Where did you roleplay before Iwaku?

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I began role-playing on an amateur game making site's pulled into it by some other members. Said site closed it's section close after said section one half died and the other went to shit. The GM moved to some small site, but I also started looking for a dedicated role-playing site.

First I ended up on gateway, but it was so vast and anonymous I never really settled in. I then joined roleplayerguild, where my first thought was upon finding the right section for my supposed skill level (assuming it's be middling at best cause this was a dedicated role-playing site) "Wait this is advanced? Half of it has lower standards than what I am used to."

And then I got into a fight with my first GM on that site about godmoding. Good fun.

The guild was great for the most part. Despite being big, the segregation of sections made it feel smaller and more cohesive. For the longest time, Fonz cool was practice and the site was overall a chill experience. Outside of drama behind the curtains which I admittedly greatly enjoyed. It taught me a bunch of stuff about role-playing and people management. You could also be a dick as long as you were a fair dick with good points. Which eventually and maybe inevitably, snowballed into you can try really hard to be like @Jorick. Which was first contained in the so-called 'condom' of the guild AKA the spam section. But because just like AIDS doesn't really stay in your genitals and circulates the bloodstream, as such it bled into other sections. To pacify it, and to keep the metaphor going, the staff tried to have sex with it. Did not work out. They were overwhelmed by disease and some became part of it.

Meanwhile. Or more like, in forever, the owner's loose attitude that made a lot of the guild great, forced a lot of decisions on a less than stable or unified team. The only capable leader we had, whether you liked her or not, got promoted irl and joined the hands off approach full time. Then, due to life circumstances I know little to nothing about, the owner did not pay their bills and the site was terminated without warning. Causing a lot of people to lose a lot of writing. The reformed guild felt like it was on life support. The owner made lofty promises about custom coding content, but before that went anywhere the AIDS, corruption and mostly the insecurity surrounding it's continued survival, motivated me to try my luck somewhere else. Iwaku was one of 2-3 sites I tried.
 
Escapistmag. It was where I started participating in forum RPs in English. I'd only done chat RPs before that. I argued a lot with fellow players, and some mods. It's still the place for some of the best group RPs I've made myself, or been in that others made. The community is dead now.

Roleplayerguild. It was a disappointing experience after Escapist. There were more RPs, but they all died so much faster in comparison. It was the place where I did my longest 1x1 though, which lasted about two years. I left after I realized how toxic the community was, and how lazy the mods were so they would never do anything about it.

GW2. Roleplaying in GW2 was pretty weird to me after years of forum roleplaying. People weren't really welcoming to new roleplayers in general. The roleplay guilds that seemed interesting to me pretty much required 100% commitment to stay in character at all times. I almost played the game 24/7 back then with friends, so it would have been difficult to do, and I might have alienated some people if I'd done it. I wanted to be able to play the game without constant roleplaying. I did some 1x1s in GW2 though.

Iwaku kind of passed over my radar for a long time despite the fact that I made an account months before I began to search for RPs here. At this point it's just one of several RP sites I use to search for 1x1s, which isn't going all that well anyway.
 
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Believe it or not. Minecraft forums was where I started and the ego little shits on that site was incredible. I then moved to rpg before guild fall came around, granted once it came back. I came back to rp on it again. Another site was roleplay adventures. A kinda complex site but good after all kinda lost interest in it though
 
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Then I don't see why Gwazi found them missing to begin with.
I mean the tabs for the forum page itself. That let you separate character lists, rules etc. without shrinking it's respective text box.
The one that was here for only a few months before removed because... reasons. :/
 
I mean the tabs for the forum page itself. That let you separate character lists, rules etc. without shrinking it's respective text box.
The one that was here for only a few months before removed because... reasons. :/
Because they were total ass, you mean. That system strangled roleplay creation because people hated it so much. Good riddance. :P
 
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*Cough* Runescape

Then I moved to Skype, and then found Iwaku.
 
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Habbo Hotel Canada - The "Welcoming" Committee

This is where I first started Roleplaying. It wasn't the worst, but it had it's fair share of problems.

