FOG's One-Year Anniversary - Happy Birthday, FOG!

As a special treat and tribute to Footsteps of Ghosts, let's take a moment to look back over the time since we've been here, whether you've been a member from the very beginning or just joined in the past month, and talk about some of our most memorable moments here.


When I was in the process of creating FOG exactly one year ago, I was hoping for the best in regards to its success, but more than that, I simply was hopeful to have a real place that I would feel truly at home at in the realm of cyberspace and where other like-minded individuals could come and join me. The message board, to my surprise and joy, grew rather rapidly, and I was fortunate that so many people that joined here were some of the sweetest and coolest I've ever had the pleasure of meeting online.

I remember when a lot of my old online friends joined up here, and it was so great to see familiar "faces." It definitely helped make this place feel even more like home. On the flip side, I also made quite a lot of new friends here too, and I remember some of those new people had other online friends that joined up here, so they all were here together and knew one another, which I thought was really cool. The FOG family was growing!

I still remember my earlier role-plays here, which included a Matrix one and an Avatar the Last Airbender spinoff. It was such a thrill for me to be getting involved in role-plays again and with people that happened to be so articulate that they inspired me to be a better writer. Simply thinking back on all the role-plays I was involved with really makes me anxious for the day when I'll have more free time to participate in them again.

As a whole, FOG has provided me with an ideal place where I could let my creativity and personality out, and I hope it's been the same for all of you. FOG will forever be my home. Happy birthday, FOG!

While I haven't been a member here since the beginning, the six months or so I have been here has been quite enjoyable. FOG is, by far, the best role-play venue I have encountered on the wild range of the web. It has and will continue to be a pleasure to work with the Staff here and you, Fate.

Thank you to all the Members that have made Footsteps of Ghosts the place it is now.

I remember back nearly a year ago, when I had the privilege to receive an invitation from Fate herself (what a wonderful pun) to join the site. In the midst of my literate reveling among such as could be found on GaiaOnline, I confess I was hesitant at first to take on another project. However, the very first role-play I looked at -- to get a sampling of the place -- was a Lord of the Rings role-play run by Aesalon, and was of such magnitude and eliteracy that my heart sang for joy. I was home.

It was more than the presence of literacy and Lord of the Rings that drew me in. The dark-toned motif was a throw-back to my days with the Mithril Knights of Evendim, who also had a blackish theme. In addition, the quality of the FOG banner, the FOG mission statement, and the organization of the forums, all of it kept setting off signals that, yes -- oh glorious yes -- this was a place where I could belong.

Almost immediately I threw myself into the FOG, reading the rules and making an intro thread and getting down to business. Very soon, Sephiris: The Price of Peace was conceived, originally a collaboration. (This seems to happen to me often, collaborations turning in to me-things because the other person drops out. It happened with my novel. It happened with Sephiris, and other projects besides. An interesting pattern, and one for which I lack an explanation.) With Sephiris falling solely to me, it quickly turned into a personal project of high priority, for I had finally found a place that could contain the full scope of my ideas.

I met Silvone and Ryona on Gaia. I felt such kinship with them from the first instant I caught a glimpse of their writing that I quickly invited them over to FOG. All the greater my joy when they became movers-and-shakers around here as well.

Some firsts for me here at FOG were One-on-One role-playing, and forum moderating. Eternity -- who seems to be the One-on-One queen around here -- got together with me to craft one of my favorite role-playing experiences to date. And then I got into moderating, first as OOC, then as IC moderator. I'd never moderated a forum before, and I was so pleased to be offered the position here of all places, a forum I could believe in.

Things settled into routine. By this time FOG really was my home for role-playing. I've broadened my horizons and made great eliterate friends. Fate is just a great person all around; I'd hug her to death if that wasn't somebody else's department. Silvone and Ryona, as I said, I half knew already and had the pleasure of getting to know better over here. Then there was people like Inerio, Kathryn who is like my fellow Grammaton Cleric, Weiss who resonates so well with my intelligent/logical/perfectionist side, Gunneh who helped show me the Staff ropes, Eternity who with her crazy posting speed inspired me to post faster while maintaining quality, and more recently people like Blackrock whose unheard-of post length and depth I so admire, Bird of Hermes who I am more and more enjoying having on Staff, and several others whom I'm going to feel terrible for forgetting to mention.

