User:Zarrakan

Zarrakan is a fantasy RPG using 6 sided dice, and a Learning System character development model that seeks to both not waste time with mind numbing leveling, and make it easy to create new things for the game. Based on the planet Cyphron and mostly featuring anthropomorphic animal races, Zarrakan has a vast encyclopedia like background from which to draw inspiration for adventures. Included in the main book are sections on background, running the game, characters, vehicles, equipment, and two premade adventures Lusty Mermaid, and My Horror Mine. What follows is Zarrakan's history in the author's own words;

History

Pre-Time Wars (????-1992)

What got me on to Role-Playing Games (RPGs) in the first place? Well I've always been an avid reader of fantasy works such as J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. So at a very early age I was made receptive to the concept of role-playing by the imaginative and epic storytelling in the fantasy books I read. However, there is no clearer turning point in my life than one game: The Legend of Blacksilver.

Somewhat similar to the old Ultima games, The Legend of Blacksilver is the creation of Charles and John Dougherty (then of Quest Software). It was published by Epyx, and first released around 1988. At the time I did not have a computer of my own, and used my Father's

Commodore 64 to play games on while I was visiting at his house in Watertown, New York. Since the Commodore 64 was still a viable computer back then, finding software for it, especially games, was easy. Gaming is what I mainly used the Commodore 64 for as I had yet to make any serious efforts at writing.

Surprisingly, The Legend of Blacksilver was not my first choice. My father was the one who bought the games for the Commodore 64 as I was young and had no money beyond my allowance. I had initially wanted a game by TSR called "Hillsfar," but back then Dungeons and Dragons was

catching flak much as it does today by the misinformed who consider role-playing games evil. Thus I was offered The Legend of Blacksilver as a compromise if nothing else because it was not by TSR. Not that big of a choice at the time, but all these years later it made such a huge difference. Thank you Dad! =)

One huge difference between Legend of Blacksilver and most other CRPGs (Computer Role-playing Games) of the day was that character level advancement was completely dependent on the plot. There were plenty of monsters to kill, but you didn't get experience points for doing so. Instead you got food and gold, but these were often not worth it compared to the losses you incurred due to damage to armor and weapons during combat that you would later have to get repaired. Thus you were never rewarded for running around and killing things as it was often more to your benefit to fight only when you had to, and avoid combat whenever possible. This would later provide stimulus for the invention of the Learning System© used in Zarrakan that also does not reward gratuitous carnage.

Instead of an experience point system, you had a status (serf, squire, knight, etc.) that dictated your toughness. Your status could only be raised by the king, who would periodically do so whenever you completed a major quest in the game. You also had stats, which could be raised (or lowered!) by the various NPCs you'd encounter in the castle-type levels, or by playing games within The Legend of Blacksilver like a coin catching game to increase dexterity, or Mancala to increase intelligence.

Additionally, monitoring your character's resources in the game was a must. Armor and weapons became damaged and less effective through use, and had to be either repaired or replaced. Elixirs for healing and spells for attacking had to be bought to help survive the game's numerous caves, dungeons, and monsters. Transportation in the form of boats or horses had to be bought to travel from place to place, and food had to be kept available or else your character would starve to death. All of this cost a lot of money which could not be effectively earned by fighting monsters.

As such I would often terrorize the Thalen towns of Ironwood and Bad Axe to gain enough money to survive. What I did is go to Ironwood, kill everyone, and steal everything. Then I went to Bad Axe, sell everything I stole from Ironwood, kill everyone, and steal everything. Next I went back to Ironwood (which had somehow repopulated during my absence), sell everything I stole from Bad Axe, kill everyone, and steal everything. I would do this continuously to generate the money I needed. Unsurprisingly, towards the end of the game I was buying boats, and leaving them wherever I happened to land. =)

Another thing that made The Legend of Blacksilver different from other CRPGs (Computer Role-playing Games) of the day was the sense of adventure, and discovery it conveyed. The instruction booklet was thin, and gave little beyond what you immediately needed to know to play. Even more impressive was that The Legend of Blacksilver's map was BLANK! Thus the game wasn't just a simple romp from city to city. You had to go explore two unknown continents available in the game to find out where everything was, and then mark things on the map with stickers that were provided with the game. I still have that map hanging on one of the walls in my computer room. =)

I had a lot of fun with The Legend of Blacksilver, and it still remains my favorite role-playing game to this day. Unfortunately, The Legend of Blacksilver was never released for the PC, and can only be played by using the requisite The Legend of Blacksilver roms, and a Commodore 64 emulator. It does not look like The Legend of Blacksilver will ever be re-released in a compilation of Commodore 64 games either as Epyx no longer exists.

