How Did You Get Into Roleplaying?

[Rina]

As the title says, I think it would be fun to share about your experience on how you discovered roleplaying and how you made it to the guild. If you have any, maybe you could even include a few cringe worthy misadventures you had when you first got involved. For me, I didn't hear about roleplaying until my senior year of high school. There was a girl in one of my classes that didn't have a friend or someone to spend time with during that period so I decided to change that. Although we didn't have a lasting friendship we enjoyed each other's company and as I started to get to know her better she would talk more about roleplaying. Deciding to figure out what exactly it was I asked a friend whom in hindsight probably knew as little as I did about roleplaying since he was telling me about the other type roleplaying. That kept me away for quite a few months but the kinky things he told me didn't match up with the stories she would describe to me so I decided to try one more time and googled what roleplaying was. I am glad I did! Before learning about roleplaying I already wrote a few stories for fun and the idea of being able to write stories with other people was quite appealing to me. However with school in the way I never joined a forum until I graduated high school and joined the guild during that summer (purely off of being one of the first sites from a google search) and have been here since then. One thing I am glad about the guildfall is that all of my cringe worthy posts from when I first joined is gone. I committed so many common beginner mistakes those first few months of roleplaying. One thing that I find hilarious looking back was when I joined my first roleplay I was overly ecstatic when my character sheet was accepted since I thought that being accepted was a challenging thing to do. I remember sharing the details of my "accomplishments" to my sister after the GM got back to me

[Ellri]

In our case it was someone starting a roleplay on a forum we were on. We joined, made a terrible character and so forth, wreaking havoc in said roleplay, then later tried to start more. None of those really took off due to lacking player base, so we eventually ended up finding this site, where we've been stuck since.

[Lord Pie]

Heh - haven't thought about that in a while. I suppose I got into it about 9 or so years ago now at the tender age of 14…ish. Used to be a member of Runescape and got into the forums there. They had a roleplaying section that I discovered and became active in somewhat (though reflecting now I'm sure I was pretty terrible at it). Then I grew up a little and a few years later wanted to get back into it, a quick google search showed me this place. All other RP sites I've looked into are nothing like this place and all look terrible :p I've stuck around for about 5 or so years now, enduring the guild fall amongst other things. Though I was gutted when that happened as I used this site to store everything I wrote, and had so many things I wanted to keep and so many amazing RPs I loved to read through after they'd finished and what not, as well as a handful of 'books' I'd swirled up over the years. All gone now. But anyway…

[RomanAria]

Oh, my gosh. I don't even want to think about it. I really liked the idea of the site, so I joined oh... four years ago. Wow it's really been that long. Anywho, I was nine when I made my account... I got myself banned from a couple of huge RPs because I wouldn't take "no" for an answer about my character sheets, and just generally derailed everyone else's RPs and sort of wreaked havoc in the spam section. I was pretty happy when the guild went down because then I could make a new username for myself and could start over... But I miss all of the fun fluffy RPs that I used to have.

[Inertia]

Well, for me, the idea of getting into another character, with his/her own set of ideals, dreams, motivations was really endearing. Well, it's pretty fun overall. I got into role playing after accidentally getting on some roleplay server on Runescape, asked one of my online friend what it means and everything else is history, sounds cliche, but hey that's how I got into roleplaying. Also I guess its a good way to forget that the world is really boring, even for just a moment.

[PlatinumSkink]

In High School there was a Pokémon event. At the event, there was a guy who prepared a Pokémon roleplay. I participated, and the GM noted how exceptionally enthusiastic I was. Due to this, he invited me into his roleplaying group. We've been best of friends ever since, and I have roleplayed ever since. I came here by googling Roleplaying because my appetite for roleplay had been awakened and could not be sated. I trust any member of this site can find themselves understanding of this thirst which draws us together. Haha.

[Derpestein]

Went into a chat site. Saw people using *'s and -'s to describe actions. Joined in. Started getting better. Left because of all the text speak and 'd0dge' and autohits. Found here before guildfall.

[vancexentan]

I suppose it goes all the way back to when I played command in conquer and I liked to imagine myself in the commander's spot back before middle school. However in truth I was randomly recruited into a youtube roleplay in about fifth/sixth grade. Oh and the guy who recruited me and his friend? I hated their guts...immensely. Like holy shit I had such a salty attitude towards them for in roleplay things they did to me. Granted I wasn't the paragon of niceness but they played dirty as fuck. Now of days I've grown up and I go around doing my own thing here after the fall of youtube roleplays and one other forum roleplay.

