Okay. I’ve been managing an RP for more years than I like to admit, and I’m sure (hoping, rather) that some of you are in the same boat (either managing, or playing) and I want to know if we are a dying breed. Lol. Honestly, there are trends now in the gaming world that have me sitting at my computer, hands over my mouth and wide-eyed.

Am I the only one waggling my knobbly cane and yelling the RP equivalent of “Get off my lawn, you young whippersnappers!”? Or, are there trends amongst us ‘veterans’ that you are boggled by and wish would seriously go away, is there anything you’d like to see return and, finally, have you given up and just decided to go with the new ways and hope that it will all go away?

What makes you really want to rip your hair out and take a cane to these ‘whippersnappers’? Why haven't you? When did all of our standards get thrown out of the window like a...something that gets thrown out the...window... *ahem*

Bear in mind that, when replying, this topic may offend some, but you’ve gotta view it like this: change makes a lot of people unhappy and while the majority may go with the flow, a lot of us who don’t agree are often silent and really need to rage.

Me, particularly, because I swear I just run around waggling my cane at everything, which is not what I want to do. (And I do need to learn to accept new things, which is another reason I’m asking these questions. Perhaps, in a way, forming a support group to help me and others like me to get through these ‘hard’ times. XD;;; )

I will save my rants for later, but for now I want to find out if I’ve got any bingo-night buddies. ^_^

Bit of Fun: You might be from the era of the archaic RPG management/role-playing world if:

• Your website was hosted by Expage, geocities, angelfire or homestead. (Homestead ad geocities girl here!)
• Your board was hosted by Coolboards, Ezboard, or Boards2go (I know some people still use Boards2go. It takes me back! <3)
• If on boards2go, you created something akin to mini websites for each of your posts. Seriously, there were templates with pictures and HTML was used to make fonts all pretty. There were sections for OOC and IC …they were a good concept, but you could come across some horrors.
• If on EzBoard, you had a unique, separate board for every (and I mean every) part of your RPG.
• You remember the plethora of awards sites, review sites and the subsequent failure of them. ( I had my own, Dobby’s Honour Awards and Affinity, which was similar to RPG-D ^_^ )
• You remember when there was no such thing as advertising other than by joining 1089038830 topsites. (You new lot are lucky. If you ever thought about mentioning another RPG on a board you were apart of, it was the ban bin for you!)
• You remember when TagBoards were hawt and then subsequently loathed for all the problems they caused. (TagBoard v2 is out now, it’s called ‘Cbox’)
• You remember when website did not mean forum. (This is one of my rants I will save for later.)
• You had your site hosted by a blogger and your domain was funkynamehere.domain.com/net/org.
• Touching Canon was like touching the Queen. If you got to do it, you were lucky. (In the case of HP RPGs anyway)
• You titled your RPG ‘Your Character’s Name, Location.’ For HPRPGS mine was “Carmilla’s Hogwarts” >.> Shush!
• Lissaexplainsitall really did explain it all. Now, it explains enough, and then you move on. (I still <3 that site though, if it wasn’t for her, I’d never know what the hell CSS was good for, much less stood for)
• For HP veterans. You remember Mugglenet, The Dark Mark and their types of RPGs, which were much like NeoPets.

There are many more, I’ll try to be less HP-centric when I do think of the others, but that’s where I started my thing. Now.

*drops into rocking chair and waggles cane* Raise yer glass and show me yer teeth! (That makes sense in my head. *nods*)

P.S. Mods, I know this isn’t a rant in and of itself, but it leads to ranty things, at least I hope. But, honestly, I couldn’t figure out where I should put it, feel free to move and smack me on the nose with a rolled up newspaper if I was bad. *hides*

I am not old. I have not even been RPing for two years. However, I have had a board hosted on EZboards, I did use those big things for posts which looked pretty and were pointless, I do remember MuggleNet and the Dark Mark.

I am too tired to say anything more tonight. I will return later.

Good gawd, I remember DMRP.

>.>

but that's it.

;.;

BUT ANYWAY.
<3 vet
hurray!
XD

Oh EZBoards and Geocities.

I miss those old days. People who RPed then were in it for the LONG HAUL. Graphics then weren't really pretty - they looked like something that came out of paint. People used Anime characters as PBs or didn't use them at all.

And to get a Canon...ohh to get a canon. You felt special as hell.

Those were the good old days. You could READ THE TEXT, You didn't have dark text on dark skins, and people back then were SERIOUS about the storyline.

