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  • The Gungan Council usually had extremely short posts in its beginning. And by extremely short, having one or two sentences was perfectly fine. No one had to be very descriptive or technical. Discrepancies from Star Wars canon were shrugged off. As time went on, it grew more narrative heavy, with the average acceptable post then being around 200 words. Disregarding too much of the official canon would be unacceptable. And being more technical or descriptive in the action of combat posts is praised.
  • Survival of the Fittest started out... oddly, to say the least. Many handlers are surprised when they read all the way back to version 1, which was more lenient about realism and good writing than the current version. This results in seeing character concepts that wouldn't work nowadays but made it through in a previous version, or seeing deaths that would be laughed off if you tried them now.
  • Freedom City Play By Post had villain PCs and a much Darker and Edgier allowance.
  • Grand Journey came, over time, to be defined by characters with supernatural powers and a huge cast of revolving secondary characters. It can therefore be a little jarring to start from the beginning and read about a completely mundane army recruit named Albin Edrias and his best friend.
  • The Imperium Of Man Comes To Gensokyo started out in the Forum Games section, which explains why the first ten pages or so are filled with God Modding, Fandom Rivalry, Ass Pulls and other Author Avatars. Fortunately, this died out fast enough that actual plot could happen.
  • Off the Page and into Life began as a wacky humorous roleplay, featuring the hijinks of the teens and young adults of Pageson. Then the Reset Button was hit, and a darker plot and backstory was introduced, along with several new characters. The current storyline is surprisingly dark.
  • Dino Attack RPG:
    • It can seem strange reading Atton Rand's early posts, which at best were a rough summary of what was happening, full of contrived coincidences and artistic license in medicine (with his characters repeatedly suffering absurd injuries and recovering quickly) along with his three characters- Zenna, Axle, and Elizabeth- compared to his numerous NPCs now. Also his depiction in the LEGO Island arc of a very clear cut "realists are evil" ideology is noticeably different from his more recent posts, which are more morally gray and tend to be somewhat grounded in reality whenever possible.
    • Just read some of PeabodySam's early posts and try not to get weirded out. Most notably, the whole plot twist about a Mutant T-Rex being disguised as a Minifig. No wonder he later retconned so much of it. Also, compared to how much Darker and Edgier the RPG currently is, many of PeabodySam's early posts were very... childish. For example, the harshest insult that Fogel could come up with for Amanda Claw is "Mrs. Dumb-Mouth".
    • Heck, just read the early Dino Attack RPG in general. Minifigs turning into Toa? A villain from Sonic The Hedgehog? Rahaga in Exo-Force Mechs? Early-Installment Weirdness indeed.
    • Not exempt from some of the later posts. Andrew's "dark consciousness", anybody?
  • Originally, DC: United We Stand was called "The DC YouTube Verse", as it was created for a cosplay group to roleplay out the scenarios that couldn't be portrayed via YouTube videos. However, it has evolved beyond that, resulting in the name change.
  • Journal Roleplay as a whole is much different now than it was years ago. Roleplaying was done through LiveJournal as it was the only one that offered everything free. Many application processes focused more on if the player knew the history than if they knew the character's personality, and writing samples would be created wholecloth for the app, sometimes two (one first-person action or network sample and one third-person log sample), even in games that barely used the third-person log format. Over a decade later, most histories are now linked from wikis and samples have been replaced with links to threads the player has already played the character in.
  • Used in-universe in Airlocked, where the prequel, Round 4 in real life, was the titular Immoral Reality Show's "first season." Round 4/Season 1 is treated as the odd one out by the in-universe fans due to its Downer Ending, which serves to keep the later survivors from finding out that many of their loved ones were taken for that season and killed.
    • Also done out-of-universe: Round 1 was the only one without a peace week (though Round 4's peace week was a surprise when all the characters turned out to be Disappointed by the Motive) and Blaze Dudely was set up as an unrepentant villain until his character evolved behind the scenes, so when he finally appeared in person, he was a Tragic Villain, even in the prequel.
  • Both Pokémon-themed TVTropes roleplays We Are All Pokémon Trainers and We Have All Become Pokémon originated as goof-off threads with little plot beyond the self-explanatory titles. Before long, however, plot and worldbuilding started to creep in, and gradually both threads became the enormous, character-driven adventures with expansive settings that they are now.
  • NoPixel, famously known for being a Grand Theft Auto V-based roleplay server using the FiveM mod, started out as an ARMA III roleplay server.

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