RuneScape Forum Archive

D F Angel

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Introduction

Nine years ago, I wrote Roleplaying Forums - A Eulogy . To my embarrassment, my dear old friend Gunslinger Z has bumped it to the front page. I wrote it when the Roleplaying Forums became fused with the Story Forums, and when I thought the forums were so slow they wouldn't survive. It is mostly filled with crude in-jokes from my teenage years, when I rolled with a roleplaying crew that called themselves The Ladz.

As the forums are now coming to an official end - I was only a decade off in my prediction - I thought I would write something a tad more meaningful this time around. There are many forums, and most of them die. I don't want to spend much time talking about internet culture as a teenager; the constant deceit about your identity, the awkward bravado as you try to maintain the false persona you've crafted, etc., because you can get that anywhere.

I want to write about the particular peculiarites that the Runescape Roleplaying Forums gave birth to. A meaningless time capsule, but one that hopefully some readers may be able to relate to in some fashion.

Off Topic
When I started roleplaying in 2005, the Roleplaying Forums already existed. However, there was a primordial era before the founding of the Roleplaying Forums where you could still find roleplayers occupying the Runescape Forums. Instead, they were based in Off Topic.

My dearest Triamilos, (known latterly as Loaned Shark) has roleplayed here since 2003, in the times before the Roleplaying Forums even existed. The diligent roleplayers of the Off Topic forums had to compete against every other topic one can find, forming a micro-community in an inhospitable locale where they were lucky to find likeminded people. Hags be hagglin', gods be god damn crazy, it's all happening ogre at Into The Fire

23-Jan-2024 22:37:51

D F Angel

Posts: 19,604 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Eventually though, the sheer scale of roleplayers in the Off Topic forum threatened to overwhelm all of those good topics that the other Subforum uses were obsessed with, such as 'whats your favourite film' and 'what's the weather like' and other such important pieces of dialogue. As such, a separate forum was made and a great migration took place.

The Golden Tyrant
The Roleplaying Forum was created and curated by Jagex's Mod Mark H. Mod Mark H was a participant in forum roleplays, though less frequently as the years went on. They also organised an in-game roleplaying event once that at least 100 users turned up to, which was far too many to make any sense as a roleplay and essentially melted down into people wanting to say hi to the celebrity moderator. There was no second ingame roleplaying occasion.

Mod Mark H was, by the older and cooler posters, called the 'Golden Tyrant' due to the fact he had to enforce the rules. I was too young to know what tyrant meant, and too stupid to google it, but thought that due to its similar spelling to tyrannosaur must mean it was some kind of cool dragon. I shudder to think how many hundreds of times I called Mod Mark H a tyrant, thinking I was paying them a compliment.

Mod Mark H was the architect of the Roleplaying Discussion thread (more on that later,) and doubtlessly was behind appointed several active roleplayers to the position of Forum Mod, amongst them Nauset, Innue, Naltir and Treefrog. The Forum Moderators (FMods) of old were pillars of the community and truly understood the forums. When Mod Mark H left, and the FMods as well, the Roleplaying Forums started being policed by Fmods who didn't know the rules of the subforum and lead to countless bad calls. Hags be hagglin', gods be god damn crazy, it's all happening ogre at Into The Fire

23-Jan-2024 22:38:25

D F Angel

Posts: 19,604 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Mod Mark H was the custodian of good roleplaying, and was treated far too harshly by moody teenagers in search of an authority figure to rebel against. Their official role in the company was Community Management Representative, which they held from September 2005 until May 2011.

Known in real life as Mark Hulmes, those interested in video games, board games, and particularly Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) will likely recognise Mod Mark H from Yogscast, their guest appearance in Critical Role Campaign 2 as Calianna, or as the Dungeon Master of long-running D&D web series High Rollers.

Role-Playing Discussion
In the Golden Age, (more on that later,) you could expect several thousand users on the Runescape Forums at any one time, and over 130 on the Roleplaying Forums specifically. There was a fleet of 2000 Fmods, several of whom were based almost solely in the Roleplaying community. But roleplays are for posting in character, and people needed a space to be out-of-character.

