<Snipped quote by Exit>
My road to moderator/co-admin is indeed another story entirely, but it's a fun one because I used to be one of the biggest troublemakers around. Just ask @stark. I'll write it all down if people are interested.

Since certain interviews will never be published/reach conclusion, def write it down.

As you can see, I never (really) left. My road to moderator/co-admin is indeed another story entirely, but it's a fun one because I used to be one of the biggest troublemakers around. Just ask @stark. I'll write it all down if people are interested.

Ha. I could definitely tell some stories, I'm sure. But my favorite ones involve you, group Skype calls, and copious amounts of alcohol. Hiccup.

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Anyway, since the others went, I suppose I will too.

My origin story isn't anything terribly interesting. Many, MANY moons ago I was itching for some Sherlock Holmes RP. (More specifically, London in 1888, during the time of the Jack the Ripper murders.) So, I googled RP sites and the Guild popped up in the results. After poking around a bit and liking what I was seeing of the community, I signed up and ran my first RP: Shadows of London - A Dark Victorian Story. It went on for several months, but then died over time as users disappeared and went inactive. (Sigh.)

Around the time of starting that RP, I began frequenting the old Spam forum. Long story short - I made a bunch of friends there. (Some due to my thoughtful responses, some due to my sarcastic/snarky sense of humor, and some who were fellow artists that I could shoot the breeze with.) I became decently popular and earned a fairly good reputation for being someone who was helpful, which is why I was eventually chosen to join the moderation team by Contra Fates. (There's a blast from the past.)

Aaaaaand I've been here ever since , plus one name change.

And with that. The lazy one appears.

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How I got into role-playing.

It started on Myyearbook, a site now called MeetMe. MyB was basically a social networking site like Myspace and Facebook. It had forums, and whatnot. I bounced around from some of them starting in Things(insert jokes here) before branching off to music and politics.

As j searched for more to do, I stumbled across the 'Everything Else' section of the forum, for things that didn't have a proper home. In there I came across a generic RP place, just a clearing in a forest and started reading. Man it was terrible in there. But something about it spoke to me. So after a couple weeks, I gathered my courage and hopped in. It wasn't like here where you need to apply. You come and go.

My first character was Rilla, a ventriloquist with a living dummy. Immediately I connected with someone, who was using an alternate character I think, and we hit it off. That's a friendship that still lasts to this day.

As I spent more and more time there my activity in other forums decreased until it was basically none existent. Roleplaying had hooked me. People liked me but my writing was shit. It was all asteriks and one liners, until one of my friends introduced us to paragraph posting and what all.

Much like here, there I was a fighter, but unlike most of them, I always focused on the story and tried to do as much of it IC as possible.

@Rilla Who's the friend?

Apologies for interrupting story time, but I have a random question that I've been tossing around in my head.

According to the name change thread, it states the following:

• Once a name change is complete there is no turning back. This is due to how the old username is linked to your forum ID, even after a new name is chosen.

I have no coding expertise, hence why I am curious if this will always be the case. No problem if it is, but I was wondering if any of you had an answer _{since I can't get what @NuttsnBolts said the last time I asked for a name change out of my head after remembering it for some reason. "But Poi!"}

Apologies for interrupting story time, but I have a random question that I've been tossing around in my head.

According to the name change thread, it states the following:

<Snipped quote by Guild Mods>
I have no coding expertise, hence why I am curious if this will always be the case. No problem if it is, but I was wondering if any of you had an answer _{since I can't get what @NuttsnBolts said the last time I asked for a name change out of my head after remembering it for some reason. "But Poi!"}

If Mahz can code it, he can change it. One possibility is that you could have a list of previous usernames that you can change back into, but I would doubt that you'll be allowed to swap out a name so that someone else can take it (eg: if I wanted Poi). That would create a lot of confusion that we don't really need.

Might be worth showing this to @Mahz to see of he can drop some info on it.

