As the DC Message Boards are drawing their last breaths, the mods were nice enough to state that anyone who wanted to save any content before it was gone forever was welcome to do so.
I am one of those people.
I first joined the DC boards in spring of 2007, and a couple months afterward began what would become my very first online creative project, an online Legion-themed Jeopardy game called, appropriately enough...
LEGIOPARDY!
I really wanted it to be something special, not just some half-hearted thing, so I put tons of of research and design (well... as much design was possible with the rather basic capabilities of the DC boards) into its creation. It all paid off, as the game was a huge success with the posters, spawning no fewer than three sequels over the next two and half years.
The nicest compliment I could have gotten for that work is the fact that, despite the six-month deletion policy on the DCMBs for threads with no traffic, all four seasons of Legiopardy are still extant over there... five years later... continually bumped anytime they were in danger of dropping.
But, since the boards themselves are now coming to an end, I figured I should probably preserve the record of those early times myself. Nightcrawler was nice enough to give me permission to repost all fours threads (which will just be combined into this single one) here on Legion World for posterity. Thanks, Nighty!
I'm just putting up Season 1 right now, but the other three will follow over the next couple weeks.
I hope you enjoy this time capsule - watching me find my voice as a message board huckster; seeing some friendships being born between myself, kenaustin, and ultron7; figuring out just which poster ID's actually correspond to a couple other Legion Worlders; and watching the exciting climax in Season 4 where - after two and half years of being pestered by a certain person - I finally lose my sh!t.
Good Times Posted by Exnihil on :
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So ended the first season of LEGIOPARDY!.
There were a couple kinks in the process, but once people got the hang of what I was doing, it was a much bigger success in the execution than I ever thought it would be during the conception.
Autumn 2007 found me at the tail end of an extended IT consulting job in Europe. I had been living for four months in a strange state of isolation, away from my wife and home and, to be honest, I was very lonely. Alone with my thoughts for so long, I decided... eh, what the hell... let me draw up another game. It will keep me busy and give me something fun to work on during my downtime.
I'm so glad I did. This second season of Legiopardy was actually much easier to put together than the first, and actually, with the addition of a lot of fun new participants (a couple of whom I would find out later were former or current Legion Worlders) there was a lot more personal type interaction - something I was really in need of at the time.
Looking back at it, I can really see my writing style loosening up and the whole "exnihil" persona really starting to take on a life of his own. I'm still particularly fond of the "let's meet our contestants" bit. I feel like little things like that broke the ice a bit and made people more apt to want to be along for the ride.
Without further ado, then... LEGIOPARDY! Season 2:
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Posted by lancesrealm on :
I never saw this on the DC message boards. Ex, thank you so much for posting them!
Posted by Exnihil on :
No prob.
It takes a little bit of Photoshop wrangling to get the threads together, so it will be a few days before I get Season 3 up, but I'm glad you're enjoying it. It was a lot of fun back in the day.
Posted by Exnihil on :
When last we left the LEGIOPARDY saga, Ex had just returned from a too-long work assignment overseas. 2008 found me back home on American soil, reunited with Mrs. Nihil... but facing a crisis of priorities.
My company at the time was very pleased with the work I had done and decided that they were now going to send me to the Philippines for more of the same. While I loved the adventurous globe-trotting, at the same time, I was really beginning to think that it was time to settle down and spend more time at home.
I told my boss that I didn't think I wanted to travel as much any more, and that I was going to start looking for another job. Thankfully, he was actually quite understanding and told me that, if I wanted, I could work for a time in the software test lab while I searched for other employment. Talk about a great boss!
So I did. Spring/Summer 2008 I spent almost entirely alone in a computer lab, running tests and looking for a job. There was a lot of downtime, so... since idle hands are the Legion's work... I said, eh... what the heck... time for another round.
Of all four seasons of LEGIOPARDY, I really think this next one was my favorite. All of the procedural kinks had been worked out; there was a nice mix of returning players and new blood; and I personally felt (likely because I was starting a new chapter in my life) that I was creatively firing on all cylinders.
While I had experimented a little bit in the previous two seasons with including some images and some sound files, in season three I went all out... including my favorite bit, the "advertisements" leading up to the show. It was this Photoshop dabbling that would inspire me to do something more expansive and lead into my first creative effort on Legion World, "Survivor: Marzal"... but that's another story.
For now, LEGIOPARDY, Season 3...
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So that was Season 3... as I said, probably my favorite of the four, and definitely my favorite "Final LEGIOPARDY" clue.
I mentioned late in the game that I was going to the 2008 San Diego Comicon, and it was there that I first met the Legion World gang, an event that was to radically change my message board habits and eventually spell the end of my time at the DCMB. But that was still a couple months away after the end of the above game, and for the time being, I was still relatively satisfied there.
One piece of LEGIOPARDY ephemera that I do want to include at this point is something that didn't appear in the game thread itself, but in a different thread where the poster, Amarta (always a super-funny fellow) had made a remark about the celebrity career of "Ali-3 Bek" prior to hosting game shows. As you can tell by my current avatar, I'm a big fan of "Golden Age" entertainment, so I began to imagine "Ali-3" as having been a Vegas-style entertainer ala the 1950's Rat Pack.
I mocked up the below image and told a funny little story... now lost to the ages... about how Ali-3 used to hang with the big guns as part of the "Parakat Pack" back in the 2950's on Ventura. There was R. J. Brande, of course, the charismatic leader of the pack; Marla Latham, the "handsome 'gentleman friend' " of R.J., Prince Jonn (later King), that "dashing young prince of Pasnic", and Otto Orion, who later got into big-game hunting and tragically "went quite mad".
