Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Ruby
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Ruby No One Cares

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Ask me anything (site related). If you'd prefer to speak in private, PM me. I promise to listen and at least give a half-way decent response, or at least try.

Some ground rules:

1) Talk to me, don't address anyone else. At best I will delete the violating posts. At worst you will earn an automatic 24 hour site ban.

2) Don't shitpost, don't try to turn it into a meme-fest. At best I will delete the violating posts. At worst you will earn an automatic 24 hour site ban.

3) Don't openly criticize specific users. Don't even veiled/generally criticize specific users. Wanna do that, PM me.

4) Rules still apply, most specifically don't openly discuss bans, past or present. You can ask about them in PMs if you like.

I'm well aware this could turn into a flaming mess very quickly, hence the rules above, but I'd like to give most folks at least a chance.

So...RIP me.
Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Ruby
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Can I just say...the responses I've gotten about stuff people ALMOST posted if not for the rules.
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by BrokenPromise
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What inspired you to make a topic like this, @Ruby?
Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Ruby
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What inspired you to make a topic like this, @Ruby?


Met a Guild member who I'd never met before in a private Discord server, got to talking and once they realized I was site staff they had some questions.

I imagined they wouldn't be the only such person, so why not an OOC thread that people can drop questions in from time to time? Already gotten a few questions in private, so already not such a horrible idea...but it's early yet. Disaster could still strike.
Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Dolerman
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@Ruby Which section of the guild do mods spend most of their time 'watching'?
Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Ruby
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@Ruby Which section of the guild do mods spend most of their time 'watching'?


Depends on the Mod.

I can't say for sure for anyone but myself, but considering Rilla still runs Arena, and Stark is a Spam lifer I'd say it's likely they keep active eyes on those sub-forums.

I like to peruse Advanced and Casual, along with their interest checks, but that's more just my enjoyment of RP and the writing of others than it is policing a sub-forum. As a general rule we don't go searching for rule violations, we respond to reports sent our way. The community will more or less police itself most the time, is the idea.
Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Exit
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...Technically site related?

Would you be willing to divulge the story of your journey to us? What introduced you to RP and ultimately to this site? Just to this site. The road to moderator is probably another story.

If it's too personal, you can forgo an answer (or pm me?). I only asked here because I thought others might be interested too.

It'd also be nice if we can get an answer from the other Mods.
Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Ruby
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...Technically site related?

Would you be willing to divulge the story of your journey to us? What introduced you to RP and ultimately to this site? Just to this site. The road to moderator is probably another story.

If it's too personal, you can forgo an answer (or pm me?). I only asked here because I thought others might be interested too.

It'd also be nice if we can get an answer from the others Mods.


Ha, sure.

I was always a writer, since I was a little kid creating my own stories and using lots of construction paper and glitter to make them into books. (Yeah I'm a nerd.) My dad was a stealth super nerd, and I worshiped the ground the guy walked on as a kid. I can recall going to comic conventions and seeing stuff like the never-released Fantastic Four movie (because it WAS that bad), watching Star Trek every week with him, going through his comic collection, etc.

So I'm a nerd, and I write. The roleplaying didn't come in until later in life, when I was around 20. I had a job (lifestyle?) that was on the extreme scale of tempo and stress: I worked on the flight deck of a US Aircraft Carrier, assigned to a squadron in a very intense part of the world (South China Sea region). One day after a 14 hour day, covered in heat rash, reading a book (my "rack" was called The Library because I was on the top bunk and used the ship hull nooks and crannies around me to store quite a lot of books delivered by Amazon) when I decided I wanted to write.

Normally just writing was enough for me, but that isolated from society, just sitting down to write on a laptop word document wasn't doing it. I had SEEN Roleplaying online before, but it was never something I tried. It was all chatrooms and "taverns", but I knew it was around. So I did a few internet searches, and after looking at enough websites I came across the Guild. I signed up, proceeded to join a medieval adventuring RP (go figure), and played that until it died about a month later. I then didn't return to the Guild for the next six months, and probably didn't think I ever would honestly. I was back in Japan from deployment, friends and I were living it up, I was good.

Then on a duty weekend (when you're on watch standing status, or on actual watch, and can't go out and do fun things) I was just bored sitting in a barracks room one slow weekend morning and the book I was reading made me itch to write. Powered on the laptop, went to the Guild, remembered the password and...never left.

