Difference between revisions of "A RPGWW History"
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== RPG World == | == RPG World == | ||
Revision as of 22:02, 18 February 2007
Contents
RPG World
The history of the RPGWW community starts before the creation of RPGWW, with the comic RPG World by Ian Jones-Quartey (art blog). RPG World is a webcomic which spoofs the cliches of RPGs--games such as Final Fantasy, for instance.
Now, back in the day, RPG World had an online forum, like many webcomics! Here fans of RPG World congregated to talk about the comic in specific, and also nothing in particular. Occasionally, a poster would come to the forum who would not be a fan of the comic--someone who came for the social aspect, perhaps alerted to the community by another poster--but these were few. By and large, posters were also fans and once-fans of console RPGs.
UBB: the early board
The early board was a single-forum UBB (Universal Bulletin Board). All threads were displayed together (like a single subforum of our RPGWW, or today's RPG World forum), and in each thread, 75 posts were displayed per page. The UBB was hosted on Keenspot, as was RPG World at the time.
No doubt influenced by these limitations, there was a certain uniformity to forum threads. Very few threads were 'serious' or uniformly serious. The larger portion of posters had a persona under which they posted--a sort of roleplaying in and of itself. Some threads would have mixed serious and persona responses, which led to some misunderstandings.
Early personas established during this period include Ash Fanrico, Daniel, Folx/EmpressFolx, Jinx, KingOfDoma, Neko, Nekogami, Phil/EmpressPhil, Rydia-chan/Empress Rydia, Stephan, Vulture, and Zero the Barkeep (not to be confused with Capntastic, "Brodzky Zero"). It was during this time that the country of Doma was established. Boozeland was created during this time, as well, but as with many others, it was selected to not to be carried over into RP canon later.
RPGWW? RPGWW!
It became popular to create or modify game sprites to represent one's forum persona, to the point that a handful or more posters had done so. This, perhaps, helped lend the idea to poster Chrono_Catfish to make a sprite comic based on the forum shenanigans.
A thread posed the question: what should this comic be called? The answer came back: RPG World World.
RPing
Most RPGW/W forumers were, by the time C_C's comic was getting into the swing of things, already posting under a created persona. Epic spam threads were occurrences many looked forward to; in such, over the course of a very short amount of time forumers would post rapid-fire responses in a single thread, often with amusing results. Some of these threads took the course of plot, spawning new characters--Staniel, for instance, or TDTLTTOBNL.
Early attempts at RPs were similar to this, but purposefully instigated instead of happy accidents. They largely did not take off.
The first "serious RP" and perhaps first RP to finish would be The Hit, started by Ash Fanrico. While bearing several typical features of a GM's and RPers' first venture into RPing, by and large those who participated in it enjoyed it greatly. The events from the RP are pseudo-canon. The Hit started and ended on the UBB forum.
The second RP to finish was Rise of the Guild (sequel: In Pursuit of the Darkness). This RP was started and GMed by Archmage, using the Philsys thingie which had been somewhat recently developed by forumer Phil-dog. Rise of the Guild started and ended on the UBB forum.
After the successful completion of Archmage's first RP and especially his second--and his loud encouragement--more posters began to try their hands at GMing and RPing.
Discontent
With the RPGWW comic and RPing beginning to take off, there was suddenly a lot more to the community to attract posters who weren't interested in RPG World. More people began to come to the forum, which wasn't completely to the liking of everyone there at the time.
Larger than before, the RPG World forum now had very distinct social groups. There were those who spammed and those did not, those who RPed and those who didn't, those who talked about the comic and those who did not even so much as read it. There were artists, who tended to be popular and well-known, if also sometimes disliked and envied for their popularity based on their "innate" skill. There were also the other well-known forumers--those who posted frequently, those who had "loud" personas, or those who contributed in some significant way to the community (such as Chrono_Catfish).
People who were unhappy stated so. Plenty of suggestions were made as to who should leave and who should stay. It was pointed out more than once that this was the RPG World forum, especially as talk of the comic became less and less common.
The forum itself was experiencing technical problems more and more frequently. It had always--at least from 2001 onward--suffered the problem of having the occasional thread eaten, but now it was happening more and more frequently. The board went down for several days, taking several threads and user accounts with it.
This was a keenspace-wide problem, however, and the keen powers that be were keen on a solution. The solution, then, that the good folks of keen appeared to settle upon was to move away from the UBB-based forums and over to phpbb.
