When I was having trouble getting a new tabletop game going, I started to grumble that it would be a lot easier to get a game going online. Instead of telling me to quit whining, a few friends encouraged me to get to work on starting one. I started poking at notes for a setting and stories, but I kept not doing anything about it, because I couldn’t find software I liked to actually run the thing online. Finally, my friend Nick got sick of my inaction and found suitable software. I announced in March 2011 that we’d start play soon. Then I did nothing again for a few months, but the game finally started happening in November 2011.

In May 2011, I began making notes for a Basic D&D game meant to really have a good old-school feel, sticking to the spirit and feel of the original game, but with an original setting. (This is a bit of a challenge for me, as I am usually overwhelmed with a desire to reinvent everything.)

Complexity and Deliverance were two distinct campaigns set in the same game world and at the same time, with different groups and focuses. The party in Complexity, run in Philadelphia at the Pobox offices, was a special ops team working for a shadowy government agency. Deliverance, run in Allentown at my friend’s dog kennel, was more of a space smugglers game, where the characters tried to pull off high-paying jobs organized by their fixer. In both cases, the campaign were named after the party’s spaceship.

The Ethos campaign started when Complexity (a cyberpunk space pirates campaign) ended. Our first game was in January 2009. It ended in 2014.