I've posted about the risks of rolling your own instead of using an established forum system (invision or something else). But at the risk of repeating myself, I just like to mention that spending too much time on the forum system is putting the cart before the horse. The forum is not the main attractor to your site (might be why a few people stay) but not the main attractors. Vgchartz got it's reputation for having the most comprehensive and arguably the most accurate vg sales numbers). Forum is just an extra feature.
Also, I'd believe, for people who actually bother posting (in any major established forum system, there'd be an ability to create a poll, since we can't here, it's hard to find out), this is not their first forum. So bbcode is almost second nature to many and deviation is distracting. Especially since the RTF is not quite wysiwyg (the look inside the edit box is different from the resulting post
I'd rather you guys spend your time figuring out more stuff to do with the prediction league and stuff. Maybe adding games (VG title hangman?) and stuff instead of spending effort on doing things differently with an established paradigm like forums
btw, welcome back 
Essay Pro