Experiences Who was the first character you roleplayed as?

[bastion]

Simple as the title, tell us about the first character you roleplayed as. Bonus points if you tell us why you played the character and how different they are from your current characters.
NOTE: Please don't cringe over your first character or how you roleplayed! Try to look back fondly instead! Even if it all seems bad to you now, it brought you joy in the moment, didn't it?

---

My first character was a self-insert / persona called Bec. It was for a monster highschool 1-on-1 rp, and Bec was a half-dragon. I honestly don't remember much about her, beyond being tough and cool because that's what I wanted to be. The roleplay was just a date of our characters skipping school, and I didn't realize it could continue beyond that so I kinda ended it before it needed to 0w0u Still it was a lot of fun and it got me to overcome my social anxiety enough to dip my toes into the rp world, so I'm happy with it.

Nowadays my characters are much more fleshed out, only natural after a decade or so, and I don't really relate to dragons at all. I tend to fluctuate between character types, but most are pretty far removed from me with the exception of them feeling the need to go out of their way to help others. I also wouldn't describe most as "tough and cool", even the ones who are popular or strong.

 

[nerdy tangents]

So I legit can’t remember chronologically who was the first person. I can definately remember the first consistent character though.

Her name was Aimee or Adelaide LeBelle.

Aimee LeBelle was a French succubus

Her succubus side was someone like Rogue who just drained psychic energy instead of dealt with sex. It was probably me working through my asexuality and aromanticness as a late teen.

She was also very shy and had either agoraphobia or social anxiety, again me working through IrL things. In this case being an introvert with generalized anxiety.

Her sort of alternate doppelgänger for less fantastical stories was Adelaide. She was possibly French but mostly she was more hyper and excitable. Sort of me playing with my more excitable and nerdy side just dialed up to a eleven.

 

[nerdy tangents]

I don’t do those archetypes as much any more but I do definately do nerdy type characters. They’re just more mature and usually a bit more nuanced.

I wouldn’t say no to updating Aimee, although I would probably remove the French aspect and flesh out her lore. But a more nuanced view of the character would be fun in a kinda cozy mystery or fantasy slice of life setting.

 

[bastion]

It was probably me working through my asexuality and aromanticness as a late teen.

Oh ain't that a mood! I've done multiple asexual succubus and incubus characters because I guess there's something cathartic or validating about using an inherently sexualized being and removing them from sex.

 

[nerdy tangents]

Oh ain't that a mood! I've done multiple asexual succubus and incubus characters because I guess there's something cathartic or validating about using an inherently sexualized being and removing them from sex.

Yeah I have always been big into deconstructing common tropes. I have just gotten more nuanced at in the past decade. Which I think is why I don’t find my early characters particularly cringe-y.

Except for teen me’s weird obsession with French stereotypes most of my early characters are more or less identical to who I play now. I just play the more nuanced and less one-dimensional versions.

I think I’m more aware of what I’m trying to say now, versus those early characters being a lot of me subconsciously working through stuff.

Now I look at them and I’m like “oh I obviously was trying to work through this or that” at the time it was more “I like this character but not those other characters.”

 

[Walliver]

the character I first role-played-
Kinda hard to say since I’ve “role-played” irl since I was like five. I think the first character I wrote about consistently though was this white haired assassin. Her name and backstory always changed. Sometimes she was morally questionable, sometimes she was just downright evil. But one thing always remained the same: she was an incredible fighter and she had no concept of social cues.

I think- if you want to analyze this- it was sort of working out the fact that I often felt powerless, timid, and unimportant in real life. I was stepped on, pushed around, and shoved to the side in public social settings and sometimes in familial settings. I’ve sort of abandoned her as a character, since I’ve learned to be more confident in myself- but who knows? Maybe I’ll pick her up again one day.

 

[nerdy tangents]

That is interesting, I have noticed that most people do seem to make aspirational characters when they start out.
ex. This is who I wish I could be.

I seem to be the opposite in that all my early characters (the consistent ones that weren’t made to fill specific roles) were more who I actually was. Or at least heavily dramatized versions of who I actually was.

