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Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
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huginn
01/10/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
I -still- go on an old muck from time to time. They're surprisingly hold up well even today if they have a strong community
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outsdr
01/09/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
LambdaMOO. Started on it in 1991; it's why I got my first internet account. Played it in the VAX lab at Frostburg State University, the same university that caused a crisis on the LambdaMOO servers a year or two later, when one of the compsci instructers taught his intro to computing class about LambdaMOO. It got so bad, the head of the vax lab threatened to block access, and we had to circulate petitions to get her to reconsider. She was a great lady though in many ways; she caught me impersonating her by spoofing her account in an attempt to get some bully to leave me alone online; it worked; she laughed and told me to never ever do it again.

That's also where I choose the name Outsider, which has been my primary name online (give or take a few vowels) ever since.

Good times.
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Purple Dave
01/09/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
True story, when I was growing up the local library had all the then-current Pern books filed under Science Fiction. All but one. Only DragonsDawn, the one freaking book (at the time) where they actually traveled via spaceship or used computers, was filed under Fantasy. It didn't really mean anything, since Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and a few other related sub-genres were all sorted by author in the same set of shelves, but each book had a little emblem at the base of the spine so you could quickly identify which type of book it was supposed to be. That way, if you were only interested in one specific sub-genre, you could skip anything that didn't have the appropriate emblem on the spine.
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mactabby
01/09/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
Ah, great piece and the memories that come with it. I worked my way up through a MUD at uni and eventually ran it for two years, which taught me everything you need to know about dealing with power-mad egomaniacs. I've since quoted that in job interviews as my earliest management experience (I was god - suck on that!). I also have a presentation I give on new technology (I'm an e-learning professional) and how there's nothing new in any of it, where I point out that MUDs were an early form of SL for those of us who prefer the written word and the creativity it enables. My MUD didn't have too many castles and monsters - but it did have a Cluedo mansion and Mr Benn's costume shop (which the UK folk will understand). Aside from the graphics, there's little in today's virtual worlds which wasn't in a MU* first.
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Kaila Hale-Stern
01/09/09

@mactabby: I love that you've used your virtual world experience for job interviews (and yes, god/wizard would make for the best business card ever).

Anyone desiring of power over others should spend a few weeks as a game admin and see how very much people are insane.

My mother used to lament that I couldn't put my game-time anywhere on college applications -- I was often working quite hard, often to the exclusion of "RL" work, but there didn't seem to be a way to pencil in "Dragonrider Search Committee" between Amnesty International club and ceramics.
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mactabby
01/09/09

@Kaila Hale-Stern: Well it's got a lot easier in the last few years. First time I tried it was in 1997 and I sounded like a complete dork (probably was...), but with forums and chats and virtual worlds entering the mainstream now, and all the user management that comes with it, I find that no-one bats an eyelid. Even better, is that the MUD I ran spawned Cheeseplant's House (for which I take no credit) which was evolutionary ancestor of instant messaging and second life. Government types just love it when you drop that in... ;-)
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Slatz_Grobnik
01/09/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
It's so strange to me. I consider myself geek and all, but there are these strange gaps in my experience. Comic books, for one, but also on-line communities, except until fairly recently.

Likewise, despite my love of tabletop RPGs and LARPs, I could never make the transition to the online world, either when I tried MUSHes back in the day or MMOs today. I never did figure that one out as to why.

But, kudos. Stellar article, Hale-Stern. It is amazing how far we've come, how communities like these matter to so many, and how almost prescient they were to our modern world.
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Michael Scott Shappe
01/09/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
I was also a PernMUSH addict, long, long ago. I watched one of my co-workers actually flunk out of school over it!

I was always amazed, though, at how much detail we all managed to cram into that little text-based virtual world...
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Kaila Hale-Stern
01/09/09

@Michael Scott Shappe: A friend of mine on the game was sent to "internet rehab" by her frantic parents. These days, her time on the game would probably be considered rather negligible online saturation.

