I found this to be a very interesting letter. I was able to answer questions one and two, but I had to consult the high-ups for the rest. Here are my and their answers:

Rouge47's responses-
1. Yes, every now and then we'll get this big situation that we have to solve. The biggest ever has been a situation which we all call the Spamming Incident where a member (rpgirl) decided to send PM spams and naughty pics to a few of our members and cause spamming chaos on every forum. Whenever Lordlynxx banned her, she came back as someone else, usually using a members name, but adding a . or a _ at the end to make it hard for Lynxx to ban to the right person. Eventually, I jumped in and scared the spam whore away with a FBI threat. I said that my uncle works for the FBI and that he access to the tracking software that can pin her location and then Mahz can sue for damages to the site since she broke US federal law and decided to threaten us that she would start hacking. Big no no. That's when Mahz promoted me to a mod. weehee!

2. Mahz isn't active a lot now because he's busy getting through college exams and stuff. He's schedule is cramped and he doesn't have a lot of room to move around when it comes to forum updates and getting that long-awaited chat box up. This also means that he won't be roleplaying for a while.

Blackfire's responses-
I can give an answer to four and five.

4) Of course! But it's a big secret. A huge secret. Actually, I have no idea what we're gonna do. Probably shouldn't actually put that answer in the RPG AP.

5) We all roleplayed on a common play-by-post forum in the past. Hell, we'd been on that site for years, but it was mostly for lack of a better one. The moderation team was pretty (excuse my French) stick-up-ass, and there was a clear division between the newcomers and the elite writers on the site. Even a damned good writer would have trouble fitting in, simply because they weren't buddy-buddy with the "in" crowd. Eventually, many of the "in" crowd became moderators, further distancing the staff from the public. That, plus harsh, unaccommodating, and sometimes unclear rules made the site feel unaccessible and unfriendly.

Despite all of that, we still had some good times. We knew it could be better, though. It was Mahz's idea to start RPGuild, and Hyz and I were right behind him. I had tried to start forums before on my own in the past, but failed. Mahz took a much more organized approach, even shelling out cash from his own pockets for something more than just another proboards site. Our initial launch wasn't completely successful, though. We had few returning members, and they weren't exactly the best writers, either. Nevertheless, we persisted and generated some pretty decent content.

Only after a complete redesigning of the boards did it really take off. Old RPGuild was ugly, to be frank. New RPGuild is sleek and attractive. I also think a huge part of our success was dividing the boards into Beginner's, Casual, and Advanced, and being sure to emphasize the fact that everyone is welcome, and that the section you choose to roleplay in is your own preference. We let you play however you want to play.

Another addition coming soon will be the introduction of PW, a project we've been working on since the old RPGuild. I think that PW will draw in a whole lot of new players, too. For those of you who haven't read the last RPG AP, PW stands for "Persistent World," and runs a lot differently from the sections you're used to now. Instead of each thread being it's own story in it's own setting with it's own characters, all threads in PW are part of a bigger plot; they're just events taking place in the world.

Like I said before, it should draw in a lot of players. I really think that it'll round out the boards, providing another new way to roleplay. After PW is launched, we'll truly have something for everyone, which has always been one of our main goals.

That's what sets up apart from the hundreds of dead and dying boards on the web.

Did we ever expect RPGuild to get so popular? More or less. It's what we always wanted, of course, and we knew that one day, it'd get pretty big. But not like this. The growth in the last year was unprecedented. We had no idea that RPGuild was going to explode like it did. We hope that the site will continue to grow and still remain the most accessible community out there.

I think that pretty much wraps it up for me.

Mahz's responses-
Radical letter! Cool questions.

2) I started roleplaying in the beginning of RPGuild when the community was very small and new roleplays didn't spring up every day. There wasn't much to moderate and my administration duties were few and simple. As RPGuild's community and activity increased over time, I got more busy. 30 minutes on RPGuild was slowly transitioning from roleplaying to more administrating tasks.

Another reason is that when you turn a hobby into a "job," like getting a roleplaying forum established, it's easy to get burned out. I used to battle burnout from time to time if you can imagine. I guess my hobby has shifted from roleplaying to providing a place to roleplay. While I will still roleplay periodically, running RPGuild presents a lot of challenges and puzzles, and answering these obstacles is part of being an admin, and I enjoy that.

3) Roleplayer Guild is a community of roleplayers. It's a very successful one. We've had a ridiculous amount of growth and we're not even a year old (established July 2007). I've never seen such a specific-niche forum grow so fast. I knew play-by-post roleplaying is a pretty large scene, but almost all of the successful communities are years old and I was breaking into a scene with established oldtimers. However, I've always held the methodology to keep RPGuild simple. I noticed that other communities have large learning curves and lots of subforums and it can be hectic to keep track of much less be accessible for new people. I think that the roleplaying scene as a whole was limiting itself by being largely inaccessible to new players. A lot of communities had essentially exclusive userbases because actually joining and participating in the community was downright cryptic and hard for a new player to figure out.

If you look at a chart of daily visits and posts over time since RPGuild's establishment, you'll notice that it's on a steady rise. Since RPGuild climbs the ranks in search engines and the userbase attracts more members, RPGuild as it stands will constantly grow. One of my tasks involves mitigating the negative effects of growth and adapt RPGuild to be able to handle its own community. No single model can work with all sizes of communities and RPGuild will always be adapting. One example is the upcoming Off-Topic Forum split. Another big example is the massive revision of the RP forum structure into "skill"-based rather than genre-based categories.

It really is engaging to deal with the challenge of community growth. At the same time, running an expansive, friendly community is highly rewarding. We've been blessed with a great userbase and have had very few user-related troubles. My long-term ambition is too keep our community a friendly, engaging one no matter how big it gets. Another ambition is to grow RPGuild into a community more encompassing of all types of roleplaying. Eventually I'd like to provide a platform for DnD players to utilize dice and keep track of stats and almost automate the process of playing DnD on a forum. I'd like to open RPGuild up into other forms of roleplaying I'm not familiar with. We're a community of play-by-post roleplayers and I'd like to expand.

4) As far as a year anniversary goes, I've got no idea. But you can bet it will be something intriguing. You know, like new servers or something. :P

continued on next post...

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