Old People! Introduce Yourselves!, Let's get to know each other.

[Moggle]

It occurred to me, as things often do, that there are some veteran people that everyone sort of knows but doesn't actually know. Having been checking the forum for so long, you sort of forget who everyone is and well, even who you are. The best course of action is for everyone to pretend that they're new and introduce themselves. If you've been away for a while, let us know where you've been.

I'm Rob Lang, nice to meet you!
I'm a Brit computer programmer who loves his free RPGs. I write The Free RPG Blog (which is on pause), Icar a free Sci Fi RPG, Chom Isis, which is a free online game that has just finished his first proper run. I've also been writing a novel and have been trying to compile all the Moggle stories into a book, which isn't anywhere near finished.

Since I've been away I've become a Dad, changed jobs twice and moved across town. When not creating stuff, I play stringed instruments (banjo, guitar, bassjo, ukelele) and am a PC Gamer. Currently addicted to Just Cause 2.

On the Desert Realm, I designed the skin (which has stood up ok over the years), am an Admin (golly!) and have Moggle (an 'old', absent minded philosopher) as my main character and Mortimer as a secondary. I tried Mortimer as a way of being evil a bit. I might use him again but I found it rather hard to write a villain.

Your turn!

[SumDood]

Rob, good to see you again.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm SumDood, also known as Dood! (a name SentinelSheWolf stuck me with a long time ago).

About ten years ago when I had more hair, I was working on an online version of a game I created about twenty years ago (table-top RP game called Entalis). That's when I ran across Brainwipe (Moggle). Moggle is also a table-top RP game developer, as he noted, and we ran in some of the same circles and visited some of the same forums (like The Forge). We started talking, and submitting our games to various sites, trying to drum up some interest in Free RP gaming.

I should note, I lost the Entalis.net domain name some time ago since I didn't pay my yearly fee, and it was bought by a cyber squatter who wanted me to pay 20K to get it back. That's not going to happen for a free game. LOL.

Anyway, in the course of submitting, Moggle and I both ran into Brian, who had created THIS site - The Desert Realm. Brian was looking for people to help him work on DR (which is how we commonly refer to the Desert Realm) and Moggle and I both jumped in (along with quite a few other players). Thus DR took off and with the programming prowess of Rob and Brian, it did quite well for a forum-based PBP RPG. For years, the site grew, and as things eventually go, it also sort of died. Old players left and eventually things languished and we all moved off to other projects. Now we're back for an attempt at resurecting it. But, of course, we require new gamers to do that. And that's where YOU come in.

Professionally, I'm a TechWriter. That means I document software products for both developers and end-users. I create the help systems that pop up when you click the ? Help link in applications. My first love, however, is SF and Fantasy writing (of the original type, I don't do fan fiction). You'll find that what I write in here isn't based on other work. I value originality, and that's what I strive for. Therefore DR is intended to be unique.

I'm also a console gamer, graphic designer and the father of two children (one in grade school and one starting middle school). Currently, my favorite game has been BioShock. I'm cheap, though, so I don't usually buy games until I can get them at a good used price. For this reason I haven't played BioShock II. Hopefully the price will drop soon and I'll get a copy. Plus, another Halo will be out soon, and I'm willing to pay full price for that one, so I'm waiting for that as well.

In DR, I generally play a lot of NPCs. You'll find me posting for a lot of different characters, including Agmir, Nangros, Deris, and many others. You may not know it's me, and sometimes it won't be, but that's how it goes. I've also authored a lot of the background in here, and I've created the Balloon Ships, Orphean Airships, magic spells, psionincs and Daeleos the Sky City. You may find similar things in other games, but none of them will have been done quite like they're written in here. This place is strange and different, it has a unique flavor to it, and I expect strange and different things from other writers who jump in.

Welcome to DR.
Create a character and join us.

[Sydney]

My name is Nic, but I rarely hear my first name outside of my wife. I am most fond of being called Avy which is a shortened form of my online gaming name. Yes currently my handle here is Sydney, and I like that name as well. I am a WoW player as well.

I was a history major in college, but put that on hold to join the service. That's currently what I do. I love writing and rp and this was the third site I tried. I've been around for a few years because the development here is well done. You'll find me jumping in and out of plot lines and developing places people and things. I enjoy helping people get started and in the past this is how I came to be a mod admin. If you need help at all you can message me.

[Kaylii]

Let's see here. My name is Jeremy and I'm addicted to World of Warcraft. I know that doesn't really have anything to do with this forum, but it eats up a good part of my day, so figured I throw it out there. The main character I play can be found here, assuming anyone cares.

In real life I have just recently left my crappy part time job at K-Mart and moved to another state in hopes of finding something better. The plan is to find myself a full time job, preferably something dealing with computers, but we shall see how that one turns out as it seems most of them want a college education, which I have yet to finish as I got very burned out of school.

On DR I have controlled a handful of characters including Recoome, Destin, Kamora, and Kaylii. Recoome and Destin are both concidered dead at this point, although I'm thinking it could be lots of fun to find a way to bring Recoome back, especially with what has happened in the 100 year jump.

