Why did you begin Roleplaying?

[Komaeda]

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We all started somewhere. Did you have a specific motive, or did it just look fun? Post here! For me, I started Roleplaying at the age of 12 years old. My writing skills weren't as good back then and I saw roleplay as a fun way to improve my writing skills (as well as my acting skills lulz)


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[JayTee]

I wanted to do all those crazy things I kept seeing characters do in my mythology books, classic literature, comics, TV shows, and movies do, but real life kept getting in the way.

 

[StealthGiggle]

Started when I was seventeen, I don't know why...it just started.

 

[Gilzar]

One word: Naruto.


When I was much younger, I started watching Toonami. Now, I had always been watching things such as DBZ or Gundam just like most at my age did but...then a commercial for this show called Naruto came on. At first I thought "Wow. This show looks extremely stupid, are those whiskers on that kid's face?' so I told myself I'd never watch it, and just stick to DBZ or something. Well, days passed and I was playing with legos or something when the show came on. At first, I really had no idea what it was, and mind that I was probably like 8 to 10 years old at the time, so I didn't put the pieces together very quickly. Well, the introduction got me and I dropped my toys and started watching the show and was hooked immediately. It was only four episodes later that I realized what show it was, and felt insanely stupid for judging a book by its cover.


So I became a dedicated watcher, unaware of things such as manga at the time. Every Friday night I'd watch one, or two, can't remember how many new episodes they showed, but yeah. That's basically what made me get into early roleplaying. I was so...fascinated by the world that i would just pretend for a bit that i was a character in the series, and that the plot also revolved around me. It wasn't long before I found a group of friends at my school who liked to think the same thing. Now, they all knew what Naruto was, but not all of them were as interested in it as I was, every recess we would 'LARP' as you would call it? Basically just mashing a bunch of shit from video games, TV, movies, or books like Playdo and just going with it. We called this activity 'The Game', and we played it every recess regardless of the amount of crap we got for not doing something like football. Everyone thought we were playing Yugioh or something from the hand motions and falling we'd always act out, but in truth we despised Yugioh.


Well middle school came around, and me and all my friends went separate ways. Things like that just happen really, we don't quite think through what we do when we're that young. I kind of dropped my creative mind for a bit and focused on the real world (Mainly Videogames) but I spent more time socializing than I did before. Truth be told, I was just sick of getting made fun of and was still trying to find myself like every middle schooler. Well eventually I found this thing called ROBLOX in 6th grade, and I did a form of LARP on it, except for it would be in game and on a chatbox, but you could see and act with the avatars much better than in real life. Not that it mattered, with my over-active imagination I could visualize most of it, but getting back to it for the next few years the only form of creativity I really did was online roleplaying. This was really shit roleplaying to, most of the time there was no plot whatsoever, all that it was composed of was just action and character emo-crises. Looking back it was pretty bad, not going to lie, but we all have to start somewhere right?


After that the timeline goes blank for a while, due to computer issues I couldn't play ROBLOX again so I dropped off of my creative side once again, still not knowing how much of a creative personality I really had. The one moment that I can tell you of, which changed everything was a single dream. I was sleeping at my grandmas house, in her basement, on the largest bed, and I can exactly recollect the moment which just tells you how much of a role this moment played on my life. My dream was...unlike any I really had before, a full reflection of my inner consciousness. In this dream, I dreamt of Naruto Shippuden, the next series of Naruto that I had vaguely watched, and all of the characters were in this. For some reason that i can't tell you why, the dream brought out a sadness in me. It just reminded me of a side of myself that i had lost touch of, a passion that dimmed like some kind of candle, and I hated the feeling. Right after that dream, which was itself extremely vague, I remember waking up and almost crying because I knew what it all symbolized.


So right when I got home from my grandma's I started watching Naruto from the beginning again, and with some computer improvements I got back online. For a brief period I did that in-game roleplaying, but internet problems stopped that (Thank god...). So I moved over to the Forum section of ROBLOX, and I found this section called 'roleplaying'. I tried just jumping into the first roleplay I saw, which was some teenager survival-island kind of roleplay. Of course like any rookie I just skipped over the plot along with the rules and just tried making a perfect Military sniper, should have named him Gary Sue. There were a few more flops, but eventually I made a roleplay called Naruto: Legacy. This roleplay reflected my respect for the manga/anime, because I made sure everything would be true to cannon unlike the other roleplays I saw on ROBLOX. I met this great group of roleplayers, which were really just 3 people including me but soon grew to 5, and we honed in on our roleplaying skills by rping the shit out of that roleplay every day until that roleplay nearly broke 400 pages!


