Discussion How did you become interested in roleplaying?

I frequented an Aliens vs. Predator forum and played the AVP2 video game religiously. It was like the Counter-Strike / Call-of-Duty / Fortnite of my childhood.

Someone on that forum created a play-by-post roleplaying site for the Aliens universe. Joined that and eventually discovered the wider world of forum roleplaying across multiple fandoms.
 
I discovered NeoPets when I was 12 or 13, and wrote some really awful equestrian and fantasy roleplays there. I discovered forums about 11 years ago, and have been writing in the same fandom since. I even ran my own site for a bit, but it sort of burnt to the ground after five years.
 
Ever since I was born, I've been creating characters and stories in my head. These characters stick with me until I simply grow out of them, or if I become interested in a different theme. I never imagined that there would be an avenue to explore their lives through writing, until I discovered role-play on an instant messaging site which I frequented as a teenager.

When I was right into Star Wars, I created my first Sith character and wanted to try writing her on an actual RP site, so I just looked up "Star Wars Role-Play Forum" on Google. That was basically how it started for me. I've been role-playing for six years now.

Role-play for me, is not a game, and approaching it in the manner of a game where you have to reach an objective and outplay opponents is anathema. Role-play for me, is creative writing in a collaborative format. Building on a scene using beautiful language and visceral description, then seeing how another writer's character responds to the scene you've crafted is all part of the fun. I have tried my hand at writing a novel many times and found it to be thankless and overwhelming. Through role-play, I can write the scenes I would like to write in a novel, but without the stress of planning and writing an entire book. Seeing how another character engages with your own and builds on your description, however, is the best part. It's rewarding in a way which writing a novel simply is not.
 
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Hmm, well my friend in school actually persuaded me to try it out when I was 13 or so. We trolled about on a site called the Immortal Coil for a while. I can't say I was too into it. I didn't have the energy to keep up with my friend's posting demands. Since then I've popped in briefly on other sites; I can't even remember all the names. I had a bad experience with the last one, and avoided roleplay since.

Rainie was actually the first brainchild I unleashed on other people. I've been writing short stories in spiral ring notebooks since 3rd grade, but I never let anyone read them. I feel like Rainie has matured quite a bit since her creation, lol.

I quite agree with Marf as well. Roleplaying is definitely collaborative creative writing. Whenever normal people ask me what I do with my free time, I tell them I'm part of an online writing club lmao
 
When I was a kid I always used to just write stories for myself until I discovered RP when I was like 12, through a play by mail group on yahoo where I started RPing.... I was honestly the biggest god modder ever, but everyone else in there did the same, I had no experience RPing with others yet, but it fascinated me, to interact, to read what others have written in conjunction with my own writing.. Then I played a game called NWN when it came out and started RPing on forums.. Man time flies.
 
When I was 12, I stumbled across MUDs. At first I had no clue what I was doing, and I actually wrote much of my posts in text talk. I remember being ridiculed by people who have now been my friends for almost sixteen years. It's incredible.
 
I do believe i started at age 13 in an app game i just sorta got into it after

point blank, nothing to it really though i did stop for like 2 years due to toxic friends.
 
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I played pretend with my friends all the time as a kid. They grew out of it and I don't think I ever did! Since people didn't want to play in person anymore I moved to forums.

So in summary: all kids are LARPers.
 
A long-time ago it was an evolution from muds and mushes. An escape into fantasy and a very active healthy imagination. It has sustained itself from realizing everyone has a hobby, and if you don't keep part of your childhood alive in sports, music, painting, or writing etc, then you have a very bland grey existence ahead of you. That takes work as you get older to keep alive.
 
