How long have you been rping? What has kept you interested?

[Altered Tundra]

I do think the title is self-explanitory. Pretty much, tell me how long you have been rping, and what has kept you doing it. If it was the thrill of just writing stories with your fellow Rpers, then tell me.

As for me, I've been Rping for a good 8 years, on and off. I did take a big hiatus from rping mainly due to lack of internet access. My first experience RPing was in an AOL chatroom back in 2003. It was kind of up in the Cyber-range with it being Inu-Yasha-themed. Yeah, everyone has to begin somewhere. I did have fun while it lasted, and I don't regret any of it. I really don't remember who I was rping with, but it was just something I did when I was out from Middle School. You know, jsut something to do. xD

Now, if we fast forward to 2008, back to a time where I have a stable internet connection, we are at the point where I was introduced to play-by-post RPing. Yes, it's pretty much all I do now. I've actually gained a reasonable amount of writing talents. Actually, Rping has helped me decide my career path. So, I guess I owe everything to Rping. I got my REAL start on KHInsider Forums, and then just ventured off into other sites, until I found this place, and well, the rest is history. The reason I keep on roleplaying is quite simple. I just do it for the thrill of writing, and meeting new friends. Improving my variety of characters and possible Roleplays aren't half-bad either. :3

Now your turn~

[Brovo]

10+ Years. Ever since I was knee high to a gopher, really.

Tabletop up until about I was 12, then online through a mix of forums and games. Been on RPG for the past... Three years, about? I've been a GM most of that time. I loved creating worlds, dynamic NPC's and plots. I loved getting to scheme with every player, learning their little quirks, genre savviness, desires and fears and twisting them into a maelstrom of terror and excitement.

And now I have an RP that's lasted 2.5 years, loyal players and very refined ideas through trial and error.

Funny how that works when you RP for 10+ years, eh'?

[Kagamine]

I've been roleplaying... I think since 7th grade or so (currently in 11th), in a couple of forms. Some of which were very... sad, compared to the standards I have now. But, eh, gotta start somewhere.

I was introduced to roleplaying on a very small online community, where... well I'm not sure why it even had an RP section. But it did, and from there I was introduced to chatroom RP. You know, your basic *waves* and the like. Though it was an... interesting community- there was only one chat session where there was RP, so in that one chat session alone there would be a large handful of RP's going on at once. It wasn't really structured, at all, you just got a character and started interacting with someone. Once you had something going you typically wouldn't RP in groups larger than 2-3, and would ignore all posts that went up not relating to your RP unless someone is clearly trying to get your attention and wants to be in your RP (and these RP's were about just about anything so long as it didn't go cyber). On top of that, it was a place where having dozens of alts was not only allowed but also quite common (thank god for active moderation keeping an eye on it)- and these alt accounts were most often used for RP, as one account=one character, so of course people would have plenty for characters to fit any scenario. And there was really any scenario, including just about every genre plus canon/fandom stuff, with canon/fandom characters... all going on at once.... yeah, that place was a mess, looking back at it. ^^"

From there, someone was advertising their Webs website on that site, and I was just about the only one who fell for the advertising trap, but, hey, I was a kid, and so was the website owner. Worked out well in the end, though, since from there I was introduced to the very basis of forums- and with that, forum RPing. Now, this was an even smaller community of people, just a small handful, and, well, after inviting my IRL friends in I can recall a lot of them making their own sites, and we all hopped around between a small handful of very similar Webs websites all doing basically the same thing- some pointless discussion and some... really really bad RPing. XD We played by our own rules, not ever really having played on a real forum RP community before, and did a lot of things that, well... you wouldn't do those things here. And also- they were bad RP's. I mean, really bad. The concepts were stupid, the setup and execution was, as mentioned, atrocious compared to the highly structured stuff here, and the overall quality of it was... bleh. I'm almost tempted to dig some of them up and link them to you just to show how bad they were. XD At any rate, though, these were my first forum RP's- some puke me and a handful of IRL friends posted on the internet. And that was my RP life through most of junior high. ^^" Thinking back though, I can say that the quality of our RP's, not just in terms of grammar/writing quality but also, mainly, in terms of actually making it look like an acceptable and recognizable RP did shape up towards the end of our ventures- especially when the guy from the chat site managed to catch up with us on our own sites and teach us a bit more about how RP's are supposed to go.

Towards the end of my 8th grade year I found a site called Mweor- it was one of those virtual pet owning sites, like Neopets only a bit more mature. Just collecting and breeding mweors (fantasy cat-like things) and buying things to pretty them up with was fun at first, but exploring the site, I learned something- the games on the site were few, far apart, and they sucked. I kept playing them because they were the only way to obtain in-game currency aside from spending real money but, well, they sucked, and hardly even qualified as games if you ask me. And, well, once the games, buying accessories, plus the buying/breeding of mweors was out of the way, there were only two things left to do on the site; either battle with your mweors (which I had decided wasn't for me real early on, since the mweor fighting business was real competitive and you needed a mweor with some real impressive lineage in order to stand a chance against anyone, whereas I bred more for the looks) or head to the RP forums.