Eventually I found rpnation, where I really honed in on my writing skills, and the rest is rock and roll history. I'd say if it weren't for the single show of Naruto, that i may be in a completely different place than I was now, never really finding my favorite hobby/passion. And while I may not be some aspiring Author, I still take great pride in telling a story, as well as creating an entirely different world so that I can visit a different world for just a few brief moments.


Sorry that was a little long, but that's all god's honest truth right there

 

[White Masquerade]

Definitely. I have two motives! The first led into the second.


Last year, I began role-play, and it was to finish a show I watched, in my own way. That led to thinking, "Wow. Let me see what happens when I put my own spin on other shows I have watched." This eventually led to me thinking, "Wow. That went well. Setting all of that up was pretty fun!"


Here we are today. I still role-play to finish shows in my own way, but also do it now to learn some serious management skills.

 

[Lexielai]

Started after I was introduced to the Star Wars tabletop rolelaying game. Eventually I loved the idea so much that I took to participating in Cortex RP, a custom gamemode in the strategy game Starcraft II. THAT then led me to joining a chat-based roleplaying group, who I played with for about three years.


I took a brief break to take care of IRL business, and have now taken to trying out forum roleplaying. It's also fun!

 

[The Gunrunner]

No motive. I said "Ooh. That looks interesting," and got hooked.

 

[Riley]

I was about 15, had just gotten married (long story) and was stuck in the house all day with nothing to do and nowhere to go...but I had a computer, internet, and a horribly active imagination. 15 years later, here I am. Stuck in the house all day with nothing to do, nowhere to go, with a computer and internet. O.o Things haven't changed much.

 

[Ducky]

Started when I was thirteen because some of my friends were into it. Stopped for a long time after graduating from high school. Started up again a few years ago because a different set of friends were into roleplaying. In both cases, it was more about the opportunity than roleplaying because friends were doing it. These days, I sometimes write short stories about my character if I can think a plot. So part of my motive is to improve my writing skills..

 

[RosesAreBlue1234]

I love fantasy and novels, so I started using roleplaying as an outlet for this. Then, I got hooked.

 

[Lil Shirou]

I was on a site with a rp.section on it that went unused or at the very least didnt know what roleplaying was. My friend @Rinirin made our first rp on the site. As we soon discovered why there wasnt roleplaying on that site. It was a mess and we soon decide to close it and open a more private one. I truly enjoy rping and character development.

 

[BLUR]

This is an awesome question, and I got to read so many cool stories out of it! Props to you @Rinirin !


Basically, if I really think about it, I've been role-playing since I was in first grade. I remember that after school, I would go to my old pre-k to play around with the other, younger kids. They all looked up to me as someone who could make fun games, so I tried to live up to their image by creating activities. The earliest example of role-playing I remember was when I pretended that I was Exodia, the card from Yu-Gi-Oh, and that I was chained up just like in the card art. After a few minutes had passed, the chains would break and I would chase the other kids around as if I was a raging monster.


Throughout elementary school, I would play "pretend" with my friends, always relating to some sort of popular cartoon of the time. Countless times we would act as original characters in Pokemon, Naruto, Xiaolin Showdown, and other fandoms. We would have so much fun just playing with our minds, and I knew that pretending would always be a hobby for me, so in the 4th grade I got into fan fiction. It started solely with DBZ. I would read stories that other people created relating to the world of DBZ, and I would be so fascinated with what everyone had written, I knew that I had to give it a shot.


Unfortunately, my writing skills were subpar, and even as a little boy I knew that. I was never able to write a complete story, because I was never satisfied with what I was writing. Going into the 6th grade, I never wrote anything anymore, and I was simply a reader. I met a girl on the first week of middle school who was into many of the same things I was into, and she introduced me to a forum site she created herself. People that would later become my group of friends at the time were all on the site (as well as the school of course), and we would chat with each other every day. Eventually, we started writing poetry and what not, and that fueled our creative urges.


The girl who had introduced me to the site then proceeded to introduce everyone to roleplaying, forum style. Other than her, none of us knew what it was. We only did a single rp, a supernatural one, before we all dropped role playing all together.


At the time, I was super into the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG. I was on a site called Yugioh Card Maker where I created custom cards just for creativity sake. Little did I know, my friend was also on this site, and that's where she learned about roleplaying.


I started trying out some role-plays on YCM, and I got into it a little bit. I still sucked at writing but I had fun nonetheless. I still wasn't in love with roleplaying honestly, I just did it to pass time when I had nothing else to do. Everyone now and then I'd go on YCM to check if there was any interesting RP to join. Most times, there wasn't, since it was a small site used mostly for card creation, not roleplaying.