Boards2go?
Pfft.

I remember when we had to chisel our posts into stone!

I was a network54 girl, myself.

I do however, roll with the changes. I've branched out, joined one of the newer games and I'm sneakily doing recon so I can take things and apply them to my board. It's tough titties really, because in the hunt for members, they're not looking for someone waving a stick at them and telling them how in their day it was so much better. They're looking for a place to roleplay and hey, some things have become "the norm". Considering I'm actually going through the process of experiencing these new trends myself, it is worth looking at why and how certain things improve the quality of gaming before condemning them completely. Roleplayers who insist on digging in their heels and not allowing themselves to adapt to change, inevitably become stagnant, bitter players.

Not so fun in the gaming, I find.

I have to say, the "old days" were no better. They too were filled with crinklies who did nothing but moan about how roleplaying was way better in their day. When in fact, it has always been rammed full of elitist wankers, bad writers, ego-maniacs, control-freaks, superb storytellers and idiot savants. I also found that "back in the day" players were far less concerned with helping other players progress. They were in it for themselves and if it you didn't automatically know how to roleplay, you were labelled an idiot and were shoved into the corner to play with the other "RP-retards". I prefer roleplaying now by a long shot. While you still get the knobs, there are far more helpful roleplayers out there than there used to be.

Plus, I'm no longer shoved in the corner with the kid who's giving cheese to his mouse XD. That's a huge plus.

I used that as well! But I couldn’t remember the name of it, so I just left it out. We used it for our live classes when the RPG first opened. XD Ooooh, good times.

But, Panda, I understand what you’re saying and that is exactly what I am saying (or said) up above. I don’t want to waggle my stick at anyone, and do not do it to players and I well know that everything ‘back in the day’ wasn’t better, but there are some things that have me going “…why reinvent the wheel?”

Sidebars, for instance, seem to be a thing that substitutes for site navigation that somehow gets boards turned into websites. Abba…wibba?

What happened to having your calling card, your website that housed all of the RPG’s information? The affiliates, the awards, the topsites the RPG’s canon, the quotes, the whatever? I saw your response in another thread about how it’s [website creation] time consuming – and again I agree with you. But what happened to taking that time out? Getting something done that you’re proud of that isn’t a carbon copy of everything else? Of setting something aside that can be a bloody good read and a reason people should join your game, even though the board itself may look similar (because face it, they all will at some point) to someone else’s. (please bear in mind I’m using you/you’re in a general sense)

As well, the trends on their own do not seem to be working. I see boards that I go to advertise on and they look well done, yet the same as any other with sidebars, plotting pages, character myspaces/facebooks (eek) and what have you, only to see that dreaded “Board Offline” message and then a link to another forum made in the same exact way and also has the ‘Board Offline’ message.

Going back a bit (I swear I have a point here) websites house information, and used to be separate to the role-playing forum. Now, there is very little distinction, which I feel hurts the overall feel of RPGs these days. RPGs used to be (for me) *fun* to look at. Especially when there was the website that was a veritable LIBRARY of lore. Links to click were gold boxes in my eyes, and the contents were rare gems. Creature indexes, character indexes, “if this RPG were a movie” sections, the lore that your game has established and become part of the world you created.

Now it’s like “Yep, yep, seen that…right…k…err, what?” and while I do research and find out about these new trends, I just go ahead and ask myself “…why?” Other examples of when I go why:

Graphics and PBs - When did they become so terribly important to warrant banned PB lists and ‘graphics admins’ on an RPG board? Especially since, as Antisocial said (<3 because I totally remember and did this) your PBs were anime characters, the old skool dollz or you didn’t have one. And, even if graphics were absolute crap (Homestead/Geocities drag and drop clip art, anyone?) no one cared, because it was the *content* of the RPG that drew and kept players to the game.

What happened to that? And no, I don’t consider things like myspace forums/character plotting to be content. I consider something like that Tri-Wizard Tournament Mousie(?) is working on to be content.

Insofar as RPers back in the day go, I find it to be the exact opposite to what you’ve said, Panda. I swear people get more and more elitist by the day (myself included, which vexes me to no end) and less helpful and remain in their holes. RPGs used to have hundreds of members, and while you didn’t meet or RP with every single one of them, you most certainly got help – and there are always asshats, no matter what, which is something you simply dealt with. My RP experience was full of fun and bunnies at the time, so I am afraid I can’t relate, but can believe it as there are places some people like that just congregate.