The Mod story is less involved, honestly. I was in the old IRC (I rarely went in--seems most RP-centric Guild members don't really go into site chats) and I don't remember the exact conversation, but Mahz was in there chatting, a joke was made about Ruby becoming a Mod, and he was all, "Yeah, sure." My brain went, "Wait, what?" I had never chatted with Mahz before, so it caught me off guard. He can't be serious, right? Apparently he knew of me. They needed some help at the time, so I thought it over for a few hours and sent him a PM saying, "Sure I'll help."

That's it.

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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Ruby
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...Technically site related?

Would you be willing to divulge the story of your journey to us? What introduced you to RP and ultimately to this site? Just to this site. The road to moderator is probably another story.

If it's too personal, you can forgo an answer (or pm me?). I only asked here because I thought others might be interested too.

It'd also be nice if we can get an answer from the others Mods.


I'm starting to ask fellow site staff to provide their story. Including someone we don't always hear from...

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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Exit
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@Ruby You're the best.
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@Ruby You're the best.


Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by stark
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Oh, hey guys. So this is a thing? Cool.
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by AlteredTundra
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@Ruby I might as well throw one at ya.

Do you personally have a feature that has been suggested that you'd like to see added? Or, if it already has been added, is there a feature on the Guild you'd like to see expanded upon? If so, then why?
Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Ruby
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@Ruby I might as well throw one at ya.

Do you personally have a feature that has been suggested that you'd like to see added? Or, if it already has been added, is there a feature on the Guild you'd like to see expanded upon? If so, then why?


Report/Flag button.
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Ruby
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I'm gonna sign off this thread for a little while. Feel free to leave questions; I'll get to them if/when I return, and of course other site staff may very well answer too.
Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by stark
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I'm gonna sign off this thread for a little while. Feel free to leave questions; I'll get to them if/when I return, and of course other site staff may very well answer too.


I'll take over for a bit.

People can feel free to ask me anything. (Non-RPG stuff is fair game -- I'm an open book, but don't break any existing site rules.)

Let's do this.



Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Mahz
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Would you be willing to divulge the story of your journey to us? What introduced you to RP and ultimately to this site? Just to this site. The road to moderator is probably another story.

If it's too personal, you can forgo an answer (or pm me?). I only asked here because I thought others might be interested too.

It'd also be nice if we can get an answer from the other Mods.


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.
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by skidcrow
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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!


the shaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaade

but thank you for the peek into the mind of the Mighty Mahz™
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Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Hank
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...Technically site related?

Would you be willing to divulge the story of your journey to us? What introduced you to RP and ultimately to this site? Just to this site. The road to moderator is probably another story.

If it's too personal, you can forgo an answer (or pm me?). I only asked here because I thought others might be interested too.

It'd also be nice if we can get an answer from the other Mods.


Roleplaying was something that my friends and I began doing unintentionally when we were children, ranging from running amok outside pretending to be our RuneScape characters to writing hilarious(ly bad) and surreal short stories to which we all contributed. Very similar to what @Mahz described. We all forgot about it and left that kind of 'playing pretend' by the wayside when we became older. You're all probably familiar with this -- we lost the infinite suspension of disbelief that children possess and picked up other hobbies instead.

In 2007, when I was 14 years old, I discovered a now-defunct website called Jurassic Park Legacy, or JPLegacy for short. Being a tremendous fan of the films (and a dino-nerd in general) at the time, I signed up. JPLegacy ran a wildly succesful and popular persistent world roleplay called Live the Legend, in which the players all assumed the role of a dinosaur roaming about on Isla Sorna, doing dinosaur stuff. Everyone did their best to keep it somewhat realistic so there was no dialogue at all, just vocalizations and the kind of pack or predator-prey dynamics you could expect in the wild. That said, I'm sure we all exaggerated the intelligence of actual dinosaurs because otherwise there'd be awfully little to write about. That was my first foray in play-by-post roleplaying.

That forum also had a more general roleplaying board, which was less popular but active enough for me to try my hand at several other fandoms like Star Wars and Halo. After about a year of this I thirsted for more and I turned to Google with the exact words (I still remember) 'roleplaying forum'. And just like today, the Guild was the first result that popped up back then in August 2008.

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.
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Hidden 6 yrs ago Post by Ruby
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A million thank yous to the admins for that.

I will finally have to stop hounding them (for like a day or two) now after coming through on this.



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