I recently have been chatting with Shade over msn, offering to help her with her site. We, somehow, got into this long conversation about all the horrors we have experianced while admining our sites. I just wanted to hear what everyone else's battle scars where? What is the worse, most shocking, down right jawdropping thing that has happened to you while you have been an admin, mod, or member. Come on, spit it out. And remember, this isnt to bash on whoever did what, this is to share your stories with everyone else. If you must use names, make them up.






For my part, I'd have to say the worst, most shocking thing would have happened in the cbox. I had this new member join, and she was kinda shy about starting off, but did a really nice job of joining in the conversation in the cbox. I'm kinda chatting with her while I"m multi tasking, and just sitting like a raven to watch what is all happening on my board, trying to keep a...heh..hawke's eye on everything. Well...out of the blue she posts "I need members for my forum" then posts a link. I was just so...shocked. I couldnt believe it. I corrected her, just thinking maybe she didnt know the biggest rule of cboxes on forums, and deleted her post. Yeesh. Anyway..your turn.

Edit: Yeh..for some reason my title says Mosts? when it should say Mods? But it wont let me edit it... -_- So yes,I know I made a typo, dont hurt me

Edit..again: Oh thanks for that Shin! XD NOW it says Mods <3

One of the most shocking things that happened with me as an Admin was with one of my members' characters, who was just as Muggle-like as she could be ..yet she was a upper-level witch at a Wizarding school? She liked to play guitar. Okay, cool, no problem with that. She liked to wear Muggle clothes. Okay, again, no problem. She's related to Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy.

Wait. Whaaaaaaaaat?

That just .. pushed my buttons.

And when I tried to explain it to her that this was a little, well, unlikely, and that we'd like to try to keep all things imaginary, she .. refused to back down. Finally I gave up and just RPed with her, ignorning the little fangirl fantasy world she was living in.

x_x It pains me even more because she wasn't a bad RPer at all. Just .. very stubborn.

As a member?

I was kicked off a board for the horrible offence of having my own board. It was amusing to watch, however, the changes that board went through after I was made to leave. Watching what used to be a canon-Hogwarts board turn into a non-canon original school... and oh yes, the juiciest part: the members coming over to my side. XD

I'm not usually so vindictive, but it was well deserved.


As an Admin?

I had a lot of IRL drama on my first two boards. I literally spent an IT class bawling my eyes out after my moderators got into fights and then wouldn't speak to each other, people were threatening to leave the site every which way, I had guests coming into the CBox and telling me in no uncertain terms that I sucked and people should join x board instead... my mods and members would go and flame them to 'make things right', most of the RP threads ended in OOC arguments over unimportant godmodes and power-heavy mods... and me, trying to keep it all together, believing I had to keep everyone happy for my board to survive.

Night.Mare.

The board didn't survive. It had it's moments, and ultimately it's what caused Tally to be successful... I learned a lot, but I ended up leaving it in the dust and starting again because I couldn't even look at it without feeling some sort of dread.

Oh gosh, Mousie, that's horrible. That actually reminds me of something that I shouldn't have even forgotten ..

I was once friends with this girl -- let's call her Frida. Frida and I met on her own Hogwarts RPG, which I was a pretty active member on, but there was one problem .. her co-admin was a tyrant. A horrible, horrible, BOMB of a tyrant. It eventually got the point that we needed to figure out a way to get rid of her, but when I finally revealed my original HP school (Cauldwell) to her, she got so wrapped up in that, the Hogwarts RPG died.

Now you're probably thinking the tyrant was the problem. Oh no, as soon as we jumped to Cauldwell (which Frida was nice enough to host, help create, etc.), this chick was totally out of the picture. Things were all fine and dandy at first, Cauldwell was fairly active starting out. But then my best friend of yeaaars, also a member, finally confided to me that .. Frida made her feel uncomfortable.

How? Well, Frida had some self-esteem issues. I don't know what else to call them, but to give you a picture, she couldn't even answer the phone sometimes without having half a heart-attack. Anything I did that she didn't like? Somehow, it was a "personal attack" against her, and she would often blow up on me. It got so dramatic that I didn't eat for days. I mean, at the time I still liked this girl, she was just .. really sensitive, you know? But eventually, we had to cut the cord. Me and Frida had a huuuuge fight, and she basically wanted me to choose between her and my best friend (wtf?). So of course I was like, "MKAY. G'BYE." I immediately moved Cauldwell to another board, knowing that she would delete it (because she's rash like that -- she once locked a thread because she was sure Donna, my best friend, who was playing with her, wasn't into it, and Frida somehow got offended that there were no posts? Uh, HELLLOOOO. It's locked. Donna's a member. Donna cannot unlock it to post.) .. And lo and behold, two weeks later my original board was gone. But as soon as we got rid of her, for good? Omg. Cauldwell was more fun and active than ever, and ever since then, there was no drama at all, really, til the day that it closed.

Let's see, I have a few notable ones. The first RPG I joined was a massive HP roleplay, several thousand characters, hundreds online on any given day. I made the awful, horrible, no good, very bad mistake of posting a snowball fight thread in spring...and I got buried under 'YOU'RENOTALLOWEDTODOTHATYOUSTUPIDNOOB' posts. I was heartbroken and disillusioned and abandoned the site. That one still stings. I didn't know any better, people, put down your weapons!

Each time I've been made an admin after being a member has ended horribly. The first time, the real admins weren't on at all and I kept suggesting changes, which they wouldn't help with, and they weren't following up on their admin duties anways. So I finally deleted my character, any applications and things posted under the character, and left. The site died. Surprise!

Shortly after that my two RL friends and I formed our admin dream team; we are capable of creating, maintaining, and populating an entire site on our own. Buuuut it became a bit of a problem.

Two of the admin dream team were promoted on an HP site to admin, we made a whole lot of needed updates and changes, the site boomed, and the old (technically replacement for the original) admin got upset. We were taking the site away from her and weren't including her. So, after I accepted a member without aforementioned old admin's permission (without anyone's actually, because I'm smart enough to tell a good application from a bad; did I mention the application was made by the original root admin?), she got furious and took away my admin powers and I left completely. To be followed by most of the site.

What have I learned from these battle scars? Make your own RPs and stick with the people you know. Turn down promotions even when you know it would help the site. Be nice to new people. No matter what happens, keep a cool head. It doesn't help anyone to sink down to a level below you.

$0.02

Wow, getting some good stuff in this thread! Mmm, I'm still young at admining, so I dont have alot of horrid battle scars to show. There is one, that I'm still a little ticked about though.

When I left chatroom rping, one of my coadmins followed me to forums. We made one forum together that was just like our old chat room and it...died. Because frankly, I had no clue what I was doing, and it was a beginner site for me (just starting out with forums and such) and I didnt know how to ad or any such things.

Then he and I decided to make Aztersil together. Well...He didnt like some of my ideas, and he wanted to make it this god awful ADVANCED ONLY YA NOOBS kinda site. And I didnt really agree with that kind of attitude. So, after a nasty fight between us, he left the fetus that was Aztersil, taking the maps and names.

Which, this is more like a flower in my hair than a battle scar, because without him, I was able to make it how I, and only ME wanted to. XDD
And it flourishes now. woot!

As a member: I joined this band site about a year ago, as a canon character (Audrey). This canon was supposed to have a relationship with the member of another band (IDK, let's call him Peter), who the admin eventually took up. Well, the admin already had a character who was in love with her co-admin's character. Okay, whatever. But then, the admin playing Peter apparently decided she didn't like me and/or Audrey, because she made Peter fall in love with her co-admin's new character Alice, who was like 10 years younger... and she got pregnant that night after ~passion~ overcame them. The whole situation was really, really dumb, because the admins so obviously only wanted to RP between themselves; and the girl that got pregnant realized something was wrong the next day. LOL, because you can totally tell you're pregnant in less than 24 hours -- oh okay.

That's really the worst thing that happened to me as a member... As an admin, oh boy.

One: I was just reminded of this by reading silent cocaphony's post. I had a member on my HP site that was really into Muggle stuff, which was okay -- but she wanted to be related to two guys from The Rolling Stones. LOL, what? IDK. It was so weird. She was also a terrible RPer; my mistake for letting her join.

