Experiences What was your first roleplay experience, and how old were you when you started roleplaying?

[Nymian]

My first roleplay experience was a CATS fandom roleplay. Yes, based on CATS the musical LOL

I played an OC kitten, and Elektra if I recall correctly. I was about 13 or 14 when I started.

I found my niche in Teen Titans RP, bringing out my OC, Firefly. Her name is changing now that I'm resurrecting her, because after I stopped roleplaying I realized there was already a Firefly in the superverse.

Some of my others that I don't see much of anymore was Pirates of the Caribbean, and X-Men (although I see this more than the others)

What's your RP origin story??

 

[Sorin]

I learned to Roleplay because an older boy told me that I was too young for it. He was right, but I was a sassy eleven-year-old then and I didn't need anyone to tell me otherwise. My first ever Roleplay was on a Chatango for a Pokemon MMO where I played as a Warrior Cat OC who went on a fantastical journey with tons of other fantasy characters. I was fairly behind as both a writer and reader, so I asked an older member to mentor me and he was quite strict with it, but I'm endlessly grateful for the tough love and criticism back then. Because of his guidance, I became better at accepting feedback, writing, and even reading. It's been forever since I've spoken to anyone from our old adventuring group, but I'll always remember them. I hope that they're well now.

 

[j.e.s.t.e.r]

my friend came to me with an idea.
He was like ‘hey, wanna roleplay?’. This was like four or five months ago, and ever since then, we have been roleplaying. We started using **, which i’m not entirely proud of, but then we finally started using quotation marks for speaking and, after joining rpn, I grew out of asterisks. i’m pretty sure our first one was about someone who was forced to be a trans boy, and wanted escape. I am ever grateful for her because he always somehow included my gender somewhere in there.

 

[Nymian]

my friend came to me with an idea.
He was like ‘hey, wanna roleplay?’. This was like four or five months ago, and ever since then, we have been roleplaying. We started using **, which i’m not entirely proud of, but then we finally started using quotation marks for speaking and, after joining rpn, I grew out of asterisks. i’m pretty sure our first one was about someone who was forced to be a trans boy, and wanted escape. I am ever grateful for her because he always somehow included my gender somewhere in there.

Oh wow, so you're fairly new to RP it seems. Welcome!!

I think you'll find that most are willing to help. Remember that like anything, it takes time and practice to hone your craft but you'll get there. Don't stress it too much if you're just starting out.
When I was a kid, this was a great creative outlet for me and that outlet (and missing my characters) is what brought me back. You'll probably find that I'm a bit rusty but eager to get back to it.

Welcome! I hope that it continues to speak to you in beautiful ways. Friendship, stories made together.. RP can be such an amazing world to be in.

 

[j.e.s.t.e.r]

Oh wow, so you're fairly new to RP it seems. Welcome!!

I think you'll find that most are willing to help. Remember that like anything, it takes time and practice to hone your craft but you'll get there. Don't stress it too much if you're just starting out.
When I was a kid, this was a great creative outlet for me and that outlet (and missing my characters) is what brought me back. You'll probably find that I'm a bit rusty but eager to get back to it.

Welcome! I hope that it continues to speak to you in beautiful ways. Friendship, stories made together.. RP can be such an amazing world to be in.

thank you!

 

[Ayama]

I was in middle school- went from writing YGO fanfics to writing YGO RPs, to joining the general RP forum. Fun times~

 

[Nymian]

I was in middle school- went from writing YGO fanfics to writing YGO RPs, to joining the general RP forum. Fun times~

I pretty much went from roleplaying to writing HP fanfic LOL

My best friend and I at the time shared a spiraled notebook that we would take turns writing the story in. I remember waiting by baited breath for her to pass me the journal during passing period between classes. It was such cringe, but it was so much fun too lol

 

[Vance_Meridian]

My first character was created in a chat room called Virtual places Excite chat back in the mid-90's. I was 15-16 when I found the chatroom and there was a page called "Roleplayers Realm" and I stayed in there pretty much the entire duration of my years there. My character was based on DBZ(lol), a super saiyan with blue hair that could shapeshift into a werewolf. Ah, the days of the cringy first character. Good memories.

 

[GojiBean]

My first RP experience was a live action role play with my best friend who lived down the street, WAY BACK in the day. I was 9 years old. We would role play literally EVERYTHING that was interesting to us. Yugioh, Jurassic Park, DBZ, Legend of Zelda, Halo, Pokemon, you name it. If it was cool back in the 90's we would RP it.

But what was first?... I honestly can't remember. It was ages ago. But probably Pokemon.

Cheers!

- GojiBean

 

[Steve Jobs]

I was twelve-ish years old on Gaia online and would join fishing chatrooms meant specifically for roleplaying. One day a chatroom focused on Naruto decided to continue the roleplay in a forum and that's how it all began.

 

[Wisazrid]

Roblox. Was like 10 or so i dunno. Joined a mario RP game and ended up rping as Luigi. First time i rped as a major character. Luigi’s been my go to since.