In any case, The Legend of Blacksilver was an excellent lesson in what a role-playing game should be like; fun, involving, and easy to play. Go download images and a text file about The Legend of Blacksilver in the MEDIA>FILES area, and see what an excellent game The Legend of Blacksilver was. =). Shortly after I beat The Legend of Blacksilver in 1991 (yes it really took me 3 years to beat it) I became involved with tabletop role-playing games.

In 1992 I played Dungeons & Dragons for the first time. I was a Fighter/ Magic User/ Cleric, and I got killed rather quickly. This would begin a long line of role-playing game experiences that would take me through Dungeons & Dragons, Rifts, Heroes, Space Opera, Call Of Cuthulu, Rolemaster, Dragon Quest, Genesis, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Battletech, Robotech, and many others. I enjoyed playing all of these games greatly, but I thought their mechanics sucked. There were too many rules, too many books, too many dice used, too much time wasted on accumulating experience points, and characters that took a long time to make died too quickly. Thus I decided to create my own role-playing game to fit my vision of what a perfect role-playing game would be like. It all began with Time Wars in 1992.

Time Wars (1992-1994)

Time Wars was largely a science fiction Dungeons & Dragons "want-to-be" since I had previously had no experience in creating role-playing games. Plus I only had a typewriter, and a Commodore 64 computer to work on, and that restricted what I could do greatly. There were classes, races, multiple different dice, an experience point system, and many other things that are normally associated with Dungeons & Dragons. I ran it for a long time the way it was with the assistance of my friends, but it wasn't long before I decided Time Wars needed to be rewritten. Time Wars was too much like Dungeons &

Dragons for my taste, and thus had many of the mechanical problems that Dungeons & Dragons has. That is why I never got a copyright on it. I didn't want a lawsuit. So I rewrote Time Wars into Warmonger in 1994 with the help of a new computer (486SX 33 MHZ).

Warmonger (1994-1998)

The rewrite's goal was to establish game mechanics based upon a Learning System; You learn how to use your character better according to your character’s strengths and weaknesses, and your character increases it’s competence by learning abilities. How well a character does during Zarrakan sessions is directly dependent upon how the character is played.

The rewrite set the stage for numerous future revisions that would continue to solidify the Learning System concept, but Warmonger was the weakest and most unpopular version of Zarrakan. When I had rewritten Time Wars into Warmonger I had gotten rid of the bad Dungeons and Dragons mechanics, but I had also gutted it, and Zarrakan had gone from 120 pages to 60 pages. Worse yet a "GM'S CHOICE" clause was adopted that essentially governed everything that rules had not been created for yet.

The result was Warmonger was far too weak to stand on its own, and relied heavily on the imagination of the Game Master (the person who hosts role-playing game sessions) in order to function at all. Also the player characters tended to all be the same with only differences in equipment setting them apart, and the NPs were essentially cannon fodder. Warmonger literally gave me headaches to run it, and you could tell the players didn't like Warmonger's fantasy/science fiction setting (Molander) much either as it continually failed to maintain their interest.

The only good thing about the Warmonger era in Zarrakan's development was that it was a highly experimental period that allowed me to try several different systems of doing things, and determine their quality. Some of the systems include the following; A hit location system which allowed damaged to be inflicted to certain areas of a character's body, and thus affect the character in different appropriate ways. An example of this would be after enough damage is inflicted to a character's legs the character's mobility would decrease. While this system did make damage more realistic, it was later discarded due to its incompatibility with creating new races. What if a new race has no legs and just hovers in mid-air? How would you accommodate for such a race in a hit location system that involves legs?

Another system I tried was a critical strike system where it was possible to kill a character with a single attack depending on how well you rolled. This system was predominantly tried out because the strength of damage sources to the amount of damage characters could take was so unbalanced. It took forever for people to kill each other with damage alone. Unfortunately, the critical strike system created an even worse effect by making characters die too fast, and thus was discarded.

I also tried a two-attribute system involving mentality (all mental traits) and physicality (all physical traits) in an effort to get away from the thirteen attributes Time Wars had. While reducing the number of attributes the players had to deal with was necessary, it proved deleterious to reduce down to two.

This alone made most characters similar to each other, and negated the variety players like to have with their characters. The two-attribute system was later discarded for the five-attribute system Zarrakan now has.