+The bonus all Game Platform RP's have of being able to design settings. Can add immersion.
-Said Platform does also severally limit (and slow down) ability to RP though.
-The fact said props also required Habbo Credits, which required real money made it an expensive hobby.
-It was more a combat system than roleplaying itself. Like, a story was there but almost everything was dictated by combat.
-Said Combat System wasn't even inventive, they just spammed attack actions until the other fell. It became a test of who could type (or copy+paste) the fastest.
-This also lead to a clear hierarchy of people who were 'better' than others. So elitism was rather high.
lmao holy shit, Habbo Hotel. I remember that mess of a website. It was just full of a lot of teenagers trying to cyber sex, to my memory!
 
lmao holy shit, Habbo Hotel. I remember that mess of a website. It was just full of a lot of teenagers trying to cyber sex, to my memory!
I mostly remained in the Naruto and Star Wars RP communities of the site.

But Habbo Hotel had some really odd practices, like RP Adoption, people getting paid to sit in a room...
It was weird. :/
 
Back in October, 2001 (I remember this because it was a month after 9/11 happened and the forum I joined had an entire subforum dedicated to talking about and coping with the attacks) lil'Dervs was huge into Starfox 64 and decided to join a fan community for that game, and it was about a month or so of just hanging out on the forum before I stumbled across the roleplaying forum the site had and decided it would be pretty fun to give that a shot.

I'm happy I don't remember much of the details other than the persistent world and characters and invididual members of the forum that I am still fond of to this day, but I am kind of glad the site went down and my early roleplaying history got buried alive in the process because I'm pretty sure 13-16 year-old Dervish's writing was fucking atrocious by my current standards, although I will say that I stopped roleplaying when people started doing speedposting and one liners over posts with substance and a few paragraphs. It was impossible to keep up or be a part of those games at the end there because it would literally be dozens, if not over 100, posts a night. That to me is the worst. So, I left the forum after biding everyone a fond farewell, and focused on other things in life.

Fast forward to January 2012 where I felt that roleplay itch again and started looking for a site for it. I found Roleplayer Guild, and it was fantastic and I made a lot of good friends there and left quite a bit of a legacy for the roleplays I ran; I still have people to this day telling me that my name means something when they see an interest check or OOC with my name on it. I guess I'm one of those people who engenders a pretty loyal group of players and manages to keep games going for several months or years when the vast majority of roleplays anywhere struggle to make it past the first few weeks. Kind of a source of pride for me, I suppose.

Anyways, as others have tread over and without beating the horse to the point it becomes glue, RPG went down, came back as an unstable and barebones mess, I lost a game that was running for 2 years and barely survived on life support after the site came back up. In one of the few cases of me ever joining in on a bandwagon ever, I joined the mass exodus of RPG members who found their way here to Iwaku. I went back to RPG in the past year to do the lion's share of my roleplays there.

I like Iwaku, but I'm falling out of love with it. I don't really talk to a lot of people on here, I can't get a roleplay to take off here and all the ones I join crash and burn or bleed out slowly, and there's just not a lot keeping me around. There's a lot in general chat here that I'm finding myself utterly disinterested in, and I never really felt like I was a part of this community. It's not a bad site by any means, and I probably had quite a bit of bad luck finding or launching games rather than it being representative of the roleplay community here, but when I go back to the old site and start new games, I pretty much immediately get interest and they're still going at six months and two months, respectively. Here, very similar games barely made it past the first page.

So... yeah. That's pretty much where I stand.
 
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Makes me sad to see folks having such difficulty finding role-plays here. I can't speak much for group role-plays, but I've had more success here finding good role-plays than I have anywhere else. If a role-play ends, it is - 9.5/10 times - my fault, which is pretty neat to me. I find the sheer size of Iwaku's user base makes it easier to find partners, because there has to be someone out there for everyone, you know? All the sites I had role-played on prior were much smaller so if you were lucky enough to find a partner, you could be sure those role-plays weren't going to last at all before the site shut down.
 
I started roleplaying in chatrooms on some obscure chatroom site that I can't remember the name of anymore. It was really skeevy and full of people just wanting to cyber sex disguising it as RP (the amount of people I had trying to get me to cam with them...@_@). Eventually I had enough of that and went searching for roleplay sites, but most of them came across as rather elitist and unwelcoming, so I gave up.

Fast forward to 2011. Board and unable to sleep, I felt the urge to start roleplaying again and decided to look for a site again. I typed 'Roleplaying site' into google and Iwaku was near the top of the page. I was a little hesitant at first, but after looking around for a while, I found I liked the feel of the community and signed up. Been here ever since.
 