Two: This member on my slash site BBABE pretty much despised anyone who didn't want to pay attention to him all the time... And I admit, my pride gets in the way of my rationality sometimes, though I really do try to be rational as possible, especially as an admin. Well, it was so obvious he was just an attention-whore, so I made it pretty obvious that the cbox wasn't just for him. And we got in a few little passive-aggressive arguments, no big deal. Then, after he'd been around for a month or two, we were talking about celebrities, and I say something like "I wouldn't want to be famous, too much drama and stuff, but I'd like to be a celeb if I didn't get all the negative publicity." He disagreed though... He claimed everyone would be famous if given the chance, and I disagreed, because I wouldn't want people criticizing me. And, I am not kidding, he got MAD because I disagreed with his "theory" that everyone craved fame/glory/recognition regardless of the consequences. LOL. Disregarding anything else that would suggest otherwise (like people turning down fame, killing themselves over stress of being a celebrity, celeb break-downs, not having the personality that craved fame, etc. etc), he seriously argued with me about it (and other members) for about 30 minutes. He just didn't want to back down and 'agree to disagree.' Finally, I got tired of it (because he started insulting Denzel Washington, who is like my BFF), I told him to stop because the whole 'argument' was insane. He didn't like that. He got all sulky and huffy, but I ignored him.

Later, I said I lived near Houston, "second fattest city in the world!" and he comes in and goes "Oh, so that means you must be obese, right, Rachel?" Or something like that. LMAO YEAH, a member basically called the admin fat. Even my mod, who adored him, was like "WTF that's not cool." I wasn't even offended because... I'm pretty athletic and not obese in any way, but I was just floored by how disrespectful he was, not only in that instance, but just in general. And the comment was just plain stupid. Err, yeah, Houston does have an obesity problem, but I said it for the lulz, and he didn't know me (or the fact that at the time I was speed skating 5 days a week).

The most horrible experience as a MOD:

This girl...ok. So when she first joined, she and I became really fast friends. We would PM each other bitchy things about the other members and we made our characters BFFs. (This was my first RPG, so be nice.) I'll call her...Rachel. So Rachel and I were friends. Then she started getting into all these arguments with the admins. She used herself as a PB, then used her "sister", and first told us her name was Rachel, then Ashley, then Christina. She made second characters when she wasn't allowed to, and finally, the straw that broke the camel's back, she sent the admin a really really mean PM.

So some time passed. She started emailing me and stuff, saying she was really sorry and she really missed the site. But I figured out something. She had made a new character under a new IP address on the board. The admins found out, so I convinced them to give her a second chance. But then this other site got mad at us because she would go to their site and spam OUR site in their chatbox. So she got banned again. But she changed her IP address, again, and posted a topic in every. Single. Forum. Just random spam. So we had to shut down the site and move it, but it was never the same again. :/

Worst experience as an admin? My co-admin and I were always arguing. We just had really different ideas about things. Also, he hated my character, so I was always trying to RP with him, and he was like, "No way. Your character is sooooo stupid." And I was like, "Well, we can be enemies then." But he just didn't want to post. And whenever I tried to think of new ideas, he accused me of trying to take over. So what happened is he made this other member, who HATED me, a MOD without my permission. So this MOD approved an application of a person who didn't understand the Harry Potter world at all. He was all, "John is a Wicca, and worships the sun god." So I had to take away the approval of that member because his application was all wrong. Then the admin got mad at me because he thought that member was great, and he was sending me all these mean PMs, and the MOD was threatening to leave, so I left. It was horrible. :(

Hmmm.

Ready for one huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge post?

Player:
- Getting sucked into the drama of other people. Roleplayers getting uncomfortably personal and mistaking characters for reality and taking everything personally. The worst, by far, was the chap who decided that because we'd been roleplaying (as mentor and um...mentored, mind you) for a couple of years, that he'd take it upon himself to oh so casually offer up naked pictures of himself. I was a) only 16 at the time and b) horrified-slash-repulsed. I had always had a very uncomfortable relationship with him in terms of player-player but the characters bounced off one another well and I tried to strengthen the friendship because a friend of mine--a woman who is still a very good friend of mine--thought he was the bee's knees. I drew the line there however, and backed off. Way off. Pandas do not like mixing pleasure A with pleasure B. And certainly not with cretin C.

- I've been riddiculed for making mistakes. Made an example of, n00bed out of games and generally treated very poorly because when I started gaming innn...97/98? You had to be either phenomenal or you were scum. I have to say, I wasn't even that bad, either. Sure I had some weird ideas, did some questionable things with characters but that's part of the learning curve. Establishing limits and such. I don't, however, think that the way I was treated was 'the norm'. It was ghastly and vile and the only reason I stuck it out was for the sake of a handful of people I enjoyed gaming with.

I learned some very bad habits from that environment. Importance of purple prose, importance of graphics, importance of having the biggest, most badass character around. The importance, moreover, of only playing with people of and around your calibre. I was asked once, why I played with someone who generated brief, poorly spelt posts with bad grammar. Fact was, he was a mate and we had an interesting story going. I didn't understand why it was such a big deal that I should want to play with this other person.

- Getting a really good storyline going with someone--awesome characters that play off each other brilliantly and for things to get interesting and engaging for...2 months? Only for them to vanish. Now, this has happened not once, but three times to me. The third time (more recently), it left not only me but other players in the lurch who were looking forward to playing with him and were really enjoying him as a person. He leaves without saying anything and every time it's the same thing. some random excuse that explains nothing. I forgive him because he's a good friend of mine and I know he has issues but I'm weak. I'm weak because I'm convinced he's genuinely sorry and because I don't think I have the right to further punish someone who appears to be punishing themselves further.

Should he come back, I think we'd be better off putting him on some kind of 'player watch' to see if he can post consistently for a certain length of time before he's allowed to go sticking his grubby fingers in all the pies willy-nilly.

As An Admin:
- Hating that I need help running a game because it would be impossible for me to do it all myself. Don't get me wrong, Pathe-thingy and Meadowlark are the best I've had but I have this overwhelming urge to do it myself, you know? I'm constantly doing things like making additions or adjustments to the rules and not telling anyone, other than marking the 'updated date' at the top. I'll make minor adjustments and think, 'should I have mentioned I'm doing these things to them?' and then just not.

It's made worse when someone breaks a rule that was a rule, but I took out without mentioning it, and someone else tells them off for it. Then I'm all...'are my n00b colours showing?' Okay, so that's not really a nightmare so much as a cock-up from me, but handing over some responsibility is hard for me and my staff STILL have to basically wrestle me for things.

- Board drama! Don't you hate that shizzle? I've had issues with players--err, favouritism is the worst one, really. Because I'm friends with my players outside the game,there are some people who think that earns them special treatment. Now, I'm fine with being lax on someone with a character or something because I know how they can play and know they can do it well. someone who wanted to play a canon character way, way, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off what anyone with a braincell knocking around, would do. I admit that yes, character development and progression goes on in roleplay but there is progression and there is canon butchery. I expect it was done because it was assumed I'd play favourites, or worse, because they were staff. I will bend the rules for everyone but I won't break them. I said no and they threw a bitch-fit. I mean all out, award-winning bitch fit of how outrageously unfair I was being.

Snide remarks followed pretty much constantly from there and I'm sure I'd have been shot of them a lot sooner had they not been a) staff and b) 'tied in' with a lot of members. When they did go it was in part due to another 'nightmare' involving more awful, awful staff.

- If you're going to leave someone in charge of an arc, make sure you have enough leverage with them to intervene, and that you still hold the reigns of the situation, otherwise it can be hell. I had issues with staff before, but one was keen to launch a particular plot and gave me a nice outline and so on and so fourth...then nothing. No progression, no nothing. Everything became slow, nothing moved because the majority was waiting on something from this plot. Now, they were absent for various reasons and hey, that's cool, but when I took back the reigns and tried to help things along, the prodigal staffer not only returns, but rips a new one of the person I'd asked to pitch in, and then me. It grated me that what I'd done had been to try and keep the game's best interests at heart in terms of movement. That was overlooked, I got irate.

I sought advice from others and they suggested if they weren't going to be around and were just going to tear into people on a solo mission of blood and fury, then I should bump them down.

Hoooge mistake, apparently!