I don’t know, I just feel like things are getting more complicated as time goes by when before, you simply needed an interesting website, a board and a smile to keep things going. Now…I don’t know…the standards being met are something just … alien to my mind.

I got everyone beat. I first RP'ed online on AOL 1.0. That was when you judged how good your internet connection was by the sound it made connecting. Ah the days of 56kbps modems! Anyway, I started roleplaying on Gemstone, the old school MUD. They started a forum-like thing and that was my first message board RP experience. I was a MUD'der for a long time before I started doing message board RPGs. Then I started playing Everquest and lost my soul to MMOs. After that came Star Wars Galaxies, of which I remained a member of a well-known guild until it was pretty much dead because everyone went to play WoW (I was doing both).

My first real message board RP was about 5 years ago. I was on Mugglenet before that, but I never participated in the RP section. It was an HP board, and it really wasn't that "old school". There was one assistant admin that was just a bully, and even the other admins obviously didn't like her. She had the biggest Mary Sue character on the site, but was always ranting about how everyone else was a MS. I ended up leaving, after she decided I was "bad" for not joining her RP school and starting harassing me both OOC and IC. At the time, I was working 12 hour days at a hospital, while going to grad school, and I just didn't have time to play games like that.

I kinda miss MUDs, but they aren't real popular anymore. I was just thinking today that it would be cool if someone made a mud client application for Facebook and the old school muds were resurrected.

One thing that I think we miss a lot of times now is RP'ing for the community, not how the site looks or how much of an "elite" writer you are. The community used to be a lot more important, and I think that's what's missing from a lot of new generation RPs.

I still think we need to form an oldbies club. This thread made me think of a real good title - "The Order of the Cane". We can beat them yun'ins with a stick!

Oooh, I say. You have surpassed the cane. You have a walking frame.

XD

I didn't mention that because, for me, it goes without saying. I should have mentioned that, but yeah, it wasn't something I felt was actually being overlooked, as it should be a default mindset. >_< I've gone so far as changing the domain name of my RPG to something that pays homage to my past, present and future writers. The site used to be called Hogwarts: In Real Time, and shortened to IRT and we often said "Ert." (we voice chat a lot) If it wasn't for my erters, again, past and present and obviously future, it wouldn't be here. 7 years is a long bloody time for one game, and it has fallen from grace, but with the community support - even from my affiliates and friends I've made in other RPGs, *bounces* Much <3 for the community.

Anyone else? C'mon, we can't be the only fossils here! T_T

P.S. I am in full support of the Order of the Cane! Make it a forum with the description "Youngin' beware and get off my bloomin' lawn!" Or, you know, something less crass. >_> XD

[/emoticon abuse]

You sound so old absolutelybarmy. I can't remember which part it was, but you sound old. :)

Ha I remember using dollz for my graphics!

Panda, are you stealing stuff from my board!? -threatens-

I gotta say if the sense of community was better way back then than it is now then you guys musta been pretty much either sleeping together or having each others' babies. Because all the communities I've been at recently have been really close and just wonderful places. When I first started (that looooong time ago) they were pretty crap and nobody cared. But now it's nice being on an RP because the people are so great.

I gotta say I like what Panda says most. Everyone else has a point - that there would've been stuff better back then. But surely it wasn't that much better. It's probably just looking at it with nostalgia and thinking it was better than it really was.

[/condescend]

:D

As I recall, graphics were equally important back then. SO important that there was significantly more stealing going on. People ripping off the graphics of others, changing the name and using it. Or people who didn't have graphics programmes just ripping a hot-linked URL and pasting the entire thing into their post (despite the fact that it was twice the size of the post itself).

If I could still doll, I would use dolls for characters. I lost the skillz, unfortunately and most of the awesome bases. It's only by chance I even found my Christmas one! ^_^

I remember a lot of purple prose--and I mean a lot of purple prose. We're talking huge epidemic that was considered elite writing. Huge massive flowery chunks of text that take an unnecessarily long time to get to the crux of the matter. I even did it myself and oh how bad that writing looks now. I will always remember phrases like, 'she descended the stairs, hips swaying in a gentle orbit' Like she was a planet. Or a man sitting and smoking who was so awesome that the smoke was written as though it couldn't bare to leave him. In short? A load of old nonsense with bits of story chucked in when they could be bothered to take a breath from reiterating how great they were. While that still goes on, we're more subtle about it.

