I don't know if it has been many people asking, or just the same person asking many times, but I feel I have seen the question of who invented "vflags" asked many times, maybe not I don't really pay that close attention. Brief answer: Ryan.

Ok I am bored here is the not brief answer.

The original scoring system for KDice was based on ELO, no I won't explain how it works wikipedia is your fried. In the ELO era the flagging system was radically different. First you didn't flag for a position, second you could unflag. The mechanics were that to end the game every player still alive besides the person in first had to have their flag checked, and when that occurred you received the position that you were in when the last person clicked their flag. This meant to get 2nd you had to be in 2nd place when the game ended. The mechanics allowed for some rather amusing hi-jinx and "exploits" such as true ninja flagging where a person would expand rapidly and flag before anyone else to could unflag allowing them to move up in position. While there was dominance under ELO it wasn't as a significant portion of the score and your position mattered much more, this is a function of how ELO works you are scored based on your finish relative to the ELO's of those that finish above and below you.

That all ended in September of 2007, raise your hands if you were playing then if you weren't then your weren't the person that invented vflagging. The September '07 scoring system only lasted one month, but marked a few significant changes in the mechanics of the game play and scoring. First off monthly resets started, you used to keep your ELO score from month to month and gain points based on games played and the Rank of your ELO score. Now everyone started at 0 every month and had to claw up, member bonuses arrived in January of 2008 ending the everyone at 0 and creating a new kdice "elite" class after the ending of the 2k ELO elite another story for another time.

Okay off track back to the flagging system. Under the new system when you flagged you went to grey and surrendered. This created a predicament for many players when they weren't offered a truce with a person they didn't have a real way to put the flag up unless they wanted to surrender right then and there. The dreaded phrase "vflag" was spawned, and while there may have been instances of a similar act occurring in ELO it was very rare as you could always put the flag up and back down. Now vflagging, or otherwise referred by to misnomers: verbal flagging or virtual flagging, as you aren't verbally saying flag and you aren't putting up a virtual representation of a flag. Vagina flagging would be the more appropriate describer of what "vflag" means. So began the era of "Player X:vflag blue" now there was much debate over "vflags" at point amongst the community and most of that goes back to the point that the phrase "vflag" is lame. Simply saying flag to the appropriate player is superior although still lame.

The flag and surrender system continued until the current system was implemented in January 2008. The only difference from January '08 and now is that for the first couple months you did not need to wait until certain round to put up a flag. This caused many people to put up a flag for 2nd in the first round to whoever had the strongest start and create often times what was a rather difficult 1/2 truce and ending any real competition in the game before the first round was over.

No single player invented the "vflag" and many have developed the proper manipulative skills needed use "vflags" to gain positions that the nature of dice placement and rolling luck would not otherwise have allowed. Ryan invented vflagging because he made the scoring systems what they are and created the situation that people thought they needed to "vflag" remember though just because a player flagged for real or just said flag in chat doesn't mean that you cannot attack them. The term "vflag" has diminished in use in my opinion so at least that is a small victory, but people still flag to often and too early.

The current scoring system is the worst of all the previous scoring system in my humble opinion as it rewards pure volume over quantity in a matter that makes playing the most far more important then playing the best.

A return to a flagging system similar to ELO, which wasn't perfect I know, would create more necessity to fight for a position. Also the dominance scoring is woefully broken some might say because of playing styles that I championed, but the solutions didn't stop the problems I was accused of creating they only made it worse. The game is still fun, just not as fun as it could be or was.

Okay this is now way too long and I imagine most will not read it, hell I barely did ;-)