I received the proverbial, 'both barrels' being unloaded on with the usual disgruntled staffer spiel and also a dozen issues that had been going on without my knowing that they had chosen to keep to themselves and use as cannon fodder, rather than address them with myself and the other staff. As a result, I look like an admin with her head up her butt and a nasty piece of work. Various public displays of brat-ery later, I delete things in an attempt to stop the drama taking over (silly thing to do in hindsight) and I lose roughly half the board thorugh that and the canon thing.

Fuuun.

These days, my players are only allowed to socialise through me.

j/k.

This taught me some rough lessons about admining. That I have to be a hardass more often than I'd like, that I can't be your friendly admin. I can only be your admin, and your friend outside the game. I also learned that I can't just expect things to always go my way and act all wounded when they don't. Unfortunately I have to consider other people when parading around in my admin boots.

Damn, damn and double damn!

- I'd say also, having my breakdown was a big phneh on my admining. I mean, I know that the breakdown was an RL thing, but I pretty much crashed and burned on my members and abandonned them. That was the worst thing I think I've ever, ever done to them and I'm adamant I won't do that to them again. I adore all my members and I consider myself the luckiest admin ever that they came back, no questions asked. They didn't shout at me, didn't flame me, they didn't even frown at me. At the risk of sounding corny, thinking about how awesome they are gets me all choked up because they're just...selfless. Beneath it all they probably only want me for my domain name (mwahaha) but they're amazing,brilliant and talented people and they make all the down sides completely worth it.

As an Admin: I'd have to say the worst experience I ever had on my own board is waking up one morning and finding out that a immature ex-owner deleted two of my characters on my own board.. By using a very old account that her and I created a long time ago. Needless to say that I was angry, and started limiting the admin powers with everyone else.. I think it had to be the most rudest thing that anyone could ever do to somebody, especially over an argument that grew rather stupid XD

Anywho I was unable to revive one of my characters seeming as I lost the app for her.. Though I still play her... But with my other one I was able to restore the app!

But yeah XD thats my horrible experience.

I love this thread already, because I have seen the worst of what RPing can do unattended.

Okay. Where to begin.

When I first got into RPing, me and my then girlfriend created a chatroom for "anything goes" RPing. Basically, we made a big city, and you could put any character in there, within reason.

Of course, people forgot the concept of "Within Reason."

One of the major things that stick out in my mind was someones rendition of Jak from the Jak and Daxter series. Thing is, this person had no care for the canon of the games. Somehow, she managed to take a perfectly decent, if mildly angsty character, and make him into a (Last chance to turn back) gay serial rapist who was part demon, vampire, ruler of hell, immortal, and was able to electrocute peoples minds if they so much as said a discouraging word about him from anywhere in the city. He could also bring about the change of peoples genders (which, because he was a rapist, also caused a number of disturbing children).

After a good while, we finally managed to boot her out and she would later become a decent enough RPer.

It gets worse. This character had a friend.

Here, we have another vampire rapist (rape was rampant in this room. You know how so many bad RP characters were molested as children? This was a spawning ground for those kinds of people. Of course, no one listened to me to knock that off). This one was much more suave, so I guess he had points going for him there. Too bad he was also completely impervious to harm. The only reason I imagine this managed to slide so long was that his player became good friends with the admin who let her get away with murder. Good buddies with Jak, the two made their whole city their personal sexing ground, to the point that I think I was the only regular who had never had this horrifying injustice done to them.

This vampire, noticing this, soon picked one of my characters as his next target. His player knew I don't do sex Rps. So, she simply had her character start hitting on my character. My character wasn't an idiot, so she ignored his advances, until finally he was forced to blackmail her (The details of which I forget, I think he was threatening to kill her actual boyfriend). Still not going into sex, it became the most wooden, poorly written makeout scene ever. I made sure that neither this person, or her character would feel any satisfaction by doing this.

Later that night, the admin tells me of a journal this person wrote, ripping into several of the members of the chatroom. Among them, I was insulted for being too set in my ways and refusing to try anything new (Thus, for refusing to allow that room to sink any further into a cesspool of poorly written cybersex written by 14 year olds, I was the bad RPer).

So what happened to little Miss Molesting Vampire after we read this?

She became the new co-admin, as I was asked to step down to make room for her. Never did get my position back, either.

On another site, I had the displeasure of regularly roleplaying with the most self destructive character ever. My character befriended hers, and the two soon started dating. Soon, however, it all went to hell.

You know how some people have powers that shorten the lifespan of the user each time they used them? Imagine someone with that kind of power, who would gladly use it to tie their shoes, lock a door, or anything of the sort*, then spent a post angsting about all the life threateningly negative effects they had on her (rather then... You know... Not using them).

It actually got to the point that her character would die every session, just to come back. Something mildly unpleasent would happen to her, she would go completely insane, then die horribly. Sure enough, fifteen minutes later, she was back on her feet, until something else happened to her.

I wish I were more assertive back then, or I would have kicked her in the face and left her.

There are other stories, but I'll stop here for now.

*(None of that actually happened, but her powers were used just as trivially, like shapeshifting to amuse people)

What...The...Hell?! O_O

That has to be the most shocking thing I've seen here yet! That...completely kills my horror stories of the chatroom rps...

I stupidly gave my phone number to my coadmin....She STILL calls me to complain about some member I dont know (because I left 7 MONTHS ago) doing something that I dont care about because I gave the room to HER!

Rawer.... ><


I'd like to see someone try to beat Sling though...That pretty much sucks right there...

<sub>i think the worst thing i've had happen to me as an admin
is having my board ideas ripped.
like OBVIOUSLY ripped.

the ad button even was the same. XD
i was really ticked. and gave up rping for a bit
... but then i was determined to make BETTER sites.
lol and yeah now i'm on this make an RPG rampage.

as a member i think DRAMA
like OOC drama was a big ordeal.
i dunno it doesn't usually happen.
but i recall one of my first RPGS i
was on was a Lost one and there
was a lot of OOC drama for whatever reason.
it was BOO.

yeah that was very undescriptive, but i'm actually quite tired.

though i can say i get "hurt" easily when people sign up
to help me out on a board... BUT then it's like i have a team
but i'm doing all the work. uh hello... i made you an admin for a reason!
[/rant]</sub>

As a Member

Being on a board with an admin who took offense to EVERYTHING. she had a character who was Sue to the max. A whore who had been physically and sexually abused by her family and ex-fiance, ran away away and changed her name, and became a sexy whore. She was gorgeous, sexy [but not slutty mind you...even though she is a whore], brilliant, and the clencher of the deal 'wanted to find her prince charming'. When I joined, said character was not a member of the site. The admin's other character was hardly as bad, although he was the definition of a manwhore.

Okay, w hen I joined, there was the usual disproportionate amount of females to males, so I decided to make a guy. It was a small town rpg and he was the town's pediatrician. He was a single father just out of a brutal divorce and between his daughter and his practice, his life was all but consumed. I posted an add for threaddage for my character, and most people were really pleasant: a mingling of friends and enemies, social acquaintances, that sorta thing. Most people were understanding of the fact that my characters never jump into a romance because I like to see how thing flow and not be committed to something that definitely doesn't seem right.

Well, in comes super-slutty [but not slutty!!!1!!!!!!!!!] whore character. She sends me a pm saying how our characters would be perfect together and that my character should be one of her clients and have an unhealthy fascination with her. She went on and on but basically when it came down to it...she wanted my character to be her character's screw buddy. Oh did I mention how twice she called my character by the name of the play-by I had chosen? I respectfully declined, explaining my reasoning and five minutes later...I was banned and my character deleted. No explanation, no nothing...just a flat-out ban. Then said admin goes into the c-box and starts telling everyone how I was bashing her over the pm's and was such a horrible member.

I wanted to tear her hair out at that moment.

As an admin

I've actually had pretty good luck with adminning...I've had people leave because I gave them some constructive criticism on the applications, but that's about it.

But the banning me because I refused to do the nasty with the admin's whore character really ticks me off.

Wow... O_o That's a nasty battle scar..... I've never been on any RL boards, and some of these things are really screaming at me to stay away from HP and RL *shudders* Anyone have any fantasy board horrors? Horror board horrors? OR are the freaks and evils all congrigating at one type.

I've had a pretty good experience as an Admin.

Had one really bad experience as a member.