A protection system was tried where armor (created or natural) would negate the damage from a damage source to a certain degree. Looking back, this was a very dumb thing to implement because it has a glaring flaw; If a damage source isn't strong enough, a character can be exposed to it indefinitely without taking any damage. Thus you end up with situations in which characters are frantically pounding on each other, but are unable to kill each other due to their protection negating any damage they might have taken from their attacks. The protection system was one of the first things that was discarded when Warmonger was rewritten into Zarrakan.

A dodge system was tried wherein after an attack is successfully made the target of the attack can roll to see if he or she dodges it. I caught the most flack from my players about the dodge system, and it's easy to see why. Combat took forever because everyone kept dodging everyone else's attacks. Add in the protection system and you have characters that not only can't hit each other, but probably couldn't kill each other even if they did. I believe the dodge system lasted for a total of four sessions before it was discarded.

An initiative system that involved rolling percentile dice, and then counting down by tens to determine action sequence during combat was also tried. I mainly got this from Rolemaster that also uses percentile dice for initiative, but the counting down by tens was my idea. While the players didn't have many complaints about the percentile dice initiative system, this too had a glaring flaw; Whoever rolled the highest initiative usually won. Thus initiative became the primary factor in combat rather than just being one factor among many that determine success. Factors like strategy, good use of resources, use of terrain, and many other things that make combat fun were negated. The percentile dice initiative system was discarded when Warmonger was rewritten into Zarrakan.

A “force of attack” system was briefly tried wherein the harder your character attacked the lower your character’s defense would be. This system was gleefully abused by my players since it reduced Warmonger’s initiative dependent combat down to “whoever goes first wins.” However, even though this system was discarded after one session it would later provide the inspiration for Zarrakan’s present Life/Mobility dice modifiers.

Very briefly I dabbled with a multiple attack system that allowed characters to attack more than once during their action sequence. It only lasted for two sessions due to how horrible it was. With this system PCs and NPs alike would often get attacked five to ten times before they got a chance to do anything, and by then they were usually dead. I suppose being able to attack multiple times during your action sequence would be a cool thing, but it quickly loses its charm when you're on the receiving end.

Finally in 1998 I had grown too tired of Warmonger's problems, and my players' complaints, to want to deal with it anymore, and

rewrote it into Zarrakan with the help of another new computer; (166 MMX Pentium).

Zarrakan (1998-1999)

Warmonger had earned a bad reputation among my players due to it's various problems (see above), and I didn't want the past difficulties associated with this version of Zarrakan. Whenever a product earns a bad reputation the production company has one of two choices; Run an expensive Public Relations campaign saying “New and improved,” or simply rename the product thereby leaving any bad associations with the past name. Thus I had to rename Warmonger into something else.

The great thing about writing fiction is that you have complete freedom with the language you are working with. You can spell it “dog” and pronounce it “cat” if you want. Most of the things in Zarrakan were named by piecing together letters from my surroundings, but I felt it was important for Zarrakan to have a name that was related directly to it’s actual contents.

It has always been foremost in Zarrakan’s design that it be easy for Game Masters and players alike to create new things for Zarrakan. After you break the word Zarrakan down into the two words that it was created from it is obvious what Zarrakan is. The first part of the word “Zar” is the Cyphronite word for “infinite”, while the second part of the word “rakan” is the Cyphronite word for “possibilities”. In essence, Zarrakan means “infinite possibilities.”

That is one explanation for Zarrakan’s name, but in truth another consideration was that I needed a name that wasn’t already being used, and would set Zarrakan apart from anything else it could be confused with. After trying a wide variety of names I would eventually settle on Zarrakan because it looked best using Dragonwick font. Thus a unique RPG now had a unique name.

After the bad Dungeons & Dragons mechanics of Time Wars, and the miserable failure of Warmonger, Zarrakan was a breath of fresh air. It had none of the bad Dungeons & Dragons mechanics of Time Wars, had none of the "GM'S CHOICE" clauses and other crap that made Warmonger so painful, and was a fantasy role-playing game. This was also the first version of Zarrakan that I began including the map of Cyphron in. As a result Zarrakan quickly exploded from 60 pages to 150 pages in four months. It was beautiful, and for the first time since I had begun my quest for the perfect role-playing game I thought "This is it. I've finally done it." Thus I began trying to get Zarrakan published.