Keen phpbb are...GO!
One day, the RPG World comic board link led to a VERY different forum. Instead of the familiar whites and pale greys of the UBB, the board was dark. Lord only knows why keenspace decided to change the color scheme so drastically--people complained, of course, because it was different--but more importantly, for a time, the board worked a little better.
Then someone changed the phpbb color scheme. And everything went to hell.
The pages loaded slowly at the best of times, on a fast connection, leaving dial-up-dependent forumers "SoL." Roughly half the time, however, the pages refused to answer for even the best of connections.
Thus...
Suicidal Sprite, to the rescue
Poster Suicidal Sprite went to ezboard.com to open a new board--one we could actually post at. The ezB RPGWW was established on 22 April 2002.
The original idea was that we would, at the least, have a temporary place to post until keenspace got it's rear in gear--or on the offchance that keenspace didn't. Perhaps if we liked the forum enough, we'd just stay there.
There was a little discontent with the move due to the overt distancing from RPG World. By this time, however, a growing number of the community didn't read the comic; a few were unaware of its existence. While IanJ was becoming aware of the problems with the forums and working on moving them to an independent phpbb system, RPGWWers decided that the benefits of the ezB forum won out over staying as the "RPG World comic forum."
Communication with Ian during this time was lacking. Ian posted in the ezB forum about this, mentioning that he would have appreciated being alerted to the problems with the forums sooner. He offered to set us up in the phpbb he was setting up, which would have a large number of the most important benefits offered by ezB: most notably, divided subforums and moderators. Today, he keeps a link to the RP forum from the RPG World comic page. The comic forum is strictly on-topic, with a stickied post which links to a separate off-topic board.
RPG World upgraded to keenspot roughly the same time that RPGWW moved to the ezB. This helped bring an influx of new posters to Ian's comic forums, which began a new evolution of their own.
As for the us RPGWWers, on our ezB RPGWW, we were giddy with our new-found forum. The ability to create subforums was perhaps one of the most indispensable new features: RPs could be separated from spam, spam from discussions, discussions from art, art from RPGWW and RPGW comic discussion. Having our own admins and moderators was also incredibly useful--or, rather, the abilities they have to delete spam, block spammers, and move posts. The ability to customize images and colors was also quickly utilized, as were custom postranks.
The original administrators of the ezB RPGWW were Suicidal Sprite (also the ezOp), Archmage, DMSCV, and pdRydia. Later admins would be Squintz Altec, Kai, and Idran1701 while pdRydia would step down to moderator.
Miscellany
Related forums
ADV!
ADV! is shorthand for Adventurers!, a webcomic in a similar vein to RPG World--that is to say, a comic which spoofs RPG cliches. ADV!'s author is Mark Shallow, or Webrunner ("Webby") on forums.
Without great surprise, there's some overlap between the readership of RPG World and Adventurers! While the forums at first kept distinct populations, some forumers began to visit and post in the other's forum; pdrydia to ADV!, for instance, and DMSCV to RPG World. It was a bit sporadic, but it occurred.
The real jumpstart to the mingling of the communities began with the "forum invasion." ADV! forumers had raided other forums in the past, and had a jolly good time of it--especially when others were a good sport about it. A few ADV!ers decided that it was time for another go, and set their sites on RPG World's forum.
Lord McBastard IMed pdrydia over AIM, explaining this, and asked permission to 'kidnap' EmpressRydia as an instigation to the raid. Tickled by the ludicrousness of the idea, Dia gave the go-ahead. What ensued was In the darkness of the night, as well as general spamming of the RPG World forums and goofiness.
This occurred on the UBB forums, which experienced trouble during the raid. It was decided, then, to move the raid to ADV!'s forum--that is, the counter the raid with a counter-raid! Thus, it was so.
- ADV!ers involved include: DMSCV, Eidolon X, Excal, Ganonfro, Gold Zeo Cabbit (LiquidX), Lord McBastard, lDarkwolfl
- RPGWWers involved include: Archmage, Ash Fanrico, Choark, DoomseekerIshida, EmpressRydia, FF Fanatic, FlamingDeth, glu_glu, GreatDave, Grimly, JediAl11, Jester_Jinx, KingOfDoma, LadyDragonClawsEDW, Molokidan, Shinigori, SuperRube
ADV! RPing being differently structured, and RPG World spam being of a different type, there were some ego clashes and arguments. Some people left convinced that their community was, certainly, the best. Others, however, got out of it what was intended--a bit of light-hearted fun.
