Fally by Night was a site of homebrew lore, nonsense, and sometimes satire, begun in 2003 and fading away in 2005. Hosted by the now non-existent Netfirms, not many people saw it back in the day. This current version is part archive, and part new stuff. I'm not planning on posting everything from the old site, but that might happen anyway...
I found the game by searching for free online MMORPGs- a genre I had no experience in at all- but I'd been playing a lot of Morrowind, which was so full of NPCs (over 2,500) that many reviewers described it as feeling like a multiplayer. Morrowind is, of course, so heavy with lore that it often crashed under the weight of it. On reflection, the crashes may have been technical problems, but the point is: RuneScape wasn't. The quests were staccato dialogue sometimes like banter, or a radio play, or just stilted and awful. But as with the graphics, simple doesn't automatically mean awful. Some of it was really fun!
Somehow in that list of MMOs, showing masses of sprites and text and players, I found this one the most intriguing:
Of course, getting a new player into RS was incredibly easy- you didn't have to download the game!
I found the pop-up book architecture of the world immediately appealing. I liked the comic strip colors, and the mystery of pixellation. I didn't know what all the skills were, or quest, or monsters, or what other players in banks were talking about half the time. It was great fun!
Adding to the mystery of multiplayer RS was the complete lack of information players had. There were stern warnings from Jaggers about visiting any website mentioning RS. There were rumors about mechanics and secret places that used to be, or still might be, or were going to be. There were PKers- what was that all about? and the free-to-play servers were thick with scammers like noobs on cows. We the players had as much notion of the reality of this world as peasants wondering why the gods were angry with them.
I was as amused by the game RuneScape as I was with the company running it, and the people playing it- the original triangle of conflict before Ranger, Mage, Melee. So as I made my way through quests and combat lvks, and sometimes skills, I did what every player does, complaining and heckling the game you enjoy. Some of these further elaborations on the fictional world stuck with me, and people on my friends list would hear about them. Eventually I was persuaded to write them down, which implied letting other people see them! Heady stuff! I eventually did both. The intro to The Sad Lesser Demon:
The story that started it all! Some players begged and threatened me get me to stop telling this story one night in Catherby. Thank player Meiessiah that I didn't, and tell them they are partly responsible for this site if you see them.
It was a few long years- or, in hindsight, a few short years- that RS grew, the population exploded, and an overall graphics update to the game was promised. RuneScape was then in the process of being replaced, though we didn't know that, and it's players poached for an entirely different game. I left my main in RS1, but went along to RS2. I was one of the few I knew who did, most on my friends list didn't. Fally by Night ran out of elaborations on a mysterious, magical world created by unknown entities, when faced with a 3d game that seemed more run by the people playing it. So eventually I left RS1 and RS2, though looking back I only ever quit the second one. I never did try PKing...
Not at the end, but near the end:
