Good news: forum RPs are back, I think!
Bad news: what the actual fuck is this web design? And yes, of course they're all infested with troons and adjacent to discord servers. Didn't even need to ask.
If this (
archive archive archive- all three are somewhat squished in the archive.org template so i'd recommend going to their original urls) is what the new age of forum RP is gonna look like, maybe the concept should've stayed dead. This shit is bloody unusable. Every single page lags like the dickens and the layouts are incomprehensible on PCs. I can't even capture the neverending cropped gifs scattered across these sites in the pictures i've linked but they're
everywhere.
Then again, this awful design could just be a side-effect of the fact that I immediately went looking for the most braindead mainstream franchises I knew for any hint of life from forum RPs as a whole. Maybe the more original stuff is a little better-looking- oh,
no...
...at least it's original? The sites stand out, I'll give them that. And i'm glad people in the modern day are using websites for roleplay
at all. I just wish the sites they made were more usable...
I'm going to link the best of these sites
here because I think it's genuinely well-made in comparison to the rest. It's still obviously a forum, but it's made with style and in a way that's very easy to read and interface with. Can't comment on the userbase- I'm just assuming it's full of the same types. No guarantees of quality if you, for whatever reason, wish to join.
All of these efforts seem to be rather new- I think the oldest site i've found is from 2021- and all seem to stem from tumblr, explaining the discords and interconnectivity. A lot of these sites have the same hundred-or-so affiliates and very little in the way of variety. Lots of grimdark or fluffy romantic shit with no in-between. This isn't a rabbithole yet, but I can tell that it might become one later down the line. Will be keeping my eyes open for any developments.