BBS RPG
The BBS RPG is the name generally given to an otherwise unnamed RPG that ran from December 1999 to August 2004. It was the first Epic-like RPG played by Epic members Tyler and Bishop, and many characters and events in it inspired things they would later bring to Epic.
The gameplay was essentially a free-for-all, as the forums were on a website that allowed people to create boards at will, which ended up often being used to make a seperate board for each signifigant location in the game. Because of this, there was little administration done, and screen names were not set, so impersonation could be done. Yet, despite this, there was very rarely godmodding, and with a handful of exceptions, impersonation was limited to joke posts. Looking back, the players were all surprised it worked as well as it did.
The Early Sagas (December 1999 to November 2000)
The game got its start in late 1999 through a Pokemon fan forum, where some bored members began role-playing. At the time, most of it was just "LOOK AT ME I AM A POKEMON", but a guy by the name of Sam (who went by Omega Star at the time) started a saga featuring a tournament held by a man named Shin Kahn (A mix of the names Shinnok and Shao Kahn of Mortal Kombat, which is what the tournament itself was based on), which brought in the players Matt and Sierra, although the final battle ended up being his character against Shin Kahn.
Over the next few months, Shao Kahn returned as Shao Nok, infecting Sam's character with dark energy in an attempt to turn him evil, but ultimately just making Omega Star find his more powerful transformed form, Omega Bocefus. At this time, Tyler joined the game with his first saga, involving a man named Suriff who challenged O.B. to fight him, and placed clues around the various location forums to where his palace was. (As the forums' different addresses were six-digit numbers, the clues were six different posts with one number each that Sam had to find and unscramble for the address.) Eventually, the two fought, and Suriff revealed he was infected by the same energy Omega Star had been, and this was the only way for him to escape it while still being controlled by it. He then died and split into two twin teenage boys who said they were his sons. No, seriously.
Not long after that, Tyler set forth a shorter saga which involved O.B. (now called Sye) learning the dark energy was actually a virus (later retconned to be a creature called Kri-Yut), made by a yet unnamed man. That was followed by one more saga where Kri-Yut's creator made a creature combining the DNA of the seven then-active player characters in the game (Yes, really.), which had to be fought off. The guy was revealed to be a scientist named Ajoita Olta, who escaped for the time being.
There was also another incident with Shao Nok involving a place called the Minus World, but I forget what happened.
The Glory Year (December 2000 to December 2001)
In December of 2000, Bishop (who hadn't done far too much in the game to that point, though he had been around) had the characters invited to the planet Orka, where they soon learned that a villain meddling with the Orkan temples set it on a crash course for the game's main planet, Giveia. They had to go to each of the temples and restore them within 16 days, but upon running out of time one of the characters played the Song of Time, sending them back to the start so the moon Orka wouldn't crash into Giveia. Eventually, everyone slacked off and the Song of Saga Skipping was played, fast forwarding to the end where Orka was saved in the nick of time.
It wasn't over yet, though, as the villain was escaping in a space station, and the group had to pursue him in a saga that actually managed to be done in full over the course of one night. The guy was defeated for now, but the heroes were then taken to a dark alternate future 10 years from now, where they hadn't stopped Orka from crashing. (This somehow made it just so living conditions were just slightly poor, rather than wiping out all life on both planets.) There they encountered Mystik, the most obnoxiously cheap villain in history, who constantly used attacks he said were unblockable, and perfectly dodged most attacks. However, he was defeated, and the heroes returned home.
Shortly after that, Ajoita reappeared to free his father, a powerful man named Doviko Olta, from his imprisonment beneath Suriff's palace. He made a vast tower 500 stories tall rise from the mountain the palace was on (Bishop later said he based Clay's Tower of Babel on this as a tribute), and proceeded to look to the sky and shoot a beam that blew up half of Orka. And yet the rest of the planet went on just fine. After this, Xtnctvich, the guardian of the one Orkan temple that the blast destroyed, challenged Doviko. Following a battle, Doviko made the first on-screen hero kill of the game, a feat that was actually very rarely repeated.
The heroes went after Doviko and climbed his tower (which he actually remembered to enchant so you couldn't fly up the side), and he made the sky stormy for a week on April Fool's Day. What a troll. He turned into a demon and then was killed. Then they went to another planet and didn't do a repeat of Ocarina of Time. The villains of that saga, however, the Kaelh Empire, did manage the second hero kill of the game. They went on to be the main recurring villains for the next year and a half.
After an incident with mutant Bellsprouts and Professor Choconilla Whuzumalit, the heroes were called back to the alternate future, a few decades after their last visit, where the universe was collapsing and the inhabitants needed help. Mystik made a return, and despite everyone's best efforts, they were forced to leave as he made sure the universe was destroyed. Some time after that, they were called to another universe called A'Gonis, where the people were being ruled by an evil king. It turned out it was Mystik, and they found out the alternate future wasn't destroyed, and this was it a few hundred years later. They freed A'Gonis, and Mystik this time followed them back to the present, where he continued to terrorize them.
A few Kaelh attacks later, including the near-destruction of Giveia, and an incident where all of the main villains attacked at once, the story picked up in September with a carnival where robots attacked it and wrecked the place. Then 9/11 happened and the saga was dropped. It should also be noted that said robots were from an earlier saga where the heroes found a universe that was a very strange mix of the RPG's world and the DBZ Androids Saga. Really.
Meanwhile, this game's Kevin (oh no another one) decided to start his own saga in another solar system called the Sinco System, where a cliché warlord guy was searching for the magic Sinco Stones. However, Bishop (who at the time hated Kevin) was given the password to the message board on which it was being played out by Sam, and destroyed it. Since then, it was just said that the villain accidentally destroyed the Sinco System.
