Ooh, join Roleplay Board...

Will this lead to new forum only multiverse spanning plots and encounters?

Who knows! Hey by the way!

And someone has to use all the O's and U's, they're there for a reason after all

I'm excited to have our forums merge, eager to read your writings, and hope to see some of you join our ongoing threads.

Me too! Welcome to everyone! ^_^

Glad to see (sort of) all these new faces. ^_^

I wouldn't worry about disrupting anyone's RPs with a sudden influx of people, it tends to kick things into high gear for a while. I don't see how we can't all co-exist as one big, happy, dysfuntional universe.

Can't wait to write with you guys.

Bonjour!

Nice to see that the US people are equally insane.

Of course, we may be able to share somewhat in the RP experience across the pond with the help of the MA.

Now where did I put my lovely picture of Cate Blanchett?!

Indeed, welcome one and all! We'll be happy to have you all here as our guests!

>.>

<.<

*Whisper* Say, uh, one of my parents is from London, can you guys spare me from the inevitable hostile takeover? Thanks.

*Considers challenging Rotten Luck...*


*Decides to just slip some nasty poison in his coffee*

Doesn't get much more unlucky than that.

*Twirls a fake mustache*

Blast, foiled again...

Speaking on behalf of the UK members, I'd just like to make it clear there's no evil British conspiracy. Never has been, never will be. It is not a movement to restore the British empire. Malta operatives are clearly nothing to do with this. God Does Not Save the Queen.

Move along.

I am also not plotting to launch an attack of hopefully funny, fluffy, sweet, bittersweet, lighthearted and generally nice stories upon the board. Or the dreaded alternate universe where Marcus Cole and Stephan Richter discovered the Well of Furries. Even if Stoatsman is a frightfully bad pun.

(One of those is a lie.)

Before the forum merger came about I did post a "Differences between EU and US RP forums" hmm me thinks I shall rehash it...just because!

Thread lengths: European RPers, sans the Galaxy Girl thread, tend to prefer shorter, more to the point, RP threads that have a clearly defined begining, middle and end, there's lots more of them for this reason but they rarely get past 30 pages. Advantage is that they never become too unwieldy and are normally related to an ongoing plot which is broken up into several threads, however this can make it harder for new faces to appear in the topic since it's probably already in mid-swing and they may not get a chance to do anything by the time the thread is officially ended.

In contrast American RPers appear to prefer the vast threads which contain a lot of backstory. While this means that these threads are never lost and newcomers can easily get involved due to their being no time limit, however they can imtimidating due to the offputting nature of the size and percieved problem of possibly not knowing enough to get involved (I admit this HAS put me off most of the big threads myself).

Big name Characters: Most of the EU Union community knows each other, very, very well thanks to a smaller pool of RPers, this has allowed some heroes, villains and groups to achieve a big name status within the Unionverse. The Court of the Blood Countess (Vampires, Werewolves, demons etc.) The Gang (Thugs and the Mafia) and The Corporation (Mercenaries and weapons dealers) are probably considered the 'big three' villain groups. Several independants have also become big threats themselves, Dr Mechano (yush me), Big Game (not a threat but a well known womanizing, tiger skin trouser wearing, fun loving mercenary), Battle Unit Omega (unstoppable alien death machine) and Colonel Blitzkrieg (the nicest faschist you're ever likely to meet, a former 5th Column member) along with the various gangs (Mercy Rogues, Freddies Crew (a group of high powered Skuls) and many others).

For example Dr Mechano on the EU is considered a big name villain for his simultaneous attack on three big name hero groups, two hero owned companies and the aformentioned big three villain groups, the attack were harmless pranks but they happened all at the same time, think of him as a not quite so psychotic Joker (it's a feat I'm particularly proud of because it took a hell of a lot of OOC planning to pull off). This along with his many large scale pranks on the city, where he normally addresses the City of Paragon through a Television hack at ungodly hours of the morning (literally I post in the early hours of the morning when doing them, so if it's 3am posting time, it's 3am when the attack happens)

The big name hero groups are the White Cats Abode (currently in in second version), the Unity Vigil and it's subgroup for teenage heroes, the New Vigilants, The Militia and The new Heroes Union. There are quite a few well known Heroes, Tiger White, Zortel, Grav Mistress, Red Commissar, Twilighter, Cindersnap, Richard Huntington (and family), Infinitron (version 2) and many, many others.

While on the US side of things, with so many people and such a wide community, it is obviously vastly harder to become a big player, since there are many others out there also vying for the same spot.

Galaxy girl: The Galaxy Girl thread, if you haven't checked it out yet (it is a bit quiet at the moment thanks to the holidays) is basically considered the premier place for heroes to meet, chat and otherwise relax after a hard days heroing, this was THE longest thread on the EU RP forums due to the fact it's been going for atleast 4 years, if not more (and this was the new version of it!). Pocket D does get RP but it isn't as prevelant as Galaxy Girl and is normally the reserve for villains and the occasional hero to hang out in.

That, my American and European Friends, is the differences I have noticed between EU and NA RP forums...thank you...and good night!

