Alleria was my start way back when. Also known as Aeylria depending on who you ask. That's the grandaddy of all forum roleplay, I think it goes back to the 80's, but its gone through many rises and falls. You might still find a wiki article under one of those names. Some of the old members I remember here came from there. I wrote a Black Jagara warrior katta named Paareth. Who I have tried to restart several times, and somehow here on Chaos ended up as a sith alchemized monster (but maybe i'll redo that!)
The experience there was structured. I loved how the whole kingdom/board ran under a set of laws that bound it loosely together. It was also a bit more technical, in that you had to keep track of your prized items and gold. (A lot of early forums did that.) Which is just busy work mostly unless it could be automated these days.
I had a Charon and also a Sith I believe was called Saareth but I can't remember exactly, on very old star wars boards, where Sorcha and Dale did some amazing early Sith roleplay. Sorcha inspired Kiara and Niaana for their madness and dead gardens. That place was short sharp replies, like much of older starwars roleplay, and sometimes threads would explode quite often, as OOC/IC was more mixed on many early sites.
Although there were ancient starwars muds and mushes that inspired the fandom to stay alive before the prequels, and I fully believe without that we would not have got the prequels. I do remember a certain board run by a big gungan
which was fun for a time. Then there was swrpg which I designed the Keth family saga, and a few characters who I now write as NPCs or dead force ghosts. A lot of people here writing came from there. I have tried longer-format posting on some forums but found it too introspective from a singular character.
SWRPG was relatively strict, and thus a lot of early Keth I had to build in the hurdles to him. Basically constantly being restricted became his character, never able to really grow beyond that fight or resistance inside of him. It worked quite well, but it was limited in my opinion. Also back then I was going through it irl, so I was naturally testing the status quo more often.
I did a spell on Mizahar twice, I still like the lore there, savage by nature. But I find the admins somewhat too strict over lore mistakes, I may be an old writer but I have 15,000 lores and characters in my head to balance; that's what I felt like replying when they said - I expect better!
over a lore slip up in a new character bio. I wrote a cop in a vampire world once, that was memorable. I forget the board. To me it offered a lot of narrative hooks just by design. The players there really tried to engage each other in larger stories, which, honestly, I feel chaos lacks sometimes by its factional design. - I think this comes from the Vampire the Masquerade session 0 inspiration, but it can lead to "Aha, you're my sister, and "Aha, you're my sisters second cousins former roomate!
I have at times here felt at odds missing both a character's wanted area and/or scratchpad. - The LFG is good, but i've almost never seen it used as a way to advertise for specific characters that would tie into people's stories. Because its factional by design, so its usually for stories or for factions to generate interest, fitting the board's nature, of course.
I've tried running two or three boards myself, the most serious of which got very popular for a short time. Revolving around nobility and titles, and very high drama as it evoked real-world focus and history, with players fighting over forums/sub forums (and thus titles). Done in a feudal hierachical form.
So when Germany invaded France, the French players were not happy, and I had messages a mile long in my inbox about the results of the battle. I wrote a Saxon king of England, who the Normans were trying to oust. Although it was a great deal of fun, with people writing a large wikipedia of history on it to give it a connected, cohesive feeling, in the end it was too much drama, and moreover, I was threatened with a lawsuit by an American bank for using an English country flag in one of the many forum titles. - Wrap your head around that one!
Natoline, Glade is a very old character that's gone through many different versions on these forums, from thief to artist to orphan, etc. Much of that is played out in her now. Characters like Taiden also take inspiration from many of them. So i've taken pieces as i've gone. I've written on more forums but this is what comes to mind.
