site or anything (I'm sure). The topics were pretty much anything under the stars. I know I read some 'the most horrible bugs on earth' or something like it and cringed at the pictures.

 

+: Oh wait apparently it still exists. Well. :|

[Sullust]

Maybe a 'News at 11' participants group? Black Wombat played a big part of that.

[Slawbug]

Oh my, it does still exist. And it's the same site. Nothing to do with TM though.

 

News at 11: Great idea! Unfortunately, pretty much all of those people are already in other groups (you, Rantallion, Creator, Djur, TM, E-Master, MM, Morgan, Arctic) or did not have enough posts to make it on the list in the first place.

[Alorael at Large]

But I'm pretty sure Black Wombat was the initiator of News at 11.

 

Don't be fooled by the M: ef and mef are the same person. She was ef here and mef on Polaris for reasons I don't know.

 

—Alorael, who isn't clear on whether or not there's a mapping/guide group. If there is, Rache and Silverchat (silver harloe) belong on there.

[Slawbug]

Black Wombat would be in a group by himself, however.

[Enraged Slith]

Quote:

4. Regarding the period around 2004-2005. Who was active in the transitional design community that began using BoA? This is a few years before Shadow Vale, so I'm not very sure. Kelandon and TM, clearly, maybe Ephesos, and I think Jewels and BainIhrno would fit in that community as well. Who else?

Stareye created the very first Blades of Avernum scenario, A Perfect Forest. Years later, in SV, he revealed that he was working on a large project, but he, as far as I know, never finished it.

TM ported Roses of Reckoning, and followed by making Emerald Mountain and Canopy, along with a host of small scenarios to teach others how to design (not sure exactly when this was).

Khoth made Babysitting relatively early on.

If by 'transitional', you're referring to BoE designers moving on to BoA, I think that's probably it.

Otherwise, there was a spattering of small scenarios created by random users who never really posted and haven't been heard from since. NecrisOmega created a bunch of exceptional creature graphics, and Luz(?) made a boatload of amazing terrain/floor/wall graphics that have appeared in pretty much every scenario.

[Slawbug]

New designers who used BoA and influenced the community in those pre-SV years would also count. Anyone in that pile?

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Enraged Slith: Luz Piazuelo? Yeah, I recall her making a lot of high quality Avernum-style graphics, and being kind of the gold standard for custom graphics in the "let's all make graphics for BoA even though it isn't out yet!" period on the forums.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Yatta

Yatta was Johnnyfeds, who along with ADoS and (I believe) Zxquez was a member of the infamous Revere Brigade.

Quote:

3. Was there a user on Polaris called "mef" and if so was this the same person as "ef"? Or is "mef" just a typo of "ef"?

same person as ef; i believe Polaris didn't allow usernames shorter than three characters

Quote:

5. What in the world was OMGJeremy?

a comedy website Scorp wrote for. think of an edgier version of Cracked. it still exists

Quote:

6. And what was the Tims fad? This is another very early one.

everyone changed their displayed name to Tim, because

[Sullust]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Black Wombat would be in a group by himself, however.

Is there a reason you're trying to enforce non-intersecting subsets?

[Slawbug]

Yes -- the whole point of this exercise is to help represent a large list of active members in an easily digestible form. Having a few points of intersection could theoretically be OK. But, when a new group could have 10 members and 9 of them are already in other groups, that will only add to the size of the whole image and decrease its digestability.

[Aran]

Originally Posted By: like tetris, but more visceral

But I'm pretty sure Black Wombat was the initiator of News at 11.

Don't be fooled by the M: ef and mef are the same person. She was ef here and mef on Polaris for reasons I don't know.

—Alorael, who isn't clear on whether or not there's a mapping/guide group. If there is, Rache and Silverchat (silver harloe) belong on there.

I suspect IPB refused two-letter PDNs, because fz also registered as fz+ on Polaris.

Would Riibu be part of the mapping group, or is this a different generation? They were all distinguished by the Cartographer custom title, which incidentally caused me to confuse them all for the same person in the beginning.