I think it’s kinda the Bella Swan/Harry Potter idea. I wanted to put a version of myself in a fantastical situation rather then necessarily to be a different person.

 

[bastion]

Yeah, for me my characters have been always a way for me to escape from my life, which usually included myself as well. I just want to be someone else and get lost in their story for a while, I guess because I've always had difficulty facing and understanding myself.

 

[Idea]

So, my very first roleplay forum was a digimon roleplay forum. There's a whole story behind that, but I've told it a few times already and it's not super relevant right now, so I'll just stick to the fact it was a site with rules and mechanics I loved.

So my first character in that roleplay was called Collectdramon. A kind of reptile creature assembled by scrap data and held together by bandages. Their base story was that they wanted to explore or something and felt they had no place in the world, so ended up coming to the human world and started living in this really polluted river because one of that character's main quirks was the fact they loved to eat trash because they had no real conception of what real food tasted like. They got really defensive about trash cans and especially the river, but since they were curious and lonely they also went along with people easily if they proved to not be after the things he wanted to keep safe (which naturally nobody would). In my very first roleplay with Collectdramon he just met some guy and his partner, they took pity on him and they shared a meal, then went separate ways (I think. I honestly may be misremembering some details here). They were simpler times when I'd probably have been happy with some three-line posts. It's not the kind of thing I feel I could enjoy today, but back when it was enough to get me all giddy whenever a new response came.

A while ago I went back to check on some of my old content and I gotta say I was surprised at how well-rounded and fleshed out Collectdramon's personality was, considering it was my very first character. He had interesting flaws, a surprisingly deep motivation (even if my ability to express that depth has considerably improved from back then) and interests and motivations. A lot of my characters back when I started had a bit this pity-bait leaning but his was very minor. In fact at the start he was never designed to be a special individual, but just another inhabitant of that setting, with some fun quirks and appealing aspects to his personality. I think that focus was probably what made him ultimately come off so well right from the get go. I think I was lucky in that the character I wanted to play aligned well with a well-crafted character and this helped me channel my creativity in the right direction... at the start anyway. After Collectdramon evolved, I began trying to push him into a prophetic role (as in literally a character that delivers prophecies) but this didn't go very well with the kind of roleplaying site that was. It was a harsh lesson to learn for me, the beginning of understanding the implications of being in a story where you don't really control the narrative yourself, and the first of many lessons that helped shape up not only my current approach but the things I am wary of today.

Honestly there are a lot of my early characters I would cringe at. I made characters that were basically just preaching (as in preaching IRL religions) and I made characters doing the edgiest stuff out of what I now recognize to be silly jealousy. I have made some characters so laughably underdeveloped that nowadays I would say that person should go roleplay with someone else if it was shown to me, among many other mistakes. But now and then I also made characters that really stuck with me. Some of them I will never be able to retrieve and check out again the way I could with Collectdramon, but many of them I guess were firsts for me. Kneckt the insectoid that broke free from a hive mind and became a scavenger and alchemist running a pawn shop was the first step in the creation of my most developed setting to date, Euphorium. Another character whose name was lost to time was one of my frst RPs on RPN and one of the only I've ever done through PMs that was fun, I remember the arcs the characters began to go through and the unexpectedly good drama before the RP unfortunately fizzled out. Even still, those characters I would fringe at I still considered important to me as a roleplayer, because as with Collectdramon and his evolution, there was a lot for me to learn from making those mistakes. I look back at my old content and sometimes smile, sometimes cringe, but I know often when I cringe how far I've grown from those times. And I know as well there's plenty for me to learn still.



I think if I had to point out a difference between my early characters and my current ones I'd say the biggest one is that I can now do on purpose what I previously managed by chance. I don't slap on the characters the things I want, I gradually construct a character from core ideas, with a methodology for branching and connecting parts of the character. I understand this sounds a bit pretentious but it isn't as much as it sounds, I promise. It's merely a reflection of the experience I've gain, great or little though it may be, as well as my changed approach to writing which became a lot more analytical and structured than it was back then. One could say I used to dream up characters and now I construct them. I used to put things in characters because I just liked those ideas or because I expected a certain reaction from people. I was happy to put whatever I dreamed up into a more tangible form, even if that form ended up being a bit clunky and not quite being what I envisioned. Nowadays I begin with an idea I like, but I try to reduce it's form to simplest, most essential components, a core of the idea, and then expand and try to fit it with other things I want for the character, always in a way that ties the character together. I think about such things as "what does this imply for the character" and "how can this serve to enhance the character's core motivation or conflicts?". I think about the potential and fitting of the pieces I make, and when I'm done I look at it and I can be proud of the end product.


