Viewpoint What age did you start roleplaying and why? (Elaborate)

[StilesBianca]

For me it's been many moons ago, but I started around the age of fifteen. I flocked to others who were into long-term stories trying to hone in my craft as an apiriing writer. I relished in the idea I could be anything I wanted to be. Writing gives you such a freedom in fiction and allows you to go in so many different directions. Many times it was a pass time, other times it was a get away from reality when times got tough. I've met plenty good writers over the years and am glad to have such a site to find others who think the same.That euphoric feeling when the connection between the players is so immense that a story is birthed and finalized is one of the best feelings ever. It's rare to get a writer buddy like that, but every blue moon there's a diamond in the rough. Interested in hearing what others have to say, but just thought I'd ask and share.

 

[Jannah]

I started when I was eleven. I realized I liked writing and decided to try writing a collaborative story. Now I've been roleplaying pretty consistently since then and I'm old.

 

[Onmyoji]

I don't remember exactly. I think I started attempting rp around 13.
But really got into it around 15-16. Had a group of friends who were also interested and we just started to rp together. It were some fandom and high fantasy roleplays first. Then I tried 1x1 with one of the people from that group and never looked back XD I don't remember exactly the age. Probably around the same, maybe slightly later, around 17-18.
I've always enjoyed writing and I agree it's a very nice feeling when you get a rp partner you can vibe with. I've met a few over the years and they all left a lasting impression ^^

 

[nerdy tangents]

I was about seventeen or eighteen. I was running a pixel adopt shop. Basically I made art of little pets people could “adopt”.

The roleplay aspect was tacked onto the shop. As it had a lot of world building so customers could sign up to essentially roleplay with their pets.

On of the mods helped set up the roleplays and explained the concept to me.

There is a whole section on the site specifically for roleplaying,

I basically looked around after setting up the shop roleplays and never looked back.

 

[ShinGeorgeTownRaja]

I don't exactly remember, but I assume I was around 12, 13, or 14 years of age. I was in middle school back then and my writing skills were pretty crappy. Not only that, but I was very much into writing fanfiction and attempted to write my first original fiction on Wattpad and the like, which failed miserably. Also, I wasn't able to join either one of the RPs on NationStates's (which you might not have heard of and I have been a long-time member there) forums because my English (of course, I am a native speaker) writing skill was so horrible. But as time passed by when I discovered RPNation, my writing skills have been improving, but I still struggle with some grammar points such as forgetting to add commas after "but" and "and".

 

[Jannah]

I don't exactly remember, but I assume I was around 12, 13, or 14 years of age. I was in middle school back then and my writing skills were pretty crappy. Not only that, but I was very much into writing fanfiction and attempted to write my first original fiction on Wattpad and the like, which failed miserably. Also, I wasn't able to join either one of the RPs on NationStates's (which you might not have heard of and I have been a long-time member there) forums because my English (of course, I am a native speaker) writing skill was so horrible. But as time passed by when I discovered RPNation, my writing skills have been improving, but I still struggle with some grammar points such as forgetting to add commas after "but" and "and".

I know about Nationstates! I was super active there back in the day. In fact, some of my most memorable RP's occurred there.

 

[ShinGeorgeTownRaja]

I know about Nationstates! I was super active there back in the day. In fact, some of my most memorable RP's occurred there.

Cool!

 

[Foxxymoron]

Started on Fb as Shadow the Hedgehog when I was about 16 or 17, I'm 26 now. I remember thinking I was the official Shadow roleplayer for sega, lmao I was so gullible. I do miss some of my friends.

 

[GojiBean]

I was 9 years old and did live-action-role-playing with my best friend who lived down the street. We'd RP anything/everything that was big at the time like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Digimon, DBZ, Zelda, Jurassic Park, etc. It was the 90's. Leave me alone.

Anywhoosle, I started online role-playing when I was about 17 on Myspace when it was still a thing. And I've been doing it ever since.

 

[Pokeking]

Excellent timing considering the year it is. Twenty years ago, I participated in my first true RP storyline when I was 23. While I did participate in something like a role play in high school some years before in my Senior year, it was through a shared document and we all had mutual control over all the characters. Truth be told, I kinda ruined it. I had first post after our librarian who was our Creative Writing Club faculty advisor. I'm sure it was going to be something like a film noir story, but about books. I turned it into a scifi adventure story which quickly became a multiverse story. The main villain was called Duran Duran whose home universe was where everything was green. I kid you not and the heroes were the members of the club.

Anyhow, I belonged to a forum twenty years ago which was entertainment based. One of the members started a subforum for role play. I looked at it and it seemed something interesting to be a part of. I only had one character in my roster at that time and because I didn't have much experience, I don't think I was good participant. I would have participated differently back then if I had the level of experience and the roster I have now.

 

[Beckoncall]

I started Roleplaying at the age of 10 as a way of killing time on the long busride to summer camp. A friend's older brother was a roleplayer, and we just kind of made up our own rules to imitate him. This evolved into a strange auction-house Roleplay more and more kids got involved in (Everybody loves winning fictional objects and screaming for attention) and this was the first roleplay I actually ran.

