Eden-Era

'Eden-Era' was an online text-based role-playing game that was first played in the Games/Role Playing Games section of Yahoo! Chat in July 2000. The game was started by Bruce Lilly and Dave Dacey as a replacement for the game Jacmus which had lost direction. Eden-Era aimed to provide a coherent rule structure and online community for text based roleplay in the Yahoo! Games chat rooms.

Eden-Era was first launched in July 2000 by publishing introductory stories and core rules on a number of linked free web page accounts including geocities, fortunecity and tripod. The web pages provided players with basic information on the accepted style of role-play, as well as information on:

• acceptable game fighting rules (giving the defender the choice of either Type One (T1) or Type Two(T2);


• a basic magic system;


• staff who maintained the webpages or who moderated over the rules;


• how to role-play in yahoo using the yahoo chat interface and other chat interfaces; and


• how to interact with other players both in character and out of character.

The Eden-era pages also provided players with an alternative platform for role-playing by introducing yahoo gamers to forum turn based role-playing. There were three major forums that drew the focus of the players, the In Character board, the Out of Character board where players could chat about anything and the Bitch board where players were encouraged to flame each other for readers' amusement.

One of the highlights of the webpages was an initially well run character registry and player database that encouraged players from Yahoo to register their characters (making them legal Eden-era characters) and to also register themselves as a player. The benefits of registering a character meant that its published abilities and history became 'accepted'. The disadvantages in registering a character meant that the character's weaknesses and statistics were viewable by other players who often used the information in an unfair manner. The character registration system was a basic one requiring players to list advantages and disadvanges and characteristics without relying upon a chance system. This gave the players a broad creative licence which often went unchecked when registering.

In chat, the launch of Eden-Era began well before the official start. Dave Dacey was a regular participant in the Yahoo Games standard RPG 1 and RPG 2 chat rooms where he openly discussed the progress of the game and its often elusive co-creator, Bruce Lilly. Dave Dacey from USA, was known as a close friend and confident of Bruce Lilly from Canada though Bruce was a number of years younger than his friend. Together they had created the game through many discussions online and over the phone. Their evasiveness and secluded discussions with other gamers, created the best form of publicity for the game: online gossip. Neither of the creators actively participated in the games administration after its commencement, leaving it in the hands of various webmasters and enthused helpers.

With a group of 30 plus players supporting it, Eden-Era's launch in 2000 was hailed as a success. Eden-Era appealled to role-players of various ages and abilities. The webpages opening introduction highlighted the game's emphasis on not supporting 'power gamers' and providing equal and fair rules for all players. The game also attracted many players who's characters were members of online 'in-character' clans and this helped to sustain the games support and gather momentum into 2001.

Debate often surfaced over the use of the Yahoo! Chat rooms in the games directory as rooms belonging to Eden-Era. While staff in general did not support this conjecture, some players were quick to accept the ownership which would often lead to arguments with other users within the Yahoo! Chat rooms in particular another role-play game, Hell and DBZ players.

Despite some ill researched claims, Eden-Era did not create TB (turn based playing). Nor did it create Type One or Type Two which had originated long before Eden-Era began. Rather the concept of TB and the use of Type One and Type Two fighting styles already existed from previous games and were used in other games played in alternative Yahoo! Chat directories such as Ayenee (in A&E) and Tenaria (teen). Eden-Era simply adopted existing styles already used by the majority of players within the Yahoo! Games chat rooms. This provided Eden-Era with familiarity and gave Eden-Era an advantage when encouraging existing players in the Yahoo! Games directory to join in the game.

The first year or two of Eden-Era consisted of many different role-play sessions led by various role-players without much continuity to the story or to an existing world. Rather, from the role-plays and from information provided by the role-players, the staff of Eden-Era began to create a world around the action. This often led to background inconsistences and resulted in very little supported geofictional information.

At one point, possibley 2002, the url http://www.eden-era.com was purchased to provide Eden-Era with a home in which to consolidate its various webpages that were published in many free webpage enterprises. The URL exists today, but no longer provides a portal to this information having been taken over once again (see paragraph on resurrection below) by web advertising.

Eden-Era was first officially closed down under the leadership of Joey, Sami and Ross (three players who became staff members and who saw at the full term of the game from its beginnings in 2000) in 2004. The official closure ended in the total destruction of the world, but this did not stop Joey and Sami from making an attempt to resurrect the game using the eden-era URL in 2006 with fresh ideas, a new magic system and a new geofictional outline. Despite the initial interest in the game's resurrection, the game's site was disabled again in mid 2008 after the initial interest wained and the site's forum was plagued with uncontrolled spam.

Eden Era Scraps
http://disc.server.com/Indices/119835.html OOC Forum This was one of Eden Era's Out Of Character forums which never properly closed down when it was replaced. Occasionally a player will still post a message, just to keep the server from closing down.

http://eden-era.cjb.net/ The original homepage. Sadly this site is plagued by Yahoo! adverts, and the text can only be read by viewing the source code.