Experiences How did you even find out what roleplaying is?

[Onmyoji]

Some of you had been roleplaying for decades, some are brand new. But there had to be a point when you learned about roleplaying and decided to give it a try.
So, how did you all find out what rp is?

What was you very first encounter with roleplaying? Was it online or LARP or maybe DnD session? Was there anyone introducing you to it or you randomly came across it and got interested?
Share your experiences!

 

[Onmyoji]

I will start by saying I don't remember very well because it was too long ago XD
But I think the first time I heard about something roleplay-related was from a friend who did Tolkien LARP.
I thought it was very cool but I never had a chance to try, so after a while I forgot about that.
Then a few years later I saw online roleplays and that got me interested, because it was basically multiple people writing a story. And that was when I already tried to join in. Not all attempts were successful but at least I understood what it was and what to do XD

 

[nerdy tangents]

I love this story. So I was maybe 17 or so on chickensmoothie (you collect pics of dogs on a website for ten year olds, listen it’s more fun then it sounds)

I had a wee little freebie pixel shop where I created an entire backstory for the little pets you could “discover” on a “secluded island”.

I wanted to do “tours” of the island for some kind of event and my mods were like “oh you wanna do a roleplay?”

And then proceeded to show me the RP section of the site and walk me through how things worked.

I think the first proper RP I joined was with a badly made succubus.

 

[A Sparkling Zombie]

I was on AO-Hell as a teen and came across the roleplay chat.

 

[StuartAnderson]

Mine was actually Erotic roleplay lol (not on rpnation I hasten to add!).
I was on reddit and came across 'dirty pen pals' sub where people write erotically together and I gained a love for roleplay and moved into general roleplay and romance and platontic roleplays rather than just sexual.

 

[Jannah]

I visited the roleplaying forums on Neopets. I saw what users were doing in there and it seemed sort of fun. I haven't slowed down since.

 

[Celestial Water]

One of my favorite questions! Brings a grin to my face every time bc it was so friggin fun haha AOL chatrooms where it was this OOC/IC mash up with one liners but also talking anime/video games and doing arena fights. I can’t stop grinning when I think back on those days. I was in elementary school at the time when my mother had just gotten a computer and I’ve been RPing ever since. I’m in my 30s now!

 

[Edric Blight]

I think when like 10 year old me was on Instagram and very into Super Mario and the Mario fandom. Some groups would roleplay on there and I guess that’s how I learned what it is.

Although I don’t really think at the time I knew I was roleplaying per say. I think when I got back into RPing in 2020 I kinda realized and learned, wow, ok, what I did in 2014 or whatever was roleplaying lol.

 

[Luscinioide]

lmfao i was like 6, 7 years old and found the warrior cat and pokemon RP games on roblox. it was terrible. terrible, but fun. after that, i moved on to live RP on world of warcraft and stayed there until about 15ish? i didn't actually discover 'forum RP' until i was almost 16.

 

[princessxsugarcookie]

I remember being on MySpace when I was way too young. I think maybe 9-10ish? Unrestricted internet access. I came across a Sailor Moon account and friended it because I was so confused lol. I think my brain thought it was the real Sailor Moon?
I discovered it was a roleplaying account and I was so invested. Between MySpace and Facebook, I created so many roleplaying accounts dedicated to my favorite fandoms. Inuyasha, Harry Potter, Sailor Moon, and Pokémon are the ones I really remember. Then my cousin showed me Gaia, and I thought it was the coolest thing. Especially since I didn’t have to keep up with a million passwords for the Facebook accounts cx

 

[caecgirl]

dnd 3.0

 

[Murdergurl]

It was 1997 and I believe I was 11 or 12 at the time. The internet wasn't some all-encompassing monster that was integrated into every facet of life at the time. And believe it or not, kids were being taught how to log on and search for things on the "world wide web". There was a list of safe sites we could access and explore like aol message boards and yahooligans and some other stuff that I've honestly forgotten. The only reason I really remember those two in specific were because they were my gateway into online roleplaying.

There wasn't bbcode or even character sheets to speak of. You just basically had a title page that contained some basic lore and then linked chat rooms where you would drop-in and drop out with whoever was available and online and pretty much had to RP right then and there for the amount of time you were both (all) online. Very basic, very limited. But it was the age that RPing was in at the time, and for us it was amazing! Later on, I discovered play-by-email and the quality of the RPs got a LOT better. But finding partners was always a crap shoot no matter what or where you were RPing. There was no way to really check out and vet the other players. I mean, even nowadays it's still a matter of luck. But the methods give a lot more room to scope out potential participants and I'm always thankful for that.

 

[starboob]

i was on gaia and one of my friends on there started a group school rp. i saw the notice on my feed, asked her what that was about, and then joined. it was a super awful rp and i hate thinking about the character i created for it, but it is what got be started! i think what got me really serious about rp tho was getting rejected from a rp i really wanted to be a part of. the GM was kind enough to give me some constructive feedback and after that i made it my goal to improve my craft

 

[WhiskeyMarten]

The timeline is fuzzy in my head, but the first few places I roleplayed were Scratch, the CBBC messageboards, the Moshi Monsters forums, and Storywriters, and I think I discovered roleplaying just from a want to write stories. There's no exact event in my head

 

[GrumpySwallow]

I read my dad's old AD&D books as a kid. I eventually found the RP forums on Neopets. From there, I moved on to GaiaOnline. RPed there for a long time until I moved on to MMORPG RP. Now I'm back to forum RP!