After seeing some people play D&D but being unable to be included, I invented my own simplified dice system that I would end up perfecting in camp and play for literally decades during the year with the same group of school friends.

Now I run D&D games on discord and forum RPs here. What a long strange trip it's been!

 

[Edric Blight]

When I was REALLY young (don't know the exact age) I did some like one liner rping with other kids my age online in the Super Mario Community, but that was only for a year or so and I don't really count that as my start with rping because it was mostly one liners and in a style I don't consider valid or professional.

When I TRULY started I believe was about I think the end of 2020 in the either end of my junior year or very start of my senior year of high school. I'd been roleplaying steadily with this one partner until I kinda took a break in 2021, but I came back in December of 2021 and then eventually in February of this year, I stumbled upon RPNation and joined!

As for why, it's because roleplaying is such a fun way to escape the stresses of the real world and a great way to relieve stress for me in my opinion. It's something that's been helping me through life as I find things are getting tougher and harder for me. RPing is a nice little escape into a fantasy world (even if that setting is modern and realistic like I tend to do).

 

[Gravelocket]

I've always been involved with writing and film so at the age of fourteen I've made just a character account and then I found out you could write about them with other people and not just fan fiction. So over the years I've made some cool online roleplay friends that I still talk too and I still write from time to time when I'm free.

 

[Ozzdogcentral]

I started roleplaying super young— at about 7 or 8! It was on an app called doodle club, with the simple asterisk style of roleplaying. It’s been a long 11 years of roleplay.

Honestly, I have roleplay to thank for my love of writing and drawing!

I specifically remember my first was a roleplay about people with powers! I played a half-dragon named Lilly. She was a mary sue, but I was 7, so cut me some slack lol.

 

[TerrorKitty]

Like 12-13 on Roblox, it was really bad xD, I continued until maybe 2015ish (2-3 yrs) the stuff that wasn't in a Roblox world, some of it still exists and it's the biggest cringe. I couldn't spell at hecking all

 

[InnerlichTot]

I began to roleplay when I was around 13, I believe, and have been doing so since. Just realized that I've been doing that for nearly a decade....wow....

I don't know why I began, just thought it would be fun to have scenarios with some dumb characters I made, eventually moving to fandoms and using those established characters.
Though recently, I've been wanting to do some more personal work, hoping that others would like to explore a world I made!

I guess writing makes up for the drawing skill I wish I had haha!

 

[wild]

When I was like, 11 or 12. I was a lonely kid, lol.

 

[0xy]

I started young, probably around 11/12! I was really into homestuck, anime, youtube, and comics at the time, so I started writing some works based off of the fandoms I was in. This was all on google+ before I started just rping on random rp websites. I stopped after high school but now I really want to get back into it!

 

[Inno]

Late teens, early twenties. It was fun writing with other people.

 

[Feileks]

I am thirty-two now, and I began roleplaying when I was 12-13 years old, on AOL of all places.

 

[DITZY]

I was actually looking not too long ago !! Literally 7-8 years old on Facebook, I used to say the most insane of things LMAO

 

[BestHelicopter]

Well, I was much older than everyone else lol. I was 26. about a year ago)
I always enjoyed writing and had written stories on my own but had wanted to colloborate as I thought it would be more fun to do with others and wasn't sure how to go about t. I did't even remember how but saw some roleplaying suub in reddit and gave it a go.
Before that, the only thing I knew of roleplaying games were dungeons and dragons which I had no interest in. I stll much prefer modern, realistic stuff.

 

[Broken Promise]

Forum play by post roleplaying for me started around my 20th birthday. I caught my brother writing (something he's normally adverse to doing) and he told me he was writing for an RP. I later joined it. Ahh, "Bubs" was alright as far as first characters go, but there's no denying that a half-angel-half-devil-dual-scythe-wielding-undead-serpent-man in a Devil May Cry RP might have been slightly miscast and also shows how little I knew about story craft going into the hobby.

But really, how many people haven't roleplayed at some point in their lives? My earliest roleplays that I can remember I was about 5-6 years old, but we called it "playing pretend" and we pretended to be people who totally weren't just idealized versions of ourselves.

 

[Murdergurl]

Oh, look... one of these has surfaced again.
(and yet here I am answering again. haha)

I started RPing (online) in my early teens. Back in the Aol chat groups and yahooligans. But if we mean organized RPing in general, and not just online.... ooof.... I'd have to say maybe as early as seven or eight years old. This was me making maps and markers on notebook paper and trying to get my little brother and cousins to envision the landscape that all my scribbles were about. we went in a round robin fashion of turns. No dice, just storytelling. Of course, us being the age we were, everything eventually turned into some kind of fart joke. lmao

But I mostly go by my online interaction for PbP RP. And for that it was the Aol groups, some 23 to 25-ish years ago.

As to the WHY... well, I've always been into creative writing, and it was interesting to get the perspective of other people in a collaborative story. albeit the dynamic was very much a drop-in/drop-out back then, and you pretty much kept a very superficial story going on with whomever the hell just happened to be on at the time. Very micky mouse. Nothing nearly as in-depth as I go for nowadays.

 

[Malphaestus]

I stumbled into it when I was eight, and I had no idea about it.