Dueling Zone got its start from two or three different ventures, the most prominent being the Team Dueling League*1 (TDL).

Ian MacKenzie's player ran the first season of TDL pretty much by himself, updating a website he created for it by hand from week to week.  In the second season, he brought on Lexa Quinn's player to help with the updating as it had expanded tremendously from the first season.  Lexa literally spent hours every week updating pages and posting results.  It was obvious that the TDL site could benefit from automation if it was going to survive.  I volunteered to join the team supporting the site so that we could automate all the various pages so that once a duel result was entered, all the standings and leader pages would be updated immediately and automatically.  This proved to be a huge benefit for the staff of TDL, because it enabled the team to spend more time actually running the league, managing the duels, coordinating with teams and team captains, promoting the league and so forth.

One of the early criticisms of TDL was that it almost exclusively appealed to the "gamer-dueler" versus the "RP-dueler."  There was some merit to the criticism.  TDL provided lots of statistics and numbers, the kind of thing that appeals to the gamer, and did little in the way of promoting role-play or storytelling.  There was some discussion of introducing salary caps, and other things, that might simulate the feel of a professional sports organization in order to foster more RP, but that went contrary to people wanting to duel with their friends as a team, so that idea was abandoned.  The criticism was still there however, and still valid.  How do we foster the RP side of things? 

Another of the origin threads for Dueling Zone came out of DoS Today*2 (later retitled Dueling Today).  DoS Today was a text-only newsletter that got distributed via email, or download, back in the days of AOL.  Right around that time, websites were just beginning to crop up.  People were still figuring out what to do with them.  A couple of the last issues of Dueling Today got published on an AOL website, but by then DT had mostly run its course and the primary contributors were moving on. 

The idea of a newsletter didn't completely die off.  Not long after DT ended its run, another player created Duely Noted, which was published as a series of static HTML pages on a roughly monthly basis.  I volunteered to join the Duely Noted team hoping to explore some ideas about how to do web-based newsletters, and to help support our shared pastime.  The scripting was very basic.  Some server-side includes, but with each article still being a discrete page.  The server-side scripting helped, but it was still a labor intensive task getting the articles published each month.  Duely Noted too ran its course, and the contributors moved on to other things.

TDL and Duely Noted can be considered the parents of TDL Insider*3.  I'd been looking for an excuse to try scripting out a newsletter type site ever since Duely Noted went defunct.

One of the limitations of the Duely Noted format was that as a monthly publication, it got lots of visits for a few days after first release, and then visitation dropped off until the next issue was released.  Also, since the content was only released monthly, an article's content could be weeks stale before ever being read.  Being on the web suggested a different publication rate would be useful.  Something more immediate.  Something that could be updated easily, and quickly, while an event was still current. 

TDL Insider was used to add some of the role-play element to TDL.  There were interviews with duelers and team captains, match reviews and analysis, "Note the Quotes," even a series of toons.  Where TDL provided the gamer-dueler with an environment to compete within the game construct, TDL Insider was focused on expanding the role-play surrounding the duels.

TDL Insider was tightly focused on TDL, which seemed like a limitation since there were lots of other dueling (and non-dueling) events happening that were of interest to the players of the dueling community.  A re-start seemed to be in order.  One that focused upon the broader theme and community of dueling, rather than just TDL. 

And so came about Dueling Zone.

The intent of Dueling Zone was to provide supplementary content to what was being offered in other places (like the Rings of Honor and TDL sites).  A place where the focus could be on any dueling event, whether it was TDL, DoS, DoF, DoM, or something new (like IFL).

As a supplemental site, it was also a playground for ideas.  Especially ideas that augmented the play happening around the dueling community.  One of the first expansion ideas was a calendar of dueling events*4.  The calendar went live in October of 2001, and ran until about January 2008.  After the Rings of Honor site implemented its own calendar, the Dueling Zone calendar was shut down as redundant. 

To support the broader base of dueling news, TDL Insider was phased out between 2003 and 2004, and Dueling Zone News (DZN)*5 was started up.  My hope was to include events from all of the dueling sports, including TDL, DoS, DoF, DoM, and whatever else came along (like the Tour de Rhydin), but not to limit the content just to the dueling.  To that extent, we sought other content, like more toons.  DZN also republished some content (with permission) from the Oracle*6.

In addition to the calendar, and DZN, other ideas and content got added, including a DoS practice game*7 written by Kalamere's player.  It's dated, but the DoS practice game is still available for duelers looking to get a better feel for what DoS is all about, and Kalamere is currently working on a DoF practice game.  There's also the casino*8, where betters can bet on dueling events (or any event really) offered by various betting houses (like SwordPlay, which has been offering lines since the beginning of Madness 2010). 

