Not really, no. But I feel like I ** /always/** have to explain it, otherwise people assume it's a sexual hobby. My parents know I'm an active online Roleplayer, so do all of my friends and so on. I've actually gotten some of my real life friends to join the site, including my older sister. A lot of my friends and even my sister have been in my RPs before, so nope, I don't hide it at all. In fact, I'm the person people run to when they need writing advice, haha.

I don't actively share it with everyone I know for the same reason a few other people mentioned: everyone jumps to the conclusion that roleplaying is something sexual. I usually just tell people I write in my spare time. If they ask what I'm writing, then I explain the roleplay part :) It usually goes pretty well that way. P.S: I must ask: Is the title of this thread a LOTR reference? XD I don't know if it's just because I'm a nerd, but when I read it, I imagined Gandalf's line, "Keep it secret. Keep it safe."

The only people who know are my family (They're writers, they love to see me do this.) and my friends who I play D&D with.

For the sake of others, and not breaking their brains, yeah.

I dont see the need to hide it but neither do I see the point in talking about it. I guess I never thought of it as too nerdy to talk about lol.

The topic never comes up, so I never need to talk about it

I never hid the fact I'm a total geek. Even in basic training, I was up front with it. And guess what? I ended up finding a new circle of geek friends just like me, WOOOOT!!!!

When I read this I thought it meant do I keep role-playing a secret, like me, role-playing a secret. Like; if a a gay person who wasn't 'out' yet always played gay characters or females when male. Which I feel, is even more interesting of a topic to discuss. Because I know I do, nothing like the aforementioned scenario but I have my secrets entwined with my role-playing, or some of it: I'm a submissive person in general so playing a submissive character is very *rare* for me, I generally play a dominant powerful passive agressive character to make up for my lack thereof in real life. Also no I do not hide the fact that I roleplay, I have a large community of friends who do as well.

For me, it's never really been something that comes up in conversation. I have suggested it to a few people I know like to write, but only like, three people. So basically, if someone asked me if I roleplay, I wouldn't deny it, but I don't go around announcing it to everyone I meet.

> I generally treat role playing the same way I treat my sexuality: if it comes up, I'll talk about it. If not, whatever. > > The only time I really actively talked about role playing was with the table top group I joined my freshman year at college (everyone graduated though so I'm alone now, lol) and when a friend and I were still close. Haha, now I'm sad. Oh well. > > Plus I'm buddies with some former RP'rs so I bring it up with them if I'm in a particularly good RP. > > Then there's this strange relationship with another kinda friend? And we both RP a lot but we never talk about it? It's like a Fight Club thing between us, lol > > So Idk. Overall, it's not fun talking about it with people who don't do it in my opinion. And it's hard to find people who do it. Rule number one: don't talk about fight club. But anyways, to the main question, if someone finds out, I honestly don't care, I'm decently cool so people would dismiss it, hell, I've even had some good friends join here.

> > I generally treat role playing the same way I treat my sexuality: if it comes up, I'll talk about it. If not, whatever. > > > > The only time I really actively talked about role playing was with the table top group I joined my freshman year at college (everyone graduated though so I'm alone now, lol) and when a friend and I were still close. Haha, now I'm sad. Oh well. > > > > Plus I'm buddies with some former RP'rs so I bring it up with them if I'm in a particularly good RP. > > > > Then there's this strange relationship with another kinda friend? And we both RP a lot but we never talk about it? It's like a Fight Club thing between us, lol > > > > So Idk. Overall, it's not fun talking about it with people who don't do it in my opinion. And it's hard to find people who do it. > > Rule number one: don't talk about fight club. > But anyways, to the main question, if someone finds out, I honestly don't care, I'm decently cool so people would dismiss it, hell, I've even had some good friends join here. I like how you mentioned you met some good friends. I too met some really good friends, including,my best friend whom,I'm about to actually meet in person! How cool is that?

Oooh boy. Yeah, I actively hid it for _years_. I've been playing tabletop since I was eight (brother's bullied me into playing the cleric), my folks were okay with that, but they would have flipped if they had known the extent of my roleplaying on the internet. I started in MSN Groups, couldn't have been older than 10, I was big in the Yu-Gi-Oh!, Sailor Moon and Digimon scenes. Moved to the officia Harry Potter Dialogue Center shortly afterwards, stayed until they shut down a couple of years ago. The one time I told school friends, they all called me a freak. My mum once found an app I'd submitted to a Sailor Moon game and freaked out because my character had a male name. Learned quick that it was weird. It actually became an issue in my marriage, hilariously enough! I was too embarrassed to tell my husband, and we spent the first two years of our marriage apart (dual military, he was on deployment when I got out), but when we started living together he found out. At first he thought it was all weird and sexual (which, I can understand, I was hiding it), but I eventually explained it to him. It felt like such a relief! I've made such incredible friends in the past decade plus of roleplaying and I can finally talk about this part of my life with someone. We actually talk a lot about it now, and I've talked to some IRL mates who've been really interested. It's weird, but in a good way. I am not a clever woman.