I remember lots of dick-sizing
Cattiness
outrageously horny characters
The open discussion of how terrible another member's character concept was.

It has to be said that the worst of the bunch were generally the players who were warbling about how things were better in their day. Everything was a direct reflection on that and no one and nothing was ever good enough any more. It's a real festering wound on the RPG community to have people doing nothing but looking back and not taking what we have and doing something with it that doesn't embody everything one dislikes about the roleplaying world.

Websites take a lot of time--especially now because standards are high. There are not enough hours left in the day; "putting time aside" is not as simple as that, especially for someone like me who had to blow off two real-life engagements to get a board upgraded over two weeks. It's not worth the trouble to me anymore. I would rather spend that time being an active part of my community, getting to spend time on other games and all my real life responsibilities. That's undoubtedly the case for a lot of people. A site has its own website? Cool. However, I don't think it should ever be looked at as a symbol of hard work because that just assumes that there's no effort put into existing forums. I don't think anyone's game is less because they don't have a website; I think it should have always been a nice little addition, an option that you used if you wanted to. Unfortunately it turned into something of a status symbol which again, is something we have in modern roleplaying but in a different format.

It has always, always been about who is shiniest. Who has the most crap to fill their board with, who has the most members, the most graphics, the prettiest character plot, the nicest templates for applications, the graphics, the avatars, etc, etc, etc. Everything has always been a vicious competition. We just talked about it less "back then".

Oh my, Geocities! It was so awesome back in the day, with its many neighborhoods, before Yahoo took over. I used to hang out in Area 51 with X-Files geeks all the time ;D

Anyhow, I wouldn't go so far to say things are necessarily better now. I agree with much of what Panda said. It's not that much different now at all. Things may look shinier and more polished upon the surface, but it's the same deal underneath.

I don't want a website for my forum. I do now how to make one, I've had my own site when the whole personal domain scene thing was real hot shit back in 2000-2002 or so. But I like everything being in one place for my roleplay, and that's on the board itself.

I don't mind graphics becoming 'important'. Although 'poor' looking layout won't deter me from joining a quality rpg, I always have liked messing around in graphics programs so why not put some effort into making my own board look visually attractive? It doesn't hurt.

Change is inevitable, and not all of it is bad. Just like not everything from the old ways was good, either.

Funny that, I did marry (and am still married to) one of my members and had his son. That did not make my entire community work for near 7 years though. :) And, I'm 25, but I've grown up and hang around older people and I suppose have picked up those traits. *shrugs and shuffles along*

You're all missing my point, I think. I know that everything wasn't better back then (I've said this a couple of times), but there are some things that are classic and work and still have me boggling when they're cast aside.

Website building: Header.inc, footer.inc, index.php. CSS.

It's pretty much what you do on forums now. In fact, there is very little difference, and this doesn't clutter the board. After all the CSS is done, the banner added and the tags are wrapped up properly, you insert the text into your index.php page and you're away. There is actually less work to be done on a website than on a forum if things are simplified. Which, they should be considering the resources available now that we didn't have 'back in the day'.

As for setting time aside. *blinks* I have a four year old, a husband who works all week, and a social life.

Half an hour here, 20 minutes there, an hour when inspiration hits over the course of two weeks goes a loooong way and I never give up engagements to make it work. I think you're thinking it's a 24 hour job, when in reality, it is not. At least it's not in one sitting. (And yes, I said before it consumes time, but everything consumes time to some extent, and while I agree that this is time consuming, one can most certainly control how much time is consumed)

These things are not difficult, especially if you have (as you all say) a helpful, loving, community and plan on sticking with your RPG.

Regardless of that, it's not just the website building (or lackthereof) that concerns me, it's the fact that they're not getting built with the the gems I mentioned previously.

You're all focussing on the negativity of back then, which I'm sure there was a lot of (I experienced very little of it) , however there were good things. What good things do you remember, do you miss, do you wish to come back, why doesn't it compare to what we have, etc.

Again, I will use The current creation of the Tri-Wizard Tournament as an example. What happened to people all over creating things like that?

Apply that to every aspect of the RPG and see why I am boggled. It doesn't hurt and only adds to the games, so why not?

boards2go?