Of course, there are ways to post out of character in a thread. Some people use the simple ooc: followed by what they wish to say. There were some that frowned upon this practice though, and quite heavily (most teenagers hold very strong views about things of little consequence). For the more refined roleplayer, the ((double brackets)) could be utilised.

Still, there was sometimes a lot that needed to be said that could get in the way of the actual roleplaying. And so the Role-Playing Discussion thread, the RPD, was born. The RPD was home and hub for the roleplaying community, where everyone came to share ideas of new roleplays, trial out character concepts, or litigate with others whether their character was allowed to hit another person's character or if this was rule-breaking, (more on that later). Hags be hagglin', gods be god damn crazy, it's all happening ogre at Into The Fire

23-Jan-2024 22:39:01

D F Angel

Posts: 19,604 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The RPD was typically made by Jagex Mods (Jmod), first Mod Mark H but latterly by others such as Mod Kalaya. The advantage of a Jmod creating the RPD was that they could sticky it to the top of the forum, but also change the thread so it no longer had a word limit. However, this was a problem.

You see, the RPD was one of the most popular threads on the entire Runescape Forums. Unlike other subforums, most roleplayers used the forums primarily and played the actual game secondary . This meant there was far more activity, and that instead of socialising ingame people would do so on the RPD.

Now, because it was so popular, it would get into the tens of thousands of posts very quickly. And this happened with such regularity that it was actually causing significant issues for the Runescape Forum Servers in general as, (so the Jmods tell us,) great amounts of data was being used to host this particular thread. Jmods and Fmods alike tried to crack down on off-topic posts, but there were easy work-arounds such as having your first sentence be roleplaying related, ('I'm thinking of making a new rp') and then the rest unrelated, ('so who is a fan of baseball?') and simply waiting until the limited mods went to bed.

In the end, Jagex took the decision to axe the RPD.

This led to an interesting period where forum users were allowed to make their own RPD, as the 2000 post cap would still be in place. Fmods would also sticky the current RPD. In this era, it was quite common for an RPD to reach 2000 posts in the space of a single day, sometimes two or three in a day. It was a high honour if you got to be the person who made the next RPD. I held that honour only once. Hags be hagglin', gods be god damn crazy, it's all happening ogre at Into The Fire

23-Jan-2024 22:39:34

D F Angel

Posts: 19,604 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

After some years of this and other nonsense, Jagex eventually relented and Mod Kalaya introduced the Roleplay Community Home. Unlike the RPD, the Community Home (which everyone immediately called the RPD,) would allow casual chit-chat so long as there was the pretence of some roleplay related talk every so often. Peace was restored. Though the Commuity Home would never match the RPD in might - for most of the frequent talkers will have already migrated onto other platforms, (more on that later).

As you will see, the Roleplaying Forums were later merged with the Story Forums and the Community Home fused with the Story Discussions thread, to create the Story and Roleplay Chat Thread. Still, in some circles, called the RPD. It was made in July 2015, and in one day will close forever.

Uncodified Constitution

Before I engage in more history, I want to set out the lay of the land. Each of the Runescape Subforums had their own rules, and the Roleplaying Forums were no different. However, unlike most of the other Subforums, the rules of the Roleplaying Forums were mostly unwritten.

There was an easy reason for this; roleplayers in those days were extremely litigious. They would argue their case all day against a moderator, and cite whatever precedent had been made before. That being the case, there were many rules that users of the roleplaying forums knew to be rules which they stuck by - or could be punished for - but which were never written down.

This wasn't terribly an issue when the Fmods were all roleplayers, but once the old crowd had handed in their green crowns it was left to Fmods with less familiarity with the subculture to intervene on matters. The subforum rules, which had not been updated in six or seven years, would give them faulty advice. This would lead to countless arguments, and eventually Jagex scrapped individual subforum rules altogether. Hags be hagglin', gods be god damn crazy, it's all happening ogre at Into The Fire

23-Jan-2024 22:40:18

D F Angel

Posts: 19,604 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

I don't have any good anecdotes about this; I just felt it important for posterity's sake for people to understand the anarchic nature of things.