Wow and here I was worried I might not have much to say... Welp, hope you folks enjoy the read at least.

 

[redsceptile]

Simple as the title, tell us about the first character you roleplayed as. Bonus points if you tell us why you played the character and how different they are from your current characters.
NOTE: Please don't cringe over your first character or how you roleplayed! Try to look back fondly instead! Even if it all seems bad to you now, it brought you joy in the moment, didn't it?

---

My first character was a self-insert / persona called Bec. It was for a monster highschool 1-on-1 rp, and Bec was a half-dragon. I honestly don't remember much about her, beyond being tough and cool because that's what I wanted to be. The roleplay was just a date of our characters skipping school, and I didn't realize it could continue beyond that so I kinda ended it before it needed to 0w0u Still it was a lot of fun and it got me to overcome my social anxiety enough to dip my toes into the rp world, so I'm happy with it.

Nowadays my characters are much more fleshed out, only natural after a decade or so, and I don't really relate to dragons at all. I tend to fluctuate between character types, but most are pretty far removed from me with the exception of them feeling the need to go out of their way to help others. I also wouldn't describe most as "tough and cool", even the ones who are popular or strong.

My first character was a beta version of the character I use now, with the same name.
But she was a sonic oc, and she was originally based off of gender swapped sonic lmao

 

[nerdy tangents]

Yeah, for me my characters have been always a way for me to escape from my life, which usually included myself as well. I just want to be someone else and get lost in their story for a while, I guess because I've always had difficulty facing and understanding myself.

I think for me it’s because I was actually unusually comfortable in my own skin. I had social anxiety as a kid (so I got overwhelmed in social situations) and I think that was mapped onto the “normal” teen experience.

So like people assumed cuz I was “shy” and “nerdy” I just needed to be pushed out of my comfort zone to “gain confidence”.

In their defense that is what media and popular wisdom said was the right thing to do. And perhaps if I had been more like you it would have genuinely helped.

Unfortunately I grew up in a time where people were still coming to grips with what various mental illnesses actually meant beyond (medicate until the person is normal).

So I think for me what I wanted above all else was just validation. For someone to actually listen to me when I said what I needed rather then assuming I was some kind of stereotypical teen trope.

(To this day I hate the shy clumsy nerd stereotype specifically because it reminds me of those well meaning assumptions.)

So the “aspirational” part of my roleplays were therefore about me actually being allowed to be myself. Because I liked who I was, it was everyone around me who thought I needed to change.

(I mean to be fair I did have clinical anxiety that I had to work through, but that’s not the same thing as just being shy or timid. )

edit

Now that I think about it that’s actually a common trope in my current characters. People that are very comfortable in their own skin but put in situations where who they are is octracized or dismissed.

So they have to find validation somehow through the roleplay. I genuinely didn’t realize I did that until I wrote this post. But it’s actually my favorite story neat.

 

[Motherlode]

Oh, I do remember my first character, at least when it came to a serious text role-play. It was a few years ago on Discord that I was invited to my first fantasy group role-play and I got to make him: Theren was his name, and I sadly cannot remember the rest of it. But everything else I know vividly, and I can give it to you in brief.

Physically, Theren was a Morainian Elf with ashen skin and topaz eyes, with long black hair tied into a neat pony-tail. Elves were technically a distant cousin to humans that evolved on a slightly different path. Theren usually wore a blood-red robe on which he kept a scimitar and his praying beads. You see, Theren was a devout priest/missionary in this world, following the faith which I dubbed Cyrenism (otherwise known in this world as reformism because of its split from the main faith), which worships three creator-entities. Two are considered lesser deities spawned by the third and greater deity.