In the 8th grade, a user named Champster created a Naruto role-play that was so complex, and so much more like a role-playing-game, that I couldn't pass up on the chance to try it. He based the entire system of the RP on the Fallout video games. It was an amazing experience. It was the first time I managed to finish an entire story arc with group of people, and by the end of it, my apathetic, driven by vengeance character ended up joining the group that was the main antagonists of the story. Unfortunately, we never finished the RP, as it ended sometime during the second story arc, but my interest in roleplaying had been peaked.


Throughout high school, I would check in on YCM for new role-plays every now and again. Champster had created a couple of new ones, but none would last very long, as the various users would randomly drop it. When my senior year ended, I decided that since I had a very long summer, and because my writing skills had improved drastically through an advanced English program at my school, that I would try to find a site that was devoted to roleplaying so I could find a few good ones.


I had also began to watch Fairy Tail at the suggestion of a friend at this time, so I was really hoping that I would find some Fairy Tail inspired role-plays. Needless to say, I found RPNation, fresh off a merger with another site I believe. I found exactly what I was looking for, and I created characters for three different Fairy Tail role-plays. Only one made it passed ten posts.


Throughout the last year, I've been involved in that one role-play, and my love of roleplaying has skyrocketed. I would say that I only really came to enjoy roleplaying the way I do now because of this wonderful site. Thank you RPNation!

 

[TheRiverSings]

I was writing horrible Star wars fanfics and someone wanted to rp with my painfully mary sue character so I did. I have gotten better through my years and look back at that now as a painful memory. Hey we all have to start somewhere!

 

[Sabriel]

I actually can't remember why I started roleplayin'. I never knew such existed until about five years ago. The entire concept was new to me, as any unfamiliar concept would be to anyone. I discovered the benefits of roleplaying and I gradually got deeper into that type of activity. Next thing I knew, it became more of a natural thing and it's something I simply cannot stay away from. Character creation and development, the endless possibilities of a fictional universe, creative storytelling- Hhn.

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[SavedBySept]

Why did I begin RPing? I was raised an only child by parents who weren't very interested in raising a child [we won't go into that], so I was raised more like a mini adult. That being said, I did not relate to kids my age very well [they were boring and immature] so what do I do? Internet! I started in random chatrooms, before they were 24/7 people looking for sex, and found a group that wrote stories together. Bam, I was hooked. I could be the mature, intelligent, creative person I knew I was without people saying I was a little weird. RPing was and always has been an outlet for me in that way.


Edit: I get along with people now. I have friends. I am not a weirdo.

 

[Feldschlacht]

I joined this msn group which was about anime and games with roleplay in between. It was owned by someone who would become my friend even to this day. I liked the idea of writing with another person, seeing how our writing flowed together. Becoming surprised at what they may have in store for their characters, how I planned to respond with my own. Of course seeing a wide range of characters is right up my alley. Getting to play the heroic yet flawed hero or the insanely delightful lunatic. I started to be challenged by others, to go beyond my comfort zone as a writer, and mostly improve as one can never stop doing so. For me there's something to always learn because there are so many different styles.

 

[housekat]

When I was a child, I would always "play pretend" and it was basically roleplaying. So then skip to like the 5th grade and I was obsessed with the warriors series, and wanted to role-play as one. so then I joined a forum, and that sparked my interest in roleplaying. (When I remember my first character I shiver in horror at the atrocity it was)

 

[AlexSilverX]

My first ever RP experience was when I was 8 years old. I was being "baby-sitted" (I'm putting quotation marks on this because they did a really bang up job of it) by my cousins who were in college and they needed an extra player for a session of D&D (I also suspect showing off their kid cousin to the one girl in the group MIGHT have been a factor, but that's not relevant.)


Anyway. I got a quick, "as we go" "crash course" in the rules of D&D and we had a lot of fun. ...this create an inside joke between my cousins; whenever I would attempt something silly or dangerous, they would yell "You're level (blank) you dunce!" which turned into the IRL variation; "You're level 5, you dunce!" They teased me with this from 8 to 14... and then again when I turned 18 (the legal drinking age in Canada) and started having beers with them since I'm a rather gung-ho kind of drunk.


From that point on, I spoke to my friends at school and told them about this game I'd just learned about. They didn't care at the time (D&D is, to this day, just not really suited for most 8 year olds) but some 8th graders overheard and came to talk to me later I was terrified, thought they were going to bully me or something xD . Turns out they had more interest in the game than my friends did and I talked my cousin ET into GMing for us for a couple of weekends until we got the hang of it. In the end, I played with them for a few months and I looked cool at school for hanging out with older kids... even though they were the nerds of the bunch, lol.