My current co-admin and I met each other on this board, a Harry Potter board. I was totally new to RP, but I started out well enough. There were a few nice people in the cbox. The number of spelling errors that riddled the site did bother me, but I was able to excuse it as the admins weren't on all that frequently, so I could mostly ignore them.

Then the admin micromanaging started.

I wanted to create a werewolf character. The admins wanted to 'discuss how to play him' with me. This 'discussion' became about five hours of talking via IM.--just a ridiculous amount of jumping through hoops... and the chief problem was that the admins had an insufficiently clear idea of what they wanted from me (they were also close to functionally illiterate).

They demanded the same of a newbie, and a really great writer, who wanted a vampire character. They simply hadn't planned it out in advance or set up strict rules, so they made him talk to them for hours about nothing in particular--it was incredibly stupid, and he ended up leaving.

The last straw came when I tried to set up one independent plot (there was no site plot) that didn't have to do with romance or sex. By this time I was well-respected on the site, had a professor character, etc. About three or four other people and I decided to set up a plot between a few of our Aurors and a sort of Wizarding mafia family. After the plot had been going for about a month, the admins closed down our threads and told us we weren't allowed to have such a group. Mind you, it was already a backstory to one of my friend's characters. Eventually they did allow it, but by that time I was so fed up I simply left.

This is not to mention the flocks of emos in the site cbox... they've now taken over, and I must say I don't care at all. That site was like a bad dream.

My first is a horrible member experience that I just remembered I had. I joined this HP role play, worked really hard on my biography, and was in the middle of a few really good role plays. There were maybe fifteen or so characters registered on the site, but it wasn't very widely advertised and things were going quite well overall. Then the administrator disappears for a week. Yes, only a week. And without warning, naturally. She comes back to see that there are still no NEW applications and that only maybe three or four people are regularly role playing on the site, so what does she do? DELETE THE BOARD. She doesn't ask any of us if there is anything we'd like to save, or even give a day for notice. She just arbitrarily deletes the whole thing. Naturally, I'm really upset.

A grand total of two days later she's starting another board, so I decide that I'm going to PM her and see A) why she deleted the board without telling anyone and B) if the same would happen to this one. She then replies with the most horrendously rude response possible, saying that it was her "right as an admin" because the board was "dead" and that I shouldn't try and "lord over her" because it wasn't my RP. She then continues to say she'd do the exact same thing to this role play if she felt like it. I tried to explain to her that I wasn't trying to offend her, just thought she might want to give people a day or so to collect and she said "you should have been saving everything all along, so it's your fault if you lost anything." I then proceeded to tell every single person I know never to join her RPs unless they're fond of dictators that delete role plays when they get bored of them.

As an administrator, the last role play I opened was going really well. I got a lot of members right away and everything was great, but then without warning every single member but maybe... one disappeared for two weeks straight. Now, during those two weeks I made every effort to get people active, but didn't really know how to get my board out there so I didn't put any effort into advertising. Anyway, after two weeks without anyone at all stopping in or even telling me over AIM (they'd talk to me and just wouldn't mention the RP or change the subject if I did) I of course was feeling that it was a bit pointless, again because I wasn't really sure about advertising at the time. So I stopped checking as frequently as I had before. Come to find out that they'd all showed up again, completely at random, less than a week after I'd stopped checking and started complaining in the c-box that I wasn't doing my job, while not a SINGLE one PMed me or talked to me on AIM about the role play, even though we still spoke nearly every day. I had no reason to believe anyone had came back and since none of them actually spoke to ME about it, I didn't know they had. Still, I was pretty much being called lazy and everything like that by my own friends when I off-handedly checked the site about a month after they'd all disappeared initially.

I admit, I didn't handle the situation well by just giving up, but I didn't really know what else I could do at that point. I just don't understand why no one at thought to talk to me until after they'd been insulting me for a week at least, at which point I was far too busy with college to essentially restart the role play. I'm not saying all the members were like that at all, but four or five were and they're still there over a month later. So now I've begrudgingly told them I'm restarting the role play in May, and we'll just have to see how that goes.

Admin Experience:
The second board I ever created and my first forum experience was hell. It started off well, and it seemed quite a few people were interested in it. It had become quite active, and after a while one of the newer members PMed me saying that if I needed any help, they'd love to. They sounded quite nice about it, not power-hungry or anything, so I thought it was a good idea. What wasn't a good idea was making her co-admin and allowing her access to the admin CP instead of making her a regular old mod. Almost immediately after establishing her as co-admin, the board was deleted. Just gone. I don't even know how that works, I thought only the root admin had the ability to DELETE the board but apparently not with this forum host. A day later, it was 're-created' exactly as it had been before, except I wasn't a member (nor the other members from before) and my co-admin was now the dictator of MY brain child. I found the link because she'd asked a bunch of our affiliates to change their banner-links. I spoke to her, asked her if it had been a hacker that had deleted the board. She did not respond to the question, she deleted me as a member and IP-banned me. I had to send a report to the forum host saying that her forum was a hacked and plagiarized version of my own and it was then deleted for good.

As a member:
I'm extremely picky about joining boards. I don't like too little activity or too much, I'm inimidated with boards that have over 50 members, I am extremely picky about genre, theme, plot, the type of characters I'm allowed, etc.... so when I do decide to join a board, it's usually in a leap of faith. I haven't had any 'scarring' experiences, though once I did join a board where the admin was just rude. My character was flat out declined simply because, and I quote, "we don't allow funny characters, this is a serious, advanced roleplay!" I was tempted to laugh, but I was so shocked I just left.

I've got a fair few "horror stories", of varying degrees of cringe-inducing pain. I'll share two.


As a member, one of the more memorable disasters was a board that I applied at a few months back. It was a high school set on Fort Lewis in Washington State, so I figured, 'hey, it'd be fun to toss a high-school age soldier into the mix'. So I did. Or tried.

In essence, I was told that the board was for high school student characters only, since the admin wanted to explore how the average high schooler reacted to and felt about the situation in Iraq. That was a complete crock, since most of the In-Character posts were the typical romance, sex, and drugs rubbish that can be found on any other high school board. I shrugged at the first rejection and rewrote the character to make him more suitable for the setting, while keeping in the Army. Still a no-go. I traded a couple carefully-worded PMs with the admin before deleting the application (it was a ProBoards RP) and then my account.

Not allowing soldier/military characters on a board that is openly set on an Army installation is only a little backwards, but whatever. I believe that board died soon thereafter.


As a staffer, there were a couple of instances that were particularly noteworthy. Someone turned up on the Cbox of the PotC board I was a moderator on, asking about character types and if it was possible to apply with a female pirate. When we replied that female pirates were not allowed, the person threw a fit and left. I banned the IP off the Cbox and largely forgot about it. A few months later, she came back and actually joined, posting an absolutely terrible app. It was a pretty classic 'modern-girl-meets-Pirates' app, and we just couldn't accept it as it was. I gave her a few pointers as to how to improve the app and she threw a fit in the Cbox about it. Not really sure how I managed it, but I got her calmed down and she edited a couple things in her app. Fine and lovely.

A few hours later, after reviewing the edits and not being satisfied - since she had pretty much ignored most of the points I had made - I posted another brief collection of tips about the app. She threw another fit in the Cbox and it took two moderators to settle her down. Then a guest came onto the Cbox and challenged the applicant, which was the last straw. It was like fireworks on the Cbox for awhile, until the applicant finally left and I banned her.

The most valuable lesson I took away from that mess is the worth in handling issues via PM, which I should have done but didn't. Instead, there was a huge mess on the Cbox that I had to back through and delete, post-by-post.

Here are some old ones because I don't want to offend people with some of the more recent. :p

as a moderator

I was on this huge forum (not RP) and appointed moderator. Thrilled I was, but after awhile I became innactive due to school. When I returned two weeks later, I had been demoted without any sort of notice. Just an announcement in the news section saying that I had been demoted and they needed someone to fill my spot.

Yeah, I was angry. Especially because I had been promoted by one admin who knew how dedicated I was to the site and demoted by the power-hungry coadmin. But I refused to beg and grovel for my spot back and instead became bitter and cynicle when mod spots became a dime a dozen and anyone could be a mod even if they had been on the board for only a day. Surprisingly enough, this was a massive and successful board.

as a member

Same board. :lol: I had my RP reviewed and they obviously didn't read it. I got mad at them. Chaos ensued. I got in trouble and no one said anything about the bad review or reprimanded the reviewer for not even freaking looking at my board before he did the review.