It's a goofy thing, but I was always happy with how little Photoshop tinkering (apart from trying to desaturate Sammy Davis Jr's hands - which never really worked to my satisfaction) that it actually took suggest Legion characters out of Frank, Dino, Sammy, Peter, and Joey.
Next up... the tragicomic tale of Season 4 and a farewell to the DCMBs.
Posted by kenaustin on :
Man, those games were fun!
Ex, thanks for re-posting these!
Posted by Exnihil on :
No problem, ken, it's actually been a nice walk down memory lane to take a look at all this stuff.
It's so strange to think that five years have passed since you and I first "met". We have got to get you out to a convention one of these days, I think I've promised you a drink about 100 times by now.
So... Spring 2008 turned to Summer 2008, and I headed out to San Diego for my first Comic Con. While there, I hung out with LEGIOPARDY regular, ultron7, and met a bunch of the guys from Legion World (who were still strangers to me at the time). Everyone seemed so friendly that, upon my return home, I started to check out the site (I had registered earlier that year, but had never really poked around much).
Coming from the DC boards, Legion World was just amazing. So many features that probably don't seem like that much to anyone who frequents other message boards were just not available at the DCMBs. Private messaging, avatars, the ability to edit posts beyond a 30 minute limit, the ability to actually include images in posts... all not available at DC. (The images you see in these archived threads were added in for posting here... originally they were just hyper linked urls pointing to the image files).
Anyway, these new features opened my eyes to the possibilities of the type of event I could design if I weren't limited by the archaic nature of the DC boards. Almost immediately the gears started spinning and, three months later, of all the things I've ever done online, the single project that I'm most proud was born: Survivor: Marzal.
I won't go into all the ins and out of S:M, as that thread is there for anyone who wants to check it out, but, suffice to say, I was in love with Legion World. I still popped back and forth between the two sites, but found myself frequenting the DCMBs less and less as time went on.
Another 7 or 8 months passed. I was now consulting for a company in the city of Philadelphia. I'm not sure why, but, sometime in late May 2009, I was struck by a wave of nostalgia for the old vibe of the DCMB and - almost on a lark - I decided to revisit my first online project, LEGIOPARDY. If I had been smart, I would have thought to host it here on Legion World, made it all slick, and lured all the old DC posters here to play - but, I wasn't thinking and, out of habit, I said to myself that LEGIOPARDY = DCMB.
Even before I kicked it off, though, I could feel myself losing the passion for it. If I didn't it preface it this way, an outside reader probably couldn't tell the difference. It seems like the same type thing as the previous three seasons - there is even a neat little element this time around where all of the categories are references to other game show titles or sayings, making it seem like I'm still being creative - but trust me, I can see that I was on auto pilot.
I delayed the start of the game because I hadn't written all the clues by my own deadline; gone are the fun little things like "meeting our contestants"; there is a huge drop off in the amount of images I included (and none of my own design); and once I got the game started you can see that I was rushing though it just to get it over with. I realized that I was trying to recapture something that had already ended a year prior.
Compounding the issue was the fact that - yet again - a certain poster was doing everything he could to be an annoyance to me. Refusing to become familiar with the simplest of guidelines that no one else seemed to have difficulty following; breaking the natural rhythm of the game by interjecting inanities; making ridiculous demands out of me to cater to his specific needs. Finally, I just snapped and told him, in public, exactly what I thought. Some might think that I was too harsh, but it was very soul crushing to have someone always disparaging something that you had worked so hard to make enjoyable. But, eh, whatever - it was all a long time ago.
In any case, for better or worse, LEGIOPARDY Season 4:
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I trimmed out a couple "bumps" at the end there, because I figured I'd give my old bud, kenaustin, the last word - because it was such a nice last word. I don't know about "forever", kenny, but now it will live at least as long as Legion World is around, and I hope that's a loooooong time.
So I hope everyone enjoyed this blast from my past (warts and all), but now it's finally time to put this old dinosaur to bed.
So... from Ali-3 Bek, Jah Ni Gil'brt, and all of us here at LEGIOPARDY... good night!
(And this time... I mean it!) Posted by lancesrealm on :
My sincere thank, Ex, for posting these. I honestly cannot believe that some of the questions were so difficult...and yet, people came up with the answers! Amazing!
Posted by Invisible Brainiac on :
This was a fun, fun game Ex! You ever decide to run one again, I'll definitely play.
Posted by Blaze on :
quote:Originally posted by Invisible Brainiac: This was a fun, fun game Ex! You ever decide to run one again, I'll definitely play.
And what will you "play"? ;P
Posted by Blacula on :
That was great Ex! Between this and your Survivor Marzal games and your contributions to Bits (I'm thinking specifically of that amazing Abstract Legion but I think there were others too) it's obvious you are one super talented and creative guy!
It is a shame you didn't do that last Legiopardy game here at Legion World as I would totally have joined in too! I'll definitely be up for it if you ever run it again though. Or come up with a Legion variant of any other game show.
P.S. at your slowly being driven insane by LAM! You weren't too harsh on him at all IMO. You had the patience of a saint to last as long as you did before unloading on him.
Posted by Invisible Brainiac on :
quote:Originally posted by Blaze:
quote:Originally posted by Invisible Brainiac: This was a fun, fun game Ex! You ever decide to run one again, I'll definitely play.
And what will you "play"? ;P
I think you know the answer to that one perfectly well
PS I loved those Survivor Marzal games too! What a riot
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at your slowly being driven insane by LAM! You weren't too harsh on him at all IMO. You had the patience of a saint to last as long as you did before unloading on him.
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