I remember InsideTheWeb! Hell, I remember when there were wolf RPs on Discovery Online...>_>

I also find that, from my own personal RPing experiences (and mine alone! I can't speak for anyone else), people were less elitist ten-eleven years ago (which was when I started). Now, it could have just been where I RPed--everyone's experience is gonna be different, and I'm sure there were elitists then, too. As for me...I started out as a complete n00b. Didn't know what roleplaying even was, found my first RPG (a wolf one) by chance, and since I loved to write, I found it easy to hop on in. I got the gist of it. The other players, many of whom were quite awesome, welcomed me with open arms even though I was so blatantly sucky, and they gently corrected me when I failed epically. It was great fun, I was never shoved into a corner--I got to play with the big kids and I learned from them by reading their posts, by observing, and by doing, not to mention I was extremely proactive so it only took a couple months for me to land myself a major role in the game. '_'

They were so friendly, and I'm still friends with a few of them even to this day. :3 Of course, there was drama, too...but it was over powerplaying, never over post length or some such nonsense.

People weren't afraid, in my experiences, of hopping right on into a plot and flying by the seat of their pants. There were no applications, and no plotting boards. You just wrote, and things were very spontaneous and exciting because you seriously didn't know what was going to happen, and you learned about other characters, and other players, solely by playing with them--not through profiles. Yeah, not everyone was stellar--I wasn't--but we also weren't trying to create fine art. *shrugs* We were playing because it was fun, we were telling a collective story, and many of us may have sucked but hot damn if it wasn't fun!

I also think what helped with people hopping into the plot more was that they had no choice if they wanted to play. I played on InsideTheWeb message boards. There were no threads. It was all one BIG thread. Threads in forums enable people to remain in their own little corner of the game. The way we played? Oh no. You could not create a separate thread; it wasn't possible. You joined, you jumped right into the huge thread of epicness with like...twenty other people. There was no room for shyness; you learned to be proactive very quickly.

The whole proactiveness and sponteneity thing is pretty muchl the reason I don't like planning stuff (not even characters) out in advance. I like to be surprised. I don't want to know what happens until I read the next post! I want to writhe in suspense waiting for a response! I want my partner to be proactive and not be afraid of doing things that move the plot. I don't want my partner to be afraid of having their character so much as touch mine without asking for my permission.

Today...it seems people are a lot more picky, and a lot more afraid of judgment. People are scared of joining open threads or of creating their own threads without a clear plan, I notice, whereas it seems like it used to be a lot more "make it up as you go and see what happens". It seems people are more afraid of this because they think their head is gonna get bitten off if they are proactive. I didn't see this years ago...I've only been seeing this hesitancy within the last few years. People are judged more, it seems. People posting profiles up on Bad_Rpers_Suck t(or even here) to be mocked, and people being afraid of doing something wrong and ending up being one of the mockees. It's pretty sucky.

People seem more superficial. And ten years ago, no, not everyone was obsessed with graphics at all (in my experience). Heck no. I RPed on a number of expage sites with their shoddy clip-art and no one cared if the sites looked pretty or not--the focus was on the text and the roleplay. *shrug* My own game looked like complete and utter garbage seven years ago (click the link to see the atrocity, I dare you.), but no one cared. It was all about the roleplay experience, not the graphics.

There were also less games then, and because of that, it felt like people stuck to one game longer--people were in it for the long haul whereas now it seems like more people have shorter attention spans and abandon games (including their own) when something else new and shiny comes along. People are learning about HTML and CSS younger now, so more people are capable of putting together a game, whereas on the first game I was on ten-eleven years ago...man, I can remember when everyone was all excited for figuring out how to do colored text. >_> At first everyone used default, then someone figured it out, and before long everyone was asking for the HTML code and writing in a different (oftentimes obnoxious) color. Lime green on a black background, anyone? Ahahah. Some things never change. *snickers*

Everyone was even more excited when we learned the HTML for bold, italics, and...*ahem* marquees. Now THAT was an interesting time.

But I digress!

And good lord I hate PBs. I can't complain about them, really, because my sites don't have them (I mean, you can feel free to represent your characters(s) however you like; actors, models, anime images, your own art...it's all good, and you don't even have to if you don't want to). It boggles me that people put so much stock in them, and that they actually effect what sort of character someone will choose to play, or the interaction they'll have with another. Whut.