Now it surprises even me how much my memory sucks, so I will never have such stories to tell as some here, because I forget them. This means my RP-life has been pretty rosy when looked at from now, because I can't remember most of it.

There have been three notable occasions which were a bit annoying:

MEMBER

Can't remember what it was about, but on an HP site I was on ages ago the admin and I had a disagreement and she threatened to remove me from the site for this completely pointless argument. We ended up resolving it through the co-admin and henceforth only communicated via this co-admin because if the admin and I talked directly we fought =/

ADMIN

I had a person apply to join my site with a canon character they'd changed to be gay and then they posted in the cbox and chatted with an established member (fine and dandy). They got to talking about sex and the established member posted a link to a very graphic gay sex fanfic which got me worried and annoyed (because the board's plainly PG-13 and it says 'no sex on the board' in the rules). I handled it badly. Because I had to get off the computer in a few minutes I posted a hasty warning saying quite tactlessly that what they were doing was totally not on and things like that.

I then got a PM from this newly joined member, saying they were sorry but they didn't want to join my site as they got the impression I was very intolerant etc. Fortunately, after panicking and crying, I talked to her on IM and apologised profusely for being such an idiot and she forgave me. It was very stupid of me and I hope to never do such a thing again.

Another time was not my fault (hooray) but I was really hurt by it. I was doing an IM activity check, as I do, just IMing the people on if they've not been active and asking what's up. I IMed one person and said something along the lines of 'hey, you've not been at NMTB for a while, what's up?' and they replied 'Well if I haven't been active for so long then it's obvious that I don't care, so go away'. It's not very shocking but it did shock me, because she'd never shown any discontent.

So! That's my little section. I've mostly had a very good time, both as a member and a staff member. Here's hoping it continues.

I tend to repress bad memories and try and move on, but there is one thing as a member I still remember.

My friend and I joined this site with characters that were siblings. It was an HP site with Durmstrang and our characters were going to be Durmstrang students. We read the plot, the rules, the application template, plot character list, everything! I hate getting confused at sites so I always try to make sure I know what's going on. Okay, so we both applied. I spent a long time writing a new application because no old ones would fit this new character. My friend gets accepted easily. I don't - because Durmstrang was a boy's only school at this RPG. Okay, that's fine. I obviously missed reading something somewhere. But I really wanted to join the site because it looked good so I PMed the admin to ask where it was written that Durmstrang was boys only. She said that it was canon and that I should've known. She only listed off places where she had it was boys only on the board - rules, plot, etc.

Okay, so I admit - I probably should have just dropped the issue here. I wasn't accepted, I could make my character go to Beauxbatons or something. But I did reply to her saying that the information wasn't where she said it was. She replies saying that that was the MOST rude PM she had ever received. O_O. I wish I had a copy of that PM because I know it wasn't rude. I apologized in the next PM and she said she overreacted, too. I just decided to not join the site after that.

But five days later, my application was still sitting at the site, with a note saying 'girls can't go to Durmstrang'. I asked the admin if she would delete my application because I didn't want anyone to steal it. She told me that I should get over it, go away, shut up, blah blah blah - oh, and that I shouldn't worry because the application sucked anyway. Oookay, thanks. That was out of the blue. So yeah. I just ignored her after that.

But you know what the best thing is? I actually do talk to her now and she definitely doesn't know it's me. I even mod at a board of hers =P.

hmm mine happened over a year ago, but it can still manage to make me seethe with hurt/anger/emotion.

So I started this plot with a girl on an RP forum. Things were going great and our story was really moving along. Well eventually, she started arguing with the admins cause she didn't like some of their rules. It got to a point where I just wanted to be neutral and walk away from it all. Well in this plot we had, I designed a character who was to be our villain. I mean I made his name, wrote almost all of his bio (she maybe wrote a paragraph for his history) though we shared playing him.

So, the fighting with the admins gets to this point where I just like, threw my hands up and decided to take a small break. I mean I talked to the girl on a daily basis, it's not like I just disappeared, but I just couldn't find the motivation to continue on with our plot under all the animosity. When I would post, it would take her a while to respond back.

So there was eventually a few weeks span where I barely talked to her at all. Maybe I was busy with school, I dunno. Come to find out, she has ripped off the original forum (oh she says she didn't, but believe me...very similar) AND has taken the villain that I created to her board. And not only that, she takes her characters and starts to RP with another girl and moves where we left off about 10 years and just leaves my character behind. (and not in a good light either, might I add). And they had the audacity to basically copy the plot idea of my character's history and practically just rewrite it with her new character. And yeah, I did kind of abandon the story somewhat (I did intend to come back, cause I really liked this RP, to this day I miss how it was before all the shit just hit the fan.), but can't you have the common courtesy to IM me and say "hey, I'm starting a new forum and taking my characters with me. Do you want to follow me there or are you out?" It really hurt my feelings when she did that, and I tortured myself by pretending it didn't bother me and trying to stick with her and her new crowd. Cause it does continue on.

So I eventually get over my hurt somewhat and join her forum. I bring my old characters with me cause I thought it would be interesting to see how it unfolded when everyone met everyone again (vampire rp). Well, to start off with, the only reason she was so avid to RP with me was cause the other girl was without her computer and couldn't. My characters were treated with such animosity because of 'how they abandoned everyone' 10 years ago when I didn't even write it that way. And then when the girl did come back, I was plainly ignored once more. (These two, when one would create a new character, the other would create a new character that was their 'soulmate.') I stopped going there too, it hurt my feelings too much.

Well, a little while later, I come up with this awesome forum that was loosely based off the idea of Constantine. (Angels and demons walk among us, each trying to tip the balance.) I decide to tell her about it, cause I think it might be up her alley and she's so good at dark characters. She and her friend join and immediately become active in it. It's well and good and we come up with another plot between our characters (mine and my old friend.) Well, eventually her friend starts to rp with her characters until they take over everything and my plot dies. And then it began again. She started questioning and arguing every rule we had in place. Saying how this wasn't fair and that wasn't right. Well all the drama and arguing doused my avid interest and I began to become more slack with visiting until eventually the whole forum died. It killed it for everyone.

Oh but this is the best part here. She actually wanted me to give the forum to her. I clearly didn't want it anymore and she'd hate to see it go to waste. Well, I talked it over with the other girl I started it with and she felt the same way I did. I told her no, this was something we built and we didn't want her to take it and change it to how she thought it should be. She responded with that she just didn't want to do that, build it all from scratch when ours was already built and had a member base. I still said no. I didn't mind if she started her own, but she couldn't have mine. So she did start another one, and needless to say...it never really took off.

I haven't RPed with her since.

You know something kind of strange and annoying about her though? She had this thing for asian playbys. Which is fine...unless you have 15 characters and they all are asian males. (true fact) She says she hates body hair, finds it disgusting. Any body hair at all. Oh and all her characters (and the other girl, who also had a thing for metro asian males) were also gay or bi with each other. Nice.

LULZ MishMoo, that's awesome. (The end part, that is lol)

I've never had a bad admin experience, but here's one I remember from being a member.

There was a guy, and he was in the army. Okay, cool. We were chatting on the always-busy c-box, and somehow the subject turns to food, and then meat. Now, I'm a vegan and don't hide this fact. I mentioned it offhandedly in a joking way, hoping he'd get the hint that I'm not mad with him for talking about it or anything, but I'd rather avoid the subject.

Continuing to talk about meat eating and how yummy it is and why you love it is rather rude, in general, around vegetarians/vegans. Like going up to someone who's a devout Christian and talking on and on about why you enjoy worshiping Satan and sacrificing Christian virgins, or something. XD

But that's pretty much what this guy continues to do.

And he even mentioned that he once enjoyed the taste of dog, which somehow became the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. I had been nothing but nice to this guy. I'm not a mean person, I'm actually pretty shy and feel very guilty if I come off as rude.

But I was tired of listening to this guy go on and on, and asked him to stop. Basically I said something like "Please stop talking about meat, I don't want to hear it.". Nothing particularly mean, just stating what I'd appreciate him to do clearly.