Edit: I suspect you've already read through the PPP beginning to end for this project, but this goodbyemilestone thread by Djur lists a few of the who's who at the time (-2003).

Edit: Forgot that he was actually just switching accounts.

[Alorael at Large]

I don't think Zxquez was in the Revere group. I'm not sure there was anyone besides ADoS and JohnnyFeds.

 

—Alorael, who can only say that there were some periods in Spiderweb history in which there were large efforts to make names confusing. Sometimes people swapped names. In one case many, many people switched to the name "We are Tim" with a few more variations on the Tim theme around. Zeviz was filling in as temporary admin at the time and wasn't pleased.

[Slawbug]

You aren't the only one who had that confusion. I don't think there will be a mapping group at all. Riibu is already under Polaris and/or Room 3, and there are not enough mappers in any one generation for such a grouping to make sense.

 

Likewise for the analytical/minmaxing folk, 90% of whom are just a subset of the mods in the 2007+ era, anyway.

[Slawbug]

I think Zeeqon was in the Revere Brigade, right?

 

What did Johnnyfeds do? I haven't seen his name anywhere.

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

New designers who used BoA and influenced the community in those pre-SV years would also count. Anyone in that pile?

'The Cave of No Return' by Eldiran was probably the first longest third-party BoA scenario.

Then there's Erik Westra, who made a scenario as well as the cookbook back in '04. His scenario (Death at Chapman's) wasn't great IIRC, but the cookbook clearly was.

That's all I can think of, but I know that the HLPM has some really detailed information on the scenarios, so there may be a good place to look.

[Aran]

(This two column format is kind of hard to read.)

 

Wise Man, ef, Undine, Enraged Slith, Rowen, NaCN and (later on) MSW were all on Polaris. All but the last two were in on Teh Conspiracey.

 

I remember NaCN as part of a posse on Polaris that also included TGM and a member going by Uncle Curio (who had another name that escapes me). I'm not sure whether he (Curio) posted on SW as well though.

 

TGM did custom graphics; many other Blades artists are listed on the Louvre.

 

Frahhamn (of Frahhamn's Dungeon) was part of the Blades of Exile webring. (Oh man, webrings.) His site is stored in Jewels' archive along with other early BoE sites.

 

Misc Staple sounds like an alias. Can't remember who it is, though.

[Aran]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

I think Zeeqon was in the Revere Brigade, right?

Zeeqon = ADoS.

[Cairo Jim]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

What did Johnnyfeds do? I haven't seen his name anywhere.

That name sounds awfully familiar. For some reason I think he may of been a bit of an occaisonal stirrer. Sorta like TM. I could be wrong about that though.

[Slawbug]

Misc Staple = ezAndy, I believe.

 

And bleusoul = Frahhamn, JtD = Lone Flame, and Commodore Mango = Rider of Rohan = RoR = Grammar Wench. I'm just glad to find out finally that Roses of Reckoning was not incarnated in human form.

[Kelandon]

Originally Posted By: off/on

'The Cave of No Return' by Eldiran was probably the first longest third-party BoA scenario.

That's sort of a weird way of putting it. It was the third scenario (not including the HLPM) released, and it was longer than the preceding two. RoR had 5 towns, BS 4, TCoNR 9. But it wasn't until APF, Canopy, and Bahs that we had JV-length scenarios.

Originally Posted By: off/on

That's all I can think of, but I know that the HLPM has some really detailed information on the scenarios, so there may be a good place to look.

There is a little bit of narrative about what happened when each scenario came out, e.g. "After RoR and BS in quick succession, there was a long lag (2 months) until the third scenario. Finally, newcomer Eldiran delivered TCoNR, a short (but longer than RoR and BS) and relatively simple but fun scenario." But the list to look at is this one: http://calref.net/misc/boa-timeline.txt

On people who were active in BoA in 2004-2005, one thing that you might not immediately know to check is the people who tried to create stand-alone scripts, e.g. Walker M. White, who tried to rewrite the targeting algorithm in basicnpc to the point that he did, er, some fairly twisted things. But I did borrow some of his coding techniques into later version of the HLPM.

Dahak also wrote some early scripts.

