Granite crystalized from, of all places, the chat rooms of America Online in 1995 as part of the World of Darkness game set there. I had played in the game at AOL for about a year and a half, having learn Vampire: The Masquerade there. For the uninitiated, AOL is at least as bad as you heard, probably worse. The game there, such as it is, is a claptrap of bad plots and cybersex set to the misconceptions and whims of the players there(and yes, that is a problem in just about every online game out there). However, for all the really horrid stuff, the one thing about it that made me want to keep playing there was the ability for players to do character development through creative writing.
In 1995 I was introduced to a MUSH called Dark Gift by a friend of mine. It was a cliquish place, at best, hard to get people to play with you, or even notice you exist. It was also difficult to understand the commands and generally a pain in the butt to deal with. Because of the OOC masquerade, a convention that basically says you don't tell anyone what you're playing, it also lacked the one thing that I needed as a player/writer, a place for deep and sincere exploration of the character I played. So, after a couple months of trying to get my character into roleplaying and getting nowhere, being discriminated against by staff for having been from AOL, and getting really nothing back from the experience, I went back, screaming, to AOL.
In February 1996, when I finally decided that I had enough of the cheating, harassment, and hordes of overstated, overstatted, two dimensional players and characters, I went to the IRC and started #blksquirrel. I grabbed Molotov, Rain, and a couple people I knew and we started playing and writing. We went on our merry way, braving the storms of IRC gaming and picking up Baldy and a couple other of the long term players along the way. I took an idea that had been lurking in the back of my mind and started a chronicle based in New Hampshire in the small and rather quaint city of Manchester.
For me as a storyteller, the idea was simple. You create a place to play and write, then let the players take the lead and tell the stories, only stepping in to prevent disasters and provide NPC support for plots. BEM wrote a simple dice/waiter bot for the channel and set me up a small exploder to run the story list. I was committed to preserving and archiving the stories we wrote, so the webpage was born. The original website was designed by a guy named Marc Leonard and I took it over once I learned enough HTML. They were wild and creative times.
However, I found the hassles of IRC channel administration and play to be very limiting. You were stuck on one channel, usually set in a bar, trying to RP out conflicts that cried out for wooded areas, houses, and other places. To say it was inconvenient is an understatement--and a fact that made me start to want a better environment. This is when I realized the value of MUSH, but at the same time realized that I didn't have the kind of time it would take to set up and maintain one. Granite was a handful of dedicated players, but not of a size or activity level to sustain a game of that sort, so we stayed put.
In the summer of 1996, I was once again implored to try a MUSH. This one was a little better run, friendlier, and more concerned with RP. It wasn't too long before I had several characters in several different spheres. I met up with Imp there and it was the place I originally met up with Jason McClintoch in RP. However, it wasn't too long before I discovered that cheating was a pretty universal thing. When staffers are allowed to get away with it, and allow their 'pet' players to get away with it, the game suffers.
Out of the ashes of my experience with that game, I made contact with someone who had MUSH sites available for rent. My husband had been playing at another game and had taken a strong interest in MUSHCode. We made the decision to build a game using his knowledge of code and the storyline my sleepy little IRC game. Imp ported in some code from another game and set me straight, up front, about what my job as a godling is. Some other people game us code from their games. We worked like dogs to get the code working and worked very hard to make the Manchester street grid 'real'. The Black Squirrel Tavern is still there and still one of the principle RP areas.
The game on March 1st, 1997, to a small but loyal crowd. I made a few mistakes and the game has had its ups and downs, but these days Granite is a top notch game, with some of the best players around. I am proud of the game, prouder of the players, because Granite is the best because of them and their contributions, as much as it is because of anything that I ever did.
At the core of Granite's design, it is about creative expression and communication in the written medium. Roleplaying, MUSH, and the creative writing process can be used to forge a true chronicle. To me, it represents a logical outgrowth of online gaming, one that is shared with PbEM and tabletop gaming. Granite values the player who can write, participate in, and lead in the storytelling process. The player who is mature in their RP, who understands the game, who wants to take their character sheet and make a living being out of those stats, is going to go farther in this game than they can ever imagine possible.
All of this nestled into the sleepy hollows and cities of a place that is breathtakingly beautiful and not all that far off the beaten path.
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