Gaming Clans/Roleplay Groups

[dotmidi]

I've been looking at this one website I saw someone share that had a few archived Geocities sites and I found the fandom side of it very interesting, although we have still parts of this side of the internet, like "shrines". I do not see people really making roleplay groups or gaming clans anymore on neocities or similar web-revival places!

I find early roleplay culture very unique too, there are sites dedicated to one RPG world and would have pages for everyone's characters! Usually the leaders would be "Game Masters" so its not that far-off from a digital D&D campaign, I wonder if one day somebody will try and recreate a similar experience online like this, maybe not as Sailor Moon OCs though, like the website I was looking at.. 
As for Video Game Clans, think like StarCraft and QUAKE.. these were HUGE things to do where you would make a website and let people sign up to be in your clan to play time together and schedule events! Usually these had their own dedicated websites alongside banners for people to put on their own sites, I showed my dad some Clans I saw and he was wondering how I was even on this side of the internet since it was the exact kind of stuff he saw as a teen online.. he was even questioning whether or not he was in the StarCraft Clan I showed him that I found xD

Anyone have any experiences with Roleplaying and Fandom spaces during Geocities-era? I'm very curious as to why a lot of video game clans and roleplay groups died out, specifically ones where they dedicated websites to them. I'm well-aware that a lot of Clans and Roleplays are still out there but they are more modernized and .. don't make websites for themselves like they did in the past. I really feel like this untouched gold deserves to be resurfaced, I'll re-edit this post and link some old RP and Clan groups I found from GeoCities tonight down below to show what I mean!

[tarraxahum]

Okay hello I'm interested, that's not exactly a side of the old web I've ever stumbled upon

My first introduction to roleplays (or clans for that matter, although I haven't exactly joined one ever) were dedicated forums, and all the subsequent character pages and such were also generally stored there

I'm curious how it worked in the cases you're describing. As in, where was the actual roleplay taking place - in chatrooms? Over e-mails?  I'll be waiting for the links!

I miss all kinds of roleplays terribly, and everything has indeed changed so much (or maybe I'm just looking for wrong fandoms)

[Guest]

I've never interacted with what you're mentioning above, but I'm commenting to show interest also. Even if just to explore what used to be, so thank you for sharing this with us!

[debleb]

for what it’s worth, in final fantasy xiv it’s still pretty common for roleplay nightclubs and groups to have a dedicated website usually on carrd or something

[creaturefeature]

i remember lurking on vampire the masquerade roleplay forums, they usually were set in a city,  and would have their own rules like what edition they were using.

one that comes to mind, had wiki style pages for characters, and it was recommended that you roleplay your characters turning into a vampire first before you started the story properly.

also the forum had  categories dedicated to each section of the city, where you could created your thread.

roleplay there was a bit of a mix between more freeform roleplay and like dice. if you were confronting another person character, is that you another player would decided what skills you should role for, use a dice generator and then post the results for transparency.

There was a lot of advice, remember roleplay a good story is a lot more important than simply winning, and there was a emphasis on story collaboration.

I never made an accounts since I was still a bit insecure about my own writing, but I did enjoy reading the characters and plots people came up with

[Badgermein]

I wasn't around to experience the Geocities era of roleplay, but around the 2010s I enjoyed roleplaying occasionally on RP Nation and Chicken Smoothie if anyone knows what that is anymore, LOL! But I spent most of my time playing on a Redwall RP site. I can't recall if it was this, but either way I had a blast making characters and stuff. Another one I found that's been around for a while is Dibbuns Against Bedtime. I think RP on the internet in general has sort of become a less-traveled path, and obscure corner where fans of specific fandoms few and far between gather. I don't think many RP sites have the same amount of traffic they once had. But, I notice a lot of RP site where you can roleplay as a nation are still pretty popular, like NationStates.   

[tarraxahum]

I've been on RP Nation and it seemed pretty active, but I will say the general demographic there nowadays (or always?) seemed very focused on playing original characters, and I'm usually much more canon-oriented. I also personally wasn't really able to find my fandoms on the active 1-on-1 calls, and my own call got only one reaction (who asked to play an OC still), so that forum is either not for me orrrr I've just stumbled upon it at the wrong time. Perhaps I shall go back and see who's looking for who now.

(i'm also incredibly spoiled by awesome co-players in the past so looking for someone new is a challenge...  )

[dotmidi]

Hey guys! So I finally found one of the websites I was talking about, the website is restricted on some browsers for some reason so I'll give a tour of what I mean for the Roleplay Group aspect.

Here is the splash page, I began to realize that they treated themselves like RPGs which makes more sense since the online roleplay community wasn't as developed then.. Also, seems like this one was quite successful if they only had one RP spot left! xD Sometimes I wonder these people's reactions if I were to email them for a role..

I'm curious how it worked in the cases you're describing. As in, where was the actual roleplay taking place - in chatrooms? Over e-mails?  I'll be waiting for the links!

It seems they took place over email from these lists of rules I saw here! other websites i've seen them take it to forums but for the most part i don't think any of the rps i saw on geocity sites were taking place in chatrooms i wonder if that was out of their own choices or maybe it was limiting to them?


These RPG groups made on geocity seem quite comparable to a lot of gaming clans as well, with having "member lists" where people have pages to describe their characters , unfortunately this one did not archive the members and characters . And yes, they did call themselves GameMasters. seems as though RPs were more treated like a D&D campaign of sorts and I don't blame them! I quite like the idea, I hope this encourages someone to revitalize this kind of community and make their own RPG website.
It seems most of y'all understand what gaming clans are so that's goodd  i like to see that roleplaying communities still peaks some peoples interests!
Here are a few more to explore, most of them are fandom related but I would love to see one where people come up with a plotline..
https://www.geocities.ws/gokeatrpg/home.html
https://geocities.restorativland.org/TimesSquare (this is the site that has restriction issues due to safety reasons but there are a lot of good archived rpg sites)
https://forumroleplay.com/about/staff/
http://www.neko-machi.com/arpg/links.html
http://www.geocities.ws/ptcruisn56/page8.html

i feel like i would have loved to join the survivor RP as a kid honestly.
unrelated, but this is a website of a teacher talking about giving her kids roleplay enviornments http://www.geocities.ws/mydisplays/roleplay.html i remember having a similar experience as a kid and i quite enjoyed it.. maybe thats why i like to roleplay?

okay now.. what, what the fuck is this- i just found this by the way
https://h2g2.com/entry/A504028

e-wrestling..

for what it’s worth, in final fantasy xiv it’s still pretty common for roleplay nightclubs and groups to have a dedicated website usually on carrd or something

i had no idea, this sounds really cool i love it! i just think we should have more websites for these groups even if its on smthn like carrd

roleplay there was a bit of a mix between more freeform roleplay and like dice. if you were confronting another person character, is that you another player would decided what skills you should role for, use a dice generator and then post the results for transparency.

exactly what i realized within my research is that they implemented a LOT more RPG elements like this than we do nowadays