Development History of Agyris

Agyris (aka "Gyr") grew out of a love of creation, RPGs, and the fantasy genre, and was begun in 1986 or so.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Travis Trent made immense contributions to Agyris, including the race of Wythir, refinement of the "Bell" concept, and the entire isle of Kelpwood. He moved away in 1995, but has just recently returned.

By 1995 Gyr was beginning to take form, and Daniel tricked his new friend Shannon Potratz (Voya) into doing a "little illustration" for Agyris. (It took Daniel a year of storytelling to convince Shannon to do one.) Shannon drew a tin golem for the Tin Puppet Theatre, which somewhat resembled the Tinman from the Wizard of Oz!

Daniel was happy to not be forced to use his own illustrations and Shannon has been drawing races and creatures ever since. To date Shannon has done around 150 fantastic Gyr illustrations, which keep getting better all of the time. I think that you'll agree that he is a fantastic illustrator. He also created Aggran the Wanderer and Yrisis, along with many other creatures and races.

One should also note that the Discovered Lands map was created in 1995, along with the larger, unseen, continent. Places were moved around, and everything was physically reorganized.

For several years Brent Carey, an old friend of Daniel, suggested that Gyr ought to be put online. After some initial hesitation Daniel was convinced, much through the programming work that Brent was volunteering. The massive content of Agyris was becoming unwieldy, and it was getting really difficult to organize and find information. The web site could offer a solution to that problem, with the added benefit of sharing more information with the other players in our gaming group.

In 2000, work began on the database structure for the information, and Daniel began working on the design of the site. Fortunately, the Gyr web site forced Daniel to document much of the world that had been previously under developed, or that had just been in his head. All of the writing that had been done up until this point was created for an audience of 6 or less, and was incomplete to say the least.

In 2001 Rob T. (Alkhound or "Alky" as I like to call him...) joined the team as a programmer, to assist Brent in getting this monstrosity functional and working. His input in organization and technical issues has been invaluable.

Ben Hunter also joined the team by offering helpful advice and providing 60+ illustrations, with a focus on Fey creatures. His work will begin to be seen as soon as the portfolio of Fey creatures begins to expand.

Now, if we could just find time to game...