Can of worms OPENED! Now, hear me tale of woe: I still hide it from everyone. EVERYONE. Technically, I started this with my sister a decade ago, but when she started it was just chatting on a forum like a normal person, and then she dragged me in, and would try to reply to people as me —which I though was hella weird. She lost interest in it really fast, but I stuck around because, hey! I kinda had friends! It took me a long time to figure out what exactly was going on, and I made a hell of a lot of newbie mistakes, but I found something I could really enjoy and was proud of that. (Prepare yourself for my life story) I started out on the Harry Potter Dialogue Centre and, because I’m not the best with handling change, stayed there almost exclusively through my entire roleplaying career until it shut down a year and a half ago and to this day I still struggle writing outside of the HP Fandom because of how my attempts to branch out were received by others. People judged me for writing HP Fics, but judged me a thousand times more when I was writing anything else. People who knew me irl judged me on my writing, because I’m dyslexic, and it’s great fun for others to sift through my writing and point out every incorrect word in there. The first time I let one of my sisters read a short story of mine, and she pointed out that I’d used 'piece' instead of ‘peace’ AND that I’d switched the i and the e, I tore the notebook out of her hand, and she and everyone near her laughed about it for weeks. I panicked, once, because I introduced myself to someone on HPDC and their reactions was "Hey, my friend's sister has that same name!" The first person I told was my closest friend. I’d created a character inspired by her, and I’d been writing for almost a year at that point so I felt comfortable letting her know. She gave me a strange look, chuckled awkwardly, and left my birthday party —where she was the only person attending— an hour early and didn’t talk to me for a week. She played online roleplaying games, and video games, but somehow writing wasn’t the same and she didn’t approve. I didn’t let anyone outside of my online community read any of my writing for almost nine years. My parents knew I spent all day on the internet, but once my dad was sure I wasn’t giving my phone number to pedophiles they generally didn’t care. Few questions were asked when I spent four hours straight on the family computer. Fewer questions were asked when I moved the family computer into my bedroom because no one else was using it and I was uncomfortable knowing they could read over my shoulder in the living room. They just let me be. My parents didn’t know. My siblings, for the most part, didn’t know. My kind-of boyfriends didn’t know. No one I went to school with knew. Hell, my employer didn’t know and I wrote a lot while on the work computer because I could. After the horrid reaction of my best friend I started writing only under my alias, an alias I still use, because I was terrified of people I knew finding me on the internet. Absolutely terrified. I was also terrified of my internet friends finding me irl, and discovering how pitiful of a human I am. I told one friend my senior year that I “write Harry Potter Fanfiction” and he screamed blasphemy, and I didn’t write for like a month. But I’m getting better with it. High School me would be mortified with the steps I’ve taken, just within the past year or so. She would also be extremely pissed with me, because back then I could stay up writing until 4am or later, and still be up and at school by 8 with no problems. High School me would also be infuriated by how little writing I accomplish, compared to how much time I now have. But whatevs. In just the past year I’ve told TWO of my real life friends —technically three but one was completely plastered when I told her and doesn’t remember anything— and neither of them judged me too harshly. When I told the first, one of my oldest friends from school, she genuinely thought I was coming out of the closet with the way I was acting. I first broke it by saying I just wrote fan fiction, and she handled that fairly well. Then I elaborated a little more to her, and her reaction was “…and?” To her, it wasn’t that big of a deal. She’d known people who’d roleplayed when she was in college, and thought it was cool that I wrote HP stuff. The whole conversation, however, happened via text message, and this is a friend I hadn’t seen in over two years by that point. I offered her one of my games to read over, and immediately panicked after sending her the link. She never read it, and I guess that brought some relief. But, after I told her, she found an article for me, talking about the stigma of writing fics and roleplaying and it was really nice of her. It really enlightened me, because I’d always thought I was the only one in the community who was so frowned upon for this, because all of the online friends I’d made seemed hella confident and talked to all of their online friends outside of the forums, some even met up and hung out! Some let their friends and fam read our writing (which scared the piss out of me when I found out); everyone I knew who roleplayed never seemed as troubled as me. A few (okay, like, six or seven) months ago, I was writing a post on my phone at work, and a coworker asked me about it. I just kind of giggled awkwardly and told her I was writing and she shrugged and walked away. But after a while she kept asking, so I finally just kind of let everything spill —and while she didn’t mock me, she definitely seemed judgey, but she let me ramble to her about it. Then she started to get pushy, asking if I’d write things for her and such, and I tried to explain that it didn’t really work that way for me, but one day at lunch she somehow convinced me to trust her enough to let her read a drabble I’d written for a character. Just a drabble. A drabble of a memory of one character’s childhood that really had nothing to do with the game, but was fun character development and I was proud of it. I suffer from frequent, absolutely horendous anxiety attacks. I have them all