Initially I thought it would be as simple as sending a copy of Zarrakan to a publishing company, and then either the publishing company would buy it or not. However, I discovered that most publishing companies won't accept a manuscript until it has been sent through an editing company which charges a fee for its services. Now I'm more than willing to have to pay a couple hundred dollars to have Zarrakan professionally edited, but the price they quoted for editing Zarrakan ($5000) is well beyond what I can afford. Thus I was forced to give up trying to get it published for now, and instead concentrate on play testing Zarrakan more. In retrospect it was probably best that way.

The problem with writing is when you think "This is it. I've finally done it." you're usually wrong. There is always something you missed, or a better way of doing things, and it was no different in this case. As I continued play testing Zarrakan I noticed a few things; it took way too long to create a character, the mechanics were great, but there weren't enough of them, and the name "Zarrakan" caused more trouble than it was worth because no one could associate with/remember/say it right/spell it. Well, these things were small problems compared to what I've had to deal with in the past with all the rewrites, but they still bothered me. Eventually in 1999 the annoyance they caused me reached a peak, and I rewrote Zarrakan into Legend with the help of yet another new computer (686 400MHZ AMD K6).

Legend (1999-2001)

Zarrakan remained Legend for the next two years, but another rewrite was inevitable. While Legend was superior to previous versions of Zarrakan, the changes implemented during the rewrite made NPs into even worse cannon fodder. As a result Legend wasn't challenging unless I hit the players' characters with exceptionally strong NPs, and this commonly excluded non-sentient creatures like Tenzi, Techarrids, and Carniflorins.

There was also a problem with the name. "Legend" is perhaps one of the most overused words in the Role-Playing Game industry, and is a favorite among non-Role-Playing Game companies as well. Thus, under the name Legend, Zarrakan was being mistaken for other Role-Playing Games, and registering a domain name for it was impossible. If Zarrakan was to ever carve out a recognisable niche for itself in the wold of RPGs it would have to do so with a name that set it apart from all other RPGs.

The only real achievement during this period of Zarrakan's development was that I finally got Zarrakan onto the internet. I was aware the internet existed prior to 1999, but mainly used it as a means of entertainment; cartoons, computer games, videos, and Search Engine Safari. Search Engine Safari (SES) was a favorite game of mine to play while I was working at Austin Peay State University’s library when I was bored, and had no work to do.

To play SES you first set up a rule before you start, and then you type something random into a search engine. The search results would pop up, and after you click on something you would then refer back to your rule, and continue your search. EX: If your rule is “worse than,” you search furry, and you click on a link that leads to a fur suit website, you then have to find something “wore than” that through another search. Unsurprisingly, this led to finding a lot of interesting things on the internet, and I shall probably be forever mentally scarred as a result.

In any case, during my frequent bouts of SES I would often bump into (thanks to the internet boom) offers for free web space. I decided to try it since I have always been keen on computer technology, and I did want Zarrakan to reach a broader audience. Thus in 1999 Zarrakan’s first website was born at Tripod.com, and it fit on a 3.5 floppy disk in all its simplicity.

Obviously there have been some changes over the years, and now Zarrakan is a huge website full of several gigabytes of static and interactive content alike. However, since I am not a website design major getting Zarrakan.com to its present state has been an interesting adventure on its own, and secondary only to developing Zarrakan itself. It was not long before I left Tripod for a larger web space provider, and would begin to dabble in CGI, HTML, JAVA, and PERL. I would also register the Zarrakan.com domain, lose it, register Zarrakan.net for a while, and then drop Zarrakan.net after getting Zarrakan.com back again.

The interactive content was especially vexing because programming languages tend to be cranky, and do not always play nice with each other. Sharing violations, incomplete instructions, computer gremlins, and developer bugs competed with each other to give me a headache first. After several years of experimentation, and persistent failure I finally got Zarrakan.com’s interactive content stabilized in 2007. The website is now a testament to tenacity, and if anything doesn’t work that is your fault, and I suggest updating your browser.

Zarrakan (2001-2002)

Zarrakan went back to being "Zarrakan" again, and I rewrote it one more time. Perhaps the most important accomplishment during this rewrite was finally making NPs challenging by making them equivalent to PCs. Previously, ever since Time Wars, NPs were weak, and incapable of offering the PCs any challenge unless I threw tons of them at the PCs. This of course was tiresome because I still had to keep track of the NPs during combat no matter how useless they were. However, after the rewrite NPs are finally holding their own against PCs, and thus allow me to keep sessions challenging by the quality of NPs rather than quantity.