Through the Ages
At one time, as previously stated, you could expect 150 users on the Roleplaying Forums at once. A thread could be born, live and die in the space of hours, reaching its 2000 post cap. People would often talk of the 'ages' of roleplaying, so I put them here for posterity.

The Golden Age of Roleplaying was, invariably, a glimmering era that ended roughly three months before you started posting. It was the era that all of the older roleplayers who had been there a few more years than you would recite as the best of all. In my time, the Golden Age was often considered 2003-2006.

The Silver Age of Roleplaying, then, was the age that you yourself joined. You would be far too humble to consider yourself one of the greats, but the times were still good. You would have been part of the last generation of people who truly knew roleplaying, before the kids came in and ruined it all. By my reckoning, the Silver Age of roleplaying ended around 2010.

Therefore the Bronze Age was the generation after you, the kids who didn't know any better. By my reckoning, that's all of the people who are likely to be reading this. The truth of the matter was, of course, that people simply grew up and wanted to write more complexly and were affronted that others were younger and still writing simplistically. This wasn't their fault; they just hadn't been around long enough.

It was also the case that the forums had a natural hum and flow to it. The Brits would come online around 4pm (their time), have steady roleplays, then the excitement would build around 10pm when the Americans in their legions would come storming in to post. On a school night, a British roleplayer could wake up to find a hundred pages of story had been and gone. Hags be hagglin', gods be god damn crazy, it's all happening ogre at Into The Fire

23-Jan-2024 22:40:51

D F Angel

Posts: 19,604 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

There was also a sizeable Aussie contingency that started their day when the Americans were going to sleep and ended their day when the Brits began to start theirs - I do wonder how curious this ecosystem was to them.

At any rate, I think a better measure of time on the forums would be to consider the Roleplaying Forums in two eras; Before and After Alpha Base.

As I say, in the old days you could expect 150 users on at once. Those numbers dwindled as the years went on, until suddenly there was a hit. Alpha Base. To its detractors, it was a roleplay about nothing which stole directly from Dr Who, Star Wars, and anything else it could, (using trademarked material was long-banned by Jagex who feared copyright strikes - though what company would copyright strike a roleplaying forum post by a ten year old?).

To those who were on Alpha Base though, it could only have been the greatest thread to ever exist. This was the last thread to be so popular that it could routinely run past the 2000 post mark, oftentimes multiple times in a single day. There must have been a hundred Alpha Bases across 10 years - to this day I have no idea what an Alpha Base is, whether it was under threat or a sanctuary, whatever. But it must have been the greatest roleplay to ever exist.

Disapora
Sometimes people got banned. For swearing, for sauciness, for general malcontent behaviour. But more often, people simply wanted more. A place to roleplay where they could be a Jedi or a Time Lord without risking an Fmod's ire. A place to be romantic, or gory. Or, more often than not, to be a place for the elites only away from the noobs. Hags be hagglin', gods be god damn crazy, it's all happening ogre at Into The Fire

23-Jan-2024 22:41:32

D F Angel

Posts: 19,604 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Splitter forums were a dime a dozen in the olden days. They were typically free websites, InvisionFree or ZetaBoards or the like, where people would make their own bespoke, dedicated roleplaying sites and invite their friends. When Jagex created FunOrb and had its own Forums, a sizeable contingency of roleplayers (RPers) decided to settle on that forum instead.

Ultimately, these new forums would die as they couldn't recruit and the RPers who considered themselves better posters were also much lazier and couldn't keep up their post quota. Some of these forums, such as Eternal Tears and Silver Glass, actually lasted years and became their own unique eco-systems.

The greatest diaspora of all, however, was to talk. MSN Messenger was the premium chat service of the day; anonymous and unconnected, formed in the days before social media. To be in the in-crowd you would have to be on MSN, and have added all of the roleplayers of your clique and beyond. There were various 'big chats', where dozens of roleplayers would at once converse. I was part of a big chat that lasted from 2008 to 2012 with little interruption, people talking day and night.

