Roleplay Beginnings

[Apparition]

I was thinking back to how I started RP in the first place.

This was a long time ago on a forum dedicated to an animated movie series. Long time ago meaning I was really young at the time. I don't even remember what the RP was about, it wasn't about the series, it was some sort of fantasy and it was a group RP. I made a character sheet and then I left for a while. I forgot I even joined but when I checked it again, it was mostly just characters hanging out, which is fine but my young self went >:) seeing this and then posted about my dragon character breathing flames on the area and everyone. And then I made no other post, of course. My young self was satisfied with the chaos.

Another early experience was on a RP forum which had a word requirement of I think...500 words? I was playing a white wolf with wings, my young self wanted to impress everyone with my word count. So I wrote at least 2k words of my character...looking around, moving her wings a little bit, in as much detail as possible, but only doing those things, and that was the post, all 2k words of it. No thoughts or description of the environment, no detail other then "and then she looked around, and then she moved her wings, and then she looked around"... I wish I still had the post, I want to frame it. Everyone has to start somewhere and I think I did learn from that post back then, but oh, young me just really wanted to have a hefty word count to awe the other players.

So if you want to share, I want to hear your stories about how you started RP!

 

[PaulaVonMalotki]

1st: word count requirements suck.. they just do (not only in RP) and you're wonderful illustrating why :3

2nd: I am not even sure I can post that here.. but.. my first (text based) RP as of a more.. ehm... expliratory nature during my early adolescence and dealt with all those new... interests and urges.. if you know what I mean... luckly it was the time I got into (computer) gaming and DnD too so the RPs got more story after that... but I still like "smut" in my RPs to this day

 

[Fluffy]

I started on Neopets. I was, oh, like...14-15 years young at the time. My Neopets were drawn to be either furries or animal-human hybrids and I'd do RPs with other players with similar styles. However, my writing got too smutty eventually, and it got me banned from the website. XD Not just on my main account but my second one too (because I was writing stuff on there too, hahaha...).

From there I moved onto Forum RPs. I think Iwaku was the main one I wrote for and developed my skills at. (But there were brief times I spent at other forums, such as a Kingdom Hearts RP forum, a Night at the Museum RP forum, and one called Twisted Worlds.) I'm from such an early time on Iwaku, I remember Googling it in June 2008 and making an account on the Proboards. Lots has changed since then! <3

 

[Manna Beast]

I'm an old fart, so originally i started back in the days of MSN Chats (yes I was a ChatRPer firstly) and did a lot of roleplaying there. Met a few ppl that I am still friends with now. But I grew to like more formatted style of writing that was novel or paragraph based. So I actually started rping in high school with a friend that started a Sailor Moon Forum. She taught me the means of writing paragraphs, and eventually I wrote so much that a new friend of mine (Now husband) started rping after school.

I stopped rping once I left high school and didn't pick it up really again till 2010 on WTFRPG. Eventually coming to Iwaku in 2012 and here I am.

 

[ImaginationGoneWild]

Somewhere...out there, in the realms of World of Warcraft. The Lich King was flooding Azeroth with undead creations and abominations, the occasional Blight here and there transforming the landscapes. I was roleplaying a blind warlock/druid with her seeing-eye Imp Steef that travelled from Northrend (her home) down to the eastern kingdoms to search for sister who was taken by a cult.

Not much came from the plot I had in mind. I was mostly just sitting in dark corners of seedy bars 'sipping my drinks and chuckling at my guild mates.'

 

[Lyrikai]

I used to write a lot of stories by myself, to myself, with only myself to share them with. I guess I pretty much always had a really vivid imagination, making up characters and worlds and stories to go with them.
Well I finally got the courage to share them with friends, one of my oldest, closest friends asked me one day if she could join in on my stories and write with me, asked if I had ever RPed before with someone like that.

I said no, and BOY did she open me up to quite the world of fun!

We started off on ye olde AOL messenger and eventually she introduced me to forum RPing with my first place being a Legend of Zelda based site (where I then met Manna who dragged me over here finally LOL)

 

[Karo]

I started when I was 11 on the Sim 3 website. I had been following this one RP about a zombie apocalypse for a while and when I turned 11, I asked my mom for permission to make an account for my birthday. The rest is history.