Also during the rewrite I finally created a working vehicle system that is compatible with the character system. It doesn't seem like much when you look at Zarrakan's vehicle section, but the problem posed by the vehicle system is brought into focus by one important question; How do you create a vehicle system that makes vehicles tougher than characters while at the same time does not make the vehicles so tough that characters stand little chance against them?

Previously, the damage that vehicles could do compared to the damage characters could do was so unbalanced that characters could easily be blown to bits with one attack by a vehicle.

Meanwhile, vehicles had to be hammered by tons of characters in order for them to take any damage.

Plus, vehicle armaments were regulated by money spent, and thus it was technically possible to create a vehicle strong enough to blow up Cyphron. While the arrangement was nice if a character was in a vehicle, characters were essentially (no pun intended) cannon fodder if they weren't. This is an accurate description of the various vehicle systems I've gone through ever since work on Zarrakan began.

Disappointed, I would usually NOT include the vehicle system when selling Zarrakan, and I didn't have much hope of ever doing so. As such, characters were usually relegated to using live transportation, or various travel enhancing abilities to get from place to place. This worked, and was certainly in accordance with Zarrakan's fantasy theme, but I still felt Zarrakan was desperately missing something; the vehicle system.

I always believed that not having a vehicle system limited Zarrakan's scope. Without a working vehicle system many ideas for adventures couldn't be done without massive abuse of the "No-Rules-For-It" Actions part in the Running Adventures part of Zarrakan's GM section. EX: An adventure involving submarines could involve combat between submarines, but without a vehicle system there would be no standard way of doing it. This could be circumvented through use of the "No-Rules-For-It" Actions part in the Running Adventures part of Zarrakan's GM section. However, the circumvention would be arbitrary, and wouldn't translate well beyond the adventure, and perhaps not even beyond individual battles. Thus Zarrakan needed a vehicle system to be complete, but the question still remained; How do you create a vehicle system that makes vehicles tougher than characters while at the same time does not make the vehicles so tough that characters stand little chance against them?

The answer was deceptively simple, and in retrospect it should have been obvious. I had been attacking the problem from the wrong angle all along, and it took making NPs challenging by making them equivalent to PCs to finally get it right; statistic points.

Characters (NPs or PCs) at their base level consist of a total of 30 attribute points, and it's this that makes them equal. So to create a vehicle system that is compatible with the character system the vehicle system has to be point based as well with 30 assignable points. Running with that idea I had a working rough draft of Zarrakan's new vehicle system before I finished dinner at Chili's.

The center point of Zarrakan's vehicle system are statistic points which have to be spent on a vehicle's statistics. This is much like Zarrakan's character system that involves attribute points, and attributes. Slight, but significant, adjustments were made to copies of character rules, and then pasted into Zarrakan's vehicle system. The end result being Zarrakan's current vehicle system IS included in Zarrakan since it is now compatible with the character system.

Zarrakan (2002-2004)

2002 through 2004 did not add any significant changes to Zarrakan's mechanics, but it did change Zarrakan's standpoint on pregenerated adventures. Previously the instructions on how to create adventures for Zarrakan in Zarrakan's GM section were sketchy at best, and went into very little detail. This was due to my belief at the time that "ad-libbed adventures" (adventures created during game sessions) were superior to pregenerated adventures (adventures created before game sessions).

After all, "ad-libbed adventures" enabled GMs to easily tailor adventures from moment to moment, and allowed player characters greater freedom of action.

Even better, since the adventures were ad-libbed there was no need to prepare for game sessions, and allowed for more spontaneous game play. However, as I ran Zarrakan sessions over the years it slowly became obvious that pregenerated adventures were better.

A GM has a lot to keep track of during game sessions to begin with, and "ad-libbed adventures" simply add more to the burden. As such I found myself relying more and more on tired adventure clichés (attack the enemy base, dungeon crawl, save princess and kill dragon, et al). Even though they were fun they could not compare with the rich detail and involvement that pregenerated adventures could offer. Thus I rewrote the Creating Adventures part of Zarrakan's GM section, and included an example of what a finished pregenerated adventure could look like (Cannibal Isle).

Zarrakan (2004-2006)

At the beginning of 2004 vast changes were made to Zarrakan including a complete overhaul of Zarrakan's mechanics. The actual changes made to Zarrakan are too numerous to list, but you can easily see the differences by comparing ZARRAKAN'S DEMO 10/05/2003 with today's ZARRAKAN. The closest metaphor to what was done would be taking a car apart piece by piece, and then putting it back together piece by piece in a completely different way, and still have it work.