There were other platforms such as Skype that were less popular but still used. The transfer from RPD to MSN, where people could talk freely without having posts hidden for being off-topic, was one of the early death-knells of the forums. Having instant access to all of their friends, RPers became less interested in posting on the forums. It is hard for me to think of any person I had on MSN who continued to be a prolific poster once they had made the jump.

MSN Messenger shut down in 2014. I was there on the final day. It represented a great part of my personal life and development over the course of seven or eight years. That is a tale best left for the Ladnuals. Hags be hagglin', gods be god damn crazy, it's all happening ogre at Into The Fire

23-Jan-2024 22:41:53

D F Angel

Posts: 19,604 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

[b]Genres of Roleplay[/b] Any cataloguing of roleplaying would be remiss to not mention the various genres that have always permeated these forums. I will try to be succinct. [i]Slice of Life[/i] - The Inn Thread, a staple of pre-2010 roleplaying, where people sat around and had conversations. Probably an answer to the no-ooc rules of the RPD. [i]Romance[/i] - The High School Thread - never advertised as such, but everyone knew what the game was. Lots of 'let's take this ingame' posts (I was never so lucky). [i]Things I've Seen on TV[/I] - The ever faithful Avatar rip-offs, the Space Wars, etc. [i]Anime[/i] - Traditionally the Ninja Thread, but in later years the anime-influenced roleplay took many forms [i]Fantasy[/i] - The 'I watched Lord of the Rings' roleplay [i]Anime Fantasy[/i] - The form most roleplays take. You never can tell whether the thread owner, or half the RPers, are trying to be medieval, western, true-to-life fantasy characters, or whether they are trying to be anime characters. I always wonder differently people see threads between the two factions who are both imagining different genres for the exact same content. [i]Wolf Threads[/i] - I joined a few of these purely to understand what on earth they were about. To this day I am puzzled. You were just a wolf. You had a pack. And you, ran around? There was a cohort of RPers that only ever joined wolf threads. I am sure they were happy. [i]Elitism[/i] - Incredibly popular and best eulogised with Roleplayer Island; a thread where each 'pro' RPer would choose a genre of roleplay to be the 'master' of and teach 'noobs' how to RP better. No one except the elites joined. It had no audience. It died. Hags be hagglin', gods be god damn crazy, it's all happening ogre at Into The Fire

23-Jan-2024 22:42:36 - Last edited on 23-Jan-2024 22:43:30 by D F Angel

D F Angel

Posts: 19,604 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Combat Roleplaying - Arguably a sub-genre of elitism, Combat Roleplaying was the etiquette of engaging in RPer to RPer combat. An artform unto itself, the Roleplaying Forums had a permanently stickied thread, The Arena, where people created characters purely to fight other characters. For every two posts there, another twenty would be on the RPD litigating whether an attack was legal or not.

Split and Fusion
As the Roleplaying Forums started on the Off Topic Forums and outgrew its welcome, so too did a subgenre start on the Roleplaying Forums and eventually spawned its own place. Ingame Roleplaying; the act of logging into Runescape and using the game features to enact your actions.

Threads that were ingame roleplays would mark their title with [IG], and they became so prolific that it was seen as cumbersome to the Roleplaying Forums as a whole. As such, the Ingame Roleplaying Forum was created. Like the diaspora to MSN, this sundering of the communities so that little cross-pollination would occur is, to my mind, another of the many death knells of forum roleplaying. Many people once started in one of those communities and then dabbled in the other; I am uncertain this took place subsequently.

In the mid 2010s when the forums in general had slowed down, due to the slowing down of interest in Runescape, due to the invention of social media, and of websites such as reddit, tumblr, etc. where information could be readily spread, it was eventually decided that the dying Roleplaying Forums would be combined with the dead Story Forums. Hags be hagglin', gods be god damn crazy, it's all happening ogre at Into The Fire

23-Jan-2024 22:44:47