Old School?

[Thorn Darkblade]

So, I might be making myself seem to be a brittle old man full of nbut does anyone remember the late 90's and early 2000's, specifically rping in that age?


I'm talking AOL chats, MSN, yahoo, Rhy'Din, and all that glorious cheesiness, accompanied by the screech of dial up.


Any fond memories? How terrible was it? How about now? How have you grown as a RPer since then? Miss it?


Myself?


I used AOL chat back in the day, spending many a night in front of the monitor and the screeching modem, did a little bit of RP in the default Rhy'Din setting, but mostly did 1x1 or chats with a few good friends I met on there.


Prior to that? As terribly cheesy as it is, a DBZ/Gundam/Megaman crossover RP site. Also spent a lot of time on a page (that still exists) called Anime League.


I'd like to say I was a good RPer back then, but I know I was probably a pretentious little $#@% who thought he was better at everything just because I could type more (Oh, yeah, I remember minimum word count RPing as well)


After going to GenCon though, I slowly phased into more traditional styles of roleplaying (D&D and other tabletop games), and haven't done a chat game in probably 5-6 years now. Do I miss it? Sometimes. I mostly miss having a massive friends list on AIM that I could shoot the shit with, and would gladly accept new friends if there were AOL chatrooms to hunt them down again.

 

[AlskaNoelle]

I started roleplay as a young teen in chat rooms (I wasn't very smart), and I remember thinking some of the roleplayers in there were amazingly cool and unbeatable, although now I'm smart enough to know they were Godmodders, and nothing's cool about that crap.


I moved on to Gaiaonline when I was 14, and I'm still on infrequently today. I actually searched one of my old accounts that's now locked and read a page from a roleplay I started when I was 16. It was....embarrassing. Every post was just one line to one paragraph of pretty much fluff and my dialogue...the term vomit inducing comes to mind. I can't believe that roleplay lasted two years.

 

[Contra Fates]

Oh man, this makes me feel so nostalgic! I got my start in role playing when I was nine years old on AOL's chat rooms in 1998, with Final Fantasy characters. I remember the year because it was the year Final Fantasy VIII came out.


I never got into Yahoo RPing, but I was active in AOL's Arts & Entertainment (I feel like I'm really aging myself now), Chatrooms for role play. I even remember all of the html formatting that we used to be able to do in AOL and AIM profiles. Those were the days, haha.

 

[hellrazoromega]

Hand me my cane son---


I started RPing in the late 70s with pen a paper and gave not looked back since. I can recall using very early BBS chat rooms in the dank dark days before the true internet to do so RPs. So for me it was the reverse, I still do chat games due to RL time constraints but I'll take a meatspace game and actual human interaction over cyberspace any day. But that is just me.


I like the interaction of chat but have never been a member of the longer (wall of text) posts must mean better RP--I know some subscribe to that and more power to them I myself am from the old--"so long as everyone is having fun it's all good" school of thought.


(Disclaimer: What have said is my option and mine alone, I don't expect anyone else to hold to or even agree with it. Your mileage--and life experience-- may vary, fees, tips, tools, taxes, and all other charges are extra. Consider this as free advice making it worth exactly what you paid for it. ;P)