However, it's not my call, it's their choice, and...I'll just stay away from that whole thing entirely. >_>

I also have a website for all the information, and then the forum. I like it like that. :3 I'm an organization freak, and having all the information on the forum looks cluttered to me, so that's why I do it all separately. Plus, to me, it feels more...hmm, dunno how to put it. Authentic? Like a library, I suppose, as Barmy put it. Plus I like to play around with the pages and do art stuffs with them, bwahah. To me it looks more clean and the information is easier to find. The forum is for interaction, the website is for learning the setting. It's easy to maintain, too.

Now...I do think some of the new stuff is good, and I also roll with the changes. I look at new things and consider them in terms of whether or not they'd improve my games in some way. Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes the answer is no. Some things just make me cringe. New trends have been happening since I started playing, and if you roll with the changes and adapt, you'll survive. I'm very open to change; always have been, because I'm always looking for a way to make my game better and keep it fresh and new. I don't like to dig my heels in and bemoan the whippersnappers, because that makes me look inflexible and stuck in my ways--though at the same time there are some issues where I just won't bend, because I have a clear vision of how I want to run my games and I won't ever sacrifice that. :3 I like to keep my options open, though, and I alwaysalwaysalways keep my members' suggestions in mind.

In closing, I'll say I'm not saying everyone is like that (superficial, uber picky, etc.) or that such people didn't exist years ago. Just in my experiences, it seems a lot more prevalent today. However, I wouldn't go back in time if I had the choice, not by a long shot. :3 I like new things. If it wasn't for new stuff, things would stagnate fast. Plus, I'm having a heck of a lot of fun. More fun, I daresay, than I did back then, and I had a lot of fun back then, plus I've met a lot of awesome new players with awesome new ideas. *grin* A lot of the new trends really do add a geat new layer to the roleplaying experience. For instance, I love boards for letter writing/e-mails/etc. <3 I really do, it's a guilty pleasure. I have so much fun with those, even to the point of photoshopping parchment and writing on them with my tablet. There are so many creative new ideas, so much fresh blood...yay!

I think the problem lies less with the trends and more with people expecting a lot but giving very little.

I am firmly against the idea of people having websites. I hate it. Mostly because I would like a website and I am planning on getting one when I have some time to learn how and I don't want it to be a trend. I love boards that do have them, but I'd like it if there weren't anymore. I think they are wonderful, useful things but they definitely shouldn't be forced on anyone.

And as for websites being simpler than forums because of the HTML and other stuff involved - yes, that's true, but all that many people do is copy and paste a skin into the CSS form and that's it. That is very little work. You need to have no knowledge of any form of coding or programming language to make a nice-looking forum, while in my experience you need at least some to make a nice one. Sure, you can use generators like they have on Freewebs, but they usually end up looking a little cheap and nasty.

Rhi-Rhi! How could you have stood it?! Having to read through lots of posts just to find the ones relevant to you...-shudders- I hate reading other peoples' threads. It's a weird thing, but true. So having one-thread posting freaks me out, because it's so hard to find replies and I have to actually read what other people have written. I know I sound terrible in this paragraph and it's true. I am. And I talk a lot stronger than I feel.

If that site didn't have to do with animals, Rhi-Rhi, I so would've joined that site! It's cool! I love your little stories! See, that sort of thing (quite amateurly made) doesn't bother me at all. The music gave me such a fright though.

Well, Carey, the website thing actually is very widely spread. Mostly sites that use boards2go create websites. The most popular free host they all use is: http://www.freewebs.com

But it's never really been a "trend". it's always just been a given. :3 For some reason forum games tend not to do that as much, but I always have and many other forum games I know of have, too.

And well, as for InsideTheWeb...I actually stood it a lot better than I did forums at first! XD Forums freaked me out. I was like, "ZOMG! Everything is all separate and fragmented and disjointed! How do people even interact?! Dx" because I was used to everything being...well...all in one big thread, all connected and intertwined. I actually miss that. See, the way that game worked was...well...it was all one big plot and all the characters were in it. I mean, there were different boards for different clans, packs, and areas, but there were no separate threads on each board. It made everything feel more...united. You read everyone's posts, too, because someone might say or do something to you, because by being on that board you were essentially exactly where everyone else was. Everyone was important.

If you wanted to say that you walked off somewhere to have a private conversation with another character, then you would mention that in your post and have your character walk off. Then you could pretty much ignore other posts, though you'd have to make sure no one else followed you.

I liked that a lot, and I miss it. It was very easy to get involved because you just had your character walk on in, and there'd always be some character that would respond. The downside was that things did move fast, so you could easily fall behind, but it was also fairly easy to catch up. I could only post like every other weekend for a while, and even though things moved fast, if you were assertive it was easy to get right back in.

