Why did you begin Roleplaying?

[MidnightSun]

I started around 10 years old, at the time I had no idea what it really was, but I had basically gotten together with a friend and we decided we just wanted to write as the characters. Since I was young I always enjoyed telling and hearing stories through drawing, outloud, movies, books, and I liked to write them after I had a basic writing vocabulary.


Most of these stories were about dogs and how they played in fields or sad bumbles bees since I was only a kid.


So, around the time I was 10, one day my friend and I decided, why do we have to write a whole story? I care about the character. We mostly just had arguments about who was what part, but that was how it all started.


I had actually forgot about it for a little while because of a lot of family trouble, but after I rediscovered it I had been hooked.


I think the funny thing about all this was when I was 15, I taught my Dad how to RP and he actually made his own character and world for him. However he had quit, thinking it was silly and he fought with someone over the Internet.


He gave me the drawing he did and he had given me his character. I have never used him, but he is a cat with saber teeth that travels between worlds with elder knowlege. I have more on him, but maybe one of these days I will use him.


That is my RP story: Origins.

 

[DerUbermensch]

My reason for beginning is because of boredom. I wanted interactive fiction, but I knew I could not do it alone. No person is an island. Thus I began RP because I see it as a collaborative interactive fiction type.

 

[Semblance]

I first started roleplaying when I was 12. My friend and I were obsessed with the Warrior Cats series by Erin Hunter, and we had found a website dedicated to roleplaying anything and everything related to Warrior Cats. We loved it so much, I remember we were teased by a few other kids in our computers class in middle school whenever we would go on that site, but we didn't care. I've always loved writing stories, ever since I was little, and I've always had a wild imagination. Roleplaying seemed to fulfill both of those aspects.


After that, I stopped role playing all throughout high school, although I wish I had continued. I had no idea that there were other role playing sites out there for every topic and genre, not only Warrior Cats. Had I known, I would definitely have continued. This summer was when I stumbled upon RPNation and my love for role playing returned. I've spent so many hours on this site collectively in the past month or so, and I wouldn't have replaced them for anything

 

[Pariah Stark]

I started roleplaying with my older cousins and their friends in tabletops. I loved it. I loved getting to play with the "big kids" and I was smart enough to understand how to play, so it all worked out.


But, text-based roleplay came far later, and opened up a whole new world to me. I started out in high-action, high-fantasy and from there I've journeyed everywhere.

 

[Joe Carroll]

I started back in 1997, on dialup AOL when there was still a monthly charge to use it. I think it was AOL 2.0 back then, but might've been 1.something? I had never done any sort of RP before and found it quite by accident, surfing the rooms and then wondering what the Medieval Tavern was. After observing the other players in the room for some time, I decided I wanted to give it a go, but had no real ideas as to how it really worked, what the rules were, etc. Like everything else, I just sort of learned as I went, asked questions, got help from others, etc. Eventually I got into historical roleplays, then all sorts of other genres as the AOL roleplay scene changed each year. I've just recently stopped going there much as the scene has pretty much died off save for a few of the same rooms just repeated in different incarnations. Found RPNation.com through a Google search the other day after giving Roleplayer.Me a few turns.

 

[Monorai]

I was about 13 when i started, mostly cause it looked fun and then i experienced some roleplays that just stayed with me and still are part of my thinking. It was so amazing that i continued looking for more amazing roleplays and while i've enjoyed all i was a part of only two really stood out to me. Recently i've been thinking of making visual novel games and i usually seek ideas and characters from roleplaying and just seeing what i could possibly do in a game. Something about creating and just being connected to the characters does something for me, i often search for music i think the characters would like or songs that describe what their experiencing and even years latter they all mean something to me.

 

[Spin]

My friend said something along the lines of, "I roleplay, so you have to roleplay too." My friend quit roleplaying shortly after I started and moved onto another hobby. I'm glad my friend sort of demanded I roleplay. I've loved it ever since.

 

[Bacon is fluffy]

I thought of it as an anime in my head that was finally coming to life in some way. My reason isn't the same but it's still fun to rp from time to time

 

[Sibylline Oracle]

Oddly enough, I think I stumbled on it many years ago on a Star Wars forum. At the time, I wasn't much of a writer, and roleplay was just "something to do". After I got into writing creatively, I ended up thinking of it as a means of improving my writing skills and "fleshing out" my plot ideas. But what it's mainly become these days is a chance to brainstorm with others by sharing my ideas, hearing theirs, and finding ways to mesh them together (or compromise by meeting in the middle) to create something neither of us would have imagined on our own!


But as it is now, I tend to world-build far more than I roleplay. Either a lot of people are busy these days or I have extremely esoteric interests. It used to be that I could easily find a roleplay involving semi-realism (like Star Trek - lacking main characters with superpowers or technology that crept out of an anime), but those kinds of settings seem rare nowadays.

 

[Otakaboo Chichan]

I liked the trees.





You see, back in April of 2013, I was searching for a fun MineCraft server when I found this roleplaying server. I was looking through screenshots of the place, and the builds were pretty amazing, but there was this one that I was amazed by- the trees. There were these giant Elven trees with houses built into them and long bridges connecting them way above the ground... and I've always enjoyed simply exploring builds in MineCraft, so naturally I thought, "I want to go there." Of course, I was intrigued by the idea of roleplaying too. I've always been a bit of a writer, but I'd never RPed before.


Yeah that's basically it. I went through the grudgingly long process of reading all the server rules, roleplay lore, and writing the CS you needed to get in. It's kinda funny, if I hadn't ever joined, I wouldn't be here today typing this, because this site was sent to me by someone I met through that server. I never thought roleplaying would become some giant hobby of mine...

