Difference between revisions of "A RPGWW History: Miscellany"

Revision as of 03:32, 20 February 2007

A RPGWW History

The first segment of this article can be found here.

Our website

Hosting

A (partially reconstructed) screenshot of the website from while it was hosted at topcities.

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 free 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.

When the forums moved from ezB to phpBB, Idran also moved the RPGWW website from zeke to rpgww.org where it now resides.

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. As even the earliest incarnation of the RPGW/W forum had the habit of eating threads, the webmistress began to save copies of RPs and back them up on the website--starting the RP archives section.

The fanstuff and RP sections exploded into convoluted messes. Many FAQs and FAQ revisions were attempted.

In the later life of the zeke.site, RPGWW's fanstuff section was stripped down into browsable directories with filenames describing first the creator and then the contents or characters depicted.

The RP information remains as intact HTML pages, but is becoming defunct as the information is transferred to the wiki and then expanded upon. It best serves as a backup.

For the later life of the RPGWW zeke.site, the webmistress was unable to upload or edit the website. Today, Idran currently has sole access to the site. Enabling remote access might be a future possibility, which would allow for others to update the fanstuff and RP archive sections.

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.

A special Valentine's Day episode of RPGWW Manga!

Indeed, the first to take up the task of RPGWW comicker after C_C 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.

Yalogank

Yalogank is a directory on the RPGWW website found at rpgww.org/yalogank. To segue into the explanation of its origins, an explanation of the word: royal backlog gankery.

The original image posted to "YALOGANK".

This was a personal project of pdrydia's, the idea of which was to screenshot the funny of RPGWW, save it for posterity, and upload it to a directory for all to see. To do this, she was to go through the backlogs of RPGWW--all of the backlogs. She started with the back of the fastest-moving ezB subforums and moved forward.

The project took a long time because it grew in scale as it was being worked on. While working on the RPGWW ezB, pdrydia would take a jaunt to the old keenspace/spot forum to scour for some very old threads, and over to ADV! for relevance there. She also made use of the wayback machine. While originally yalogank was intended to only house screenshots, that obviously didn't work out. The other directories began to form naturally as, while trolling through old threads, pdrydia found amusing images--macros, emoticons, avatars, and so on. Thus the evolution of the yalogank directory.

In due time, pdrydia felt yalogank was "finished" enough. On 2 December 2004, the thread YALOGANK was posted in Kotoki's Bar and Inn.

Up until now, pdrydia refused to explain the origins of the phrase "yalogank" but to two forumers who soon forgot. Now it is written for all to see.

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.

A fairly accurate representation of the average early chat.

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

On 14 Mar 2006, RedEye Dragon89 posted the thread RPGWWWiki, instigating a discussion about the possibility of a wiki for the community. On 16 Mar 2006, Idran posted that he had set up a RPGWW Wiki at mysidia.org/rpgww.

The Wiki is intended to be a be-all-end-all information dump for all things RPGWW. So far, information is of two primary types: Community- and RP-related. Information has not yet been completely transferred from the website.

On editing wiki pages: Idran and other sysops can arrange a user account for you. You will need a user account to edit articles. When editing an article, only some HTML works. It is best to use wikicode when possible. See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Editing. If you ever become lost or need help on finer details of editing, Idran--our resident Wikigami--can help you.

Related forums

ADV!

ADV! signs of the apocalypse--think about it.

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, pdrydia 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, FFFanatic, 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, Archmage and Ash Fanrico were made generals, while FFFanatic was given a castle. In Gaera Main, Daniel Hyral and family has this castle, while Hakaril Silvar and Ash Fanrico 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 renewing. 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. Brainwalker 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, today, 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, in May 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.