There are also various tools*9 available at the Dueling Zone site, including matrices and round checkers.  

Other projects, less developed, have been started, like one for player-contributed maps*10.  The engine is mostly used right now to supply the map of Rhydin, and its various districts, but was intended to be for any map that a player might wish to add to supplement their storytelling and role-play.  The Rhydin maps are linked from the Rings of Honor website. 

After I implemented the basic code for the map registry, I also had an idea for a currency exchange*11.  Rhydin after all is a melting pot, sitting off the Nexus, where characters from all sorts of worlds (and times) mingled.  The exchange would be a place where players could list their character's currency of choice, and then be able to map the value of those currencies to the values of other character currencies. 

Both the map registry, and the currency exchange, were intended to allow players to share the references they use for their storytelling.  For example, if Porthos is using coins of French origin (e.g., the Louis d'or) or the Spanish pistole, how much are those compared to the Roman denarius?

I also had plans for an auction house, where characters could bid on items put up for auction by other characters, like the famed sap gloves of Billy Ray, or an empty mug once used by Siera Redwin. 

Many of these ideas got put on hold a couple of years ago when I went through a period of burnout.  Life had grown unexpectedly busy, and the lure of dueling had dimmed somewhat for any number of reasons. 

Then, last summer and fall, with the badgering and encouragement of a few folks like Matt, Koy, and PJ Ramirez, I was lured back to the dueling forums, and introduced to the ME forums where it seemed like an old voice might be able to offer some useful input.  I was still waffling around, mostly observing from the sidelines, until Matt talked me into participating in a Diamond Quest (which I subsequently won).  That and other events (like the Tour de Rhydin and a challenge or two) got me back into the dueling.  When Madness rolled back around, Kalamere resurfaced and expressed interest in bringing back his Madness fantasy/betting site. 

With Kalamere's prompting, we kicked some life back into DZN (including adding an RSS feed*12 for it), and the casino, which will hopefully continue even now that Madness has ended.  In the last couple of months, in addition to the Madness site, Kal developed a log viewer*13, both of which are being hosted on Dueling Zone.  Kal and I have been talking about other ideas and projects.

Overall, Dueling Zone is intended to expand the play experience for the players in the dueling and role-playing communities.  If there's continued interested on the part of players, I'm hoping to do some revamping of the content at Dueling Zone, such as adding the ability for people to add comments to the articles posted on DZN, and to expand the functionality of the map registry so that it can be used not just to record maps as they are now, but maps over time.

Really, Dueling Zone's a playground to develop ideas to support dueling and the role-play around dueling or Rhydin.  Nothing's off limits if Kal or I can figure out a way to implement it, and it adds value to the play.  Some ideas will stick.  Some might not.  But none of the recent efforts would have been possible if there hadn't been renewed interest in the dueling and Rings of Honor over the past few months.  It's my fervent hope to see that interest grow, and if in some small way Dueling Zone can contribute to that then I would count the project a success.

-- Jake Thrash
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DZN Contributor
Rings of Honor

Related Links:
*1 TDL was originally available at http://teamduel.org, however after TDL ended the content was moved over to http://tdl.duelingzone.com
*2 Reprints of DoS/Dueling Today are available at http://duelingzone.com/dzn/archives/dt-index.cfm
*3 TDL Insider is still accessible at http://duelingzone.com/tdlinsider
*4 The Dueling Zone calendar is no longer updated, and is no longer linked from the Dueling Zone menu, but is still available at http://duelingzone.com/dz/calendar
*5 Dueling Zone News (DZN) http://duelingzone.com/dzn
*6 The Oracle was published on the Red Dragon Inn website http://rdi.dragonsmark.com/oracle
*7 The DoS practice Javascript game, and a few others, are available at http://www.duelingzone.com/dz/games
*8 The Dueling Zone Casino is available at http://www.duelingzone.com/casino
*9 Dueling Zone Tools, including matrices and round checkers http://www.duelingzone.com/dz/tools
*10 Dueling Zone Map Registry http://www.duelingzone.com/map/
*11 Currency Exchange (proof of concept) http://duelingzone.com/dz/tools/currency.htm
*12 DZN RSS feed http://duelingzone.com/dzn/dzn-rssfeed.cfm
*13 Log Viewer presently available at http://duelingzone.org/madness/chat_viewer