Typically Dark Elves like him bore more shamanistic beliefs, but this particular wasteland clan in which he was born into (where he was originally meant to become a trapper like his father) was visited by missionaries who managed to convince him to convert. And being so enamoured by their revelations and faith, he decided and was allowed to follow them back to their temple in the city of Ferencia, a sort of cultural capital of the east where he chose to educate himself in theology and language.

As time went on, Theren became old and educated enough to go on his own mission. He chose the forested jungle-island of Alucia as his destination, and embarked aboard the fastest steam-liner he could find. Because yes, this fantasy world had gone through an industrial revolution, and we now found us in a year comparable to our own 1880s–1910s in terms of technology, with firearms, Verne-inspired sci-fi literature, and even rudimentary diesel-electrical submarines operated by the Alucian Elves. Magic in this world is sort of a rare, esoteric thing in this time: rarely seen or used by anyone because of its impenetrable secrets, and often regarded as a superstition or outright non-existent by many people. But I digress!

Theren arrived to Alucia in order to profess his faith to the lizardian natives living on the southern tip of the island; the Alucian Elves were already believers, but they commonly enslaved the natives for their rice and sugarcane plantations. This is where the role-play began and I met up with the other players' characters.

As a person, Theren was usually a very vocal idealist, holding a lot of disdain for people he considered to be unjust or hedonistic. In contrast, Theren was a staunch ascetic and philanthropist, driven by his faith in the good of the personal spirit and the gods. I remember him getting into a lot of beef with my friend's character because of it: a vagabond mercenary who didn't quite share the same ideals as Theren, but in the end, through toil and danger, they managed to become unshakable friends together, relying on each other's strengths to succeed in the world. Theren was always the orator and negotiator of the group, meaning to overcome hardships through the power of words.

Sadly, we never got to finish the group role-play, but I had a lot of fun with the characters while it lasted. I still think back on Theren and the many ways I could have improved him and added more layers to his faith and motivation. It still only amounted to wanting to do good in the world, but in no way do I cringe or feel stupid when thinking back on it all. I just recognise some unused potential that I'd have used with my deeper well of experience that I now possess... that is, if I ever got to use Theren again, haha!

 

[Vinegar3]

I started my roleplaying on Google+ and it all began with a guy called Vinebomb. Vinebomb was a little green Bomberman guy who had been really modeled to be the comic relief of our friend group's OCs, in that he always cracked jokes, came off as ultra-confident to the point of comedy, and overall he acted a lot like Deadpool. I don't know if this was subconscious or not because I read a lot of Deadpool at the time but I distinctly remember him acting like that.

He used to be my main guy for a long time, and when I was younger I used to make comics about him in real life which elaborated on his origin of belonging to a race of alien robots and coming from another planet which had been destroyed (sounds familiar doesn't it), with his left arm being the only thing that survived the destruction. It ricocheted across the galaxy from the force of the planet's explosion towards Earth, where he was reconstituted by some passing wizard guy but with the tradeoff that he lost his memories of his previous life.

 

[BackSet]

A long time ago on a forum probably not that far from here called Zelda Universe, I created a character named Jensen Wildier for a Zelda RP. He was a walking contradiction as he was supposed to be quiet and brooding but also fun loving and snarky. I got a bit too meta in that RP and accidentally killed it and that makes me sad.

Technically, he's not my first character as I started on a Minecraft server but I don't count that.

 

[bastion]

A long time ago on a forum probably not that far from here called Zelda Universe, I created a character named Jensen Wildier for a Zelda RP. He was a walking contradiction as he was supposed to be quiet and brooding but also fun loving and snarky. I got a bit too meta in that RP and accidentally killed it and that makes me sad.

Technically, he's not my first character as I started on a Minecraft server but I don't count that.

Character's with contradicting traits are so good! They can be tricky to pull off, but when you get it right it gives them so much depth! Sorry to hear that you feel like your killed the rp though...

 

[Jannah]

I honestly don't remember since it was literally a lifetime ago (I'm old, lol). I just know it was in some fantasy RP on Neopets.

 

[BackSet]

Character's with contradicting traits are so good! They can be tricky to pull off, but when you get it right it gives them so much depth!