I'm tempted to liberate the old, old Mac from the closet some day and look through those thousands and thousands of pages of logs...it really was quite extraordinary to have that gateway, wasn't it?
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jutman
01/09/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
Never have played any MUD or MUSH but I have ready every piece of anything on PERN. I so miss the night till 2 a.m. re-reading a book for the 3rd or 4th time.
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Kaila Hale-Stern
01/09/09

@jutman: I think I still have several copies of "The Dragonlover's Guide To Pern," which was pretty much our bible on the game -- we tried very hard to stay on-canon.

I still wish McCaffrey had allowed women to Impress Bronze dragons, though. She insisted we stick to the gender-assigned colors on the game. No flexibility with Gold and Bronze.
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mad love for Astrid
01/09/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
While I missed the online roleplay train, I was healvly involed in x files fanfiction communites starting around '97.

I still miss every crummy geocities and anglefire fanfic site, a lycros inbox full of stories broken into several parts and eagerly awaiting Gossimer updates.

I use to write long, in dept e mails to authors about their works, and get thoughtful reply's back.

We were fanatics, and i loved every moment. It seems like so much longer then 12 years...
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Kaila Hale-Stern
01/09/09

@mad love for Astrid: Oh, man, YES, the X-Files community! Nothing will ever trump my initial forays into reading M/S; all other fanfiction came after and while glorious, it's never quite like your first fandom again.

I remember how 20th Century Fox used to chase down the site owners, waving cease-and-desist letters, as though a story about Mulder finally getting the balls to tell Scully he loved her or finding himself surprisingly in lust with Alex Krycek would bankrupt the Chris Carter empire.
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Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.
01/09/09

@Kaila Hale-Stern: I was a founding DDEB member!

Also, in alt.callahans and a place called AncientSites.

Beautiful article and responses.

*GROUP HUG*
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Elizabeth Weinbloom
01/09/09

@mad love for Astrid: @Kaila Hale-Stern: @Evil Tortie's Mom: Yes! Group hug!!!

My big fandom claim to fame was starting a round-robin fanfic on the OS (or, to some, Gerry) message board when I was 13, which led directly to the creation of the board's fanfic folder.

I love that sites like Gossamer and the OS still exist and look EXACTLY THE SAME. It's like time travel, yo.
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Elizabeth Zelle
01/09/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
I, as well, spent my formative High School years playing PernMUSH and this post brought back a lot of fond memories for me! I will never forget many of the lessons I learn in that text environment, from writing not only quickly but well to how to deal with how quickly power can go to people's heads. PernMUSH helped, in some small way, to make me the happily nerdy adult I grew into.
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Kaila Hale-Stern
01/09/09

@Elizabeth Zelle: Yay, Elizabeth! Maybe we even crossed paths. I think it's the mix of good and bad life lessons that makes the game linger so much in my mind; plus some fantastic friendships and truly epic dramas. But I can't imagine anywhere else I would have rather been.

I still can't see a green dragon without something fluttering in my heart or stomach or both.
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Imbri
01/09/09

@Kaila Hale-Stern: I played a bronzer on Harper's Tale about 5 or so years ago. I think he's still around. I've logged in faithfully once every three-or-so months so he hasn't been reaped. I still remember the first time I read my dragon's desc and fell completely in love. That bit of code is the reason I can't bear to let a somewhat painful reminder of drama and mistakes get thrown into digital oblivion.

I think I had a character on PernMush, but I never stuck. :)
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Kaila Hale-Stern
01/09/09

@Imbri: I used to faithfully login, too -- even just for half a second, to look at the WHO and skim the +bboards. Slowly, slowly, I've lost the linguistics, though -- I can't believe I ever knew so much code.

I was just talking to a friend who has migrated her dragon's desc, and a few logs, from a series of computers since the '90s. I know I have my first dragon printed out somewhere, waiting to be refound. I'll never forget getting that Impression message, not until my brain goes mushy too.
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Annalee Newitz
01/09/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
I was really into the Postmodernism MOO way back when. You could choose to have one of like seven genders (one of which was called "Spivak"). Basically it was a bunch of theory geeks chatting and passing virtual bags of potato chips back and forth.
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Rasselas
01/09/09

@Annalee Newitz: Wow.
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Moff
01/09/09

@Annalee Newitz: It's things like this that cement your status here as Supreme Nerd Above Us All.
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zenpoet
01/09/09

@Annalee Newitz: Love the story, as it takes me back to the time when I first started reading the Pern novels.