of the time, over everything. I swear in the twenty minutes it took her to read the drabble (as you may have noticed, I write _a lot_) I swear I pretty much died, like, seven times. I was in agony. If I hadn’t been in the middle of a Starbucks, I’d have been on the floor screaming. She chuckled at some parts, and I seemed hopeful. She commented on the length of the post, and I wanted to chuck myself out of the window. When she finished she just kind of looked at me, handed me back my phone and said “Cool. I have no idea what I was reading, but it wasn’t bad.” I shouldn’t have driven back to work after that. I was trembling so violently I couldn’t see and I honestly don’t know how I got back to work. For the next fews hours I got a lot of “dude, what’s the big deal?” and “are you actually, like, having a panic attack over this?” from her. She thought my reaction was cute. And now, the only question she has for me concerning, aside from “where’s my story?”, is “If you’re dyslexic, how do you even write?!” Carefully. Painstakingly. It tends to take me hours, even days, and it’s frustrating as hell most days, but even still I love it. Thanks for asking. But that, even with how horrible it is, is progress. My parents still don’t know. My siblings still don’t know, for the most part. But one person who I have to see every day knows, and I’m slowly learning to not care. I used to rarely talk to my online friends out of character. Once I did, things got weird, but after a while I got past the weird ones and formed some pretty solid friendships, under my alias, with people who were technically complete strangers. I never, ever, spoke to any of them outside of the HPDC. I tried, once, but never got anywhere. I moved to the Guild almost two years ago, on the request of one of my dearest online friends. We chatted a lot over PM, about our lives and the world and and cats and things normal people talk about, and the fear made me physically ill. But I worked past it, and invited another close friend to the Guild. Where before no one I’d ever talked to online knew me, had no proof aside from words on a screen that I was even actually a human who existed, now; I have one writing buddy I talk to nearly every day. She knows just about everything about me there is to know. At first we just chatted about our game ooc, then over PM, then we moved our game over to tumblr and followed each other’s blogs. Then we created a blog specifically for us to talk to each other because we could. We’ve built extremely elaborate worlds together, we’ve talked each other through horrible moments. She’s the first friend I’ve allowed to email me. In October I started playing Borderlands with her. The first time we played, she chatted at me over the headset, but I didn’t have a headset because I was too terrified of her hearing my voice. Of actually confirming to her that, yes, I am an actual human being. I do live. See, I have vocal chords that function somewhat properly, that’s proof, right? But after that game, I went and bought a headset. I had to spent the first hour of the next time we gamed trying to get it to work, but the excited “Yayyyy!!” I heard once I got it working made things a lot less scary. She has my phone number. I text her every day, sometimes about character ideas, sometimes for advice. Sometimes I just text Spice Girls lyrics to her! She butt-dialed me the other day. But she’s the only online friend who has ever, ever, been this close to knowing me irl. And she’s pretty much the absolute _best_ friend that I have. She suffers through my horrible writing, and still (sometimes literally) talks to me at the end of the day. I’ve let one irl friend in on my hobby, and she kind of judges me for having a panic attack over it and pressures me to write for her, but she hasn’t disowned me yet. I’ve let one online friend into my real life, and I’ve been able to let offline people read my writing. I’ve been able to be comfortable knowing that people close to her have read my writing. I’ve become comfortable letting her, and people she knows, know how pitiful of a human being I am. I’ve almost let her see of selfie of me, and I barely allow people irl to see me!! She’s heard my cat grumble at me. She’s heard me spew profanities at scavs and kraggins and Lost Legion Marines and at myself for misgauging a jump. I’ve LET HER HEAR MY VOICE! I’ve talked to an online friend, offline, more than I have any member of my family in nearly a year. More than I have a high school friend in almost three. I still have not told my parents. Or my siblings. Or any other friends or coworkers or acquaintances. Because the first rule of Fight Club IS you do not talk about Fight Club! And the second rule is?! But I’ve let an online friend into my life. And, really, I could probably let others in too. I’m not as afraid of being discovered by people who live miles, states, worlds away. And that’s progress. High School me would be so pissed right now. CORRECTION: I forgot about the eleven year girl who was in a play with me when I was eighteen, who I geeked out over Harry Potter with the entire time of the show that I told a little bit about my stories, and encouraged her to write too. But I never let her read any of my stuff, and she was too young to understand any stigma on roleplaying, I didn't even call it roleplaying, I just said I wrote stories with other people online and she thought it was nifty, but didn't understand why I didn't write the stories by myself like everyone else does.

Also: I have never met a solid friend on a Roleplay forum. oN other ones: Yes, on roleplay forums: NOPE!

I don't hide it, but then I also don't advertise it mostly because it is hard to explain to certain people and in that way it is not worth the effort of the explanation. It is something I do for fun and I am not ashamed of it and if it comes up in conversation I certainly mention it. I do frame it as "Writing stories cooperatively with people on a forum" since that makes it more understandable to most people and keeps the misconceptions about RPing out of the discussion. So far it's worked for me.