 

[DarkKitsune]

I am currently 18 I started roleplaying around june—july of last year when I was 17 on a platform I originally joined for the sake of writing. Long story short I was invited to a roleplay and said ‘why not?’ And that was when my first roleplay character Faine was created.

 

[Jet]

Started during college at 18 going on 19, had never done creative writing and it was a spurious thing. I looked up things like "create your own (insert fandom) character" and other queues like it, and stumbled on a website dedicated to Fandom RP. That sounded cool so searched for RP and randomly found this site.

One of the best decisions I've ever made, found out I like writing and that there's an outlet for my daydreaming, and one day I'll write a book.

I've never roleplayed anywhere but RPN and likely never will.

My first RP was a generic superhero, knockoff X-Men thing with oppressed mutants fighting a corrupt government. I was having fun but then it suddenly ended, and I was so confused lmao. It never occurred to me that people would ghost RPs, so I hung around way too long hoping for some movement. I was doing solo one shot, side story things in the secondary thread, but everyone else had already called it

 

[YsFanatic]

First one was a Phantasy Star IV RP on MSN Groups when I was in Jr. High I think. It was set after the events of the game and everyone just made their own characters and it was my first time encountering someone else that had made up their own faction that could go between universes to deal with bad guys. Went from there to a different forum to join an alternate timeline PSIV RP that had increased multi-verse elements. That game spawned a sequel (Infinity Crisis) that took us to a variety of universes, hell its safe to say we went to different multiverses, and then that game spawned a sequel of its own (Saga Genesis) starring the kids of our characters. Then I did a tabletop game set 40 years after Genesis with some of my characters showing up for cameos or as recruitable NPCs (and my players made sure to recruit EVERYONE) And now I've got a kid of one of my Saga Genesis characters that I'm looking to play, though that has be difficult given the nature of where she's from, lol.

Done plenty of other RP settings as well, but that particular chain of RPs formed the core of my RPing experience for something like 20 years now.

 

[Tarraxahum]

Oh this one is always a funny story

It's been quite some time ago and it was the W.I.T.C.H. fandom (anyone remember that show/comic? or W.I.T.C.H. vs Winx wars?)

I had completely zero understanding of what roleplay is, haven't even heard of such a thing, like, period. So I see a post in a Facebook group advertising a forum. I go to that forum, start snooping around, sorta get the impression that there's something fun going on and decide to join.

Now, naturally, to join a roleplay forum you need to fill in a profile/application and wait for the admins to approve you. I got that much. What I didn't get, however, was the fact that you're supposed to fill it in with a character's info. The sweet stupid summer child that I was filled everything in in regards to myself. My name (not at all location appropriate), my place of living (very much not canon-setting-appropriate), my personality, etc etc. The only thing I had the sense not to include was my own photo I guess - it was a classic picture of an "OC" aka badly recolored screenshot of a canon character, as it goes. Or, well, went, at least, dunno if it's still a thing.

Poor admins, of course, critiqued my application to hell and back according to all the points mentioned above. While reading their notes I finally realized what's supposed to happen on the forum and what I had been expected to write.

But I've always been stubborn and rather than admitting to a major mistake I just... decided to ditch it and create my own roleplay forum instead. Right of the bat, no experience, one badly failed application on my 'resume'. Noob to admin pipeline.

And I did, and I excitedly stuffed that forum with so many plugins and JavaScript effects and stuff that the poor thing barely loaded, and surprisingly it got some players and we even somewhat consistently ran for a while! Even if sometimes I sneakily picked up characters and pretended to be new registered users (or, like, up front took over abandoned characters) to keep our wonky resemblance of the plot going.

I was... around 13 years old at the time. One hell of an express bootcamp in roleplaying experience, I'll say.

There were more forums after that, as well as a Tumblr roleplay blog (a wildly different medium as you can imagine), then group chats and all, but big location-based forums still hold a special place in my heart because that's where I started.

 

[Henley]

I had been playing the sims 3 around when it first came out and was frantically googling trying to find similar games, searching life simulation games brought up a ton of stuff including IMVU! Wide eyed and hopeful I start using it only to be very confused as to what was going on, stumbled into a zombie roleplay server and had what was happening very patiently explained to a preteen me who was frankly too young to be there - thought it sounded pretty cool and so I left and for lack of a better word started frantically plotting.

I watched how others did it, how much they tended to type and essentially just copied? Not their text but style and length. Grew more confident and started to actually make up my own people, an embarrassing amount of characters who were very YA novel protagonist vibes, made a few friends until there were five or so of us who'd roleplay together; magic schools, witch shenanigans, foster care, possession, boarding schools that were actually a coverup for cults, werewolves, schools (we really didn't trust them it seems,) that were actually secretly preparing you to be an astronaut for the end of the world was coming and we need to flee! A very short lived roleplay set in the marauders era of HP where we were a bunch of Slytherins who didn't want to fight but one of us was actually a death eater and gee golly which one of us is it??

In hindsight we loved a good murder mystery.