 

[Nougat]

My sister made me join the site she was in lol. idk why bc she never rped with me >:( rude. I think she knew that I really liked writing stories and was a really big fan of text adventure games so she figured I'd like it lol. After that site shut down I joined another site and I was a mod there for a few years, although that also shut down recently because the hosting service decided it wanted to do crypto instead

I actually joined iwaku like a year into that second site being made because there were disagreements about what was or was not permissible on the site and one of the RPs I was in ended up moving here. Actually I think a solid half of the rps I joined here at the time were originally on that site before moving (though not all for the same reason). Then I took like a 6 year break from rping and now I am back

And my sister apparently was looking for a drawing reference on google and ended up on that site because someone was using the picture for their character lol. So if she did not want to draw some random anime character I would never be here

 

[arden]

i started on this percy jackson proboards site that was genuinely the most fun i had in middle school
my dad was military so i lived overseas a lot and had a hard time holding on to friends. my fellow "campers" were all near my age and we all had similar interests outside pjo and rp
there was also chickensmoothie but that was less rp and more "let's make a bunch of characters, post an intro, then ghost the thread immediately after"

 

[Ardent]

I honestly don't remember how old I was. Fifteen? Sixteen? Anyway, it was the summer vacation, that much I know. I had only just gotten into anime and was looking for places to watch some shows, when I randomly encountered an anime-centered rp website during my search. I lurked the forums for a bit but I wasn't really sure what I was looking at... until... I randomly decided to create my own rp I guess?

Needless to say I had 0 interests, probably because everyone could smell the noob from a mile away. But I kept at it, made some friends in the process, migrated from site to site, and now I'm here!

 

[Uruvion]

Oof, memories. I started RPing in a chat program called Excite Chat Virtual Places back in the mid-90's. Of course I was a horny teenager so you know what was the majority of my chatting XD I met my first wife there and we RP'd together for over a decade in forums and other chatrooms while we were together. I took a break for about 7 years with my 2nd wife because she considered ERP cheating (-.-;), but now I'm back! Currently writing with people on other forums as I am just dipping my padded toes into Iwaku and haven't made any formal posts or RP requests yet. My dance card is a bit full at the moment but when someone slows down or drops off I will make a request thread here and I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Blind Hemingway]

It was this form back in 2006. Well not really this forum, but the second version of it (the og was a Dot Hack anime fan forum). Besides the point, I realize. But it's important to whatever semi-interesting backstory I am trying to set up. Anyways, I was kidnapped by some dude named Gabe and was chosen to babysit the forum as a mod. Then he went all crazy and I was made an admin. Chose @Diana to help us with moving to a new area away from Proboards since a site hosted on its own server can make its own rules and really allow people to explore their writing skills.

My first stories sucked. Like I tried to go with strange and surreal concepts that totally weren't just rip off of oldtaku anime and the X-men. Totes not. But hey, we all have to start somewhere. I honestly don't get much of a chance to RP anymore.

 

[Mojo]

I believe I was 9 or something. I saw this ad in a manga book (it was most likely Naruto or Full Metal Alchemist) about a new website that was like a forum for everyone who was interested in manga. You could meet friends, talk about different things etc. I even got interested in HTLM coding because of this, because you could edit your profile quite a bit if you knew what to do. Anyway, I made an account there and just searched through the forums.
I'm not sure though how I started the roleplaying. I was most likely just curious about what it was and back then I didn't write much. Probably 1 paragraph and a total of 100 words haha.
The website eventually shut down but I got some friends from it so I added them on MSN, and continued roleplaying from there.
One of these people that I did add on MSN I'm still roleplaying with to this day on and off. ^-^

I still have some of the old stories saved in a word document and as much as I cringe, it gives me a bit of a boost too to see how far I've gotten with my writing skills.
Also, because I used to write like this '' Mojo: I'm currently craving chocolate *eats a snack* '' lol

 

[rissa]

tumblr/google docs with a friend. we'd make side blogs for our characters / and then a shared one for the world we were creating and then wrote together in gdocs! i think i found rpnation around late '14 and then migrated to iwaky mid-to-late '16 iirc. started kinda late in the game forum/ rp-wise, but ive been writing since i was like 8 and the journeys been fun!

 

[kroyote]

i think i was like 9-11 roleplaying warrior cats on girlsgogames x.x or maybe i started everything all on warriorcatsrpg truly i have no clue, everything is soso fuzzy