How did you first learn about Avalon?

[Maud]

I thought this might be a fun ice-breaker.  I had never played any text RPG's prior to Avalon, the Legend Lives.  Prior to that, I was a gamer on the SIMS ONLINE.  Go ahead and laugh.  I was one of the beta testers and got a reduced game rate (and I'd do it again).  I had heard there were some historically-based games out there and thought that might be a fun thing to google.  So, after trying a few different time periods, I typed in key words like king arthur, avalon...and there you all were.

That first time I checked the link out, I held my breath.  Was this something I wanted to leap into or reject outright?  How complicated was the 'game' aspect and what was I getting into?  I read nearly the entire manual before entering the game world.  I might of been better off had I let all those commands ABSORB before creating a new character.

Maud means 'battle-maiden, or a woman of valour in battle'.  She was named however for my great-great-grandmother.  Most of the other names I'd tried had already been used.  Even with that, Maud was still suspected of being a second for Maudeeb.  So, a long introduction to the game but after that, twas history.

[Phalant]

strangely enough, and quite opposite to maud, i'd been involved in many a text based game before venturing into the world of avalon. i spent my last two hours of high school as a teachers assistant in my fathers elementary school class, so the time was mine to do with as i pleased more or less. i spent about 6 months searching through various games and what not until finally stumbling upon firstage, which i then played for two or three years until venturing into legends. i've been stuck ever since...

[Nostradamus]

Let me take you all back to a time when the internet was only something college students knew about, and most of us were using a modem as our portal to the blossoming digital world, which was mainly dominated by BBS (Bulletin-Board-Systems) and all I had dabbled in up to that point.

One fateful day when I was round a friends house he handed me a small scrap of paper with a telephone number written on it 'Oh a friend gave me this said its a fun game you might want to give it a try sometime'. I probably kept the scrap of paper on my desk for almost a week, and nearly forgot about it and then in a fit of boredom decided to try it.

I had already played single player text adventures but had never considered the depth or possibility of interacting with other people in such a world. I was immediately entranced, almost spellbound as an animist by the name of Fiorella took my young hand and began showing me around. Question after question I asked of my new found friend, my life surely destined at this point to be that of peace and love.

Without warning in a spray of blood of flames the innocent Animist was cut down before my eyes by Helkarakse, at that time guildmaster of the Seers. He offered me a new path, one of destruction and chaos with the guild of Seers and his lord, Anarchos, the original God of Chaos.

My lips turned up in a smile and my eyes sparkled for the first time. I had found my home.

[Crael]

I was living in an attic trying to turn it into a sculpture studio. No furniture but lots of metal and random rubbish. I eventually found an ISP willing to put in ADSL and after two weeks of downloading every film I'd ever liked and every song I'd ever liked from Bearshare,Shareaza, Limewire and Kazaa I got bored and on my way to the local store I overheard two guys in the street talking about Runequest (old paper RPG) and wondered if anyone had done an internet version. Typed rpg into a search engine when i got home. Spent 24 hours trying to stop dying with the help of Huzow and Plaman. Quit. Came back. Quit Came back. etc etc

[Elmak]

Back in 2003 I wanted to find an online game I could play, but my computer had a really really crappy video card, and I couldn't play any of the decent games out there. So I started googling around for something...and somehow I stumbled on Avalon. I don't remember how, but I found a client, started it up, and, well, I'm still here today and I've barely taken much of a break.

[Mirrigold]

I ended up in Avalon in summer of 1999 after remembering that the game's website used a background image of a scroll which I wanted to steal for something else I was working on.

I had no idea what the hell Avalon was and had only seen the website because a house mate at the time had been looking for paper images for some of his web work.

[Sisyphus]

I was coming out of a baaaad relationship at the time and sought a retreat.  I was actually looking for something graphical and had never heard of MUD's etc before that fateful internet search so when i clicked something that reminded me of King Arthur (of which i've always been fascinated) i was a little confused when it came up.  Needless to say i persisted and after i spent about an hour trying to find some kind of name that might fit in (ok, it wasn't the best choice i admit) I started up.

My earliest memory was getting lost whilst on an accolade, being stuck around the Lookout tower, north of the Path Entrance, and getting helped out by Saevander the Wizard.  I became a Wizard soon after that and made Avalon, home.  I never got lost again.

[Ender]

For me, it all started way back in 1994.  I'd spent the previous couple of months playing 'Legend of the Green Dragon' on the Minerva BBS and was doing quite well.  Anyway, this charming young lady called 'Fang' sent me a message telling me that if I like LOGD then I would REALLY like Avalon.  She gave me the telephone number for Avalon (this was before it was on the internet) and logged on.

