It has been a wild ride to be sure…
2025 will mark 20 years of roleplaying for me. I began in the summer of 2005 in Myspace groups making extremely simple roleplays in a Dynasty Warriors forum. It is here I met some of my first roleplaying friends (some of whom I still have as friends to this day). I started off simple as a one lining text speak roleplayer, and boy was I horrible at it.
It was a year later I created my first dedicated roleplay profile on Myspace, playing as the Samurai Warriors character Hideyoshi Toyotomi. Even from this point, I have beloved friends I’m happy I stay in touch with and even RP with to this day. After Myspace began to die off, I moved to the now defunct Sitemodel .net where I began to leap into multi-character roleplays and expanding my ability to write paragraphs and multiple paragraphs. I met more friends.
When Sitemodel rebranded itself into Roleplayer .me and eventually Aniroleplay.net, I moved there. For 6 years, I stayed there. I expanded my horizons to move comfortable into a multi-para to novella style of writing. I met more friends, some of whom have even become my closest friends of all outside of my wife.
My time at Ani ended unfortunately as poor moderation led to an outbreak of drama and bullying that still haunts the site to this day. In 2016, I packed up and moved to a new blossoming site known as Roleplayer’s Guild. My year there was spent being introduced to many more friends and expanding my horizons finally to original characters.
Roleplayer’s Guild unfortunately fell under its weight, growing too large too quickly for the admin to keep up. As we left, my friends and I came here in late 2017. In RPRepository, I finally moved almost entirely to original characters and began the burgeoning process of developing my own world. It was here that I met many more friends, and learned what a truly great roleplay community looks like when its leaders at the top take their jobs seriously. Since then, I’ve expanded my repertoire to include other sites and even apps such as Discord, where I’ve done my best to foster a community to write with one another.
Now here in the first month of 2025, I look back at my path to this point. In 20 years, I have had tens of thousands of roleplays; some as short as two replies while others have gone on for years and years. I have roleplayed with thousands of people (some brief, some deeply missed). I have gained hundreds of friends. I will likely gain more in the years to come.
My philosophy for RP has always been to cast the widest net and be the person the community wants of me. I strive to not be too picky; I strive to help where I can. Even as the weight of having too many roleplays puts a strain on my time, I still try my best to look out for others. From this, my advice to others is to never stop expanding. If you find yourself short on rps, look around and make yourself known, even to people whom you may not consider at first. Some of my best roleplays and closest friends were people that started out just like me; one-liners and text speak.
Be the beacon for the lost souls to find, and you’ll never find yourself short of company.
Ultimately, though, it would all be meaningless without the vast community of writers and friends I found along the way. To the staff at RPR who have fostered the best RP site community I have ever had. To those who I have known since my early days. To those who I just met. To those I lost and never found again. To those who I have shared wonderful stories and enchanting tales. To those who have guided and nurtured my journey along the way and to those I have taught in turn. To those who have a creative mind and an adventurous spirit…
Thank you for making this journey a wonderful adventure.
Here’s to another twenty.
2025 will mark 20 years of roleplaying for me. I began in the summer of 2005 in Myspace groups making extremely simple roleplays in a Dynasty Warriors forum. It is here I met some of my first roleplaying friends (some of whom I still have as friends to this day). I started off simple as a one lining text speak roleplayer, and boy was I horrible at it.
It was a year later I created my first dedicated roleplay profile on Myspace, playing as the Samurai Warriors character Hideyoshi Toyotomi. Even from this point, I have beloved friends I’m happy I stay in touch with and even RP with to this day. After Myspace began to die off, I moved to the now defunct Sitemodel .net where I began to leap into multi-character roleplays and expanding my ability to write paragraphs and multiple paragraphs. I met more friends.
When Sitemodel rebranded itself into Roleplayer .me and eventually Aniroleplay.net, I moved there. For 6 years, I stayed there. I expanded my horizons to move comfortable into a multi-para to novella style of writing. I met more friends, some of whom have even become my closest friends of all outside of my wife.
My time at Ani ended unfortunately as poor moderation led to an outbreak of drama and bullying that still haunts the site to this day. In 2016, I packed up and moved to a new blossoming site known as Roleplayer’s Guild. My year there was spent being introduced to many more friends and expanding my horizons finally to original characters.
Roleplayer’s Guild unfortunately fell under its weight, growing too large too quickly for the admin to keep up. As we left, my friends and I came here in late 2017. In RPRepository, I finally moved almost entirely to original characters and began the burgeoning process of developing my own world. It was here that I met many more friends, and learned what a truly great roleplay community looks like when its leaders at the top take their jobs seriously. Since then, I’ve expanded my repertoire to include other sites and even apps such as Discord, where I’ve done my best to foster a community to write with one another.
Now here in the first month of 2025, I look back at my path to this point. In 20 years, I have had tens of thousands of roleplays; some as short as two replies while others have gone on for years and years. I have roleplayed with thousands of people (some brief, some deeply missed). I have gained hundreds of friends. I will likely gain more in the years to come.
My philosophy for RP has always been to cast the widest net and be the person the community wants of me. I strive to not be too picky; I strive to help where I can. Even as the weight of having too many roleplays puts a strain on my time, I still try my best to look out for others. From this, my advice to others is to never stop expanding. If you find yourself short on rps, look around and make yourself known, even to people whom you may not consider at first. Some of my best roleplays and closest friends were people that started out just like me; one-liners and text speak.
