THE MESSAGE BOARD LEAGUE'S 13TH ANNIVERSARY
June 2, 2012, will be the Message Board League's 13th anniversary. On June 2, 1999, a poster under the handle of Mad67 posted a thread on the DC Comics Message Board called:
WHICH 7 USERS WOULD BE IN YOUR MESSAGE BOARD LEAGUE AND WHAT WOULD THEIR POWERS BE?
It began as a playful exercise in witty banter, a typical chat-type message board thread, but somewhere along the way it took a turn that led to the formation of a group of original superheroes based on message board posters' handles called the Message Board League. The thread continued on as a strange mixture of chit-chat and storytelling.
The next thread was called "The New Message Board League" and, unlike the previous thread, was mostly straight storytelling. By this time a mythos had begun to form around the small group of original superheroes led by the poster known as Rypta Gud'n.
Months passed, and the Message Board League moved to several different forums and message boards, going from the JLA forum to the Other DC Universe Topics forum, to the Minx forum, to a Message Board League Yahoo! club, to the Promethean City/Athanon message board, and finally to Rob's Damn Boards, where the last MBL stories were written, and where the MBL's descendant, Vanguard/Hero Revolution, began. It's been a long, strange ride.
No new MBL stories have been written for a few years, now, but I've begun archiving all the MBL, TOMB, and Vanguard stories (amongst others) on this site.
My goals are archiving these old stories are:
To make sense of all that's been written in the shared MBL/TOMB universe and the Vanguard universe;
To edit and rewrite stories where needed so that anyone reading them for the first time will be able to understand each one;
To inspire people to start writing again, whether using some of the characters of the MBL universe or starting something brand new, as I must admit that some of my fondest memories have been writing collaborative fiction, which is often frustrating, sometimes tedious, but usually very fun;
To get these great stories out for anyone to read! There is a lot of good storytelling in these tales, and it's a shame that only a small handful of people are even aware of them, let alone have access to them.
I'd like to hear your ideas on what we can do to begin collaborative writing once again, or on how we can celebrate the 10th anniversary of the MBL.
Anyway, I'm not sure how many of the old MBLers this will reach, so if you happen to get this message, and you've kept in touch with some of the old crowd, please pass this message along.
Thanks!
The Time Trust AKA Doc Quantum
thetimetrust@gmail.com
HOW TO USE THIS SITE
Check out the Archives section, which is regularly being updated with complete collaborative stories written by the Message Board League group of writers: MBL: The Secret Beginning is the first in the MBL series, and Vanguard: A New Beginning is the first in the Vanguard series. This section will grow faster than the other ones, since there are a lot of previously written stories by this group of writers.
The Chrononauts wikinovel, formerly on this site, has been moved to the McKenzie's Krononauts site.
This site is currently a work in progress. The completed stories are being archived with little editing, and we will flesh them in later. For now, though, they are quite raw.
STORIES
This site is for archiving older collaborative fiction written various forums and message boards, now edited for style, spelling, punctuation, and grammar. In many cases, these will be largely posted verbatim, or the same way they were originally written. In a few cases, a lot of rewriting will be involved to ensure that the quality of writing matches the rest of the site. This is not meant to disrespect the original writers but is only meant to represent older stories written on the fly for a new audience.