How Old Is Giant In The Playground?

[DarthArminius]

I've been here since 2004. I was new then, but I don't know how long these forums have been around. Well?

[SirKazum]

The earliest post I could find anywhere in the forums dates from 2003... and it's about a blackout (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?9368-The-Blackout) that caused the loss of previous data from the site. So, it's definitely older than 2003, but it's hard to tell by how much, at least from information still on the forums. So I think that's up to the oldest posters to reply...

edit: according to whois.net, the giantitp.com domain was registered in July 8th, 2003, so there's that. The site could still be older and under a different domain, but anyway.

[Peelee]

The earliest post I could find anywhere in the forums dates from 2003... and it's about a blackout (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?9368-The-Blackout) that caused the loss of previous data from the site. So, it's definitely older than 2003, but it's hard to tell by how much, at least from information still on the forums. So I think that's up to the oldest posters to reply...

edit: according to whois.net, the giantitp.com domain was registered in July 8th, 2003, so there's that. The site could still be older and under a different domain, but anyway.

I did a whois lookup only to find you edited that info in while I was doing it.

[Manga Shoggoth]

According to the introduction in Dungeon Crawling Fools, the comic was started in September 2003, about three months after the website itself was started, so that's June 2003 ish?

From the description, the forum was part of the original site (described as a ghost town of a message board). It's grown a bit since then, obviously...

[Eldan]

Sadly, google trends doesn't go back before 2004

[Jasdoif]

edit: according to whois.net, the giantitp.com domain was registered in July 8th, 2003, so there's that. The site could still be older and under a different domain, but anyway.That timing seems right for the initial launch.


I made this website as an attempt to launch a game design career because I had come in second place in that WOTC contest. I created the comic a few months later because I needed something to give people a reason to come back to the site and see my newest gaming article, so I decided to do a comic strip. I chose to do a gaming comic because I thought it would maximize interest among the people I was looking to draw to my site."That WOTC contest" would be the Fantasy Setting Search that eventually resulted in Keith Baker's Eberron, and the selection of the winner was announced in February 2003 (as near as I can determine (http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=3904)).

[137beth]

The oldest post I can find (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?9014-Test) is from August 6 2003 (slightly older than the one about the blackout SirKazum linked to above).

OOTS launched later, on September 25 2003 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?7333-The-Order-of-the-Stick).