[Thousand]

Wait what.

 

Why am I under Polaris? This is news to me. I think I posted like all of once there, if even that. Comparing satellites I posted more at Desp than at Polaris, and I was never really part of either crowd. SV, though, yes. Room 3 I'd... accept, I guess. :|

[Aran]

Yeah. If we class everyone who posted on Polaris as Polaran, we'd have to include TGM, Thuryl and Alec.

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: Kelandon

There is a little bit of narrative about what happened when each scenario came out, e.g. "After RoR and BS in quick succession, there was a long lag (2 months) until the third scenario. Finally, newcomer Eldiran delivered TCoNR, a short (but longer than RoR and BS) and relatively simple but fun scenario." But the list to look at is this one: http://calref.net/misc/boa-timeline.txt

I knew about that list, but I couldn't remember the link. As for the HLPM, I was clearly remembering it as being much more awesome than it actually is, which I guess is a compliment to you, but not that helpful to Slarty.

[Slawbug]

New question for people from era 2:

 

When people have been telling me about Btl, have they actually meant, BtI, as in Bob the Impaler? Who is the same person as Rantallion, and I suppose, just had multiple accounts?

[Kelandon]

BtI is definitely Bob the Impaler. Rantallion is not what anyone called him, though that was the PDN of his last account. No one else went by BtI.

[*i]

As far as Era 1, I tend to think of it in four epochs:

 

1) Early Days -- The first few months after Blades of Exile was released where most community interaction centered around websites. This predates the ITW Aceron board days. I would say anyone with a website or a scenario released during this time would belong to this epoch. Some people: Akhronath, Zaloopa, Brett Bixler, Aceron, Derin, Olly, Tony Wilsdon, JtP, Jesse Thrall, Stareye, Tarl, Scott Evans, BGracefield, Sean Rea, Ryan Saneka (also Lump), Kylaer, Chatty, Heng Yee Zhe. Some may be a little later, but not by much.

 

2) Old BoE Days -- Sometime around March or April 1998, the ITW took off and serious scenarios stated to come out. The arena also began sometime in the summer of 1998. A flurry of scenario design activity occurred from about the summer to the deadline of the first contest. Perhaps this could be called the "Silver Age of Blades" (see epoch 4).

 

3) The Interregnum -- Official support for BoE from Spiderweb began to wane and many of the stalwart designers left after the contest concluded. Scenario design continued at a slower pace. The arena chugged along and kept things going. There were long periods of several days where no posts were made on ITW. Over time, Aceron and other major personalities left or faded away.

 

4) The Lyceum -- The Lyceum was founded by Alcritas and the ITW collapsed, the community shifted there. Some old personalities remained, as well as new ones. Focus at the Lyceum was largely on BoE scenario design, and has been called the "Golden Age of Blades".

[Balladeer]

Originally Posted By: Kelandon

But the list to look at is this one: http://calref.net/misc/boa-timeline.txt

Any new scenarios since 2010 not on the list or did everyone pretty much stop?

4. I actually fought BoA for quite a while. I was a diehard BoE and was reluctant to see the community start to favor the newer game. I added BoA scenarios to TrueSite in May 2005 but didn't purchase it until November 2006 when the call for contest judges got a bit more pleading. Don't know if you consider the website enough to count me in on the transition or not. I was there, but I was dragging my feet for the most part.

[Dintiradan]

There have been quite a few new scenarios since then.

[Balladeer]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

There have been quite a few new scenarios since then.

Then TrueSite is woefully out of date...

[Slawbug]

Dintiradan, WHERE are these things announced? I haven't seen them here, and of course SV is no more. ARE they publicized? No wonder BoA seems lifeless.

[tridash]

helpful hint: there is a Blades of Avernum forum a few down from General

[Kelandon]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Dintiradan, WHERE are these things announced? I haven't seen them here, and of course SV is no more. ARE they publicized? No wonder BoA seems lifeless.

They are announced in, e.g., topics like this one: http://www.spiderwebforums.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=262836

Or this one: http://www.spiderwebforums.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=241811

Or this one: http://www.spiderwebforums.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=237760

Or... well, you get the idea.