[azkul]

Hello... I'm Azkul, the original founder of The Desert Realm. My real name is Brian. In 1995, I bought my first computer with a new-fangled program on it called Windows 95, which came with an AOL dial-up account. It had a super fast Inet speed of 19.2 kbps - all my friends only had a 14.4!

Soon after, I found a cool site called Geocities, which let you make your own website... for free! What a novel idea! I bought HTML for Dummies, and started making Desert Realm. Like everybody else, I had no clue about design principles, usability, maintainability, etc... but I was having fun. I made the site a sort of "choose your own adventure". So I'd write a few paragraphs and present you with some choices... "Click here to attack the dragon", "Click here to RUN!". So you'd click one of them and you'd read on the next page that you just became lunch.

Once there were 100 pages or so, I started to learn what "maintainability" meant. As in, "this sucks... I don't want to change 100 pages to have a different background color!"

I also wanted a more interactive feel and discovered Yahoo Groups (back then they were called Clubs). A few people found the club and we started posting in character using the Desert Realm as the background. This went on for a few years and it was pretty exciting... Azkul, the disposed orc king, was the center of a rag tag group of adventurers on a quest to restore forests to the desert. Eventually, I lost interest and the club continued in my absence for some time... then it eventually died off.

During this time, in real life, I became a web developer for a tech support company and started learning about server side programming and databases. I discovered this forum software, bought a cheap hosting package, and built desertrealm.com - at the time, I was interested in search engines, so I wrote a spider in Java and desertrealm.com became a fantasy search engine. It had this forum, but nobody was using it... so I had the idea to try to revive the old Yahoo Club. I invited a few of the old members (sentinelshewolf was one of them... there were a few others as well), and we picked up where we left off with the club. There were pretty much no rules at the time... just "you live in a land where magic uses water to fuel its spells... which turned the oceans and forests into desert". Of course, in any free form group like that, people start arguing and we eventually formed rules... and many of the originals left the site because they either didn't like the new rules or the new management.

About that time, the 2 Robs and Pam joined the site and really, if it weren't for those 3, DR wouldn't nearly be as fleshed out as it is.

Some time during all of this, I got a wild hair to own and run my own business. I had ads on the site, and was making about $5/month from Desert Realm's ads (still am), but my other passion is photography. So, I created another site called TheLensFlare.com, which did a lot better with the ads... not great... but enough to make a car payment. Using these 2 sites mentioned and a handful of others, I learned what works and what doesn't to drive people to a website and get them to complete the goal of that site, whether to click on an ad, to fill out a form, etc.

A few years ago, I partnered up with some others and built a new site... www.prospotlight.com - it took quite some time to build because it was done in a new programming language that was very different from asp and php. That site furthered my understanding of marketing, web development, and helped further some other business ideas and goals.

At this point, I'm now self-employed and handle the CTO responsibilities for several companies, most notably www.kuulli.com and www.vauntiummarketing.com

Kuulli's the software the homepage is now running on as of last night, and Vauntium is a full service marketing company that creates websites for companies and the marketing plans to fuel their success.

I'd like to see DR revived again... this will be its 3rd or possibly 4th age. We'll migrate background info from the forum to the main site, and eventually Kuulli will be able to handle its own forum. At that point, we'll dump this forum and migrate the posts over because the Kuulli system uses modern technology to make things more usable (better seo, use of ajax where appropriate, etc)

[SumDood]

Azkul is also an Orc.

[azkul]

Yeah, Azkul's a smart orc possessed with the spirits of ancient kings.

[DarquenessFaIIs]

Hello and welcome to DR. SumDood, Moggle, Azkul, don't faint. I'm still here. I missed you guys and Corby contacted me and said he was posting here again so here I am checking in on you.

-clears throat-Ahem. My name is DarquenessFaIIs, aka RavenBlack on some sites now. SumDood, Moggle, Azkul, Corby a few others and I help build this site up to what it was "back in the day" and I still love it (and all of them too). Real life took over for a few (ok stop giving me the stank eye Dood) more then a few years but it's better now and I hope I can be here more now. IDK what I'm going to do yet, may try to start something with one of my existing characters or maybe start a new one. Haven't really done in creative writing in a while so may be a tinge rusty. Glad this site is still around though and maybe we can bring it back.

Looking forward to getting to know the new people/mods as well. Hope this finds you all well and happy.

Love ya all!

Darq

[azkul]

Heya, Darq... glad you're still alive and kicking. This site is still pretty dead, but there's an occasional post here and there.

As for me, I've got about a month more of intense work (12+ hour days, 6 days a week). And then I'll be able to slack off and take every other weekend off (but still do 12 hour days the rest of the week). The good news is that I should be able to spend some time working on the community aspects of the software platform in September, which will benefit this site as well. *crossing fingers*

[SumDood]

Hey Darq!
* gives burrito *
Nice to hear from you again!