RP in the not-so-distant past
Apr. 6th, 2004 06:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoDiscussing this with a friend last week made me think about it for the first time in many years. Let us set the Wayback Machine for 1978, Chicago, Illinois. Pick up a copy of the weekly free alternative newspaper called The Reader.
I know this is a bit hard to imagine for some of the younger people who might read this, but that was a time before the public internet, before personal computers were appliances that you could buy inexpensively, before there were online RPGs and MUCKs and chat rooms. In fact, the dialup BBS was just in the process of being invented, and the only users who had access were technogeeks who spent considerable amounts of time and money on literally building their own computer systems.
But, the interesting thing I want to point out: RP, very much as we know it, was alive and well. Turn to the classified section of that free newspaper, and find eight or ten pages of personal ads. These are not paid ads, and do not contain what you might expect ("GWM into leather, BB, tired of bar scene...etc.") but rather are the interactions, couched in the form of poses or statements, of hundreds of characters who exist solely in those printed pages. Manual Dexterity, Tiny Dancer, Gonzo, Fuffle, Geech, and many more developed their characters and interacted through these weekly ads.
The rules were stringent. Free ads could contain no personally identifying information lest they be used for something illegal or commercial, so no phone numbers or addresses were permitted. Anything that looked too much like a real name might be suppressed as well. Length was limited by the format in which ads had to be submitted: typewritten on one side of a 3 x 5 inch card. This usually maxed out to about four lines of print in the ad columns. An individual could submit more than one ad per week, but each had to be mailed separately to a post office box address. Fortunately, a letter was only 13 cents in those days. The paper would print as many ads as it had room for, usually somewhere between six and eight pages of fine print.
We used to read through all that print very carefully so as to avoid missing anything. Would Manual Dexterity make up the lover's quarrel he'd been having with Tiny Dancer for the last three months? Would Fuffle manage to evoke a grin from the enigmatic Jaffy? The action proceeded, at a snail's pace, but it did develop. Characters unfolded, virtual friendships evolved as well as occasional enmities.
None of us had any idea that what we were doing was a precursor of something as popular (even in a limited sense) as the mucks, chat rooms, and talkers of the internet era. But there it was. The mechanics were slow but workable, and the process almost exactly the same. Look up the microfilms, you'll be surprised.
I know this is a bit hard to imagine for some of the younger people who might read this, but that was a time before the public internet, before personal computers were appliances that you could buy inexpensively, before there were online RPGs and MUCKs and chat rooms. In fact, the dialup BBS was just in the process of being invented, and the only users who had access were technogeeks who spent considerable amounts of time and money on literally building their own computer systems.
But, the interesting thing I want to point out: RP, very much as we know it, was alive and well. Turn to the classified section of that free newspaper, and find eight or ten pages of personal ads. These are not paid ads, and do not contain what you might expect ("GWM into leather, BB, tired of bar scene...etc.") but rather are the interactions, couched in the form of poses or statements, of hundreds of characters who exist solely in those printed pages. Manual Dexterity, Tiny Dancer, Gonzo, Fuffle, Geech, and many more developed their characters and interacted through these weekly ads.
The rules were stringent. Free ads could contain no personally identifying information lest they be used for something illegal or commercial, so no phone numbers or addresses were permitted. Anything that looked too much like a real name might be suppressed as well. Length was limited by the format in which ads had to be submitted: typewritten on one side of a 3 x 5 inch card. This usually maxed out to about four lines of print in the ad columns. An individual could submit more than one ad per week, but each had to be mailed separately to a post office box address. Fortunately, a letter was only 13 cents in those days. The paper would print as many ads as it had room for, usually somewhere between six and eight pages of fine print.
We used to read through all that print very carefully so as to avoid missing anything. Would Manual Dexterity make up the lover's quarrel he'd been having with Tiny Dancer for the last three months? Would Fuffle manage to evoke a grin from the enigmatic Jaffy? The action proceeded, at a snail's pace, but it did develop. Characters unfolded, virtual friendships evolved as well as occasional enmities.
None of us had any idea that what we were doing was a precursor of something as popular (even in a limited sense) as the mucks, chat rooms, and talkers of the internet era. But there it was. The mechanics were slow but workable, and the process almost exactly the same. Look up the microfilms, you'll be surprised.
