Ramblings of Converting A 20 Year Old RP to a New Site

[SataiRolePlayingGuy]

So, if you have been paying attention to the list of clubs with recent activity, you have probably seen (and in a small number of cases, joined) my ‘Ryouseiku Academy RP’ club.  It was a story that originated on Yahoo Groups (technically egroups, which quickly become Yahoo Groups) almost immediately after I turned 18, about 20 years ago.  It started as a girl’s school which happened to have a dueling system for the students (partially inspired by the anime series ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena’).  It was originally started by someone else, but the person who started it disappeared early on, and me and one other member made it go weird.  Introducing the supernatural and two main characters becoming Horsemen of the Apocalypse and causing a bloodbath.  The other person involved involved eventually disappeared on me, after probably around a year.

After that, it got a reboot, became coed, added rampant essentially free-use sex, but with some setting culture behind it and elaborating on the supernatural aspect, including a pantheon of gods and a Cold War of sort between them.  Also, continuing the Utena inspiration, a Student Council which enforces an almost authoritarian distopic power over the school.  And options to play in a post apocalyptic future, or semi-Atlantean past.  Got a few new members, but only one was truly long term.  Combined with the original story, we had about 15 years of writing.  Unfortunately, due to a combination of factors, there were a few years that I found it very hard to find time to write and it sort of screeched to a halt, to my regret.

About 1 year ago, I was finally working myself up to recommit to it, then Yahoo decided ‘hey, let’s shut down Yahoo Groups’.  Fortunately they provided materials for members to save all the group material, with an almost perfect success rate (of the many posts, there were something like 5 or 6 that did not seem to copy over correctly for me).  I suggested the other member that this was probably the best place to move it to and she agreed and joined the site.  We then needed to figure out to what extent to copy material over.  I have copied much of the setting information over, but not the actually story, extremely long as it is.

That is where it has stopped.  The other person last logged in in early January.  That delayed my efforts to put more time into it.  I have made one more attempt to contact her recently, and just have to hope her quietness has a more harmless reason, similar to mine (the timing of it compared to the pandemic start is the biggest thing making me more uneasy on that).  As I wait, I wrestle with what to do.

I am going to be generous in the time I give to see if she answers my latest email.  If she does not though, I have a few options.  Try to continue the existing story, with entirely new members other than myself.  Or reboot, keeping the setting, my characters, and some backstory, but resetting so much else.  I have begun writing stuff to help new members jump in, reboot or not.  But while a few have joined, there has been no activity other than my own.  Though of course there won’t be actual playing going on until the reboot question is resolved.

This is more about describing my usual situation here.  Though people can of course reply if they want.  I suspect I will be writing more on this, but not sure how often it will be.

[kingddude]

I go with option 2

[SataiRolePlayingGuy]

Since someone mentioned it to me privately.  Yeah, I would love to fix those asterisks on the front page and break up the paragraphs there (and do the same on my other clubs).  But club homepages work completely different than everything on the site, and I have never figured out the formatting need to put proper line breaks on those pages, whether you have to use some sort of code on those pages, or something else.

[SataiRolePlayingGuy]

My original inclination was to wait until at least close to the end of the month, but upon further thought, it is starting to feel like that is just delaying the inevitable, having been almost exactly a year now since I heard anything from my old partner.  At this point it is more likely that as soon as more people interested in playing it come along, and potential stories get worked out, that it will likely be rebooted.  May update the title page to address that soon (after spending a little more time to see if I can finally figure out how to break up paragraphs on those pages).

[SataiRolePlayingGuy]

The wall of text has finally been broken, the asterisk rows annihilated and the warning paragraph at the top revised.  At this point it is mostly just waiting for other people now and possibly continuing to make other OOC/lore posts as I wait for that.