I like reading other people's threads, and I think I got that from roleplaying the way I did for so long. :3 You had to read other peoples' posts because, again, everyone was important--and something could be relevent to you! You essentially got to interact with a ton of characters...

*nostalgia*

It really made things feel big and epic and exciting and really instilled a great sense of community--because everyone knew everyone elses' characters. Everyone knew everyone elses' plots. Everyone was connected. <3 So when you played on that game, you really felt like you were part of something much greater, and that what you did really mattered.

The big problem with the question of what was good back then? Most of the things I think of have been translated into modern roleplay anyway.

The only thing I want to do more of is IM RP. I'm a sucker for live roleplaying--and that means not having to wait half an hour to an hour for a reply. That means live roleplay that doesn't take much time to do at all. These days it's a very alien concept because people worry they will have to sacrifice quality for it. That worries me because I am the only one who will read it, aren't I? I'm not going to pass judgement. For transferring them then onto a board, you can do all the sprucing you like and no one would ever know you roleplayed the scene out over IM.

I miss it intensely but lack the contacts for doing it. I still try to visit places like chatalot.com but I find it virtually dead or the players unwilling to break from their current playing to drag someone new into the fold.

It's something I am trying to incorporate into my game--the allowance of roleplays to take place over IM, email or PM. I'm even considering hunting down script to get us a non-java chatroom for it. That would be awesome.

I'd go to a chatawhore room with you Panda love.

I miss chathouse insanely. That's where I really started playing about nine years ago, I mean, really roleplaying with a sense of plot, developing my skillz, etc. I did do some roleplaying before then in random rooms found on the internet. I can't remember the names though. I think one was an Anne Rice chatroom, but it didn't really seem like an Anne Rice chatroom, as in, we never talked about Anne Rice, and I don't remember any Lestats. I hadn't even read any of her work back then.

I don't remember exactly at what age I was when I first roleplayed on the internet. I think I was eleven or twelve, but I'm not sure. And when I was that young, the internet wasn't as hip as it is now. In fact, I think the very first roleplay room I ever went into was Xena and Hercules. o_O And I had no idea, at that point in time, what roleplay was.

What I miss about playing back in the day... was the live game play and the fact that it was always fun and never a chore. I met some really awesome people, and I met some total asshats that needed to die.

But I'm with Panda, probably because we come from similar rp background. There was a lot of elitism. A lot of it. And even I am guilty of it because as my prestige grew and the big kids started to play with me, I tended to shun the n00bs. Until, one day, when most of the big people had gone, I realized that it could be fun having an utterly ridiculous roleplay with the newer generation. Plus, they were, generally, much nicer than us older folks. So you can all throw rotten fruit at me, because I was one of those people who would have shunned you if you were just starting and couldn't give me at least a decent written paragraph.

Back then graphics were a really big thing. And I sucked at making them. My character portraits were always horrible looking and I was constantly, later on, begging Panda to make me images, or other friends to make me images. Now, you could totally have gotten away with not having a character portrait back then. It wasn't required, from what I remember. Some of the really elitist people didn't have them for all their characters. Its not really that way anymore, but that doesn't bother me, since I like making them. And looking at them, and making them for other people.

But I do hate IM game play. I know it isn't much different than gaming in a chatroom, but for me it is, and I refuse, usually, to play through an IM, unless there is no other way to do so.

Now I've forgotten where I was going with this, or where I was supposed to go... x_x

Expages, wow. I do remember those... o_O Used to be all over Geocities once upon a time, even had a real small spell in Yahoo chat RPs :p

And who can forget EzBoard? XD Owned my first RPG board there, then watched it all crash and burn after the hack.

Oh my, that takes me back too. Those fancy tables that people used for every single IC post? Pretty, yes, but so so unnecessary.

Never did this myself, but I sure do remember being on a site that literally spanned out over four seperate boards x_X

As far as roleplayers themselves go, I always wonder what happened to having a little patience. All these boards going offline after a matter of weeks because their owners balked at the first sign of slow activity? *sigh*

But I agree with a lot of what's being said here. As much as it's fun to moan about the state of today's RPing, change and progress is inevitable, and we all have to go with the flow of things, better or worse.

I suppose this is more on websites or...? Like I said, I personally see no need for creating a website for my board, because I like having everything in one place. But if one has the time, the will and the need, why not? I can see roleplays with massive lore, such as high fantasy and space particularly, benefiting from having the website the most.