 

[Snquin]

If my memory serves me right I started when I was 14 years old and it was all because of fanfiction. Yeah, surprisingly, I learned of roleplaying due to stumbling upon a site that supported roleplays. Indeed, I was an oddball and typed with hyphens on each end, but I couldn't stay away from this new found hobby of mine. I started to develop in creative writing as years went on and I've been showered with love and support by other people that I met on roleplays. I guess that's one of the reasons I continue to roleplay until now, the community itself is the reason why I've come to love roleplaying more and more.

 

[Chantey]

I was fourteen and playing on Neopets, (yes, I was a lame teenager) when my friend asked me to join her roleplay guild. The other members taught me the basics, and I immediately became obsessed with roleplaying.

 

[Ursus]

I almost went of on some long rambling tale about how and where I started. . . but you asked for 'why'.


I was probably about 14 or 15, I believe. Originally I was invited by someone I had befriended on a Final Fantasy forum and I found myself enjoying it. At the time it was a chance to envision and describe a fantastical story that I would have liked to read. I'm sure it was utter trash.


Some things never change.


Since then its become an exercise in escapism and wish fulfillment as well as self-exploration and a sad attempt to keep the social bunny away.


Again, some things never change.

 

[Sunbather]

I have a lot of ideas for plots or characters, but I rarely ever have the patience (or skill) to write books. I like interacting, so roleplaying was a naturally suitable activity, haha.

 

[Dagfinn]

I was bored and I was surfing through the ROBLOX forums, I noticed the RPing thingy. Then I just submitted a really shitty CS.


It's gone a long way from there. I think I've been RP for 5ish years now.


Exciting story huh?

 

[Tipster]

My first actual experience roleplaying was actually, believe it or not, in an English class. We spent the lesson in a group of 4, passing a wedge of paper around the table, writing a paragraph and passing it on. Then we carried on adapting, adding in a block of text the teacher put on the board, carried on passing it around... then we started fleshing out characters, and it kind of built from there.


This is kind of the root of my belief that your background means nothing to the players (unless, of course, it involves them), it's their actions in play that define them.


That aside, I didn't actually touch roleplaying until I moved to uni and a friend dragged me to the local Sci-Fi and Fantasy society....and things went from there.

 

[Neow46]

For me, it all started out as an idea a loooong three years ago..... escalating from an Idea to a concept, a concept into a story, a story into a Rp, and now it's currently a RP turning into a actual novel.


Simple as that really for me.

 

[Shin Positron Laser]

Roleplaying came naturally for me, even before I knew the meaning of the word. As a child and even today I still collect and play with lego. I was really into the scifi themes from the old 80's lego space series. I would roleplay as entire armada's of both sides, replacing the mini figure heads with blocks, flowers, and other specialized items to create 'alien' races.


During highschool, anime got me into the world of drawing. I always thought it would be my prime hobby. Then the real world hit me and I knew I would not be making a living from this, otherwise it would ruin it for me since I loved it as a hobby. Later on anime got me into forum based roleplaying after highschool and I have been on and off since then. I have since used my drawing skills to augment my RPing experience usually drawing the characters I would portray, or drawing to help explain scenarios etc.

 

[Mitheral]

Well, for roleplaying itself ... 1980 ... before the internet .... before video monitors became the thing and we still used teletype printers instead of displays. I predicted MUD's and MMORG's in 1982 ... before Windows. I was 20 at the time.


I started online RP's in 1995.

 

[LegoLad659]

This is kind of a difficult question for me to answer, because of the way I write fiction. When I write, I tend to have little planning go into the actual details themselves. I have a very basic plot set up, and make up the rest as I go along. To me, writing feels like I'm roleplaying with myself, with all of the characters in my head. I set up a circumstance for the characters to overcome, and the characters figure it out themselves. I don't feel like I'm the one figuring out how it should end, even though I technically am. I feel like I'm the character, struggling to find the solution to their problem.


If we're going by that definition, I started when I was about 7, because it was just fun to me.


If we're going by the standard definition (Writing a story with somebody else) it was a couple of years ago (When I was 15? Maybe 14?). A friend (Well, "Friend") invited me to join him on Twitter, of all places, where he was part of a rather active roleplaying community. I figured I'd give it a shot, and here we are now.


However, only one of my characters I RP with now came from that time. I developed most of my old characters in a private roleplay I had with my sister on another website. We had a blast, and that's where a lot of the characters I imported to RPNation originated.

 

[Cameron]

I started when I was about nine, mainly using Habbo Hotel. I didn’t know what role-playing was at the time and mainly used asterisks to “hit” people in fights or enter various hospital-themed chat rooms, using them to play along until I got bored. Then I’d usually switch roleplay for trolling the ‘bwabies’ in the adoption centre - or flooding the room with fellow RPers. I’m not sure why I started - boredom, I suppose.


They were good times, too, if you cancel out the amount of child predators and lunatics on there...

 

[razorrabbit]

I think I started around 9-12 years old when reading terrible fan fiction I noticed the site I was using had something called 'Rp requests' thought it looked like fun and saw it as a way to put characters I already made in my head down and share them with people.

 

[Demon]

[QUOTE="The Gunrunner]No motive. I said "Ooh. That looks interesting," and got hooked.

[/QUOTE]
This was me except I was like, "I WANNA DO THAT."

 

[kittbit]

I didn't really have much of a motivation for roleplaying O.o Most of it was because it was cool and I loved to write at the time (I was around 12). Now, I use it as a way to calm me down most of the time. To relax

 

[Usuru]

Me and my sister roleplayed irl all our lives by talking as the characters and stuff, made totally awesome friends in Webkinz World and started online roleplaying with their sucky limited chat system 8 years ago, participated in clans and Sonic RPs even though most of the people I met on there power played/god modded the living hell outta each other, got hooked despite all that and well, HERE I AAAAAAM~!♪