[Tyranicus]

Also, they are all available for download on my site.

[Slawbug]

I saw Mike Slack's topic from this week, of course. But if the previous announcement of a scenario being released was last summer, that would explain why I can't remember any announcements recently: there haven't been any.

[Slawbug]

NEW QUESTION:

 

The Club of All. It seems this lasted for a lot longer than I had previously realized, and had a somewhat more consistent set of participants. Who was involved in this?

 

So far I have Shaper Master, TGM, Order Mage, Sir David, Wise Man, Wizard, XYZ, NaCN, Zephyr Tempest, xxo (who was that?), Reality Corp., FBM/Rupert (I think)

 

A few of these folks are era 3 only, and some are already in groups, but this has the makings of a legit social group to me. It would probably be a Proto-TCOA group for era 2, and a TCOA group for early era 3, just as is the case for Shadow Vale in eras 3-4.

 

Was ADoS involved? Aran, I know you had an account there and visited from time to time, at least.

 

EDIT: Ooh, Stughalf too.

[Tyranicus]

There were two incarnations of TCoA. One from long before I joined and one later hosted on Aran's site in mid-2006(?) The second incarnation never really took off and was abandoned not long after it started.

[Slawbug]

The first incarnation went through a few different hosts, in fact.

 

The one on Aran's site never took off at all, so it's a footnote at best.

[Aran]

It vegetated a bit until OM went on some kind of racist rampage on it, which eventually caused me to shut it down.

 

If you're going to catalogue early satellites of 2003-2005, you'll have your hands full. They were a fad, and proliferated like RPs did in 2003 or Aimhack campaigns in 2011.

 

I remember the "Bladester" forum by Zephyr, "The Club of All" by Order Mage, "Chance" by RealityCorp, "The Place where you do Stuff" by ADoS.

 

This thread is informative. It mentions "CSM" by JadeWolf(?) as a currently active one, and also others that were already dead: Chance, TPwydS and something called "Dark Fire/The Abyss"; not sure who made that one.

 

Edit: this post reminded me of something I'd forgotten: While OM did indeed start the early TCoA, it was pretty much taken over by TGM and WiseMan, likely for the larger part of its lifetime.

 

Join my forum...please - this thread is representative of a lot of topics in 2004.

 

In that topic (March 2004) RealityCorp quotes a list of what existed at that time:

 

Polaris

Desperance

Wiseman's Forums

The Club of B00G3YM3N

Chance

ADoS Revolution

Abyss

Dark Fire

 

Indicating that Abyss and Dark Fire might not be one and the same as it appeared, but the list is not very reliable. I strongly suspect TCoB = TCoA and ADoS Revolution = TPwydS.

 

I'm done trawling for now, so I'll close with Thuryl's final comment on the above thread about the orbits of satellite fora:

 

If Ptolemy were alive, he'd be spinning in his grave.

[Slawbug]

I'm only cataloguing the active ones. A lot of them have 1 or 2 snapshots on Wayback, so this is discernable. That means Bladester doesn't count, nor the Abyss. Haven't looked at ADoS or Dark Fire.

 

TCoB definitely = a later name of TCoA, from the era when Order Mage changed his PDN to Boogeyman variants.

 

I'll have to look into CSM since 2005 Aran seems to think it was active. It is not on WM, sadly.

 

If anyone has defunct addresses for the others (ADoS, Dark Fire, or anything else I should care about) please post them.

[Aran]

"Active" of course is kind of fluid, because almost all of the satellites back then had a nucleus of about 5 members, and their chief traffic were posting games. If they became places like Shadow Vale or CalRef, then you'd later date their birth to that time; for others you'd see in hindsight they never were alive at all.

 

I don't think CSM was more active than Chance, but I'm not sure if Chance was closer to Bladester or TCoA.

 

I notice that you clearly distinguish the Abyss and Dark Fire, and have found an archive link for the Abyss. That's more than I have...

 

Maybe it's possible to search the giant graveyard of InvisionFree for relevant stuff. I'm not sure of the other prominent free forum hosts at the time. ProBoards and ezboards were among them.