It was a lot of fun and eventually we ended up going to tumblr and emails and oddly minecraft but as time went on we all dropped out and got busy. Honestly hope they're all doing good.

 

[BakaTheIdiot]

First? No no no, I couldn't possibly open the ancient texts and unleash that cursed cringe upon this site.

...Alright fine, I will lmao

I was roughly 12-13 when I started. I was on this weird and probably malicious Russian app called Prop Hunt Portable because I thought it was a fun game (game was a'ite, RP scene was B o n k e r s). I got wrapped up into a FNAF themed roleplay and played as springtrap.

Not proud of those days, but I've come a long way and now I write stuff I actually understand and enjoy.

 

[dangerfluff]

Heheh wow. A lot of these are familiar. I think my first roleplay was a wolf pack one. I was in my teens, but don’t remember my character at all.

 

[thymedfire]

If we're talking specifically online RP, I started out on Trollplay/MSPARP, which considering my anxiety about abrupt RP sessions is frankly kind of shocking for me to look back on. My first IRL high school friends introducing me to Homestuck is what got me more socially active online, and I grew up with parents who were at various points very active TTRPG players, so I guess I just knew the concept well enough to put myself out there.

Now if we're talking just in general, the furthest back I can remember is when i was in... third or fourth grade, and my dad helped me DM a oneshot session of Kobolds Ate My Baby for the usual Dungeons and Dragons group, which would have been... at least 15 years ago now, dang. And going beyond that to things I know about but can't remember, I was very technically involved in a vampire LARP by being a bloodbag, and I'm on the beta tester list for a Shadowrun book because my parents were in one of the groups involved in playtesting and the DM thought it would be funny to include me.

 

[RedArmyShogun]

Broke my left wrist one summer skateboarding when I was 16 "This sucks, guess I'll mess around on the pc." "Oh wow what's this roleplay people are doing on this section of TTV anime. I'll join the PVP fights, I like Anime."


22 years later

 

[Thalia_Neko]

First time I started rping..
I dont remember how I found the site, but it was a warrior cats rp -- so not CATS, but still cats, for me lol

It was way back when there were a lot of unique, specific, and individual warrior cats rp sites out there, and yet, when forum-based rping was basically in its overall infancy. I found it, looked around on it, was like "Huh. So they just.. make fan characters then type out responses to each other that are not canon." I was bored and in school -- yes, this was at school, when I was allowed to use the computer. I joined the site, made a character, and started rping. Yep, I would do this during school time when class was boring me.

I met another rper there (who had been rping just a bit longer than me), and we like really jelled. I think it was because of her that I got so into rp. We had good in-character chemistry and our rp on the site kinda bloomed. While most others were just kinda around or off and on, we were posting all the time. After that, we'd join other sites together, like go "Hey, I found this other rp site! Join with me!" And she would, or I would, etc etc.

On that particular site, though, our characters were also just mentor and apprentice. But ended up being romantically interested in each other by pure happenstance.
Like I said, I think that rper was one of the reasons I got so into rp. Out of all the hundreds of rps ive done (and many many warrior cats rps), I still remember that one quite well. And that rper.

 

[Pokeking]

I do enjoy reminiscing about my roleplaying past. I had my first true roleplay experience in 2002 when I was 23.

It was on a board called Medaverse and the storyline was called Red Ground Tavern and Inn. It was a standard medieval fantasy setting and we used D&D style character sheets with alignment. At the time, I only had one character whose face pic is the one I use for my avatar here. He was something of a Gary Stu since he was based on my dreams.

If I could go back in time, I would have done things differently. I would not have used him as a character. I've developed a roster of characters over the years and if I had the same roster today back then, I would have used another character instead.

 

[MAROON QUILLNEST]

I started around 12 or 13 using this website called Roleplay.me. Horrible place. Really not a place for a child with how i was talked to and the things i saw and how i was treated. It was not only NSFW but also a huge place for bullying. Especially if you were new like me. Got relentlessly bullied had people ss my shit roleplay and say don't roleplay with him. Anyways i had fun. i was terrible but i had a sense of community and now as a 17 y/o im way better!

 

[tsurene]

My first RP experience was in 2016 (when I was 11-12?) in the MyCandyLove forums. It was a second-generation Ouran High School Host Club RP about the children of the main cast reviving the host club after twenty years. One of my characters was Umeno Morinozuka (Mori's eldest daughter) who wore ripped tights as part of her uniform for some reason... The other was Junko Kobayashi, who was a student of Lobelia Girls' Academy. I assume that the OHSHC RP was also some people's first expreience cuz the story ended up being so messy orz.

The reason why I was able to share my characters' names was because the site archived it lol. Though I still cringe from how many spelling mistakes and contradictions I've made, I remembered being so excited about posting there before MyCandyLove's userbase died out.

 

[San Son Sun]

First one I joined was either a Naruto or One Piece RP but this happened before 2010. I think I was ending high school or just started college. I think its safe to assume that I'm an old head among all the youngsters here.