As if all that weren't enough, naturally my writing skills are improving, and I'm having a blast expanding my capabilities and experience with different kinds of artwork. From day one, I can't point to a single bad experience. Even the testy times were a great way for me to exercise my diplomacy and learn about how all my new friends worked and thought and cared about things. It's not quite a year for me, yet, but I'm thrilled as can be to be celebrating FOG's First Birthday with you all.

FOG, for me, is nothing less than a dream come true.

@kalon:
Sorry Silvone and I have not been up to par as of late!

Happy Birthday FOG!

As I sit here in my new apartment, cigarette in hand and a Mountain Dew near me, I'm reminded of a simpler time that came no more than a year ago. A time when I lived in a nice little house with a good-sized yard, I barely had enough money for food (let alone Mountain Dew in any form) and a time when I had no addictions in my life aside from Mountain Dew and enjoying life to the fullest.

Needless to say, things have changed since then, but the only thing that has not has been FOG. Sure, we've gotten bigger and we've been around longer, but that same sense of family that I felt since the beginning is still here. I'd like to think that I had a part in keeping that feeling strong, but I'll not harbour all of that for my own ego boost.

The truth is, when I first started out here on FOG I felt inadequate about my writing. Sure, I'd roleplayed before on other sites (all three of which being MUCH larger that the 20-30 we had when I first filled out my FOG registration), but my writing was nowhere near the caliber in which Fate expected. At least in my eyes. You know those little invites that a lot of you got from Fate personally? I never got one of those. I found out about FOG through the affiliation that FOG had through the Roleplaying Affiliated Press (RAP) at the time, which was an internet publication that I was a contributer for that brought together several roleplaying sites under one umbrella. So I checked it out and I saw the promise that FOG held, so I registered. I also saw that Fate was looking for moderators, so I applied for that as well.

Did I believe in my heart of hearts that I was going to get the position? Not really.

Was I extremely surprised when I did? You bet your ass I was.

Since then, I believe that my writing has improved exponentially and I've made some of the best friends that a man could make through a computer screen. Also, being that I am the only member of the original staff (aside from Fate), I've seen that meager 20-30 member list grow to over 500, I've seen several changes in staff and I'm not done yet.

I've been here since the beginning and I don't plan on leaving anytime soon

Happy Birthday, FOG, and thank you to all of you who make this forum enjoyable enough for me to look forward to signing on every day. It really means a lot.

FOG has definitely been a dream come true for me as well. I remember when I first tried my hand at role-playing on the Pokecommunity forums. I found that I really enjoyed it and was, I thought at least, quite good at it, but I got frustrated as the RPs I joined kept on dying right out of the gate or other people just didn't maintain a high standard of writing. Imagine my surprise one day when I received the invitation from Fate to join FOG. I must admit, at first I thought it was some kind of spam or an invitation to a sketchy website that would give my computer a virus (sorry, I'm paranoid like that sometimes), but I found myself more and more intrigued as I first started looking through FOG.

Registering for the site was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Role-playing with you all has really helped me improve my writing and also given me more self-confidence as a writer. And just interacting with all of you has really helped me come out of my shell more (I'm pretty introverted around new people in RL) and also learn more about myself along the way. It's been a great journey with you all so far, and I look forward to seeing where the winding road will take me through the swirling mists.

So Happy 1st Birthday, FOG! Here's to many more years of role-playing with all you fabulous people!

My stay here at FOG haven't been long at all. I joined a little more than a month ago. I started RPing because my friends did, we did it online and offline, and of course in my first language, Swedish. Slowly that fell apart though: we graduated the current school and went on to others, we got busier and busier. But in the back of my mind was always the thought that I wanted to RP again, though this time it would be in English.

Only for about the last year I've been trying to focus on my writing, trying to write more so I can get somewhere. The dream is to live on my writing, a dream that probably won't be realized for many more years, if ever. This desire to learn more about the craft of writing lead me to a workshop and Kalon happened to be on that one too. We got into contact and discovered our mutual love of RP and he pointed me here. I'm eternally grateful for that.

I had never joined a forum, beside way back when (errr...7-8 years ago), and really wanted to stay. Or even stayed engaged for this long. It's the atmosphere and the desire from everyone to write the best they can. I do love FOG, and I enjoy what you do with it.

So from a very new member I say Happy Birthday to FOG! And want to congratulate everyone on what a great forum they've created!