[Hawlin]

I owe a bunch to .//hack; growing up on the 4game series made me look at MMOs differently. I kept wanting my character to have a compelling story, but...well, you know how MMOs are. It was...gawd, 8 years ago when I was a member on runescape and needed to sell stuff on the forums. It was there where I found the roleplay section. I thought it was like in game stuff and was pretty disappointed to see it was just text. The more I read, the more I found myself wanting to be a part of it with a feeling familiar to the late nights standing in Mac Anu (.hack Infection). My first attempts were anything but graceful. Posts were smaller than a third of the last paragraph and I often forgot the period at the end of a line of text. :P I chalk it all up as a happy accident.

[Kidd]

This is super embarrassing but about ten years ago (I was way too young to be on the internet at this point but family / personal circumstances kinda pushed me to it) I was super into InuYasha. It was my first anime after I discovered anime. So I started looking for online communities for it because I was in elementary school and no one fucking watched InuYasha in elementary school. Needless to say, I found a website for it, and I was exploring the forums and I had no idea what one was: "Role Play Forum." ?????? Well, curiosity got the best of me and I checked it out. At first I only scrolled through a few threads, totally confused. But I kept coming back, reading up on what people were writing. And everything was in script. Looking back, that's kinda weird that there was no paragraphs or full sentences of any sort, but there it is. Eventually, I gained the curious to join one. And original characters were allowed? Don't tell that to a little kid 'cause she'll fucking make a Mary Sue, Inuyasha's sister. First character ever. Kirayasha. I'm so fucking creative. For some reason, I was still allowed to join after the character sheet was made, and I jumped on in to that single RP. It went on for months. Then Idk what happened but it stopped, then the whole site went down... Neopets was my second love, and it was there I really learned how to RP. Literacy, character development and creation, blah blah blah. Met my best friend there, who I still talk to and RP with today, and I really only recently got back into forum RPing. I do a lot of chat room role playing on deviantART, but it's really slowed down. So, yeah. Here I am. And maybe it's the cringing embarrassing I feel whenever I look back on my Inuyasha days, but I just can't do fandom RP, lol. @Cynder RPs seem to be an exception, though.

[KaBling]

Minecraft Forums -> Forum gaming -> Forum game moved to a rather obscure roleplaying section -> ended up in roleplaying there and now here

[HeySeuss]

Tabletop games like D&D.

[Robeatics]

Migrated here about a year and a half before Guildfall from shitty anime forum RP. Got much better, then after a huge RP I was in died I dropped off the map for nearly a year with mostly chat RPs filling in the gaps. I rejoined near the beginning of summer, I think, and it's been nice.

[SilverWolfAngel]

About a month (ish) ago I was looking for anime pictures for something, I forget what, in Google, and instead of clicking the view image button as I normally did, I noticed what looked like the description for a character, so I clicked the visit page, button instead. And guess what I found? RPG! It was a appearance pic for a RWBY roleplay. Of course having just gotten hooked on RWBY recently, I paid a bit of attention. Just sort of looking around at the site; exploring a bit, As you do. And I was kind of like; what the hell is going on here; I couldn't understand why only the RWBY RP I had started on was OOC (not that I knew that it was called that at the time). I completely missed the different tab thingies ;). Eventually I, after Googleing "What is roleplay?" and it vaguely making sense, kind of worked out how to navigate the Guild. I then saw the OCC for a roleplay that I really, really, really wanted to join, so I created this account, slightly regretfully picking this name (it's not bad of anything just, not my best, or absolute favorite ever), and getting to work. In the end I didn't get into the RP, having not managed to make a character in time. Instead to roaming the different RP's and interest checks, joining any that I liked the idea of, until I was totally and utterly addicted. So yeah, sorry for the long winded description, I occasionally can't stop and so just keep typing.

