Thanks, Tokiwong, for the link. I'll have a look!
Thanks for the compliments, guys.
Please, however, consider this:
The IR did not start as a game at all.
It didn't even start as a question, not really.
I was bummed out one day, after a Flame War over my You Must Be Tolerant post. So, I sat down and thought up a frivolous nonsensical question (involving a situation that would never happen, not in the Forgotten Realms!), and set it down.
I was hoping for a few humorous answers in return. Some humorous, absolutely of no importance, kind of stuff.
So what happens?
What happened was spontaneous.
It was not something I foresaw, nor intended, nor could have started if I had tried.
People started posting serious answers to my humorous question.
Then, more people started posting, replying to the serious replies.
So I said ... hey, ok, I'm betting that if this is what you are posting, then maybe those NPCs really would act that way, and I think this would happen.
And then more posts, and yet more, came streaming in.
People started to argue with each other over the What Ifs, and yet more people jumped in.
So I said ... ok, it seems we have two sides here. The gnomes and allies, and their foes. And it seems to me that the foes of the gnomes would be winning, based on the posts.
Then about six people jump in on the side of the gnomes, and I say: ok, perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the gnomes would win.
Then yet more arguing broke out, and long articles explaining why this or that would happen, and ... well, then, something rather magical happened.
I became a storyteller instead of a commentator, somehow.
And those who were arguing, were suddenly players, each representing a different faction.
What had been a serious debate over the original frivolous question, was now a game.
And then, when that happened, suddenly hundreds of posts descended on the ENBoards, all in the matter of a few days.
An avalanche of posts, and I watched with my mouth wide open.
But I like that kind of thing. It's neat, writing a story. We gamers write a story every single time we play the game, you know. We write a story, in the air - but it IS a story.
So, since I had become the storyteller, I assumed the job of impromptu DM, and everyone ... just accepted me as that!
So I said this and that, and the chain reaction built up to a colossal roar, and we made history on the ENBoards, and we altered the Forgotten Realms beyond recognition.
And many of us, had a ... lot ... of fun.
But ... I did not say at the start: Now I shall begin a game, and run it, on the ENBoards.
I never imagined that my frivolous, humorous question would create the IR. (I am greatly honored that it did.)
In the second IR, I pulled a trick.
I thought - I cannot go and say ... let's do this again. People won't go for it.
So, I put something on the boards that I thought would stir up a tempus. Sort of a Troll, really. Rabble-rousing.
Without warning, I had the Chosen - in the most arrogant and unreasonable way - demand EVERYONE submit to their justice, and be judged, and accept their punishment, for their actions in the first IR.
It worked. Some people, like Forrester from the first IR, were rather incensed (heck, I would have been incensed!) And when they came to pound the Chosen into snailsnot, that pulled back in everyone from the First IR.
Even so, it was a close thing. I pulled every trick I knew to keep interest, to try to get people to want to be involved.
Thus, the Second IR was a philosophical uproar. It started as a trial, turned into a peace conference (and when was the last fantasy peace conference you were in, that wasn't a verbal uproar), and finally ... when it was obvious that peace wasn't going to happen ... I threw in elements to start the war all over again.
In the Third IR, I attempted this stunt again, with the Wanderer.
However, I was far less successful here.
I think the Third IR worked because everyone remembered the joy of the First and Second IR, saw the fun that could be had, and everyone tried to create something good, something fun, once more.
I tried to create something more lasting than the first two IRs were. I tried to create senses of time and motion. I put in rules to give a framework upon which to base decisions - I tried to create a new RP game, in effect. An effort that grew harder and harder, as you gained more and more powerful weapons and magic, until my flawed framework of rules was buckling and collapsing, but I shored it up as I could, and just kept on. (I have been accused of being stubborn. Stubborn I am, and it helped me to keep going there.)
...
Now, if I go back to Faerun, as it is officially, and I say: What would you do, if the gnomes started the industrial revolution (my original question), I am not this time asking a frivolous question.
Instead, I am saying: do you wish to start a game.
That is a very different thing.
And remember that when the First IR occurred, we could play it in RPG General, where the most people who post here would see it, and be inclined to join in - we cannot do that now, for the setup of the ENBoards is different now.
How would I run such an IR?
Some of you would want rules such as existed for the Third IR. That is, that your power or people had so much strength, so much access to technology, so much magic, and so on.
Some of you would want freeform. Remember that the entire First IR was pure freeform. Look at the archives.
I don't know how to do it.
I would want, if I ran an IR again, to allow for a good time for all of you ... how do I do that?
And I don't want people to say: Edena blew it in the end. His last IR was a disaster.
If I could start a new IR on RPG General, it would help, I think. But the rules are the rules.
Darkness was nice enough to allow us to start the 3rd IR on RPG ... he protected us when posters became upset, and he did a lot of good things for us. However, Darkness could not allow it now ... the rules are much stricter now.
If I never thanked you, Darkness, for doing that then, I thank you now. (Can someone point Darkness to this post, so he can read this? I do not have his e-mail.)
I would like to recapture the spontaneity, the sudden outburst of outrage, joy, bewilderment (what IS this thread about??!!), and sheer madcap mayhem (I leave for 45 minutes, and half the the war has passed, bemoaned Balor), that was the First IR.
Read it in the Archives. You'll see that it was all this!
I wish there was a way to do it again.
Because that outburst of outrage, joy, bewilderment, and madcap mayhem, WAS what provided the base and the inspiration, for the ten thousand posts and four month long 3rd IR (averaging one hundred posts per day, for over three months.)
At least, that is my opinion.
How to recapture the spontaneity?
How to recapture the atmospherics of the First IR?
Go to the Archives, and read the First IR again, anyone who feels like it. Perhaps you can find the answer that eludes me.
)
- about this, e-mail me at your earliest convenience and together we'll see to it that we can make this fun without sacrificing your health and sanity for it, ok? 
