The history of Lords Two is as follows:

Lords of the Earth, Campaign Two, actually started in Lords 12 where I played Zapotec in Colin Nankervis' Lords game. That game went defunct, but I had learned of Thad Plate's Campaign 9. He ran his game out of the Game Depot on Arizona State University's campus. I played in that campaign for awhile. By my senior year, I had to quit. I did not play Lords for 18 months.

But, you see I had been bitten by the Lords bug. And, I was itching to do something. I had moved back to Minneapolis after graduation. I was working in some dead-end job and was quite bored. I thought it would be a good fun to run a campaign as well as keep my writing skills honed, while I cleaned toilets and swept floors. I knew that something would turn for the better, so why not try Lords of the Earth. I wrote a letter to Thomas Harlan asking what I needed to do about running a campaign. He wrote back explaining that I had to do this and I had to do that. The letter was quite depressing. I thought Lords would be and should be fun, instead of all this dumb, boring administration stuff that he told me about. I waded through the tasks and sent off what I thought was a good idea. Thomas agreed.

I graduated from ASU with a Journalism degree. I had one history class in college - History of Sports. I got an "A." Every history class I had as a kid in elementary, middle and high school bored me. I am convinced today that it was the teacher's fault for not making interesting. I have learned all my world history knowledge from GameMastering Lords 2. And, since I did not have the history base to start a campaign, I had to wing it. And, wing it, I did, flying by the seat of my pants. Research at the library lead to three months planted firmly in dusty old books. When I raised my head to crack my neck and stood for the first time in what seemed as if a bijillion-kazillion years, the ass-groove in the chair remained intact. I felt I had a OK base to start Lords 2. I had neglected to find and research Attila, the Hun. Quite the oversight, huh. Anyway, Thad Plate caught wind that I was running a campaign and quickly pointed me in the right direction. Thad and I had contests who could process turns faster. He generally bested me each turn, but I was developing a system that worked for me. Somewhere around turn 15 or 20 I set a personal record. I processed turns and mailed them out in 2 1/2 days.

Lords 2 developed with the Finnish Varangians taking control of most of northern Europe by defeating the Norwegians. Meanwhile, the rest of Europe fretted over the hastily slapped together horde of Attilla. He was very big. Too big for the scope of the game at the time. After the abrupt ending of Attilla, Lords 2 progressed well. Actually, several countries did so well that if they kept going at this pace, about 3-5 countries would develop into the Renaissance aspect of Lords of the Earth very soon. I was in no position to GM that, so I placed a plague to knock these countries down to size. This wasn't your ordinary plague, it only hit the countries that had high tech points. As the countries recovered from this and the others were catching up, Xixi Tae Wing of the Hang Pei Empire became the legendary emperor in Lords 2. His stats were BBB. Since he had no rival the Hang Pei controlled most of China. His legacy lasted 17 turns. He died at age 92. People have joked that his title was longer than some countries write ups. Oh well. Somebody had to reap the benefits of such an historic character.

Since then, Lords 2 has developed at a natural pace. The New World opened shortly after the plague. At one point around turn 30 there were 53 available positions. Nearly all were being played. Then the boys [new Minnesota players] from my hometown, Burnsville, MN, decided it was more fun to gang up on the veteran players, especially Bob Nardone, and knock them out of my game. This infuriated me! I had put up with their tactics for five turns and then decided to take a break for an unspecified amount of time and not run Lords 2. Nine months later, I decided that enough time had passed. Most of the Burnsville boys had moved on, some to college, one to a new state, some just got disinterested. Mission accomplished. Lords 2 bounced back with a veteran crew of players that go to war on occasion and stay in the cold war more often. The paranoia, sneakiness and politics is quite interesting at this point.

The big groups of nations rule Lords 2 in sections; the Christians run Europe with their minor differences. Rome and Constanstinople run the Christians. Africa is a wild-card. There are pagans, Canaanites, Zoroastrians and Muslims there. The Middle East is a mess. The Sassanids and its Zoroastrian Church are the main force, but one Christian country and one Islamic country border both sides and constantly worry the Zorats. India is Jaunpur's. The Buddhist nation can do what it pleases. Ava, Java and Khmer are equal rivals in southeast Asia. China is basically uncontrolled. And, Japan is a strong island.

Sadly, Sean finally wound up with too much RL (real life) stuff to do. So as of turn 72 he quit running Lords Two, and the game was turned back to Thomas Harlan (the designer) to find a new GM. As of turn 72, Colin Dunnigan had agreed to do some interim turns and get things back on track.