Some results from the forum invasion have become RP canon. For instance, for their efforts on behalf of the kingdom of Doma, Hakaril and Ash Fanrico were made generals, while Daniel Hyral was given a castle. In Gaera Main, Daniel has this castle, while Hakaril and Ash are indeed generals--the reasons are, however, different, as no forums were raided in Gaera Main. Also, no EmpressRydia existed in Gaera Main. Ever.
The ADV! forums has had some shiftings of its own, both in terms of webhosting and in terms of social dynamics. Some time after RPGWW had become RPGWW and moved to ezBoard--the same service which hosted the ADV! forums at the time--a number of ADV! posters began to post on RPGWW more regularly, and then made the switch complete.
Amongst such notables are--aside from the recognizable names amongst the invaders--Brainwalker, Banjooie, Divinegon, NebulaQueen, Priam, Reako, UnclePervy, and XaqShenor.
The Phantom Lord's OT Board
This board deserves note for being one of the previous targets of ADV! forum raiding, prior to the RPGW/W Raid. From here, a few posters came to post regularly on ADV! and later at RPGWW. Kelne and Zemyla are two such notables.
Abstract Magic
Abstract Magic was the name of an ezB forum whose ezOp--creator--was Brainwalker. At a time when subscription to Gold services ran out for the ezB RPGWW, the Powers that Be looked at the cost of resubscribing. It was a lot.
Not entirely unreasonably, gold subscription costs are based on page views over a certain time period. RPGWW, now, had a lot of page views. The idea was proposed to let the page views fall to the point where Gold became affordable. BW had the aforementioned forum--Abstract Magic--for which a very cheap subscription was purchased and a temporary shift was made.
To prevent numerous page views, all forums of RPGWW had posting privileges locked to admins and moderators only. An explanatory thread and link was left in both Kotoki's Inn and in Discussion.
It should be noted that Gold services include the lack of popup ads and, these days, incredibly large, obnoxiously-placed, often-animated ads throughout the forum. Most image customization are also Gold features, as were stickies at some point in time. Additionally, ezB only makes backups of their Gold forums. This would come into play during the Great ezFluke of June 2005.
The move to and from Abstract Magic, May of 2003, saw a noticeable drop in forum activity.
The RP Bootcamp
The RP Bootcamp was an ezB forum separate from RPGWW. Originally associated with a Hogwarts roleplay board, ownership was lended to RPGWW when the original owners transferred to phpbb.
The RP Bootcamp was intended to be a forum for training and polishing RPing and GMing skills. There were a few lessons regarding this posted by RPGWWer veteran RPers and GMs. Notably, to gain confidence in his GMing skills, MechanistoX ran an RP at the bootcamp using the Risus system: Operation Starblade: Bloody Elves!. It was well-done and sequelled over at the ezB RPGWW.
Unfortunately, the entire Bootcamp forum was eaten during the Great ezFluke of June 2005. No backups were had from ezB as the forum's gold subscription had recently run out. The forum has since run defunct.
The forum's structure looked like this:
GENERAL Introduction (11 posts, last 5/23/05 5:39 pm) Please read the "The Purpose of this Forum"
before you post! General Discussion (62 posts, last 3/15/06 7:05 pm) Need to discuss something that doesn't belong
in one of the other forums? This is the place. LESSONS Lessons in Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar (18 posts, last 9/28/04 9:30 pm) This forum is for those of you who have problems
with spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Lessons in Role Playing (0 posts, last 12/12/05 11:39 pm) This forum is for those of you who have problems
with, or otherwise wish to improve your Role Playing. Lessons in GMing (16 posts, last 12/31/04 1:57 pm) This forum is for those of you who have problems
with, or otherwise wish to improve your GMing. PRACTICE Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar Practice (0 posts, last 9/20/02 8:52 pm) Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar Practice Role Playing and GMing Practice (167 posts, last 5/11/05 7:51 pm) This is where you can practice the GMing and role
playing skills that you have learned in the Drills.