And for a little history of RP on Union (Having been there for the Alpha, and knowing me, will probably still be there for the Omega):

Unionverse: A brief history of time.

During the City of Heroes Europe Beta, a poll was run by Rockjaw on the Beta forums to determine which would be the unofficial RP server. Union was selected as this server.

In the begining of retail, there were two main supergroups with roleplaying at the core. The Society of the Phoenix was lead by Shadowplay, while the Real Heroes Union was lead by Templar. There were also unaffiliated heroes and some smaller groups. The wider diversity of RP supergroups came later on.

Towards the end of Febuary, I got drafted into the Society of the Phoenix on Zortel, my main. There had been arguments amongst the RP community players, including between members of the main two supergroups. Alongside this, a player from the Real Heroes Union, Prize, suggested a meet up of RP heroes in response to the uprising of the Council.

The chosen location?

Galaxy Girl Statue.

A wide range of heroes turned up, and after delivering a speach, The Prize roused heroes including War Crow, Fury, Shadowplay and others to head to Stirga Island to fight the Council in the Wolf's Throat.

Being Roleplayers, some were a bit too low level to fight in there, and some, such as myself, not even being able to enter the hazard zone.

The next night, another, more social gathering of roleplayers turned up. And the night after. And after that. The seeds had been set, and the player of War Crow (Ravenswing) created the first 9pm Under Galaxy Girl's Skirt thread.

From here, the roleplaying started to bloom, with more supergroups (including the Rooftop Generation, a group of mutants that liked to hang around and chat on a Kings Row rooftop eating Up and Away burgers), to bigger plots involving evil swords, industry, aliens, growing up angst and magic. The meetings originally lasted for an hour or two, and started to creep on into the night more.

Firsts for the RP community included the first collaborative writing project involving the death of Fusebox, where seven to eight players including myself contributed writing to the death of the teenage mutant. Of course, like any comic book universe, she soon got over death.

Groups were forged and broken up as 2005 pressed on. Every month there would be a Friday night party at the original Paragon Dance Party. Relationships were forged, intimacies were acted upon and rivalries and hatred surged.

2006 brought some calls to move the group elsewhere as the numbers surged, making chat difficult to follow at times, disagreements between players, as well as friendships and new groups. November 2005 brought a small group of the roleplayers together in real life for the first time at the Brighton Comic Con. Bristol Comic Expo 2006 brought a larger group together. Other comic events have been opportunities for the roleplayers to meet outside, as well as supergroup specific meet ups.

2006 also brought the first overarcing plot for the Unionverse, when a series of events lead to an alternate version of Requiem waging war on the Multiverse. Time intensive and stressful, it lead to both excellent roleplaying and some breakdowns between players, though the IC after effects have been lessened due to new influxes of players, players leaving and the permament game world.

In late 2006 a side project called Ultimate Galaxy Girl started, a forum based attempt at a reworking of the Paragon City universe. Active for a few months before he administration took its toll on the GM's, it had a small contingent of players, and some of the ideas and characters crossed back into the main universe.

We also got a new roleplaying thread. The old one reached about 11-12k posts of updates, banter, arguments and sillyness.

2007 and 2008 continued with the ebb and flow of roleplayers, the statue becoming insanely busy at times and less so at others, in a cyclical fashion. The newly arrived Pocket D drew in the opportunity for heroes and villains to mingle, and the Ski Lodge at Christmas Time tends to provide a gathering point for seasonal RP.

(As a note, a similar gathering like Galaxy Girl was attempted on Villains side, at the Clock Tower in Mercy Island, but Villains aren't as prone to meeting up to chew the fat in such a way.)

Wars were fought IC between hero and villain groups, as super groups teamed up to tackle threats and sometimes with sad consequences. The mad scientist Doctor Mechano let loose a new version of Superadine on the city, which rallied the heroes into action, and the Rikti war surged into life once more, bringing heroes and villains together to face a common foe, right into the heart of the war zone as major players from the big groups struck a blow right at the heart of the Rikti operations.

Groups such as the Silent Tempest continued to bring more global plots to the table, and into 2009 the cycle of Roleplay on the servers has begun again as old players come back, new players arrive and the groups begin to pick up once more.

All in all, GG and the Union server as a whole for roleplaying have had a lot of ups, downs, and darn strange events.

If I left anything out, please add some in. I'm only one person (With many alts) and this is just from one viewpoint, though I have tried to include things that I know about but didn't experience.

I say we keep rolling and see what happens. It would be nice to see you guys drop into some of our threads, and I'd like to see some of those "short arc" threads Mechano was talking about.

And don't be put off by the length of some of them, either. They're all still open to new people joining. Read just the first ten pages or so to get an idea of what the thread's about and read the last ten pages to get an idea of what's going on currently and you'll be more or less fine. If there's something more you need to know, look on that wiki I linked earlier and failing that, ask someone.

Hmmm... fair point, FFM. I actually hadn't considered that. I think that says interesting things about my unconscious playing of him, and how he wants to be perceived by people outside the times when he's putting the smackdown on the bad guys.

Food for thought, there.