<Snipped quote by Sola>

If Mahz can code it, he can change it. One possibility is that you could have a list of previous usernames that you can change back into, but I would doubt that you'll be allowed to swap out a name so that someone else can take it (eg: if I wanted Poi). That would create a lot of confusion that we don't really need.

Might be worth showing this to @Mahz to see of he can drop some info on it.

Sounds fair enough. As I said, it isn't an issue if it is indeed impossible, especially since I can just ask for a name change regarding the character's name rather than her catchphrase whenever I can request a new name change once the 3 month wait is up.

I know Proboards has a thing where everyone has a username but outside that they can have a nickname to show up whenever they post rather than their actual username. Could be worth looking into something like that too.

<Snipped quote by Exit>

When I was a kid, before we even had internet, my friend (Hyzhenhok) and I would write stories together. We each had our own Lego man and we'd take turns writing chapters in Microsoft Word while the other played Nintendo 64. Our Lego men would roam around a Lego galaxy into fictional worlds like Lava World (the floor is lava) to defeat an antagonist named Shane, who was basically a Chad.

My character's special weapon was the Adult Rifle. By the time I learned it was actually called an Assault Rifle, too much lore was written and I kept them old name.

I don't know how that began. Just cosmic luck, because it was probably one of the most important events in my life, a gateway into writing and eventually other socially destitute hobbies like programming and being a roleplaying forum admin.

I didn't know we were roleplaying at the time. So by the time I found internet roleplaying forums, I was a seasoned veteran.

The bulk of my roleplaying took place on the now-dead http://rpgchat.com/. And that's where I met someone named Blackfire.

Well, rpgchat.com had this annoying issue where the admin, ThornBreed, was never around. Ugh, doesn't he know how to run a free forum? I was 15 and had all the time in the world. I didn't understand how an admin could just neglect a forum like that. I obviously knew things he didn't!

At the time, 2006 or so, roleplaying communities also usually were mired in strict rules and moderation.

So Blackfire, Hyzhenhok, and I created the Guild as a place with no rules nor moderator intervention. And with admins that would always be around.

Well, it took a year of sock puppeting my own accounts to get the Guild to a point where it had a large enough cabal of regulars for me to stop sock puppeting. And that's how I burned out on writing and roleplaying. In fact, I've barely roleplayed since then. I wrote many thousands of posts to make the Guild's first members think they weren't the first members.

Fast forward over a decade and I now understand why ThornBreed was never around. I'm 29 now and every year it gets more and more expensive to devote time to the forum, but I look at it as a charity since roleplaying was so enriching to my youth. Every time someone gets mad that I'm not around, I see my own self 13 years ago. I would've never guessed how much effort it would take to bootstrap a forum, that's for sure. Definitely not something I will ever have energy for again.

Of course, in Dec 2013, the Guild was deleted. And having no job/money, I thought it would be cheaper to build it myself. But I underestimated the effort it would take. Though I finally got the Guild's monthly expenses down to almost $100/mo while it used to cost $400-500/mo when it was on vBulletin. After an incredible amount of work (github.com/danneu/guild) the Guild is still missing relatively basic features people expect from a forum.

These days I'm always wondering if it makes more sense to continue work on my custom forum software or finally migrate to something like Xenforo. I wish I could peer into a parallel universe where I use Xenforo and see how much money I'm spending and how much happier Guild members are.

Every once in a while I create an alt account and try to roleplay to force myself to use the forum I've built. It helps me experience the forum's sharpest pain-points first hand, like the atrocious editor. But I think I roleplayed enough for two lifetimes back when I first started the Guild and it just doesn't seem to be an interest I can claw back.

Hold the phone, here.

Our wonderful @Mahz pays to host the site out of his own pocket?!

I never realized someone had to pay for the forum, because before RPG, I used forummotion and proboards, so I just figured RPG was free like those.

Dude, you just got so many extra brownie points with me.

Thank you for everything that you do for the guild.

@Ruby

What's one Rp that helped shape you into the writer that you are today?

@Ruby

What's one Rp that helped shape you into the writer that you are today?