Peripherals
The website
Hosting
Originally, C_C's RPGWW comic was emailed to interested parties. It so happened that pdrydia--at the time posting under Rydia, Rydia-chan, or EmpressRydia, depending--learned about this comic and asked our C_C to email her the backlog. He kindly did, although he had to ask around find a couple of ones he had misplaced. Dia offered, then, to place these comics on a website--somewhere the whole forum could easily access, and coincidentally a place to store backups. C_C was agreeable to this idea.
The first RPGWW website was opened several subfolders down at [zeke.tzo.com]. The length of the URL was intimidating, which encouraged Dia to later move the site to [rpgww.topcities.com]--which at some point in time was automagically shifted to [rpgww.50megs.com].
Dia met a guy of the SN GreatDave through (of all things!) a Rydia fansite, and the kindly Dave offered webhosting at davidr.com. Thus, RPGWW moved once again, this time to www.davidr.com/rpgww. At some point in time, Dave's rent of the domain name davidr.com ended, and the domain changed to greatdave.org--thus, www.greatdave.org/rpgww.
Later, Dave decided to take leave of the internet for some time. RPGWW was moved back to zeke, this time at the shorter URL zeke.tzo.com/rpgww.
The website now resides at rpgww.org thanks to the fantastic Mr. Idran!
Contents
The website was originally intended to host C_C's webcomics.
Damientobin would be the first forumer to draw fanart (Two Monarchs and a Bird, which showed KingOfDoma, Rydia, and Vulture). This apparently seemed like a neat idea, for more art followed. So did fancomics and any number of fan...things. The website came to host fanstuff.
As RPing took off, and then rules introduced, Phil-dog's Philsys was uploaded to the website. Sheets and explanations were added.
The fanstuff and RP sections exploded into convoluted messes. The fanstuff was then stripped down into directories. The RP information remains intact, but is becoming defunct as it is transferred to the wiki and expanded upon.
Comic evolution
Alas, the illustrious Chrono_Catfish had to one day cease work on his fine comic. It had a good run, and inspired many.
Indeed, the first to take up the task of RPGWW comicker was...Chrono_Catfish! As the plotter for ChancellorSmartz's art. This comic was called Undestined and featured a story independent of RPGWW affairs.
The next RPGWW comic was based around canon RP events and was drawn manga-style by Nekogami. Like Undestined, Idle had a sadly short run.
The most recent RPGWW comic is Capntastic's RPGWW MANGA, an amusing series of MSPaint (and occasional multimedia) shorts. There is no official schedule for updates.
Chat
RPGW/W's first venture into AIM started during the era of the UBB board. There was a thread--several threads, actually, as each successive thread got bogged in spam and then fell to the bottom of the thread heap--requesting AIM screennames. As screennames appeared, they were added to buddylists and invited into chats when RPGW/Wers were online.
Originally, RPGWW chats had spontaneous names and all chatters had to be invited. A gathering of 6 chatters was a momentous occasion and necessitated the involvement of all chatters present, for it might not happen again for quite some time.
During this time, RPs tended to occur spontaneously from normal chats. A normal discussion would turn to spam, the spam to spammy RPing, and the spammy RPing to serious RPing. Older characters often have backgrounds which have links to spammy origins and events because of this.
Sometimes the RP would move to a different chat at some point, but only if there were enough people in the chat who wanted to just talk. Starting RPs intentionally, mind, was difficult for most chatters. One would say, "I want to RP," get the entire chat to agree, and wait as everyone did and said nothing, not knowing what to do to initiate an RP.
The tradition of naming RPGWW chats "RPGWW Chat" and of keeping RP chats distinct from the main chat was cemented with the RPGWW website. At one point in time, FlamingDeth told pdrydia of an HTML code--it made a link which, when clicked, would take an AIM user directly to a chat of the coder's choosing. The ability for RPGWWers to invite themselves to chat sounded pretty neat--it just necessitated a static chat room name. As RPGWW Chat had been used for a bit of time already, RPGWW Chat (aim:GoChat?RoomName=RPGWW+Chat) was decided upon.
RPGWW Chat had grown stagnant, RPGWWers having been accustomed to being invited to chat; inviting oneself to chat took some getting used to. The link made things easier, certainly. Still, today, some RPGWWers generally will not enter chat unless invited--how else to know the chat is active? It's not terribly uncommon for RPGWW Chat to host up to 20+ chatters at once, all of whom are doing things other than chatting.
MUSH
See RPGWW MUSH.
Wiki
The Wiki came into being after the MUSH and is hosted by Idran, our resident Wikigami. It is awesome.