He went crazy. Apparently, I was trying to "violate his freedom of speech, which he is fighting for for me", and ranted on for about 20 minutes longer. I didn't respond at all, I just let him look like a lunatic.

I made a simple request, something I thought should probably be done for me out of common courtesy, if nothing else. It's all pretty funny to me now, but what the hell was his problem? O_o

My worst experience was as an admin - fortunately it wasn't all that bad, I've been lucky in that respect.

Okay, so as the admin on my first site (which has now passed away sadly, though we made a good run of it) We were participating in a fairly large battle (this being a War RP) which included just about every member on the site, either playing NPC defenders or their own characters. Now things are going well, all is dandy - a number of duels (one on one fights between officers) have been declared, including one between my Co-admin's NPC and another member.

Long story short, member godmodes and kills the NPC. It was a reasonable line of thought that the guy had, but obviously he was inexperienced on the rule. I was preparing to interject and explain to him that it wasn't allowed when the co-admin saw and blew up.

And I mean blew up.

He went off on a huge rant about how this other guy had godmoded and how I had better change the ruling on this and punish the guy he was fighting and he wasn't going to come back to the site until he saw it had been changed. Fortunately, though, by being firm with the co-admin (even if I had to endure c-box and IM aggro for a while) I managed to calm him down and diffuse the situation.

A happy ending! Hurray!

My worst is an admin, roleplayer and everything in between all in one incident. & I'm seriously hoping the person isn't a member of RPG-D, though I'm sure she isn't. xD

It started off when I made a big group of roleplay friends and we roleplayed all the time on neopets. I was especially close to one of them - let's call her Rachel. Rachel played evil characters, and I was totally in awe of her writing; it was pretty damn amazing. We decided to create a forum together, a kind of private one for our group of roleplaying friends. It seemed like a good idea and I suppose at the time it was, since it did last nearly two years.

However when I was on a fanfiction site, I saw a fanfic that was pretty much identical to an intro of Rachel's. Genuinely confused (and stupid), I asked her about it and she blanked me. Eventually it sank in that she had copied it and I was pretty annoyed; I hatehatehate plagerisers. Then her characters started getting out of hand; I'll name one. A teenage girl who was abused in every way possible by her family, schizophrenic, bipolar, somehow beautiful, abusive husband but having an affair with Harry Potter... yeah, do I need to go on? She also got aggressive and accused people of stealing her work - our friends - when they quite clearly weren't.

I drifted away from her and I was quite upset and put off roleplaying. One of my RL friends, we'll call him James, was angry cause I was really really into roleplaying... and still am. So he IM'd her and called her a stupid name, which he really shouldn't have done I know. I got angry at him for it but then Rachel started IMing me and shouting at me. I told her I hadn't told him to do it and there was no need to get angry with me but she continued anyway. Then she started IMing me saying she was going to kill herself; it was pretty horrific.

I don't speak to her much now; much more things happened, that was a basic gist of it. She's on my MSN list but we rarely talk because it's okay for her to make fun of my idols, personality and characters but when I snap back, it's the freakin apocalypse for her.

One of the worst things that happened me was;

I was helping my friend with a site and she made me an admin. So I was all excited for the site and advertised like mad.
My 'friend' posted her biography for her character once we got some members and soon enough one of the members is pm'ing her saying that she stole the character.
I PM'd that member saying it wasn't right for her to accuse her of something like that and to my horror she sent me a link to another board where the stolen character was, and she was right. My 'friend' had stolen this character completely, down to a T.
I felt like such a fool because I had been defending her.
I left the site and would not go back to it.

this should perhaps be kept open for a while, just broke my modding virginity with the creation of my first roleplay site, fingers crossed that i don't end up going crazy and killing myself due to stress induced overworking, yeah that's never going to be a possibly outcome

Ooooh, let's see...

As a member? I joined this Star Wars role play maybe...a year ago, and long story short, I was banned because I made a bad_roleplayers_suck post on Livejournal and there were some mods or something who were members.

Now, the reason I made the post (about the game) was because my character was basically auto'd by another player. The rules of the site said that you could kinda do that as long as you PM'd the player of the character you're autoing and asked permission and/or sent them a PM with the post you wanted to make so that the player could approve it. The guy who did it to my character did neither.

As an admin?

When my status as an administrator/moderator was taken away because I wasn't too impressed with something one of my co-mods wanted to do, and I ranted about it in my Livejournal. Unfortunately, it wasn't a filtered entry (or rather, I thought it was, but apparently not), and one of my co-mods saw it and told the others about what I'd said in the entry.

So then...I don't even remember any more. But they basically kicked me from being a mod/admin in a game that -I- had started. The co-mod who saw my entry was one of the original mods from the start. The third original mod ended up quitting, and the other two were...basically replacements of him and another mod we had who ended up pulling some crap that wasn't cool (like basically stealing the spotlight with her character, which was a Wookiee Jedi master, and not giving myself and two other players, all with Jedi masters perfectly capable of battling a Sith, a chance to battle the ONE Sith because her character finished the battle before any of them had a chance).

o.O Some of that last paragraph didn't really make sense.

But, yeah. I was IM'd by one of my co-mods and told that I wasn't a moderator any more, even though it was my game.

Well, I take that back. It was MY game because I had wanted to start it, but it was kinda a shared thing too, but...yeah. It was just very screwed up. I ended up asking them to just make a post saying I had stepped down due to real life issues. If only I could tell the members the truth. Hell, if only I could -really- rant about it. But, I can't, because two of the co-mods are members of the place I would love to rant about it at, and I'd probably make it pretty obvious that it'd be about them.

And maybe a few months after that, the game ended up getting closed down because the co-mod who IM'd me disappeared, another co-mod disappeared, and the co-mod who saw my entry and the co-mod who replaced me after I was kicked basically just lost interest. :| It lasted for almost a year, though.

/ramble

My worst experience as a member happened about a month after I started RP-ing.

While doing some link hopping, I came across a site that was basically an Originals only X-Men site. Since I though it would be interesting, I read the rules, hunted for the password and spent some time on an app. After posting the site admin told me that I had missed a topic based on taken powers and to please alter my character's power. She was pretty polite and understanding about it so I tweaked the personality and history and my girl went from electrogenesis to healing. I posted saying the edit was done and went to work, hoping that there'd be a response when I got back.

I came home to discover that another person had joined and posted and we both had responses waiting for us. The site's mod had posted saying that the other member's character was a cheap knock off of Wolverine, the chosen codename sucked and that the character was an all around Gary Stu. Reading over the app at the time, I had to agree, yes this was a Wolverine clone, but the character had a few personality tweaks that Wolverine didn't. With a bit of simple tweaking, the character could have worked and wasn't really a Gary unless it was based off the player, which I, or the mod wouldn't know. To my own application, since my character could heal people (at a cost to herself) she decided that she wanted to become a doctor and thus began to work a bit harder at the sciences. However, since I was using Lena Katina as my playby, the character was Mary-Sue because she was to beautiful to be any good at science. Nowhere in my appearance section did I say the word "beautiful." "Slightly pretty" came up once, and the fact that she was a bit chubby had been mentioned as well. So both the other member and I did some editing only to be told our apps sucked worse than ever. Frustrated I decided to see the mods own app and noticed that the admin had left some interesting comments and had never officially accepted him.

Angry at what was probably some form of nepotism and a little hurt that despite my efforts to improve (the second post offered no hints on what to change) I decided to blow off the site and just create a second character on the other X-Men site I was on. I used the same concept, healer who wanted to have a medical career in that app and after making her a junior X-Men (students were temporarily banned) my "Mary Sue" was deemed a neat character by one of my RP buddies and an excellent app (for a relative newbie) by the admin.

My worst experiences as an Admin have pretty much all involved plagiarism. From lifting an app belonging to a friend of mine to having parts of my own app lifted twice. The excused ranged from "it's too hard to write three paragraphs for personality" to "I didn't know it was plagiarism." I still haven't decided which excuse angers me the most and the shock of it made me act in a way that was probably not very dignified and had I let myself cool down, I probably wouldn't have been Godzilla when I PM'ed the members with the Rule regarding plagiarism and the rant about seeing it in their apps. Next time, my co-admin will be playing the bad cop if something like that happens again.

I won't refer to the most recent debacle because there are some tender toes about it...but there are other things.