Man this takes me back... I think I started about when my sister turned 5 so like when I was 8. She was starting to voice her imagination but we hated each other but like I was a weird boy I would play Barbie with her (yes i had other friends and I’m not gay) but like it evolved into the “Baby game” basically she was a mother and I was some stupid nightmare child. Destroying imaginary houses the works; that really helped keep my imagination alive aswell as occupy 100’s of hours.
I think it was around when I was 10 when I stumbled upon G+ (that’s google plus for you weirdos who don’t know it.) I was super obsessed with like rpg games at this point in my life but fully customizable and sandboxish. Ok I confess there was a girl I was hard core crushing on in like 5th grade who used and “role played” I naively thought it would give us an instant connection. (It didn’t.)
One thing led to another and I ended up Joing a group called role playing. After watching and taking notes I felt prepared to try it I entered my first rp request to a super edgy emo girl. And she saw through me and my default profile pic. We were pming each other and I don’t know why but she just took me under her wing. (She was in high school I was again in 5th grade).
She showed me the ropes and got me to join her rp group witch exposed me to my dark side and dealing with emotions that I wasn’t aware existed tell them. Depression was new and tbh kinda whack. But it shifted my writing style to something a little more somber and it was inspiring.
I started looking for active groups and I found one sort of similar to this one and they like practically raised me then it died and I started looking for another one and here I am...
 
Sure, why not.

I started while playing a text-based, turn-based online war game sometime around 1998. One of the games required Roleplay in order to participate in it (Improv, which later became Mo'pri). At first, it was just playing out power fantasy for myself with a Mary Sue character, Seska (the same one I play today).

Played that game for five years, then when it died, found I enjoyed writing stories so I kept on at a different site, and then another, and so forth as either websites vanished or changed.

It is my fervent hope to actually sit down and write something that is publish-worthy some day, and a lot of my writing in recent years had been towards that end - examining aspects of writing I have not traditionally been good at, such as dialogue, depth of character, and things of this nature. It might have started as a requirement to play some silly game, but aspirations to greatness are what keep me going!
 
I was always a kid of the written word, though to call me an artist is like calling a drunken baboon Picasso.

I wanted to bring my inner world to life, through either writing or drawing, I wanted to express it. Then came the characters, to populate the inner world with all their interactions. My imaginary world in my own mind. My own playground with imaginary friends.

Like Aeyliea up there, I have a dream of publishing my own book, only that it is a representation of my inner world and all the madness and scope it supports. I write because I want to, and need to, cause frankly, I might go insane otherwise, hehe~

Roleplaying helps alot in that, as it lets me learn interactions and dialogue and how they are executed thanks to the many absolutely beautiful people out there who roleplay like I do, and bring their ideas to the fore. I've been doing this for 10+ years, and I don't see no sign of stopping yet - cause I knock em all down!
 
Oh geez...

Well, I've enjoyed writing stories for as long as I could remember. Growing up in a rural town, surrounded by some really fascinating places (The North Wales coast, basically!) was incredibly inspiring and I was fortunate enough to have been able to explore a lot of these places as a kid. Most of my stories at the time were particularly inspired by local folklore and ghost stories that had been passed down from generations back, but I also attached stories entirely of my own to certain places around where I grew up.

So, my love of writing stemmed from there, but as for actual Roleplaying, it wasn't until I was in my teens. The internet was only just becoming a big deal at the time, so a lot of people, myself included, didn't have internet at home, so access was gained either at the library, or in school. I remember being mad into Final Fantasy at the time. Final Fantasy VIII had just come out so there was a lot of buzz around the series and I joined this online forum called FF Extreme. They had a whole forum section for Roleplaying, which included story-based Roleplaying and battle-based Roleplaying. It caught my attention, and reading some of the stories that people were coming up with together was pretty inspiring, so I got involved. It kinda snowballed from there. There was a couple of occasions where I ran my own Roleplaying forum, to moderate success, and there were a few other sites I would Roleplay at. I kinda stopped when I hit my twenties due to work, social life, moving around a lot... I dipped my toes back into it for a while a couple of years later but family commitments made it hard to keep up with the pace of the more active Roleplayers, so I fell back out of it for a good few more years before ending up here.
 
Took a creative writing class in high school and I wanted to keep doing it. Was always interested in gundams so I found a post by post site and never looked back.
 
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Not sure if anyone remembers an old chatroom site called TalkCity. They had chats for just about everything, including Star Wars. There was some general discussion but it was mainly RP, my first introduction at age 13. That eventually collapsed, did play-by-post with a small group on YahooGroups and eventually TGC. Took a short break in my early 20s but it didn't last so I jumped back in and have been RPing in some fashion since then.
 
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