But this opened up a door for me and I liked this whole "create a story with someone else" thing. This girl Ariel (no last name for privacy reasons) came to talk to me in September of the following year. She'd overheard - yeah, that theme is not getting old any time soon, whoever writes my life is really bad at introducing new characters - me talking the last year and, while shy, she wanted to share her own RPing story. "There are different kinds of RPing???" was my reaction. I had what basically amounts to a spaz attack and more or less begged her to show me.


This is how we began RPing together. I wasn't allowed on the computer at that age, and neither was she, so we had this little diary we exchanged and wrote our individual bits in (she consistently wined about my calligraphy, I'm a lefty so that talent was not easy for me to get... hand keeps covering what I write!!!) but we had a lot of fun. We still had this "opposite gender has cooties" mindset, so there wasn't much romance. It was a tale of friendship between her character - an action girl princess - and my character - a dashing rogue à la "Zorro" - who ventured the world to find the dragon whom had kidnapped the princess' little brother and save him. This RP not only contributed my first non-tabletop RP experience, it also challenged a lot of my ideals as a country boy raised by his 62 year old father. She was better at writing action scenes than I was and I was better at writing character development than I was.


By the time I clued in the original reason she'd approached me was because she had a crush on me, she'd moved on and had found herself a boyfriend. That' not really relevant, but that's how, 2 years later, that little RP relationship ended.


The next year was the year I hit the age of 12, and boy was that a year. As a 6th grader, I felt like I was "one of the big shots". I was in above average physical shape, my grades were high, my cousins invited me to play D&D more regularly and actually considered me useful, I'd finally opened up to the idea that girls might not all be about flowers and playing pretty pink princess... and my dad let me use the computer - and the internet - unsupervised for the first time in ever.


This is when I created my account in a very basic website with a forum-based community. I won't name it, but I suspect a lot of people started their RPing there since that was the case in my old community, so you probably know what I'm talking about. The big perk of the website was that you could create this little avatar and spend on-site money (which you gained through being active on the forums) to dress them up however you liked. Rings any bells? Good, cause that's the last hint I'm giving.


Anyway, at first, I didn't use it for RPing. But I discovered relatively quickly that there was a forum dedicated to RPing and SWEET TITTIES YES! (That was the extent of my foul language at 12 years old, people. Sarcastic applause unneeded.) On that community, I learned a lot... I mean, a lot a lot, about RPing conventions which I had up to that point been completely ignorant about.


By 16, I outgrew it. It had rules against certain things like 18+ content (kind of like on here) and in my 16 year old horny teenager mindset, if I was going to RP a romance, I was going to RP the whole damn thing and RP the hell out of the "interesting bits". (I won't discuss my first experiences with "cybering" as I'm sure most of you can imagine what that was like and those of you who don't are lucky and I should not hue your psyches with that kind of nonsense).


That community was rough on newbies and "newbie hazing" was a norm. So it was hard to fit in early on, but as time went, I earned respect and prestige for my good RP etiquette, active posting and well balanced characters. There was even a trophy system on the site based on who did good in what area (kind of like the keys on here). I grew in love with that community... ...and then fell out of love with it by the time I hit 21.


The big problem was that; when you allow 18+ content on your RP site when so few others do, EVERYONE WHO WANTS TO RP 18+ CONTENT COMES TO YOUR SITE. In character copulation was the norm, not the exception, and as a 21 year old still in his sexual prime I was surprised to make the realization; "I'm actually tired of screwing..."


I had an RP hiatus following that.


This bit is unrelated to RPing and more about my personal life so feel free to skip, but it does fill the blank in the timeline.

Which was good in a way, I had to focus on college which was finally getting difficult after two years of breezing through classes on material I already knew or cared nothing about, my first children's book was published, I had to juggle my two girlfriends (they knew, it was a consensual arrangement and they had people on the side as well, I'm not a cheater. Calm down please.) and I just... didn't have time or motivation for RPing.


But things slowed down. April 2015 came. The university year was over, one of my girlfriends got really jealous out of nowhere after 8 months of being fine with the arrangement and dumped me, I had a falling out with my editor after I refused to appear at a public event... it was rough. So I sought comfort with my other girlfriend, who thought I was getting "too needy" and ended up leaving me as well little over a month later. So I moved out of my apartment to a new place in the city. I started going out with friends and drinking... ridiculously. Partying gradually cut into my budget in a way my earnings couldn't keep up with, I was constantly either drunk or hungover, and over the course of May, June and early July, I lost 40 pounds putting me at 120lbs (completely unhealthy for a 5'10" guy). I was a mess.