Ha. My writing is a downward trend in the past few years, but that aside...really hard question.

Probably one of those advanced Game of Thrones RPs. A lot of collaborative posts=a lot of practice with dialogue, and IRL I'm told dialogue is something I do really well. Plus it was one of the last times my close knit group of Guild friends was still active and around me. I've been losing people steadily since then, and me being me, I just don't even try to replace those kinds of Guild friends. lol

What about you? One that stands out to you?

<Snipped quote by HaleyTheRandom>

Ha. My writing is a downward trend in the past few years, but that aside...really hard question.

Probably one of those advanced Game of Thrones RPs. A lot of collaborative posts=a lot of practice with dialogue, and IRL I'm told dialogue is something I do really well. Plus it was one of the last times my close knit group of Guild friends was still active and around me. I've been losing people steadily since then, and me being me, I just don't even try to replace those kinds of Guild friends. lol

What about you? One that stands out to you?

For me it would have to be one of the first ones that I joined on the Guild - It was a RP full of some of the most awesome roleplayers' that I respect and admire. It pushed me to writing on a Casual level. The other players as well as the GM held each other to high standards. It was the first time that I had really made a 'detailed' character sheet as well. Seeing the way that they wrote, how much they wrote, and what they wrote, made me want to be a better writer. Up until I joined this RP, I was doing one line shit posts on another forum. xD

<Snipped quote by Ruby>

For me it would have to be one of the first ones that I joined on the Guild - It was a RP full of some of the most awesome roleplayers' that I respect and admire. It pushed me to writing on a Casual level. The other players as well as the GM held each other to high standards. It was the first time that I had really made a 'detailed' character sheet as well. Seeing the way that they wrote, how much they wrote, and what they wrote, made me want to be a better writer. Up until I joined this RP, I was doing one line shit posts on another forum. xD

Nothing wrong with one line shit posts, but I'd agree: this hobby is the most fun when you're interacting with new people that can maybe become old people, when it's more a collaborative effort than a competitive one. When you find someone that blows you away in the best possible way. Thanks for the question.

<Snipped quote by HaleyTheRandom>

Nothing wrong with one line shit posts, but I'd agree: this hobby is the most fun when you're interacting with new people that can maybe become old people, when it's more a collaborative effort than a competitive one. When you find someone that blows you away in the best possible way. Thanks for the question.

I have this kind of philosophy when it comes to art. Finding people who push you to be better (even if unintentionally) are awesome. Anything that causes you to improve yourself in a measurable way is hard to argue with.

#truestory

How do you guys feel about people using real-life photographs as faceclaims or other appearance imagery? I personally think it's kinda off-putting and don't really like it. What're your thoughts about it? Especially considering sometimes people using real-life photographs for 18+ RP's? Could the guild get into trouble for something like that?

How do you guys feel about people using real-life photographs as faceclaims or other appearance imagery? I personally think it's kinda off-putting and don't really like it. What're your thoughts about it? Especially considering sometimes people using real-life photographs for 18+ RP's? Could the guild get into trouble for something like that?

I generally don't care too much. As long as the images comply with our PG-13 rating, then no harm, no foul. Now, that said, we have had instances with people using illustrations/paintings/photographs apparently without specific permission(s) and the artists have come and asked us to remove the images, which we happily do. We always encourage people to try and vet all their sources for things, but we have to rely on the community (or the artists themselves) to police this for us as there's no real way for us to search everything that's posted on the forum.

But reaction gifs...?



They can be fun. Sue me.

Sugarplum faeries, sugarplum faeries...

Yay!, necropost here I come :D

So @Ruby, my question to you is:

What kinds of characters do you generally like to play, and are they anything like you, or do you tend to go way off the charts with regards to personality?

@starkwhat do you think of tony stark: iron man

i just got issue 1 today i liked it

@starkwhat do you think of tony stark: iron man

i just got issue 1 today i liked it

Oh, that new one? I haven't read it, actually. It's been a while since I last picked up any comics.

@starki recommend it strongly. it only has two issues.