The Shadowrun Pub started off with really meager beginnings. It was 1997 and I had finally gotten online with AOL. I know.. AOL.. blech! Anyway, around late '97 I found out that you get free webspace with your account so I decided to learn some HTML and put something up. It started off as a clone to the 50 million personal web pages out there until I figured out I could make a website dedicated to my all-time favorite RPG: Shadowrun. Wow, what an idea! Off to work I got, and on January 21, 1998 The Shadowrun Pub was born!

     Why 'pub' you ask? Well AOL had this huge free-form role playing section of chat rooms, and for some reason most of them were called 'blah blah bar' or 'blah blah tavern'. I wanted to make a Shadowrun based room, but I wanted it to stand out more so I figured I could call it something else than a bar/tavern. First thing that came to my head was 'pub' so that's what it became.

     It was ok, but it lacked something that would make it stand out. I found some free bulletin board website on the web somewhere, I forget what it was called but I believe it's no longer running. So I created an account there and linked it up to my then fledgling website to allow people to come and discuss Shadowrun.

     Around the year 2000 or 2001 my family dropped AOL and signed up to get a DSL line (since we got a deal that was cheaper than AOL anyway). Once we got this line I had to figure out what to do with the site...

(to be continued)

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