 

[Surgaslan]

Oh man. I don't remember the exact point, but I grew really interested in storybuilding and writing after failing an english class some aeons ago. I just remember telling myself "I've gotta get over this or I'm gonna be a failure". It sure wasn't true, but hey, I got into collaborative storytelling and RPing and it definitely changed my life for the better.

 

[JJae]

I think it was when Corona started?
For years I've been writing smaller stories and such but never enough to publish anywhere. So, I searched for a time killer that would match my hobby. I don't remember exactly how I found roleplaying sites? But I do remember a game I once had. You could roleplay as wolves and I wanted to create fun stories but with other people! I love to see how others turn the story around and the variety. But sadly my old PC crashed and the game was not running on my laptop. I figured I could find something alike on the internet. First I discovered Discord Rps, Twitter, anything before finding websites like this! And after a while, I began to love it.

 

[Lucyfer]

I also don't remember the exact point. I was huge into Dragon Ball Z at the time, though, and I scoured chatrooms for other people who loved DBZ -- I know I was under 13 because I was lying about being 13.

I found some chatrooms, found some people, and realized there was like...combat stuff going on as characters? So I rolled up as Vegeta and Android 18 occasionally and played by these 7-10-7 rules (7 words to attack, 10 words for the person to defend, 7 to connect an attack). So if you were fast typist, like I was, you "won" a lot. Somehow ended up vibing with a Raditz player as Android 18 and we ended up doing a bit of an AU story for them, and the rest is history from there as I learned the lingo and what all of this was called elsewhere on the web, lol.

 

[Pretty Little Creature]

I was obsessed with ad libs and choose your own adventure as a kid. I started role playing via pen and paper when I was 15. I got introduced to gaia online at 19. I was introduced to proboards and freeforms around 23ish. I saw rpn for the first time hmm I think when I was 33. And now you all know im bitty old human

 

[Jannah]

I was obsessed with ad libs and choose your own adventure as a kid. I started role playing via pen and paper when I was 15. I got introduced to gaia online at 19. I was introduced to proboards and freeforms around 23ish. I saw rpn for the first time hmm I think when I was 33. And now you all know im bitty old human

You're not alone. There's a few of us here in our 30's and older.

 

[Pokeking]

Let's wind the clock back to 1996/1997, when I was in my Senior year of High School. It was something like role playing but it broke one of the cardinal rules: don't play as other writer's characters. I was a member of what our school called the Creative Writing Club and our computer admin set a user name just for our club which we used to share our stories and collaborate on a story. Each member would write a part and then another member would write another paragraph or two.

To be honest, I screwed it up. It was supposed to be a Noir type story since it was abut a mystery. I prefer the sci-fi/fantasy genre and as the first poster, I began to change it into something I was comfortable with. it soon became a multiverse action story where the members of the Club and their variants did battle with Duran Duran, not the band but a single person who lived in a dimension where everything was green. I would have done things differently had I used the knowledge I have today back then. I might have made it something like Indiana Jones.

My first true foray occurred twenty years ago. I was a member of a forum called Medaverse. At the time, it was a message board that was mostly about games and entertainment. One of the members set up a RP forum within the message board under the heading "Red Ground Tavern and Inn". There was a post which was about the hub which was the Tavern and Inn. Other posted topics covered quests that were taking place. As I said, I would have done things differently. I only had one character was was a self insert/Gary Sue version of myself who had all these powers. My character of King Jojin is basically this character reduced to a cameo since I'm trying to rehabilitate the character into a playable/not so uber version.

Over the years since then, I've bounced from RP site to RP site. My only RP regret besides not having a robust roster back then that I do today was that I didn't discover RPN until two years ago.

 

[Yunalescaa]

My cousin made me an account on Neopets and told me she wanted me to RP with her on the boards. That was back in the day where if you closed out of a thread it was gone forever lol.

 

[Reveria]

Oh, a writing assignment for school! At first, I didn’t even really realize that I was at an rp forum. I was just doing a bit of digging for the crime/mystery I was writing. But I found their CS pages interesting. I particularly loved the way one of the detectives were written. It reminded me of Criminal Minds, which was the story I wanted to write. From there, I kinda just joined and messaged the admins about how to get started. Thankfully, the admins and mods were super nice and welcoming in joining their site.

 

[BakaTheIdiot]

Short answer: by accident.

Long answer: Almost 8 years ago (jesus I'm getting old) I got my very first smartphone, ever. It was an Alcatel OneTouch little burner phone that my (probably) vape dealer Uncle got me for my birthday. It was super sluggish and very tiny, good for my pockets at the time, but couldn't play too many games, so I started looking into other things that I could dink around with on it. One of those was a site called Amino.

It kinda just seemed like (and still seems like) Facebook for tweens when it came to be and it seemed kinda cool, so I decided to try it out and make an account. I later discovered what roleplaying was when I joined a server called Shady Hill.

I never recovered.

 

[MokeySee]

9-11 y/o on amino in their BTS phase is all I'm gonna say.