I was a member of a board that had an RP sub-board. They made me mod of it, and I did a lot of work revamping it, setting up the new rules, and was the only person who worked at setting up new RP ideas. Well, I got ill and had to take a LOA and they had someone else come in for me. That was fine. But she basically killed the thing. And when I came back she was impossiable to work with. She'd changed the rules, and I asked her why. She didn't play in the RPs or begin new ones. I had lured a MOST excellent writer from another site to start a Victorian Murder Mystery on our board and she snubbed the writer so badly that they fled the site. I was so embarassed. Finally, with no support from the owners in the matter, I said that I had to go. They were happy with her then it would be best, I thought, if I left so there would be no conflict. Went back to visit about six months later, the woman had left the site like two weeks after I had.

I was member of another board, was promoted to mod, then promoted to admin over a year or so's time. The owner got burnt out and left the board for a while and when he came back wanted to play as just a reg. joe. Started RPing and then out of the blue disappeared for a few months. So we wrote around him. Well, he came back and deleted posts and moved things around via his admin powers so that it was as if his PC had never left.

One thing lead to another and the board was closed during a hissy fit on his part. This was a huge board with like 200 members and thousands of threads. He however did give notice that he was going to do it, and allowed folks to save their stuff elsewhere etc.

lol I find that highly amusing for his part. Like omg, if I delete the posts, I can make everyone else forget that I've been MIA for months and they'll suddenly write as if I've been here the whole time! It's more like, delete old posts, I don't care. I know what really happened and I'm going to continue to write from that.

Member... and mod and... admin I suppose... I was everything on this board... but since it wasn't my board I guess I'll go with member.

A few years ago I joined this board - I was the first member to join. The staff told me that they wouldn't be open for a few more days and that I might get lonely - I told them to think nothing of it. I'd get that board active if it killed me lol. So I started RP'ing with anyone that signed in... talking with anyone who'd show up in the c-box... playing welcome party for ANYONE who'd join the board.

Eventually said board got active... three members were promoted to mods and staff over me which didn't really bother me because I was too busy with my character and RL at the time to be bothered to staff... even though I'd been staff in all but title during the early days of the board. Anyway, they started talking to me like I was incompetent or something and wouldn't listen to me or side with me in any of the arguments I'd take in an RP. I figured that... hey! Maybe I was wrong in those arguments and just let it slide...

Eventually the board grew and MORE members came. I - as I always had been - played host and welcome part for whoever joined. Sadly... no one would stay with my RP's for very long before the staff and the older members would see that the people I was introducing to the board had skill - or were active - and RP'd with them until they lost interest in what I was RP'ing. I thought... okay... maybe my plots really are that bad... so I let that slide too.

My position as unofficial 'welcome party' and 'ill-treated board burden' didn't change as the years went by. I played with anyone who'd join to help them get active - and then they'd get bored with me after they were offered more things to do. I was a laughing stock in the c-box treated like I wasn't worth the jam scrapped off the pavement and if I so much as TRIED a character plot or my character focused on himself for any moment I was jeered at in the c-box and in PM's - one-liner RP'ers talking about how 'unrealistic' I was being and how I should practice more.

Eventually the board underwent a plot... sadly, no one would join in it. I, however, being the idiot I am. Loaned my character out as a fulcrum to to the plot itself. Letting the rampaging evil mutant girl have slaughter my character I took lumps and bruises and abrasions like no other and - for a time - the girl that played the 'evil rampaging mutant' seemed to enjoy my RP'ing and was willing to talk to me with some sense of respect.

About the I was finally given my mod-ship... but not respect came with it. I was basically treated the same accept for when the girl - who ended up the admin for the site - signed in. In which case I was ignored while a boy fought for her attention 24/7. Eventually she lost interest in me and her character married the boys character... and then came the ending.

Ever since the beginning of the board there had been a 'trouble member' who would join and jump into threads he hadn't been invited to. God-mod in every single battle. His character had NO power limits - in fact the only weakness he had was 'exhaustion' which only happened once his 'burning inner core' grew too cold to supply needed energy. Now ever since the first admin had begun to populate the board he'd been willing to give the trouble member a chance... but after his fifth or sixth offense said character was banned and the staff were given instructions to NEVER allow him back.

Eventually the original admin went away to college - and he left the girl in charge. The first thing that was done was a new skin. A new board code I helped program and various new mutant fight styles. I was given control of advertisement and the management of the plot section - which involved making sure that all approved plots were moved to the section they belonged in and that all unapproved plots were deleted.

A cushy job to be sure... but that was because I was the advertisement mod and spent most of my time doing that. Not that his stopped the member-base from yelling at me any time their plots weren't approved or said plot wasn't moving fast enough... all of which I didn't control. The second thing she did... was allow the trouble member back on the board. The staff were not told about this change - and when asked she said that he deserved another chance.

He started to act exactly the same as before... and when I brought it up in the staff forum by asking 'I really don't trust him... can we take a vote on whether his powers should be restricted? I really think it would help things' which was a big mistake. She accused me of questioning her 'ruling' on the matter and that if it continued she would have to contact the original admin. This prompted the removal of my sig and avatar by the site image hoster and the sudden hostility of every single member on the board.

The staff began to take me apart piece by piece in the staff forum. Declaring that I was bad for the image and moral of the board and that if I couldn't mesh with the rest of the staff I should be demoted or even banned. And then the admin himself was contacted... he posted a two-page long lecture on the importance of a board flowing smoothly... and that any person or member that stopped the flowing of said board would have to be replaced.

It was about then... that I discovered what 'being made the goat' meant. Various problems that had plagued the board in the past were blamed on me. The 'trouble member' himself began lecturing me in the c-box about incidents in the past that involved HIS actions which were all attributed to me. The final incident involved the posting of every single PM I'd posted during the past month about how bad I felt...listing the people I thought were going to far and how I hoped this would blow over.

This ended up turning the board itself into a fire of rage which quickly began to chew away at my 'delicate inner sense of danger'. I finally resigned myself to my fate and posted my resignation. Three or four members left with me... but they all either stopped talking to me or ended up going back. *shrug* I've never recovered board-wise after that... RP'ing on boards is hard enough without members having 'heard' about you. People I'd met on the board before who had friends on other boards of that genre blacklisted me and I haven't been able to find a board of that genre that will accept me ever since. The fact that the genre itself is mostly dead doesn't help... which is rather depressing really.

Admin

This is much smaller... the biggest battle scar was a board I built around the same time as the biggest fight on the aforementioned board. The 'friends' I asked to join suddenly stopped RP'ing... contacts I'd once relied on dried up and the board itself was suddenly filled with spammers...

The only other 'battle scar' was the realization that I've made eleven total RP boards in my time... and none have lasted... I suspect its me but *shrug* who can tell really.

Heh. Being the creator of many highly unsuccessful forums (a.k.a. all that I've ever done...) my sites have never really had this kind of drama to start. But on my latest failure we did have a major problem.

My (former) best friend and co-admin and I got into it at school when I told her that she needed to get over her with her ex (who cheated on her by the way. Yeah, not something I should've said...). She got pissed and stopped talking to me but she promised to make my life miserable for what I said. Ironically we have the next class together so I continuously apologize to her which she does not accept since I'm only apologizing because I was scared of the consequences which was true.

So later on that day us and a couple of friends hang out at her house. It starts off fine but steadily escalates to her getting pissed about the comment (and she brought it up first).

I go home that night and check the site to find that my account was locked! Turns out that after I left, she got onto the site, deleted all of my members and locked me out. So then we get into this huge fight over the c-box (it was the only way I posible could have talked to her as she wasn't answering her phone and all of her IM services wouldn't be responded to) that ends with me being forced to apologize and having to keep her on the site or she would delete the entire board. It passed and she calmed down, but I moved the board after that.

Could things go any worse, when your rp's site AND forum disappears, just like that?
Yeah, I know that feeling.

I was changing my web host and I had asked them to move all my files to the new host. At first all seemed to work pretty well, but then I noticed, that my RPG's sites had disappeard. I didn't found them from my old host or my new host - all files were deleted. You can imagine how shocked I were x___x
Well, it was my old hosts mistake. They had moved just my main-files, not everything what was needed. I had to create new sites and forum in no-time, but luckily members understood ^___^ But it really was a bit shock!