The changes were spurred through my various experiences with White Wolf's role-playing games which have fast and simple role-playing game mechanics involving multiple dice, and target difficulty numbers that allow role-playing game mechanics to be secondary to role-playing. Zarrakan has now returned to this ideal after a long journey into mediocrity. Another major development for Zarrakan was making it free for download again.

It was the beginning of the 1990's internet boom when Zarrakan was first being developed, and you could find free webspace everywhere, but bandwidth (amount of resources your website visitors use per month) was expensive. As such, the only way I could afford to distribute Zarrakan for free was if it remained small (around 1 MB), but larger file sizes were demanded as I continued to add more content. Eventually, I had to begin using a DEMO/FULL Version dicotomy where the DEMO version would be free for download, and the FULL version would be for sale.

This worked quite well, but hindered Zarrakan's distribution since Zarrakan had no FULL versions that people could look at beyond buying a FULL version. Thus, most Zarrakan sales were made at conventions, with little interest being generated at Zarrakan.com. Thankfully, Zarrakan can now be distributed for free due to advances in Adobe Acrobat compression technology, and a dramatic decrease in bandwidth costs.

Another internet related development during this time was the creation of RPG List. Prior to RPG List if players wanted to get in touch with other gamers they would have to find a gaming store/convention, and hope the RPGs they wanted to play would be featured there. Unfortunately, gaming stores/conventions tend to have their own unspoken set schedule of events, and rarely deviate from that. Thus, you will probably have a hard time trying to find people to play Dungeons and Dragons in a locale that primarily serves Warhammer 40K players.

Within the gaming community there was a definite need for a service that allowed RPG players to better coordinate their efforts, and RPG List was created to help. RPG List is a searchable database that supports local gaming through free posts, and easy searches. Initially RPG List was accessed via Zarrakan.com’s menu, but I wanted RPG List to be viewed as a separate project, and would later register ListRPG.com.

Towards the middle of 2005 one of the largest developments in Zarrakan's long history occured; Klooge. Ever since the beginning of Zarrakan's development finding a place to run Zarrakan, and then finding players has been a problem. All cities have Role-Playing Game populations of some sort, and have locations in which they gather to play, but this does not garuntee access to either. Player populations tend to have their own bias, cliques, and favorite RPGs that can make it impossible to recruit them regardless of what RPG you are running. Gaming locations have some of the same problems, but can also have the additional hinderance of cost; aquiring gaming supplies, paying for a table, checking in to a hotel, travel money, etc. To add to all of this is the unfortuate, but necessarry need to haul all your gaming supplies with you making the entire effort even more diffcult.

Thanks to Klooge none of that is an issue anymore. Anyone on the planet with an intenet connection can play, and this allows you to reach a much larger player population. It also allows me to run Zarrakan from the comfort of my own home, or any place with an internet connection. Best of all my "gaming supplies" easily fit on a single flash drive which can be carried around in my shirt pocket. All of the problems I previously had with running Zarrakan are now gone thanks to this wonderful program; Klooge. Go to INFORMATION>SESSIONS for further details about how you can play Zarrakan over the internet via Klooge.

Zarrakan (2007-2008)

I have always photographed/filmed Zarrakan events as often as possible as it creates an extra means of showcasing Zarrakan via pictures/videos which I can then post on Zarrakan.com. However, prior to 2007 watching a Zarrakan video meant buying a video CD because the video sizes were too large for my monthly web traffic limit to handle. Thankfully by 2007 advancements in video processing/compression would allow not only posting Zarrakan’s videos at Zarrakan.com, but also allow me to participate in an emerging social phenomenon; Youtube.

YouTube was created in February 2005, and has since then allowed more than 100,000+ people to post videos on a wide variety of topics. However, it would not be until January 16, 2007 that I discovered it existed, and registered for an account. It would be even longer before I began posting videos on January 01, 2008, and established my own Youtube show called Learning Curve. Learning Curve is meant to be a variety program to help advertise both Zarrakan.com and ListRPG.com while showcasing videos on a wide variety of topics including Zarrakan.

Zarrakan (2009-????)

As time passes Zarrakan will grow, improve, and become more well known in the Role-Playing Game industry. Eventually I will be able to get Zarrakan professionally published, and see copies of Zarrakan in Role-Playing Game stores throughout the world. Until then, you can download Zarrakan before you leave. This is where the adventure never ends. =)