I had a moment of realization and stopped behaving that way. I lost a few friends in doing so, but they were bad influences... still, that meant less people to hang out with. That also meant my "crutch activity" (i.e. partying my brains and wallet out) was out of the picture. I got really... really... bored.


Back to RPing

Three days ago, I found this community. And I'm loving it so far.


Wow... this went from "How I began" to "My whole life as an RPer". Sorry for the novella ._.'

 

[SirJonithus]

I started RPing because it's a cheap form of entertainment AND it's one where you have a surprising amount of control with! Also it's a great way to keep up your writing and creative skills in practice


... Oh yeah and I like Fantasy a lot so.

 

[Trace]

Haha, I could go on and on but essentially, I started because a friend of mine was the administrator of HP roleplay site and asked me to join. So I did, and I was hooked. I'd always liked writing--my first experience was probably writing these terrible short stories about horses when I was really little (I think most girls...have a horse phase).


After that, I began searching for other roleplays and I think the next big thing I got into was...Naruto. I was so on top of that lore like you wouldn't believe. That was my main roleplay fandom for a very long time, and interestingly enough that's when my writing ability got exponentially better. It helped that I found a great group of writers who were incredibly active, welcoming, and creative, and I stuck with them for a few years before I eventually moved on. I found another group on Proboards and did solely original roleplays for a very long time. The roleplay sites tended to die quickly, but we would hop from site to site with each other. I became good friends with some people who tended to be site creators and tended to jump around with them.


Writing was a great way to meet new people who loved the things that I did and, honestly, it was a great way to escape from every day life. I loved creating characters and figuring out their nuances and their histories. It was an excellent distraction when I needed one. I've had quite a few hiatuses but I always come back.

 

[ganymede]

Well, when I was a kid, this girl who was my frenemy kinda? and I and this girl who was always in the middle of us would make little ocs and do the 10 year old version of larp. I would write little stories about ocs, we would play... Then I found the internet.


I don't know how I found the site, but I stumbled upon a little warrior cats rp site. It was, well. It was crap. Poorly structured and organized, typos everywhere, etc. And my 10 year old self thought "What if I fix it up!" So I did. I got promoted to moderator for my (successful) efforts and RPed to my hearts content.


I was hooked. I've been through other places (Gaia for a few years, doing nightly intense dialogue + action + gm but no dice rps that often lasted until the morning, one time till 11am, for a solid year until I fucked shit up with a friend, a while of nothing, and now here. ) but there's always been an itch to rp.

 

[Musing]

I can't remember when I started, but I always loved writing and making up stories. Then my family got a computer, and I found AOL chat rooms and forums, and yep, I was up all night RP'ing mercenary angel/demon hybrids with the other nerdy 90's kids, lol. Started playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was 19 and finally met people who played. I'm 32 now, so I've been playing for awhile now, and still love it.

 

[Miguel]

I am looking for something to do with my life.


And I have a very good imagination (It just works when it wants to). Also I am good visualizing so I came here.


Also I want to improve my writing skills. Not just something like "The guy then used his sword and killed the dragon without problems". Damn no... I want something more detailed like complications, a near to death scene and then kill the dragon... Just an example, not a dragon around here.


I want a place to share my imagination and creativity while I, with the group or partner make a history.

 

[Kalessin]

When I was younger and had way too much time to spend I started making up some random characters and imagined how they would do stuff/how stuff would happen to them, well and for some reason they've been living inside my head since then. I grew up a bit and so did they, some died and some randomly appeared and I have no idea why. This probably sounds weirder than it is, haha. Basically, whenever I was bored I was RPing with myself, and when I found out that people do this in a written form I thought it was awesome to let those imaginary people out a bit. Well, yeah, I feel kind of stupid for typing this nonsense but that's basically my story.

 

[MsJoyMaeda]

I began about 4 years ago on a forum that is currently dying out.


I've always had a strong interest in writing. I even carried a journal of my own around school and wrote in it during free time. My stories were cheesy and the characters were cliche, but hey, someone has to start somewhere. In 2011, a forum I visited recently opened up a roleplay section. People began to create roleplays and I participated in a good handful of them. Some died out too early, while others went on for a long time. One even reached the page limit and had to move to a separate thread.


Of course, there are mistakes I learned from over the years. Romance was a big issue, and I made my characters fall for someone too quickly instead of letting the relationship develop naturally.


I was 11 when I started. I am now 15, and I don't plan on giving up this fun hobby I picked up.