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I don't really talk to a lot of people on here, I can't get a roleplay to take off here and all the ones I join crash and burn or bleed out slowly, and there's just not a lot keeping me around.
Pretty much what happens to me.

If a role-play ends, it is - 9.5/10 times - my fault, which is pretty neat to me.
I wish I could say the same was for me. I know some rps dying has definitely been my fault, but the majority were not... and when you spend a good week or so making an awesome character and backstory just to have them flop after less than a page of rping... Well I'm sure everyone here must know the feeling. Some take it better than others though.

Anyway ^_^' I'm not going to relay more of my woes. Sorry about digressing guys!
 
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Coloholics? Anyone from Coloholics besides me?

That was my first "serious" forum rp site I was on during my late teens. Have lots of great memories, stories, characters, and my longest rp partner until we lost communications. If it wasn't for the wave of anime based rp (all cannon), rude admins, and a shady owner who we all suspected was using donation money for his personal use, I would probably still be there.

But, Iwaku is the better roleplaying site for me now.~
 
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My first experience with roleplay was Sailor Moon Universe in the chat room. It was a lot of one liner persona chat playing. Someone from SMU invited me to this little one-page forum style roleplay. My first ever character was Sailor Virgo. :D At that point I just discovered the GREATEST THING IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.

So I started my own Roleplay Forum called Moonwings. Moonwings was my treasure precious babby. I instilled in it all the things I believed in. Friendly community, members are family, fair rules, think before you judge, teach instead of elitism. But I was also REALLY NAIVE. I gave a lot of extra chances when I shouldn't have, I trusted people I shouldn't have. Some of my ambitions created a bad environment for roleplaying. I made a ton of mistakes. I'm pretty sure the only reason it stayed alive so long is because I NEVER GIVE UP. When we got close to our 8th year, things were falling apart pretty hard. D: Member drama was so high, and the site was small, there was no way to FIX IT without banning half the members and destroying a lot of people's relationships with each other. So I shut it down and hid on a private, friends only forum (AFTA) for awhile.

Then Rory asked for my help with Iwaku. Iwaku was exactly like Moonwings pre-drama eras. I LOVED the personality of people in it. They were headed towards mistakes that I had JUST finished licking my wounds over so I thought "hey, I'll help get stuff under control and then go back to my cave". And well... IT WAS BETTER HERE AND I NEVER LEFT.

Since then we've gone through lost data, hackers, staff civil wars, multiple mass migrations, crazy forum drama, bad choices in decisions and management - but also learned SO MUCH in how to handle all of those situations and get better because of it. So Iwaku is still here and still kicking.

AS FOR MY FUTURE... Like a couple people here have already said, they ain't "feelin' it" anymore. I am also one of those. I love Iwaku, and I am going to protect Iwaku and what it is. But I'm ready to retire and get involved in a new project. What I need from roleplay and the players I wanna interact with is different, and Iwaku doesn't fill those needs. I mean, I could change the whole site and MAKE IT be the kind of place that does. O__O But Iwaku provides something special that a lot of other RPs don't. I'm not gonna break that up.

My next project is going to be an 18+ adult roleplaying site. :D The kind where you can write all the smut in any way you desire - but without the creepy vibes a lot of Adult RP sites tend to have. Every time I check one out, you have to worry about constantly getting hit on and flirted with and members always making uncomfortable passes at you and wanting to know about real life you. They blur that line between character and player. And I HATE that. >< I'd like to create one where that doesn't happen. I want to write amazing stories that have sex in them, I don't want to deal with flirt drama. D:
 
Runescape, then some weird Warrior Cats chat-based rp called Kugyay. Did some time on the WoW forums. Ended up on Tumblr somehow with an okay group of people who were far too pc for my tastes.

Now I'm here. It would be nice if we could get some more non-anime rps, or more with higher writing requirements, but it's a fine place and overall the residents are pretty great.
 
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AS FOR MY FUTURE... Like a couple people here have already said, they ain't "feelin' it" anymore. I am also one of those. I love Iwaku, and I am going to protect Iwaku and what it is. But I'm ready to retire and get involved in a new project. What I need from roleplay and the players I wanna interact with is different, and Iwaku doesn't fill those needs. I mean, I could change the whole site and MAKE IT be the kind of place that does. O__O But Iwaku provides something special that a lot of other RPs don't. I'm not gonna break that up.