 

ezboards hosted the Lyceum, naturally. It also hosted ADoS' site.

 

http://pub42.ezboard.com/btheplacewhereyoudostuff/

 

(The URL doesn't work; it might help on the internet archive, though. I've also tried theplacewhereyoudostuff.yuku.com, matching the new URL of the Lyceum, but I guess it was closed without being transferred.)

 

Heh; I just came across a UBB.classic forum (unrelated to Spiderweb) and felt a wave of nostalgia at the words "This topic comprises N pages:". Man, I need to put that in the PPP theme just for the retrioactivity.

[Tyranicus]

In late 2005/early 2006, there was also RIFQ, which apparently still exists, albeit very dead.

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus

In late 2005/early 2006, there was also RIFQ, which apparently still exists, albeit very dead.

I might have to change back to this avatar for old times sake.

Oh! Another site from this time period that perhaps has not been mentioned: Overwhelming's Beta Testing Centre. Unlike most other satellite boards at the time, it served a niche purpose. It got spammed out, and Shadow Vale ended up taking over its functionality.

[Aran]

I remember Overwhelming had a scenario repository as well, but that caused some sort of fallout (with Kelandon?) when he hosted scenarios without asking the authors.

 

(Fun annotation: That kerfuffle gave me the idea of a central repository that would allow authors to upload them on their own; giving authors control while avoiding the dissipation into a thousand Geocities pages. This later - much later - became the Blades Forge.)

 

The testing forum is here.

 

The site itself was at http://overwhelming.squarespace.com/ with a splash portal at http://boa-center.uni.cc/ . Both are gone, but on Wayback.

 

Edit: And here is the kerfuffle aforementioned. It's far earlier than I thought. BoAC was alive well through the end of 2005; so it would be incorrect to say this issue ended it. However, the site is gone now.

[Tyranicus]

Originally Posted By: Aʀᴀɴ

I remember Overwhelming had a scenario repository as well, but that ended in some sort of fallout (with Kelandon?) when he hosted scenarios without asking the authors.

I'm fairly certain the big issue there was scripts and articles rather than the scenarios themselves.

[Slawbug]

Hosting scenarios without permission was definitely an issue there; see the topic Aran linked to. And, wow. I never actually read past the first post of that topic. Talk about drama! What a jerk.

[Aran]

    

I remember Overwhelming had a scenario repository as well, but that ended in some sort of fallout (with Kelandon?) when he hosted scenarios without asking the authors.

I'm fairly certain the big issue there was scripts and articles rather than the scenarios themselves.

Well, Kel was pretty clear about wanting all his works down; in particular, after Overwhelming had grudgingly taken down the scripts and articles but insisted on keeping the scenarios.

[Slawbug]

According to the topic, Overwhelming grudgingly took down only the articles, claiming he had the right to distribute others' copyrighted work due to some bizarre misinterpretation of the BoA license. When Overwhelming's ISP found out, they took his site offline until he removed the illegal material.

 

The linked topic is pretty damning for Overwhelming. Among other things, it features him claiming he asked everyone for permission first, and then Zxquez, Ash Lael and TM all say they were never asked either and ask for their stuff to be removed, too.

[Kelandon]

Overwhelming's smug and self-righteous demeanor, total tone-deafness to the needs and desires of the community, and arbitrary stubbornness that you can read in that topic were characteristic of him more generally in the community. If my original message to him, which he quotes in part in that topic, seems abrasive, I offer as excuse that I was very annoyed with him based on previous incidents (one of several possible examples), and at the time, I did regularly update my scenarios (check my site history around January-April 2005, which was when I released Bahs, LP, and 9 Vars, with a whole bunch of updates following). Also, I would be being less than honest if I denied that I had other reasons to be underwhelmed by Overwhelming.

 

In checking my old PMs (which I still have from that era), I saw that BSC — I forget what he originally registered as, but he kept the BSC acronym throughout — was another active poster at the time. He was a good dude, albeit not around for all that long. But I immediately remembered him as soon as I saw the name, which is something.