 What's up guys this Theron and tonight we're taking another dive into the para watch wiki tonight's thread was started by user Clola hoop on May 5th, 2015. It's called escape from terminus Let's begin Before Dungeons and Dragons before Empire of the pedal throne before chain mail white bear and red moon or even siege of Bowdenburg there was escape from terminus Considered by some to be the father of modern tabletop role-playing Escape from terminus was first distributed by Albion Games in 1965 One year later the company folded of the 700 initial prints less than 50 were sold But in the years leading up to the gaming explodes in the 70s escape from terminus became an underground hit Loose leaf binders filled with dog-eared photocopies of its 343 page rulebook made the rounds at V con a Canadian fantasy and sci-fi gaming convention in 1973 Along with perforated cardboard sheets that could be folded into the special dice needed to play Despite the rabbit interests most of these binders were incomplete Entire chapters were missing people desperate to complete the game filled these gaps with homebrew rules Others would mistake these pages for originals and cert copies into their own rule books over time This made it all but impossible to tell which pages were authentic and which were written by overzealous players Interest in escape from terminus waned in the late 70s and early 80s Simpler and more accessible games like Dungeons and Dragons tunnels and trolls rolemaster rose in popularity Nevertheless it retained a small and active audience who sought to outwit the cruel and relentless minotaur The game is set in a sprawling complex of hexagon shaped chambers connected by doors on all six sides The players navigate this infinite maze of hexes one move at a time Adding each room to their maps as they go The content of a hex is determined by rolling dice and consulting reference tables a room can contain traps items messages Rations even the bodies of previous players with no combat mechanics the game focuses on exploration and survival But what made escape from terminus unique was how you played it alone with no companions and no dungeon master Once you died either from a trap Starvation or the minotaur the hex you perished in was marked The map was then passed on to another player who started again When entering a room that had been explored previously by someone else new reference tables simulated the passage of time and the actions of the minotaur You could also leave behind items for the next player or provide hints written to chalk These messages were included with the map in sealed envelopes marked by the hexes number After years of playing each map developed a life of its own Players recognized landmarks and paid their respect in hexes where previous runs met their untimely end Others created elaborate strategies tailored to the layout of their map Rooms could contain dozens of messages that had accumulated over decades of play Even the minotaur's behavior felt unique to each game as if its personality was dictated by the map in which it lived Eventually the sheer size of the map required multiple sheets with meticulous notes regarding how each part fit together In some cases it grew so large that it could no longer be shipped from one player to the next The longest ongoing session from escape from terminus started in 1974 between a group of friends in Minnesota It was then passed on to their friends who passed it on to theirs in 1985 the map grew so large that it had to be moved into the basement of a local game shop Before the last player vanished in 2008 the map allegedly included well over 200,000 hexes and 600 messages only a handful of which were ever even read In 2005 a web forum terminus velocity was established as a hub for escape from terminus players eager to beat the game Participants scanned every map and rulebook they could find They then combed through gigabytes of handwritten data and produced the first attempts at an optimum strategy Everything in escape from terminus is resolved via complex mechanic They use a six seven-sided dice in addition to a coin flip producing the probability range of an inverted bell curve The result is checked against several hundred reference tables with different outputs Modifiers plus or minus are applied to the role according to circumstances items and even adjacent hexes The game ends when someone finds the escape hex a hex containing the stairs out Since each hex is randomly generated Optimizing escape from terminus meant maximizing the chances of spawning this hex But there was a problem the minotaur Every time someone came close to spawning the hex they fell prey to escape from terminus's unseen nemesis Either via a trap it set a door it locked or an object it destroyed Maximizing the chance of an escape hex also maximized the chance of the minotaur's presence Despite years of frantic attempts most players eventually recognized that spawning an exit and not dying was virtually impossible Once players realize the game was effectively unwinnable most of the community went silent The web form unexpectedly dropped offline in 2012 taking most of what we know about escape from terminus with it an Incomplete rulebook or boxer with pages from an abandoned campaign will occasionally show up at the yard sale somewhere But otherwise escape from terminus has become an obscure footnote in the history of tabletop games one last thing Two days prior to going offline terminus velocity experience a brief flurry of activity a new thread managed to generate more Replies in 24 hours than every previous thread combined the post in question Hey guys Randall Petrov's son here. He was part of Albion Games in the 60s I know he would be so honored by and proud of everything you've done here You all have gone far beyond what he and Albion ever hoped and gave new life to the terminus story It's so exciting to read all the different variations. I wanted to ask though Whose idea was the minotaur? Okay, wow what what do you mean whose idea was the minotaur that's crazy What do you guys think of all this leave your answer in the comments below Subscribe and hit the bell join the site 42 patreon and I'll see you next time