Krakii Remembers 30 Years Ago and “That Rolemaster Thing”

KRAKII REMEMBERS: Krakii waxes sentimental about how times have changed since he first set eyes on GemStone 30 years ago. It sounds like there may be a sequel to this post, too:

As nearly as I can recall, I started on the GEnie network just about exactly 30 years ago today. I know that it was “over the Thanksgiving weekend” of 1992, logging onto the Multi-Player BattleTech game for the first time.

Over the next month, advancing up through the ranks of Kurita, I was frequently encountering this guy (turns out his name was “John”) who often had his roommate looking over his shoulder (her name was “Kim”).

In January, John (and a buddy who did not play MPBT) drove down with his boxed up computer and we used my two phone lines to dial in and run missions together. (AMAZING, being able to “just talk” rather than type all that crap out.)

Then February rolled around, with Tax Season, and I went largely inactive until about May. Didn’t really get back to it as much afterwards, either.

Over the 4th of July weekend, I drove up to visit them, use their dual phone lines, and met Kim. On the way out, as I was boxing up my computer, I happened to look over John’s shoulder and saw him getting some text results with things like “OB” and “DB” and “THT”, and said to myself, “Self, that looks a lot like the RoleMaster system!” He said that it was, and I could find it on page 930 of GEnie.

Pretty much stopped online completely for a while, since I got back home after that weekend to have a family situation. 🙁

But in mid-September or so, I remembered about that RoleMaster thing, and since I had enjoyed the idea of the system (but never found anyone to actually PLAY that game with), and I dipped my toe in to see what it was like. Turns out that John liked it, and Kim liked reading it enough to start playing herself, and a bunch of people up there were involved too…

…so that’s how I met Tarin, and Warble, and her then-boyfriend Krisenfest, then her later-boyfriend Kyrion, and Manny, and so on.

Fun times, fun times.

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(You should anticipate another walk down memory lane in about the second week of September of next year, too, because that will be thirty years actually in THIS game, not just “online” in general. 🙂

Newsby

Newsby is the main anchor for the TownCrier channel over ESP and Lich. She does not adventure, she is a townsperson and completed her apprenticeship for the news desk in 2017.