I never got into the MUSH, MUCK, or MUD scene, but loved having intensely long discussions with friends about books and series we had read.

I think the longest running discussion we had was about the Saberhagen series, Bezerker and Book of Swords. Loved 'um!

Great article by the way, and worth the read.
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Annalee Newitz
01/09/09

@Moff: Well like the Puppeteers, I prefer to think of myself as the Hindmost.
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Moff
01/09/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
Awesome piece, Kaila. And Pern totally counts as SF! I played a couple of MUDs, but never got too involved or did anything with MUSHes -- I might have, if I'd known more about what they were and all the writing involved.

I get a little nostalgic for the online communities I used to be a part of (mostly the Wire, the first U2 mailing-list), but then, I also get nostalgic for wood-paneled station wagons, and being in charge of passing out milk at snack time, and driving past my high school crush Molly Anderson's house when my friends and I had nothing better to do. Ah, nostalgia. If I ever stop feeling it, I'll miss it.
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Ed Grabianowski
01/09/09

@Moff: Oh man. I was so heavily into the Led Zeppelin online fan community around 1997-ish. It's weird how profoundly things have changed since then. No more mailing lists. No more fan-moderated FAQs (well, I'm sure they're still around somewhere). And all those Maxell XLII tapes I worked SO HARD to collect, relentlessly tracking down low gen copies of some obscure 1971 concert recording, all utterly worthless now that you can swap entire concerts in minutes via torrent.

To this day, if a bunch of so-called Zeppelin fans are sitting around discussing, say, their favorite Zeppelin song, I can trump them all. "Whole Lotta Love is your favorite? Do you prefer the late 1969 prototype performances, the '73 blues medley versions, or the '77 version with the extended solo? 77? Yeah, I prefer the LA Forum, second night, myself. You?"
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Kaila Hale-Stern
01/09/09

@Moff: Thanks muchly, Moff! If you'd stumbled into MUSHes, maybe we would have met there in the long long ago, instead of over drinks and on Gawker rooftops. But face-to-face has a certain charm, too.

I remember meeting a friend from the game at a cafe when I was about 17 -- half excited, half terrified she was going to kill me. Those were the days girl magazines told you not to meet People From The Internet, as they were like to have dubious motives. I suppose we still do -- have dubious motives -- but that's now rather the point of meeting up.
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Moff
01/09/09

@Ed Grabianowski: Totally. I can do the same with "With or Without You." (Chicago '87 or Sydney '93?) Also, not just hunting down tapes—I spent $25 a pop on so many bootleg CDs, at a time when I really had no money to spare, and they're all worth nothing now.

@Kaila Hale-Stern: Ha! That's awesome. I felt pretty much the same way at the first Gawker meet-up, and I was 32.
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Ed Grabianowski
01/09/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
What was the name of the Tolkien MUSH? Elendor? I messed around with that in college. I think I was an orc living in Moria. I recall the debates about whether the MUSH should diverge from the original novels or not. There was a pretty neat Star Wars MUSH as well.
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entertheoctopus
01/09/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
I never got into MUDS for some reason or another, but have been a committed tabletop roleplayer my entire life and, thus, can entirely relate to what you're talking about here. Building these organic, beautiful and entirely imaginary worlds and people is an ongoing pleasure in my life.
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Purple Dave
01/09/09

@entertheoctopus:
I used to tabletop as well, but could never get into the text-based stuff. Probably had something to do with the fact that I could leave all the object-tracking to the GM instead of having to try to visualize it all myself.
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Torley
01/09/09

In reply to Confessions Of A Virtual Dragonrider
I haven't played this incarnation of the Pern world, but even before I knew who Anne McCaffrey was, I used to play this strategy game on the C64: [www.mobygames.com]

Chasing those threads sure was tricky!

Thanx for sharing your memories, I've been feeling really nostalgic recently for early computer entertainment.

The narrative that continues to emblazen through my mind is the Deus Ex universe, and right on topic with holistic cyberpunk goodness, I am very much looking forward to part 3.
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