The RP forums there, well, they were certainly different from what I was used to- mainly just because I was entering a real RP community. The RP forums had a Persistent World-like setup, and people RPed using their mweors as characters doing pretty much whatever they could think up. Simple enough, right? Well, I got slapped on the wrist for a lot of things real early on just for breaking the rules of common RP courtesy- stuff I didn't even know about back when me and my friends on Webs played by our own rules all the time. However I got acclimated pretty quickly to what real RP looked like, and RPed pretty much solely in Mweor throughout the summer and start of my freshman year, and grew to really like RPing- far more than I did before. By the last few months of it, I recall using the site really solely for RP.

But, that site was really small compared to something like this, and it was one fateful December day that, when bored and waiting for replies on all threads I was involved in, I decided I wanted to look for RPing elsewhere to expand my horizons, and googled "forum roleplay" and, well... here I am.

The structure here is different than Mweor, but, not a ton- especially since every so often in Mweor you could find someone running an RP in some completely different universe which required CS's and stuff, so I was already fluent in that. Mweor prepared me well, and I grew to like RPing here even more, and continued to increase in skill throughout the year and a half I've been here (two years in December ). RPing has brought me lots of fond memories and some strong bonds with some friends, too, like IRL friend Cheetay, whom I invited to the Webs sites and grew close to there, who then followed my invitations to Mweor and the Mweor RP boards, and finally here, where we still RP today. We share a ton of memories and inside jokes from RP's way back in Webs to currently here, and while our posting speed has gone down dramatically since and we really don't RP quite like we used to anymore... still, at least we have all the fond memories. ^^

I went off on a massive tangent and never brought it back. O.O Whoops. ^^" I guess to answer your question, I kept RPing (on the chat site) for the fun, game-like experience, (on Webs) for fun times spent with friends, and (on Mweor and early days on RPGuild) for exciting new territory and a chance to improve. As for nowadays, well... it's a part of my life. I really can't imagine what I'd do without it. Especially when the only RP's I've had time to keep going are the ones I'm in with my friends.

[Wayward]

Keeping this one shirt and sweet since I'm on my phone, which is incidentally my alarm clock too; you get the picture.

For starters, I have been creating characters in a Roleplay-ready format for probably six years now. But I got my first (true) taste of Roleplaying around three and a half years ago. It was in the play-by-post breed of RPing, which has ultimately been my main source of RP activity. Like Altered Tundra, I got my big jump start on KHInsider, where I proved rather active (and not half bad, according to most other players there). Since then I've tested the waters just about everywhere I could get me foot in the door (it's so nostalgic it makes me talk like a pirate!). But only a few places have ever really held me over for lengthy periods. This place is one of them, as well as a gaming site or two that I've hung around out of loyalty. I keep with it because I enjoy working my creative processes. The RPing I do inspires my other creative endeavors, which in turn inspire my RPing.

[Aragorn]

Honestly, what has kept me interested is this site. The people make on here make it fun for me. And when I feel like I need a break from roleplaying, I can go to Spam for a few laughs.
No but seriously, this site is what got REALLY got me roleplaying. Before I joined, it was just the occasional IM/Skype roleplay.

[Dorian Gregory]

I've probably been role playing for about 15 years now...and I'm not sure if that is a good thing or just very sad. However, currently it doesn't really keep me all that interested. But I keep role playing to ensure that my mind and hands are up for the abuse that is my outside creative writing policy. In sort, it keeps my style and vocabulary at an acceptable level.

[Shadeheart]

I've been rping for over 10 years, not quite sure how many, actually....

I started back on my room floor with my friends with my plastic horses, graduated to theateresque live action rp with one of my friends as we hashed out the beginnings of our stories. Then in high school I discovered play by post rps. I love them, but as the years went on I discovered that they can get really frustrating if people decide to be rude, so I kinda stopped and have been doing things informally with my friends.

When I got a new comp last year, I tossed the idea of rping again around, and finally decided to come back here. Though now some people are starting to make me regret my decision...

[Dudel]

I've been RPing since forever, and like most of my interests it goes through phases. Sometimes I wanna, sometimes I don't wanna. Mostly what keeps my attention in RPs is player and character interaction, especially since I consider that the primary reason to/for RP.

[Hagazussa]

I begun roleplaying sometime close to Christmas the year I was 15, I am now 30 so I have been roleplaying for 15 years. As for what have kept me interested, I love stories, I love to be told stories in the form of books and movies and comics and so on, and I love to make my own stories, I write both fan fiction and original stories and roleplaying allow me to tell stories with others, that is what is keeping me interested. Especially I love science fiction, fantasy and horror and you will find so many others interested in those topics among roleplayers. I have played both over forums, chat and tabletop and even done a bit of LAIV RPG.

[Goldmarble]

Started in 1997 or 1998 on Yahoo Chat.

Keep playing as pure escapism.

Started playing D&D in....2001 I think.

Keep doing Online non-D&D because of the freedom of creation offered.