NwN was stated in early 1994 when it occurred to Doug and his computer friends that you could play Doom with more than two people. Prior to this we had been playing multiplayer games with several friends and relatives modem to modem.

James and Doug first met when James went into Doug’s classroom in 1992 and asked if he played computer strategy games. Doug said yes and James gave him a copy of a little known game called Command HQ. Basically, to play this game you had to take over the world with little square infantry, armor and air units. James and Doug introduced it to several other teachers and friends including Doug’s brother-in-law Brian.

We soon had a group of about five or six regular players. We would play the game four or five nights per week. James and Doug would even gang up on some other players and play them two on one. One of them, usually James, would be at the keyboard and the other would be helping with strategy. We even had nicknames back then. Doug was Stormin' Norman and James was Legal Eagle Jr. James later changed to Teacher for a while and then went to Big Dog.

We played in several national tournaments that were organized around the online service Prodigy's competition ladders. It was a great game. It had a simple replay feature that was way ahead of its time. We would spend more time analyzing our games and strategies than actually playing the game.

James' friend from college, Tim (Legal Eagle), is the best video game player we have ever seen. He can finish an arcade game on one quarter. He introduced Command HQ to James. James still has the original note that Tim sent him. Whenever we managed to beat Tim in CHQ it was a cause of great rejoicing.

Brian (Madman) was obsessed with computer games. While he was in college, he would buy a game and finish it within a week. He and Doug started playing Doom 2 over the modem. Brian would win every time. James and Doug even took their computers out to his apartment in Palm Springs one year and played modem to modem on his two phone lines. Brian bought a game called "Rise of the Triad". It was a run around and shoot ‘em up game that included many bouncy springs that would toss you up in the air on top of buildings, where you could blast people with tons of cool weapons.

Somewhere along the line we noticed the buzz going around about how great Doom was on a network. You could play with 4 people with NO LAG! So Doug set out to figure it out. He had no network experience at all. He contacted Dale at 3D Computers in Redlands. James knew Dale because he had purchased his first IBM-clone from 3D. Dale gave Doug some bootleg copies of the Novell operating system. It included all the network code you needed. He also provided some free cables. (we still use them).

Doug collected money from Jerry (Sandman, Megawatts,& now Master*) and Dylan. They paid 20% each for the hub and network cards we would need. Doug paid 60%. He paid 20% for Brian as a birthday present and the other 20% because the hub and cables would be staying at his house.

We then started meeting at Doug’s house for several weeks trying to get the network to run. We could get 2 players connected but no more. The bootlegged copies of Novell had serial number keys that kept them from working if they detected a duplicate copy. Doug actually tried to hex edit the configuration files but had no luck. Windows 95 had just come out but we couldn't use its built in networking. Most of us were still using 486's with 8 megs of ram and they couldn't keep up. We did manage to connect with 4 of us but it was unplayable.

Doug decided one Sunday afternoon that he was going to find a solution. He spent over eight hours searching newsgroups for information before he came across a post from a guy telling how he had setup up his own home network for gaming. Doug emailed him for help and the guy sent back a quick note explaining what was needed and where to find it on the net. He sent a FTP site that told the name of the file to download. It was a hacked version of Novell's network drivers. It was soon downloaded and the drivers were installed on Doug’s machine. Doug called Brian and he brought his machine to the house the next day. We connected the cables, ran the drivers (all in DOS) and BOOM, we were playing. Doug immediately called Dylan and Jerry, but they weren't able to come over right away. We had to wait until that Saturday.....

Around this time we stopped playing Doom 2 and started playing Duke Nukem 3D. We played a lot over the modem, but it isn’t the same as being in the same room. Nothing is more fun in computer gaming than sneaking up behind someone and putting a rocket in his ear, especially when he is sitting right across the table from you.

Everyone got to Doug’s house early that Saturday. It took us a while to get everything loaded on all the machines. Doug had modified a small batch file that we ran to start the network drivers. Once everyone got them running, we booted up Duke. It was glorious. Everyone yelled and shouted. We were playing with 5 computers with NO LAG. We must have played Duke Nukem for 12 hours that day/night. For the next 18 months we played DN3D almost every weekend.

Somewhere early on in our Duke fest, Dead Guy was born. It soon became obvious that whatever advantage Doug had in a game was quickly lost whenever anyone else booted it up. His wife came into the room one night and asked which guy he was. Doug replied that he was "the dead guy" on the floor. Of such small things are gaming legends born.

Jerry became "Master" during our Duke days. The network code in Duke reads the MAC address on the network cards and always assigned the lowest number to the master computer. So for a year and a half we had to listen to Jerry gloat while all of our screens displayed the message: "Waiting for Master"

While we were playing in California, James had moved to Michigan. He was attending law school and playing computer games. He worked at Circuit City to make ends meet and in a way started NwN "east". He and Tim got together one night with another friend and managed to hook up a serial cable between two machines. They played for six or seven hours. We think James left Michigan and law school so he could come back to California and join NwN. Don’t tell his wife though.

We decided that we needed a name for our group. Jerry and Doug spent many hours brainstorming until Doug came up with NoWork Network. The idea was that nobody could send any work related files over our wires. It was all games. We soon abbreviated it to NwN.

Brian was trying to run a small custom printing business from his apartment. He took artwork that Jerry drew up and printed baseball caps with NoWork Network on them. We don’t remember all the other names that were kicked around but one we do remember was GAM ON (Game Association Members Only Network or something like that) "Game On" was used on the lower part of the logo.

One important new member changed our group forever. Jerry met Travis (Havok) while surfing the net looking for game sites. When Travis showed up with Windows 95 and a Pentium 200 machine with 64 megs of ram, we were green with envy. He also showed us how to use mouselook with games. It was like he was actually there in the game. He introduced us to Quake. We started using Windows 95 networking and threw away our joysticks and gamepads.

Just after Jerry met Travis, we were fighting with a hiccups about every ten seconds or so while networking in Windows95. While searching online for more groups and LAN info Jerry ran across the LAN group called Western Pennsylvania Network Gaming Group and emailed one of their members. Jerry explained our problem and we started using IP addresses. Bingo, we were back to smoother networking with Windows95, well as smooth as those early Pentium machines could run them. Jerry still contacts them about once a year for something or other network related.

We started gathering a few new members over time, especially from the furniture factory where Jerry works. He introduced us to Sal (FastBreak) and Don (KillerSquid). Don always brings his kid Kenny (Col. Sanders now Decoy) with him to play. Quentin (originally Q-dog, now known as "The "Q") joined us soon after we started. The running joke is that we have patches that keep him from scoring. The Q is the only guy who dies more than Dead Guy. We recently added Richard (Coach) and his brother in law Jonathan (Tiger).

Jonathon, who figured the other guys watched Winnie the Pooh as much as he did (with a 3 year old son) thought everyone would know the difference between a Tiger and a "Tigger".  So, he changed to "Major Tom" because he is usually "out there, somewhere all alone" ie... lost in a darn map trying to get to the action.

There are several others who come and play occasionally too. Part time members are Robert (no callsign) and Lance. (Duece).

To be continued….