My next project is going to be an 18+ adult roleplaying site. :D The kind where you can write all the smut in any way you desire - but without the creepy vibes a lot of Adult RP sites tend to have. Every time I check one out, you have to worry about constantly getting hit on and flirted with and members always making uncomfortable passes at you and wanting to know about real life you. They blur that line between character and player. And I HATE that. >< I'd like to create one where that doesn't happen. I want to write amazing stories that have sex in them, I don't want to deal with flirt drama. D:
heck yeah I am SO DOWN for this!
 
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I started off at Roleplayers Guild in the year of 2012 I think it was? Had lots of fun, joined lots of great RPs. Even, "gasp", completed some! But then everything went sideways. While later, site came back up and I went back on, but it was a shadow of its former self like others have said. So many members had just left(including many friends I had made on there), off topic section had become almost non-existent, and none of the RPs really appealed to me. Then somebody in the chat room on RPG sent me an invite to Iwaku, which I had heard a lot of my partners had moved over to, so I migrated.

Unfortunately, my roleplaying career seems to have died with OldGuild. :/ But that's another subject...
 
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First started on Neopets and Marapets back when I was 10-11 and had just discovered that what I was doing with a friend via notebook paper & folders actually had a name. Then I ended up joining Roleplayer Guild in early 2009 and fell in love with the place. It was my home away from home until shit happened and I migrated over here during the Mass Migration thanks to @Brovo & @Jorick. I love this site and don't plan on switching any time soon, though old RPG will always hold a special place in my heart.
 
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Loads'o'places. Buckle up, we're going on an adventure, in chronological order--from oldest to newest.

Warcraft III: SotDRP was neat. I liked it.
Fate: Enjoyed it greatly for what it was. Grew out of it as I got older.
Verdict: Don't regret it at all. It was a simpler time. Wouldn't do it again, though--anything I could glean out of that experience has come and gone.

Gaia: A rite of passage if you will.
Fate: I quickly grew to hate it and everything that it was.
Verdict: A harsh lesson that big communities are not always best. Loads of people there were just terrible people in general, making absurd demands that made no coherent sense whatsoever. Moderators were random tyrants that imposed whatever their crude sense of morality is.

Roleplaygateway: Alright site, overloaded with unnecessary complexity.
Fate: Grew bored of it in due time. Too many elitists always blaming others for their failures, never themselves.
Verdict: Decent site, may go there again one day, but I doubt it.

SBRP: Referring to acronym to preserve their security.
Fate: Tiny site had no interest in growing, burned itself away with inner turmoil.
Verdict: I outlived the community. Learned the harsh lesson that small isn't always better either.

NVD: Another small site.
Fate: Creating an atheist was apparently not allowed.
Verdict: Learned that small sites can be crazy cult shit too.

GMod: Garry's Mod.
Fate: A fun experiment that rapidly taught me how horribly inefficient game engines are for telling deep and complex narratives.
Verdict: I could be convinced to do it again, for shits and giggles. It takes zero effort and might be a nice way to waste an afternoon.

RoleplayerGuild: Good times.
Fate: Staff who were constantly outnumbered, overwhelmed, and in most cases, who didn't care. (A couple of notable and lovely exceptions.) Site imploded and reincarnated, but was a non-functional potato for a year.
Verdict: I burned my bridges there when I left. Not intentionally, but when you accidentally draw a hundred people away from a site via mass migration, it tends to leave some sore egos behind. I miss the site for what it was--but I don't know what it is now. I'm sure it's still a nice place to RP now that it's working. I, however, won't take the chance of having several years of work suddenly go up in smoke again because the admin was too lazy to pay a once-a-year bill.

IwakuRoleplay: Left-leaning.
Fate: Staff-to-member ratio is skewered in favour of staff, policies tend to be further left-leaning than I'd ordinarily like. Very heavy LGBT emphasis with tags and the like. Earnest community.
Verdict: I've seen sites with a greater level of writing ability overall, but Iwaku wins out by sheer professionalism on the part of the staff. The fact that the community is as diverse and humorously lovely as it is, is a bonus. I can teach writing, I can't teach compassion.

Do I roleplay on any other sites right now? No. Would I consider it in the future? Maybe--depends on circumstances. At the moment though? No. I like having one go-to place for my roleplaying needs.





if iwaku is left leaning, what does that make @Gwazi Magnum ?

or ME?

we are neither right nor left

we're penis
 
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