What I miss from the old days would be more relaxed stance most people had towards roleplaying,and the patience, yes. I absolutely loathed boards2go, and those post templates people used so often while posting IC on EzBoards that allowed HTML. Hah who says people are more concerned with style and surface shine nowadays, when it really wasn't that much different before.

I don't remember such a pervading sameness about every site. It seems now like a lot of sites look, feel, and act like every other site, and if you don't make it the same as "The Right Way" then no one joins.

((Hope everyone had a good holiday!))

I can see any RPG where a world is created, even if based off real life, having lore and therefore a use for a website.

I most certainly wasn't:

http://p200.ezboard.com/bdiagonalley62248
http://p201.ezboard.com/bhogsmeadevillage82866
http://p202.ezboard.com/bhogwartscommonrooms3414
http://p199.ezboard.com/bthedarkrealm14879
http://schoolforthemagicalarts.homestead.com

Those were my graphics. And my RPG thrived just fine. Before that, in fact, only just before that, I was using clipart and 3-D text generators for headers. But I used them neatly. Most of my affiliates and other RPGs around this same time did it as well. And yes, that IS our old writing on that board. :p That's why I know not everything in the past was better and, in general, agree with that statement. ^_^

I find that this mindset, when followed holistically, leads to this:

Not sure about you, but that’s not something I am looking forward to rolling with. :/

Mhmm, well... if we're talking about holistics, then that's certainly true. Because as a whole, things do feel like they're moving that way. :/

This isn't something I really enjoy either. If your board hasn't got a forum for plotting pages or cell phones (??) or other totally superfluous things, then people just seem to move on. And that is sad, I agree. What's the use of every single site looking and feeling exactly the same? That's a recipe for mind numbing RP experiences right there.

Man, I RPed on Prodigy Classic, on Windows 3.0 with a 14k modem.

Thems was the days.

Oh, Ezboard, I had 20 email addresses on hotmail for all my characters and NPCs, and had five global accounts so I could link them in batches.

And 2005 and the Great EzHack and BOOM

WHY NO I'M NOT STILL BITTER WHY?

Thread bump!

I think I have most of you beat in terms of forum software. I remember foruming back when it was UBB or nothing. And UBB was written in Perl, back before CGI was available on every webserver too.

I remember when webspace was $50 bucks a month for 20 MB of space and a gig of bandwidth. And if you were lucky, it was hosted in someone's bomb-proofed basement on a T1 connection. I remember forums in the pre-COPPA era, where ten year olds online were normal because the internet and instant communication were new. Or when people were worried that AIM (the new kid on the block in '97/98) would kill activity.

So yes, get the hell off me lawn!

Okay, I need to set you buggers up with a home for this. XD

Hmm. Maybe this is slightly off topic now, but...okay, in the old days - raise your hand if you did one liners. *raises hand* Wewt.

Now, raise your hand if you evolved into writing 38290389022 word posts because that was better. *raises hand again*

Now, keep your hand raised if you realised that was just silly and that a good balance between quality and quantity was needed.

Raised? Okay, good.

Now, tell me, honestly. Is 300 words difficult to post? Is it really? Tell me I'm not the only one thinking that the attention span of RPers needs to be stretched and/or we need to stop catering to that sort of nonsense.

What happened to patience, to creativity? Those go hand in hand and certainly, if you have enough, you can bloody well hammer out 300 word posts. Eff that. 500 words. That's highschool essay length. Meaning, it's nothing at all.

*cane waggle*

I never wrote RP posts as one-liners, so I can say I got a bit of head start. I did get into a phase where I wrote longer posts, but more or less as a response to pressure that it was damn near impossible to win any judged spars/battles if you didn't match your opponent in length.

I suppose I was always judged a prodigious writer, so by the time I started RPing, I knew a fair bit about what constituted good storytelling, even if I was young and naive then. :p

Attention spans of RPers nowadays have gone down in more ways than just post length. They seem to have no patience for RPs to develop at all.

And yes, a home for us batshit crazy old fogeys could be cool.

I feel so young! I have not heard of a single thing on that list. Well, I've heard of Ezboard but never used it or seen it. I mean, all the things that seem to bug people who have been doing it for a long time, well, they're all I know in the RPing world. Yes, a lot of them bug me too but I haven't really ever known any different. The 'good old days' do sound appealing though. :)