Yeah, I didn't pull it off right because I was, like, 13.

 

[nerdy tangents]

I honestly don't remember since it was literally a lifetime ago (I'm old, lol). I just know it was in some fantasy RP on Neopets.

Every now in again people being up Neopefs and I am like “oh yeah that was a thing, then it got weirdly economic.”

Same thing happened to Gaiaonline. Started out similar to Neopets (just with a human avatar you could do stuff with) and lots of forums to play around in. Then they became this money grabbing monstrosity and then they died.

It’s kinda a weird look at early 2000s internet.

But I can’t talk I started roleplaying on chicken smoothie which was overtly a site for ten year olds to collect animal art.

 

[Jannah]

Every now in again people being up Neopefs and I am like “oh yeah that was a thing, then it got weirdly economic.”

Same thing happened to Gaiaonline. Started out similar to Neopets (just with a human avatar you could do stuff with) and lots of forums to play around in. Then they became this money grabbing monstrosity and then they died.

It’s kinda a weird look at early 2000s internet.

But I can’t talk I started roleplaying on chicken smoothie which was overtly a site for ten year olds to collect animal art.

Yea, I was on Gaia too, but eventually left since I essentially got harassed off the site (long story). Neither site was the same once the microtransactions came in. I guess that's just a typical thing to expect now in late stage capitalist internet, though.

 

[eyclore]

My first character… was a girl called Sophie. I made her have highlights in her hair and wrote a story about her.. pretty cringey

 

[crumbelivable]

Edison Calder. He was a former commercial spaceship pilot who turned mercenary after he was stranded on a planet when a war broke out upon it. Been meaning to use him for something else for a very, very long time.

 

[bastion]

My first character… was a girl called Sophie. I made her have highlights in her hair and wrote a story about her.. pretty cringey

Nothing you described was cringe-worthy. Highlights in the hair is pretty mundane and tame by baby's-first-OC standards XD

 

[bastion]

Edison Calder. He was a former commercial spaceship pilot who turned mercenary after he was stranded on a planet when a war broke out upon it. Been meaning to use him for something else for a very, very long time.

That sounds really interesting!

 

[candygore]

i have two that come to mind and i can't recall which was first so i'll name both:

one was for this incredibly cheesy high school romance rp. we didn't use irl face claims at the time but i remember she had really long black hair. if i had to compare her with someone in terms of appearance, it'd be sakurajima mai from bunny girl senpai. she wasn't anything too special: just your typical tsundere highschooler. thinking back to it, my characterisation of her doesn't make me cringe as much as i thought it would

BUT then we get to this other girl: i wrote her for a zombie apocalypse rp i was gm-ing. she was such a mary-sue. i have no idea how people didn't call me out on it. i had roles for each character and mc's was literally "leader/all-rounder" but then she'd go and do the most stupid things like blare a gd air horn on top of a building to see if she can attract any survivors WHILE there was a zombie horde nearby

neither of these characters had any personalities tbh but i think for a 14/15-yo first time rp-er, i did pretty well, haha

i realised how badly i was writing my apocalypse girlie a couple posts into the grp, and requested everyone if i could restart it. no complaints. we restarted it. i wrote her as a scientist this time, and it went fine. i ended up getting bored of her and brutally killing her off so i could introduce a blind antagonist who could still see her surroundings in her mind (and probably had danger sense powers)

my characters were very heavily inspired by the anime i was watching at the time and tbh, i kind of miss writing them! they were all so creative and it was so fun to write them

 

[Celestial Water]

I was 11/12 at the time so can’t 100% remember but my very first RP that I can remember was an arena fight back on AOL. It was probably DBZ or anime inspired. The people I knew back then were mostly into Anime. My character won her first fight (and so did I OOC wise) bc the player didn’t follow an OOC rule but I felt her character should’ve won. We were closely matched and I was so nervous bc it was one of my first RP experiences and character matches and you got all these people in the chat room watching y’all’s character fight haha

It was all one liners and inexperienced RPers but it was good times. It felt like a transitional stage bc you could tell there was a blending of IC/OOC for the most part but moderators tried to keep us all IC lmao