About Us

Vassal is the Latest in a long line of Modded Worldbuding & Roleplay Servers by Autumnly. As of Currently Writing this (Nov. 8th, 2025), Vassal is looking forwards to the upcoming launch of it's Second Season, but it took a lot more than just one Season to get where Vassal is today.

The Initial Concept

The Idea Started back in the times of Plague (Covid-19), where I had the idea to run a Medieval-Fantasy server. This started small, with the initial release of a small server called Rusticraft. Rusticraft was quite Vanilla-Plus, and while it was fun, it was also limited in scope. It didn't focus much on Roleplay, and barely had any rules or systems to enforce that.

Rusticraft would see several iterations over time, (3 if I remember correctly), and by the end of it, I had started to become more comfortable with running servers in general, and had gained a small, permanent community for my projects.

The Catalyst

I then had an idea; what if we focused more on Roleplay, and made something a bit more.. immersive? So, I came up with the idea to run a small event as a test. It was based around the Lord of the Rings: Renewed mod (among many other individual mods), and it was called Peasants & Plagues. 

It was intended to be a silly little project that would come and go, but it started the ideas flowing about this kind of experience. Could we make something properly immersive AND actually find a way to get people to Roleplay?

Fiefdom

After the P&P Event ended, I got to work on something more "permanent", and I designed the first iteration of Fiefdom, Vassal's main precursor. Fiefdom removed the ties to Middle Earth and went in it's own direction, and we even opened up the Server to the Public! It shockingly garnered a really large community, its Ad still being my most viewed long-form youtube video (though it's since been unlisted).

Functionally it was very similar to Stoneworks in terms of systems and rules. Anyone could do anything, just with the limitation of it needing to be Medieval-Fantasy.

However, with how open and relatively limitless it was, the problems were quickly made apparent. The world felt quite disjointed and incoherent, Staff had little-to-no way to curate what is "Good" worldbuilding vs. What was "Bad" (As in, what worldbuilding contributed to the overall world in a coherent way).

Additionally, it was fraught with Moderation Issues, Interpersonal Issues, and Performance Issues (it being my first large server). We ended up with an experience that Staff was really unhappy with, and that players weren't loving as much as they could.

Fiefdom had 2 Public Iterations in it's time, but by the end of the second one, I was beyond burnt-out with it, and additionally dealing with Health Issues. So we shut things down and decided to move onto other projects for the time being.

Beasthunters: Reborn

Beasthunters: Reborn was where we started to lay out the foundations of the systems seen in Vassal today. It was a revival of an older RPG server concept of mine that never took off outside of a small handful of players. We decided to focus then and there on setting the rules of the world in stone.

The First Major Change to the server structure was Applications, which have since evolved into Vassal's Verification System. We decided to advertise it publicly, but we wouldn't just let anybody in. You had to fill out a long-winded form and create a character, which we would then review before you could be let in. It was a good way to filter out all the wrong people, but it also scared away some people who saw a big application form that asked a lot of you.

The Second Major Change was to set some things about the world in stone, not to be controlled by players. You had a select list of Races, One Continent to Play on, and the World Even had some pre-determined Lore. In fact, one of the most iconic pieces of Lore was born in this Era; The Elder Fae.

However, players were still freely able to make their own kingdoms and run everything as they decided, which ended up with the same problem it always does; Tiny Kingdoms of 1 Person spread out across the world, with no communication or co-operation. The "Tiny Kingdom" problem is dare-I-say the most prominent issue in Minecraft Roleplay Servers, and we were determined to find a fix for it in the next server.

The Server Ended due to technical issues revolving around the Choice of Modloader (which also solidified my decision to never return to Fabric Modpacking), and we moved onto other ideas for the time being.

Of The Briar

Of The Briar was a small, short server test with a concept I had tried before; Terrafirmacraft Worldbuilding/RP Servers. Unfortunately, I found the same issue there I always did, Terrafirmacraft has a tendency to turn away the kind of players that just want freedom to roleplay. However, that wasn't the biggest takeaway from OTB, as we also tested something else; Limiting Kingdoms.

Instead of just letting everyone make their own kingdoms, we decided to just have everyone be together in one kingdom. This was partially to help make TFC more Accessible, but also to test out if that could solve the "Tiny Kingdom" problem, and, well, it did! The main settlement of OTB was incredibly community-oriented, and everyone was co-operating and building some cool things. So with the end of that test, we were able to take what we learned and finally move onto "The Real Deal" so to speak.

Vassal: Season One

This was the beginning of Vassal. I brought everything I had learned up to that point together. I decided to make a lot of things set in stone. There were 3 Kingdoms, and 3 Kingdoms ONLY. There was a small selection of races to choose from (Too Small, we've since learned), and even Magic was preset using an idea I had in a previous server but never actually implemented.

With Applications, we decided to seperate the actual Application and Character Creation into 2 seperate forms. You apply first, and then you submit a "Character Request" once you've been accepted. It gave Staff much better control to curate things and help guide players in a cohesive direction.

We also decided to focus in on realism and simulation, with big terrain, food decay, and making every system in the game more involved. It also used custom content more extensively than ever before, using some savings I had to commission multiple forks and addons to curate the exact experience I wanted. In theory, it was perfect.

But Theory is not practice, as we've learned. Much of the ideas were incredibly cool, but not all of them really found much enjoyment, and some ended up being pretty rough for players and staff. Food Decay, unsurprisingly, isn't really fun. Forcing Staff to be so involved in every aspect of the game tended to lead to Staff burnout, and there was unforseen issues with many of the custom systems we had tried to implement, such as Limited Lives and an Admin Shop.

However, it was still a solid foundation. Though the server had bugs, it performed unbelievably well due to me accruing modding and optimization experience. We were able to work out a lot of the kinks over the server's lifespan, and a lot of amazing memories and impressive structures were made. 

Unfortunately, a small group of players had worked in the background to essentially destroy the server's economy and community by exploiting bugs and loopholes, and after many interpersonal issues with that group and their eventual bans, the server was in such a rough state (as was my mental wellbeing) that we decided to close and take a break until Season 2, where we'd re-evaluate everything we could. 

The Present

Finally, that brings us to the Modern Day! We've learned a lot from all the experiences that came before, and while nothing's perfect, this knowledge helps get Vassal ever closer to near-perfection. We've decided to put a few more things back into the player's hands, clear up our vision for the project, and make everything as accessible and polished as possible.

While I'm certain bugs will be found on launch and changes will need to be made once players get their hands on the server (as happens with any server), we're working on a more solid foundation than ever before, and can confidently say Vassal will be something quite special.