In the early days of UO 1998-1999, there were 2 or 3 guilds that predominately roleplayed their chars. There werent many folks in those guilds, so they never showed up on the "top ten" list of guilds. They ended up going to roleplay facilities like that tower near yew (sheesh I cant remember the name, but I bet Ciara will know it).
I believe there were 3 or 4 "towns" that roleplayed some of their chars as well.
Unfortunately those players ended up leaving UO. I "technically" roleplay my main char (KingDavid) as the one true King of Sonoma, but I rarely roleplay ingame with that character.
Some of the fun history of UO is found in this post I made that has notes about PAS through each year of UO ...
http://peoplesarmyofsonoma.net/viewtopic.php?t=7296
The Sonoma Alliance was partially roleplay, partially not.
One of the funniest events of that Alliance of "good guy guilds" was the very first meeting. At the time, DeGuy of PAS and I as real life friends talked on the phone while we played UO. He told me he didnt like us accepting BLD as a guild because he thought their gm was a looney *smiles*.
I believe his name was Grunk, Half Orc. Anyways, I'm talking ingame at that first meeting of SA and Grunk starts emoting that he's looking at the guys armor next to him. Then he sees fleas and starts picking them off and eating them. Of course, DeGuy says on the phone, YEAH that was a good move to accept them!
The good part is BLD became very good friends with PAS, and Grunk and I had some fun adventures, where one or both of us roleplayed our chars.
I was sad to see that I hardly have anything on these forums about the Auburn Quest. I cant find anything on my computer here, so I'll summarize that event.
Auburn was a soothsayer that could see the future. One day he saw his death in the future and went mad, tearing up his diary that listed all the things that were going to happen in the future. He went around Britannia, tearing a page here, another one there, etc.
According to the KD story, when KD and PAS arrived at Sonoma, no one recognized KD as the King, nor did anyone recognize the other PAS. KD was sure that Lord British had cast a spell on the people to make them forget who KD and PAS was.
So KD recruited more and more PAS, and when KD heard the rumors about this madman named Auburn, he wanted to look for those pages, because if he could find the page that described Lord British and his spell, he might be able to find a way to break the spell, and could have evidence that Lord British did this.
So every so often, I would run an Auburn Quest event. I typically ran all the chars in the event, but every so often some other PAS would help me out.
I would meet with PAS at NJ and give them the first clue, then I would log KD out and log into chars that I had placed at various locations to talk to PAS and give them the next clue. It was a lot of work, but it became a very popular event.
We never have found that page yet btw.
Another fun roleplay we did with about 6 other UO players helping was the capture and then trial of Lord British. I believe we spent 4 or 5 events before we caught up with Lord British, and it was a char name that LB was known by in the old Ultima games.
When LB was caught, we had a judge, a prosecuting attorney, a defense attorney, a few jurors, and a few players playing witnesses that were called to the stand.
It was a blast, as it went 5 or 6 45-60 minute sessions before the judge declared him insane and ordered him to prison for life (so technically he was not innocent or guilty in the end).
The real fun part was nothing was scripted. Everyone just played their characters like they felt they would act, etc. So no one was sure of how it would end.
We had a dozen or so regulars that came along with PAS guards to the trial, and it was open to anyone to come watch.
Another roleplay we did was with our CSA (Cross Shard Alliance) allies. That's an alliance that I made by visiting other good aligned guilds on other shards. My goal was to get one guild on each server that was similar to PAS, and we would do things like cross shard trade with each other when Xmas gifts were out etc, and would do cross shard events.
The first cross shard we ran was a pirate invasion of Buc's Den. Our Nappa CSA allies were there (about 15 or so), plus 1 or 2 from another shard. They created noob pirate themed chars, and we had a house where we had stashed tons of pirate gear (cutlasses, skullcaps, etc)
We also had gm made purple pots, so they could at least do some damage. Anyways, I believe the story of that invasion is somewhere on these forums, but the short version is that pirates had their chests of gold (provided by PAS), and they were at Buc's Den to bury their treasure.
That's when a lot of reds hung out at Buc's Den, and we landed the pirates and the pirates started roleplaying their chars, and the reds were mouthing off etc, and then a red opened a chest and saw 60k gold and yelled THERES REAL GOLD IN THE CHESTS. Then the reds started looting the chests, and all the pirates started chunking their purple pots, and actually killed one or two reds. The best part was the panic by the reds, as they were all around the chests, and the pirates blocked some exits, so they started yelling OUTTA MY WAY and other fun things at each other.
Of course, once the pots were gone the pirates would surround a red and fight him, but the reds just laughed and killed them in 1-2 hits or spells.
I remember one guy yelling "Noob" when he killed a pirate, and another pirates yelled "We pirates have already drawn blood and sent 2 of yer mates to Davy Jones' locker!". Of course the red killed that guy in 1 hit and yelled "Noob" again rofl.
Then there was the Presidential cross shard event we supported in Sonoma. We asked players to create named chars for their presidential candidate (Bush, Gore and the other guy that was an independent hehe cant remember right now). Anyways, there was about 20 Bush, 20 Gore, and 10 of the independent.
We gave them a minute or so to yell threats and then we started the fight. Guys were sparring with each other to get their skills up right till it started. Then most of the Gores fought the Bushs, and the independents sat back and waited. I believe the Gores finally killed the Bushs, but by then they were down to like 4 guys, and the independents ran in and killed those 4.
What a blast!
Oh, and I have to mention the RMH (Red Monkey Horde). It was a guild of red noob chars that were archers, and when we killed people we only stole bananas and hats from the victims. this was a blast, because we could pick where to go and attack people, and the other players had a blast with it too, because we each carried lots of gold with us, so when we died (which was almost all the time), the others would get a nice reward.
We always had a guy with us to res the folks we killed as well, and to explain it was roleplay etc.
Those red monkeys were mostly PAS, but we ended up with about 15 other UO players who mostly did not want me to share who they were (sometimes because they were enemies to PAS).
They all played nice though as RMH and we all had a blast.
OK I'm worn out posting this, so I'll stop here.
But that's most of the history of roleplay that PAS was involved in.
Oh yeah and the Followers of Armageddon (FOA) is in that link above about the history of PAS.
I hope this gives a good background of the history, at least that I was involved in.
Oh crap, I just remembered all the shard wars we did. I think there's posts for some of the battles we had in the UO/PAS stories forum.
We had a lot of other shard wars, but these were the biggest battles that Sonoma has ever seen. The largest battle was a 75 vs 40 or 50 at Trinsic if I recall. Oh my god that was fun (and should be listed in the UO/PAS stories forum also.
KD