Kevin followed this up with the strangest saga in the game's history. After the destruction of the Sinco System, the Sinco Stones somehow ended up on Giveia and a planet known as the Bean Planet. Why is it called the Bean Planet, you ask? Well, it was populated by intelligent, talking, walking beans. The Beans quickly found the Sinco Stone(s) that landed on their planet, and discovered that the others were on Giveia. When they arrived on Giveia, they apperently decided to call of their search for the Stones, as they proceeded to destroy any forms of civilization that they could find. Meanwhile, Kevin's characters, who had discovered the omnipotent Wishing Stone, used it to restore anything that the Beans had destroyed. Oddly enough, they never thought to wish that they had all of the Sinco Stones, or that the Beans were destroyed/defeated/gone/eaten/whatever.
Other events in this incredibly eventful year included pretty much everyone making clones, from Sye's monkey loving clone Jadorius, to Not-Yet-Weapon's bird loving clone named Cairo. Most signifigant was "BBS TV", a fake TV station for the RPG where people contributed various in-universe TV shows. It was a great success, spawning such favorites as "Car Crash Bash" and "The Adventures of Cairo and Peeps", Kevin's controversial shows "Battle o thee trees" and "The Adventure Show", Sierra's long Linkin Park story, and the legendary Intervy00 Taim.
During all this, there were some sagas on other planets and such, but the most signifigant one was where the heroes went to a universe thousands of years in the past (which had been mentioned a few times before) to prevent it from being destroyed, which ended up being a finale to the sagas where they had travelled into the future, ending with the group fighting F'ji, which was clearly not Lavos at all, and failing.
The Void Tournament and an Aborted Finale (January 2002 to December 2002)
2002 was less active than 2001, and started the game's decline activity-wise. As it began, a group of powerful people called the Dysians organized a tournament in the void between universes, inviting people from the multiverse to represent their sectors. The heroes joined in for the South sector, and the games began for the massive 32-person tournament. Granted, many of those were NPCs, as we had few people from the East and none from the West. The North was mostly filled by characters from a side game at the time called The New World.
Surprisingly, despite being an RP tournament, only a little of interest happened, with the two most remembered matches being the third and fourth of the 16 preliminaries. The third was a very long fight between one of Tyler's characters and a character from The New World, which ended with Tyler's character being barely pushed out of the ring while the two remained evenly matched. The fourth featured Kevin's character breaking the rules by using weapons (the tournament was specifically martial arts, magic, and energy only), and him throwing a fit about it. Making a long story about the tournament short, Sye won.
Meanwhile, Kevin was continuing his Sinco System storyline with the Restenor saga, a planet related to the Sinco System. It wouldn't be at all notable if it wasn't for one thing: 99% of that saga was Kevin RPing with himself. Seriously. It was honestly kind of sad to see. At the same time, Sam finished off the Shao Nok storyline with the character's return, where he was now quite insane and tried to kill Sye in the Minus World, but ended up taking his own life instead.
Around this time was also the introduction of the J`huika, five siblings named after major planets in each section of the multiverse, one of which was the tomato-loving and quite odd Earth, who is also the only character from this RPG who was brought to Epic as the exact same character, rather than one with a similiar personality and name. The J`huika were gathering pieces to some important universe thing I forget the details of, but was a collaboration between Bishop and Tyler to set up for what was planned as the last major saga of the game.
Unfortunately, while the entire finale saga was planned, and the opening sections of it were held, everyone had become busy with school at this point. The game went into a state of no progress for a few months before Bishop decided to just do something else, while still declaring the planned but un-RPed events canon, with one of them even appearing in Universe Game and the Three Years Later quest in Epic: The prototype universe-travelling ship Hopestar Alpha.
Epilogue (January 2003 to August 2004)
In place of the aborted finale saga of 2002, 2003 started with the beginning of The Final War saga, where an ancient evil guy who was an enemy of the Dysians attempted to take over the multiverse. It started with a runaround to different locations from the game's past, but eventually moved on to the Dysians' home universe after an interlude involving evil clones.
The heroes all battled for the fate of the multiverse, splitting into groups. The main group followed Weapon and some others as they went after the villain. This also featured a final battle with a resurrected Mystik, although he later returned intact in Universe Game because he just can't die due to being cheap.
Sye finally made a return at this point, joining the back-group fighting off enemies, as he had been absent for a while due to Sam not being around, but Sam agreed to pass the character on to Tyler for the sake of plot. Meanwhile, another group featured Earth's brother Giveia having a realization about what was going on, and running off to another world. There he met with an old acquaintance named Bonveleau, who he showed great dislike for, revealing Bonveleau was the mastermind behind everything. However, while this plot twist was actually better than it sounded, it nevertheless didn't lead to much of anything.
Back with the main group, everyone got seperated, and Kri-Yut returned as one final roadblock for a few people, taking control of one of the group and attempting to lead them to their deaths, before finally being discovered and destroyed. After escaping a monster the various groups had found growing during the saga called Penance (Which, despite the name being borrowed because Bishop liked it, isn't related to the optional boss in FFX), Weapon defeated the villain, and then they all had to team up to beat Penance, who then exploded. Everyone got out okay, and the game ended, two years past when it probably should have ended.
By this point in real life, CCCoH was already going, and Epic was being planned. Bishop and Tyler were the last ones left to stick through to the ending, and really just did it so the game could have a proper ending. It had a long and strange history, but it was a fun game, and the influence it had on Epic was enough that its history did need to be chronicled here, even if only for posterity.