About 2 years ago, I was admining on one site where all the staff was kinda cliquey, and there were a lot of arguments within the little circle. They were mostly about the cliquey-ness, but I tried to keep out of the arguments.

The board had some strange rank policy with the admins, where they promoted the admins on how active and helpful they were. I was at the second to lowest rank, which was the rank where you could appoint people as mods. Before I was an admin, I had become friends with some regular members, and I noticed that one girl in particular was really active and always had suggestions on how to improve the board, and they always worked. So after discussing it with one other admin, Shelley*, we decided to make her a mod.

The highest admin, Carla*, got really pissed at me, since I didn't discuss it with her. She had stated on numerous occasions that we didn't have to discuss everything with all the admins. I feel she did that just so she could get all her friends as admins. So anyway, she blew up at me over AIM and demoted me and the new mod.

I IMed a few days later and asked her why she suddenly changed her policies regarding admins, and she just told me that I was irresponsible and too young to be able to handle an admin position. (I was 13) I told her that I had discussed it with Shelley. Carla then said that her mom wanted her off AIM, and to talk to her on a Cbox. So I did.

Carla started saying on the Cbox that I was ruining the site and that I refused to talk to anyone that wasn't a staff member. Other members came to my rescue and tried defending me, but Carla wouldn't shut up. Eventually I told her that she was being annoying and was causing unnessacary drama. I also said that I probably would never meet her in real life, so it was pretty stupid to fight. She just said that the fact that we would never meet meant that she could do whatever she wanted to me. I told her to do what she wanted. And she went and banned me.

Eventually I made my own site, and advertised on another board I was on. Carla was on that site, too, which I didn't know. She joined my site and started spamming it with useless accounts and posts. I banned her, but she still managed to get on, and made an alias so I wouldn't know who she was. Her IP was also different, so I was clueless. She applied to be a co-admin, and I accepted her. That was the biggest mistake ever. She turned off the board and made it so that I couldn't access it. And then she went and changed everything, so it looked like I was a freak. She screwed all my HTML. Soon I found out that it was her the whole time. I emailed her saying that she obviously had no life, and that I didn't want anything to do with her. I closed the board, closed registrations, and banned her. I never heard from her again.

It was weird, since all this happened online, and I found it kinda creepy how this girl became so intent on bringing down someone on the Internet, but it was a long time ago, and I don't care that much anymore. And Shelley told me that her original site died because some members thought there was too much drama. ^_____^

Okay, here's one that's pretty darn scary...

There was a member of the Cats board that I co-admin, named Bob, let's say, who was part of the board since it began. As they years went by, Bob would delve into great detail about his supposed personal life. I can't for the life of me remember ever single tragedy he regaled, but here's a few:

- He was part of a gang, and got into numerous gang fights.
- His excuse for being away from the board for long periods of time was due to his being in the hospital for stab wounds.
- He had an arch enemy, who he called Jaxton, who was always out to get him, and would continually hunt Bob down and terrorize his family. (On one of my other early boards, he actually pretended to be Jaxton, who somehow hacked into Bob's account, and posted a threatening message to us. I wasn't pleased, obviously.)
- Bob's girlfriend, who he called Sandra, was killed by Jaxton.

Finally, in 2007, Bob's sister, who had been a part of the board early on as well, though hadn't been by to post in a long time, comes on to tell us that Bob has been murdered by Jaxton. Yeah, murdered. Come on, seriously??

Well a few of the members ate it up, and put mourning-type images in their signatures in his honour. I on the other had, would have none of it. We knew that Bob's stories were a load of blah. It wasn't really that hard to figure out, as I'm sure you've noticed. Well, I took it up with the head admin, and she said she felt exactly the same. So we talked to the team, and they all weren't convinced either, so we confronted Bob's 'sister' about it.

He put up a fight, oh man did he ever, but we eventually whittled him down. Bob had pretended to be his sister and typed up a long and involved post about his tragic death. Fortunately, the head admin had exchanged phone numbers with Bob previously, and decided to call his house. Bob's father picked up and told her that he was 'out' at the moment. Not dead, just out. Silly Bob, he didn't think that one through did he? We didn't reveal this to him, but we got it across that we'd found him out. Bob stormed off in a huff, so to speak, and took a few of his loyal friends with him.

It was such a relief to be rid of him. Unfortunately, his most loyal companion would continually make new accounts and create freaky characters and send disturbing PMs to members. We've got her though for now. Thank God!

as a member:

I'm a member of the Age of Sail fandom on LiveJournal, and I was chatting to a girl on IM about how there were no AoS RPGs out there. So she looked around and made a board, which I advertised on LJ. We got a few members and were starting to get into it. None of us had really had the chance to RP before, so we were taking it easy, trying to figure things out.

I was in the middle of writing a post IC in a thread, hit 'post' and the board had gone with no warning.

I asked the girl, very politely, what had happened (thinking there was maybe a server problem or something) and received a really rude reply along the lines of 'I deleted it. If you and your mad crazy friends want to go somewhere else and play, go.'

That was a month and a half ago, and I'm still slightly shocked, though it gave me the impetus to realise that people in my fandom do want to RP, so I set up my own board, which I'm still tinkering with.

And I've never had so much fun!

I can't think of too many, thank God, but I do have one from when I was an admin.

Basically, I made this site, and posted on a few different sites looking for helpers. One girl joined and was very, very helpful, and had a lot of good suggestions to make. However, her boyfriend decided that he wanted to help with the site, too. I gave the okay, but his first participation to the board was suggesting a newly written up plot. I would have been fine with it if it had just been more catchily written, or even if it expanded upon my idea, but this strayed far from my idea. I wanted to stick with my own idea, but I said that if the other admins I had hired preferred his, we could go with that. But, the majority of the people wanted to stay with the plot I had written up.

I thought that would be the end of it, but then next time I signed on to AIM the girl and her boyfriend had invited me to a chatroom. I went to the room and he still wanted to use his idea. I tried to politely tell him that the majority of us liked mine better and thought his strayed too far from the intended plot, but before I knew it he was totally flaming me. He started telling me that he had more experience as an admin, was running several successful sites of his own, and basically telling me that my idea was doomed to failure. At one point he started throwing out religion-involving facts (my site was apocalyptic, although I had stated that I wasn't meaning to make it religious in any way), and said that the plot was offensive because it mixed ideas from various religions. After a long conversation he decided to leave the site, had his account deleted, and all. The girl and my other helpers all wanted to stay with the site, but... My enthusiasm for it was totally crushed. =/

Since then, I've always made sites by myself, and only appoint people as admins/mods when they've been roleplaying on there for a while and I know they won't try and pull anything like that.

So my biggest battle wound as an admin:

I had created a site. It was about three weeks old, had about twenty members and I was the only admin. I had a mod too. Things were starting to pick up and were looking pretty good. But I was going on vacation for the next week and a half. the night before I left I realized no one was in charge while I was gone and I had forgotten to tell anyone.

Whoops. No biggie I thought.

So I sign on. The only person on was my mod, replying to a post someone had made earlier.

So I pm-ed my mod, who at the time I thought to be quite nice, responsible etc... She'd been one of the first members to join. I asked her if she'd be willing for be an admin for the next week (and maybe a few days over, while I got unpacked and back to life).

She was so excited and asked if she could become an admin fulltime. I told her I'd think about it when I got back, but I really had to go to sleep since we had an early flight. I quickly posted a notice tell people she was in charge for the week,

A week later I return to the site and everything seems normal. Until I try to log on. Apparently my account doesn't exist. I go back to the main page and there's an announcement from my temp Admin. I read it.

Apparently I decided the site was boring me and that I really didn't like any of the members and told her I wanted to quit. So I had made her an admin. I went on and on and there was a "quote" from the pm I had apparently sent her about my leaving. My account had been deleted and all my e-mail addresses banned. I didn't even want to stay at the site anymore. I couldn't be around her.

Yeah.

But here's a little story that's more awkward than a battle scar. It happened on one of the first sites I joined. This one player (with only two characters) would only play with himself. He would post and tag his other character then log in and post a reply witht he other character. He wasn't even pretending that they were played by different people. It was really weird. There were really graphic sex scenes of them together and his characters ended up having kids and stuff. I'm pretty sure he never played with anyone else... weird, huh?