by Kai » Fri Feb 22, 2008 2:46 pm
I'm active at both Hidden Realms and Chaos Theory. On HR I play Myrnal and Elhadron, while on CT I'm Alema Nilim and Shakti.
Hidden Realms does have a detailed setting, but it's not actually too much more detailed than, say, Gaera is. If you look at Gaera's wiki entries, we have a hell of a lot of info to learn as well. It's just that more parts of the setting get used on HR(which is an attraction for me), which means that you do have to know more if you want to roleplay in more than one place.
Also, the rules are there because they do have an application process. For a forum like RPGWW that's both less active and less focused on RP than HR, an application process would be the stupidest thing ever. However, HR is active enough that they can dedicate staff to the express task of ensuring people aren't running around with half-assed ill-written godpowerful superassassin sun-worshipping dark elves with poisons that can make your head explode with blood. I've seen enough sillyass things apped that I'm actually kind of glad that everyone I play with there has had to prove they're willing to put some thought into what they're doing. It's not a difficult requirement to meet, but having that one small hurdle weeds out a lot of people I'd rather not RP with anyway (and as you can see, I've exported my old RPGWW elitism with me to HR).
On Hidden Realms you do switch subforums when you switch locations, which was really annoying to me at first. Now I can kind of see why you might do that. It's an incentive to use all your locations (since you can tell by looking which have gone unused for a while), and a way to see what else is going on in the same area as your plot. Sometimes this makes it easier for people to meet up or whatever.
Quality of RP at HR tends to be very good, and I've been both a player and a GM there for over a year now. Setting is a little grittier than Gaera (as evidenced by the fact that my dark elf character actually does have people who want to kick his ass on sight, as opposed to the open-minded and egalitarian Doma Capital where Gaerans tend to end up).
HR doesn't have as strong an OOC community as RPGWW does unless you're able to hang out in the IRC room. The rest of what goes on tends to be spam threads that hold little interest for me, so I hang out with the staffers on IRC and that's enough.
Chaos Theory is a Star Wars forum that split off from The Gungan Council. Some of you may recall from my LJ the insane explosion of drama and general assholery at TGC, and at the end of it a lot of people left to form Chaos Theory (myself included). It's not as active as TGC (RP-wise it's on a par with RPGWW as far as the usual number of threads) and the OOC community is pretty strong. There's also a general vibe among the members that they've had enough drama kthx, so keeping things casual and friendly is a priority. I'd recommend this if you're looking to write with people who're good at RPing, but don't tend to take themselves too seriously.
At both of these sites you have to make a new account for each character you play (though due to ezboard douchefuckery this rule is being eased at CT because I don't think they really care), and while at HR nobody worries about people knowing who they are, at CT it's more common to keep your alts a secret. I've never bothered with this and don't really care, but some people like to keep that anonymity.
Islands of Elements I'm only passingly familiar with. I visited their forum once because a friend asked me to advise them on things like forum layout. They took a couple of my suggestions, but I haven't checked back since (since being on three RP forums is quite enough for me).
I hope that offers people some more general info about the affiliates I've checked out.