I was born into Parrius, quickly greated by Cardodius and helped along through the intro quests.  In the end I got chatting to Snowlock (the mortal for Orthwein) who offered me a place in the Thieves.  And the rest, as they say, is history.  I would however like to take the dubious honour of being the second (maybe third) person to ever log on via the internet - it went live the week I started University - the less said about my exam results the better.

[Laslow]

I first played Avalon in Feb. of  2000. I was coming off a rough patch as you might say it, my older brother having just died in January. My best friend was living with his fiancee, who played MUDs, and having never tried one before, Avalon didnt take on my first character. There were several misguided LW's with names like SirKilroy, and other such rubbish before I subbed as Laslow. This name came from the fact that while I was in my semi-depressed state I almost exclusively watched movies as an escape  and the character Laslow is a semi-heroic figure in the movie Casablanca. So thanks to the now forgotten Danora, I've been fairly active for 7 1/2 years. Its odd that whenever I think I am done with Avalon, something causes me to just pop-in and I'm hooked all over again.

[Algernon]

Five months ago I was curious about RPG's, and went looking around to see if there was something that offered more than just fighting fighting fighting.  Avalon intrigued me because it is text based (and when I was an adolescent I was *mad* for text adventure games, and actually spent a whole week's vacation solving Myst).  Avalon also got my attention because it has been around for a long time, has accumulated a lot of history, and players actually contribute to and change the world.  I did not think I would stay, so I registered under my own name, but I ended up subbing five months ago and this is why my character in Avalon has the same name as me. 

Not real good at fighting, still, but interacting with characters and the history of the land keeps me interested, as well as learning new things.  If my character gets wiped off the map - and it looks like that is looming as a possibility - I'll likely be back in some other incarnation. 

[Maud]

Not real good at fighting, still, but interacting with characters and the history of the land keeps me interested, as well as learning new things.  If my character gets wiped off the map - and it looks like that is looming as a possibility - I'll likely be back in some other incarnation. 

See, I would think it'd be a lot more interesting, from a roleplay perspective, to keep the same character even after they've been "wiped off the map" as you put it.  We all have ups and downs and how we react to setbacks allows us to develop real character, in Avalon or in real life.

[Algernon]

I have only recently learned - very recently, because I had to ask about it! - that one's character does not disappear after 10 rides, so I see your point now. 

[Zilveren]

I've been playing since November of 2003. Not as long as some, but longer than others
I've been in the Marine Corps since 2000 (1999) if you count my actual enlistment, and as an escape from my a very bad marriage, I used to play D&D a lot with the few friends that one can manage to keep around in an institution that loves to move everyone around. As does seem to happen, our game once again got killed because we lost half the players to another set of people being moved from place to place. Getting extreamly irritated that we could not keep a game moving for any length of time I went wandering on the web to see if perhaps just maybe I could not find some sort of online D&D role play environment I could otherwise lose myself in, and so I went on Google, and typed in D&D online. Oddly enough Avalon came up. I looked around the website for a bit, and decided that this did indeed, while not exact, did look quite promising, and so I logged in, created a character, and here I have been more or less besides when my deployments take me away ever since.
Now what I did NOT ever contemplate is the people and experiences in the game actually more than just hiding, helped me personally. I have since gotten divorced, and have moved on to bigger and better things, and while I'm not around as often as I used to be (the world just isn't quite so scary anymore lol) I still love the people and the exeriences I've had in Avalon, and will probably always at least if I'm not around all the time "pop in" hehe.

[Ygraine]

Hmm

Feel a bit impertinent replying to this as a relative newbie, however...
I came across Avalon last October as a complete novice at all things RPG-related, in fact I had always thought people who indulged in such things were deeply sad, had too much time on their hands and were,to misquote Ms Austen slightly, in want of a life.

What can I say?  After my initial trial I was completely hooked.  I loved the complexity of Avalon and the interaction with other characters, and for a time I toyed with the idea of building a sort of 'slashing and bashing' persona, which I thought might be fun. 

Alas, I either don't have enough imagination, or my rl self is more determined to assert itself than I thought, because some months on, Ygraine has settled into a friendly, helpful, determined (if slightly scatty) type, much given to inhaling of chocolate cake and patting of kittens!

Ah well, we can't all be warriors - maybe next time!

Ygraine

P.S. I chose Ygraine as I felt it in keeping with the 'Avalon' theme, originally fancied Morgaine or Morgause but those were taken - who knows who my character might have developed if either of those had been free?!

[Kresslack]

I first started playing Wheel of Time, then quit that for a few years and then started looking for a new mud after a while. A google search pulled up Avalon and it looked pretty cool, so I tried it out.