[Allel]

I started out as a huge fantasy fan with next to no reading ability, so I clung to games like Runescape from as early as 7 years old, I'd take what I could do there and then go LARP with my first and second grader friends at school on the oval. It is pretty embarrassing thinking about it, I remember one recess I had spent the entire time 'shooting' imaginary cows from afar then collecting their hide so I can get my crafting up, I was a pretty weird kid I guess. Anyway, as I played Runescape and got into the community a lil' more (though I never visited the forums) I started learning to read, write and spell from there and tried my hand at in-game RP. The chat often moved too fast for me to keep up so it took me awhile to really start RPing. By the time I was a competent RPer (by Runescape standards) I was a member of a Roleplay group who followed the Fremennik lore closely (Got others to call me my Fremennik name and all; Larkur). But in-game RP in Runescape became rarer and rarer so I left, most of the RP worlds were full of people who didn't know what RP is. Eventually I did a little bit of RP on WoW and other games, but anyone else who would RP with me often treated me like my low level also meant that I had low intellect, like I was 10 or something. Then came Habbo, eventually I joined Habbo in its... uhm... golden(?) years. The playerbase was large, the locations few and the players creative. So for fun I'd often go to the RP adoption places and hospitals and start killing people with 'RP', usually just continuous lines that were like; -I grasp the hilt of my sword tightly- -I draw my sword here raising it to your neck- -I apply moderate pressure in your direction- -The blade rips the flesh- -the blade rips the bone- . . . yadda yadda yadda, pretty bland right? By this time I could touch type and I could do it really fast, so I'd often get 'shut up' or 'u r dum' in response. Eventually I started doing more serious RPs, but most of the players were egotistical and refused to lose, there was little structure and what structure there was, was hard to enforce. A lil' while after that I get told about Gaia's RP forums, so I did a little google search and I noticed RPG was in the list of results, Roleplayer Guild seemed a lot more refined than what I'd find at Gaia so I clicked there instead, did my first few RPs there, fell in love with the format. ~ I actually get put off now by RP sites that don't have an interest check section.

[oOWonderKinOo]

I started on the Rp forums on Neopets then I moved to GaiaOnline through out junior high and high school. I spent a little time on BlueMoon but things changed once I went to college. I stop Rping for a while then came here. I guess my progression was from a simple Rp style. (Ex: <hops down from tree scratching behind her Tanuki ears>) to what I do now. Of course I, like many young people who start off that way, had a bad tendency to make highly over adorned characters or over powered ones. Learning the key to making an interesting character is a constant on-going process. I still worry about making generic and boring characters but I would like to think that I'm getting at least a little better with this.

[freedomliveson]

I really enjoy reading other player's experiences...not only because it's very cool to see that there are tons of players out there, but that a lot of us had to go through growing pains in order to get to where we are now xD. Does anyone remember MSN groups? That's where I got started. I was a part of several different MSN groups wherein most of my threads dealt with my male character instantly falling in love with the female character...also, I may or may not have imbued my characters with powers that essentially were the same xD. Once MSN groups collapsed, I joined two roleplay sites via Proboards and had a ball with a very awesome buddy, even helping in the creation of a site. I stepped away for personal reasons and upon returning to a desire for roleplaying, I found the guild about 2 years before "guildfall"(is that the official term?) and have stuck with it ever since.

[Ezrath]

Guess I'm kinda new so I'll throw in my two cents. I was always into world building when I was younger. I started doing RP when I was 12-13 y/o and got myself way over my head in terms of keeping up with other people. I wanted to think of myself as an "Advanced" RPer when in reality I was casual. I had the thoughts in my head, but couldn't put them to paper (or keyboard I suppose). I started off on a website called... Werecat I think it was called. It was an Eragon-based RP site that went under when the host and admin Vali couldn't dedicate any more of her time to it do to life. I actually found my way here immediately after and jumped right in for over a year, participating in various RPs until life took over and I completely forgot about the site. For some reason I found myself thinking about RPG earlier and now here I am! Between training and work, I have some downtime that I'd like to spend doing something no so physical, and I hope dredging out an old hobby is a good way of doing that.

[Lillian Thorne]

I started playing D&D when my older brother couldn't get his buddies to play with him. Off and on for years I played, but never with any dedication until I moved to Boston and fell in with a crowd who introduced me to the World of Darkness RPGs. They actually Role Played, not Roll Played as I had been doing. It was incredible, I was hooked. But life sort of scattered us after a few years of steady RPing and my GM suggested I look online. I think he was sick of me pestering him for more RP. On my first Google search back in 2010 I found the Guild and haven't left!

[Hank]

I had a very kinky girlfriend when I was 13. The rest is history.