Be the beacon for the lost souls to find, and you’ll never find yourself short of company.
Ultimately, though, it would all be meaningless without the vast community of writers and friends I found along the way. To the staff at RPR who have fostered the best RP site community I have ever had. To those who I have known since my early days. To those who I just met. To those I lost and never found again. To those who I have shared wonderful stories and enchanting tales. To those who have guided and nurtured my journey along the way and to those I have taught in turn. To those who have a creative mind and an adventurous spirit…
Thank you for making this journey a wonderful adventure.
Here’s to another twenty.
Nice run! I think I was registered on Roleplayer Guild at one point but never actually roleplayed there.
This year 2025 makes it 25 years of online forum roleplaying for me. I started on a music forum on EZBoard in 1999 called Rock Alley. EZBoard was a precursor to Runboard and Proboards where your registered account was a 'global' one and it could access the forum sites people set up on them. I still have my Runboard (The Shadow of Arnor) I started in 2005. Started it after EZBoard crashed and burned on the last day of May 2005 taking much of the content of my board with it. We managed to salvage much of the stuff when EZBoard found a months old back-up, but it sort of destroyed a couple roleplays when pages of it were lost.
Shadow of Arnor had a couple dozen people at one point who were mostly refugees from The One Ring com (TORc) and the DarkStarr EZBoard when a wave of drama washed over those places. There were a few forums started around then from their fragmenting. I still visit a couple of them (Board 77 & Hall of Fire).
Slowly, as the years went by, people quit logging in to Shadow of Arnor, and around 2015, it was just my wife and I there writing our stories together. We still co-write stories there, but we have a private mirror group here as back-up. Sometimes our stories are shared on my public Tolkien group (The Library of Annúminas). Back in 2007 Runboard had an offer that for ten Euros, the forum would be made premium and have something like 500,000 hits in the bank. With the declining usage, I just checked and I have 315,499 hits remaining.
I too have made lifelong friends on most all these places, including meeting my soulmate on TORc in 2001. Sadly a few of my friends have passed away over the years. To new friends and old, and to another twenty! 🍻
This year 2025 makes it 25 years of online forum roleplaying for me. I started on a music forum on EZBoard in 1999 called Rock Alley. EZBoard was a precursor to Runboard and Proboards where your registered account was a 'global' one and it could access the forum sites people set up on them. I still have my Runboard (The Shadow of Arnor) I started in 2005. Started it after EZBoard crashed and burned on the last day of May 2005 taking much of the content of my board with it. We managed to salvage much of the stuff when EZBoard found a months old back-up, but it sort of destroyed a couple roleplays when pages of it were lost.
Shadow of Arnor had a couple dozen people at one point who were mostly refugees from The One Ring com (TORc) and the DarkStarr EZBoard when a wave of drama washed over those places. There were a few forums started around then from their fragmenting. I still visit a couple of them (Board 77 & Hall of Fire).
Slowly, as the years went by, people quit logging in to Shadow of Arnor, and around 2015, it was just my wife and I there writing our stories together. We still co-write stories there, but we have a private mirror group here as back-up. Sometimes our stories are shared on my public Tolkien group (The Library of Annúminas). Back in 2007 Runboard had an offer that for ten Euros, the forum would be made premium and have something like 500,000 hits in the bank. With the declining usage, I just checked and I have 315,499 hits remaining.
I too have made lifelong friends on most all these places, including meeting my soulmate on TORc in 2001. Sadly a few of my friends have passed away over the years. To new friends and old, and to another twenty! 🍻
I got my own start on a little Proboards site that some chat friends from Writing.Com (back when it was Stories.Com) set up, and bounced around mostly various smallish forums from there. Another Proboards site, Embyr Haven, was the first I really stuck with for awhile and started developing through, and I still have some of the characters I originally created there. After awhile, I landed on GaiaOnline for a few years, and it was there that I met the person who eventually introduced me to RPR about 10 years ago.
I never really kept track of how long I've been RPing, but judging by my little waypoint memories, it must have been around 2000 or 2001 that I started. I guess that'd make it around 23-25 years for me, depending on when it was more specifically. Heh... seems like I've been RPing for longer than most of my current friends have even been alive.
It's strange being the older person in a group for once...
Anyway, congrats, and may you have many more great years ahead!
I never really kept track of how long I've been RPing, but judging by my little waypoint memories, it must have been around 2000 or 2001 that I started. I guess that'd make it around 23-25 years for me, depending on when it was more specifically. Heh... seems like I've been RPing for longer than most of my current friends have even been alive.
It's strange being the older person in a group for once...Anyway, congrats, and may you have many more great years ahead!
Ha.. Now that I actually count it, it's been 20 years for me this year as well. I think I've RPd in various places.. lets see.. airg, myspace, facebook, vampirefreaks (I think that's what it was called?) and some other places I can't recall the names of. . skype and text and discord and even email at times too lol and only recently started getting into DnD the last couple years. . 
Of course I was on hiatus until you dragged me back here again..
Of course I was on hiatus until you dragged me back here again..
Congratulations !!! I too have been around for a "few" years...
So what is Playerfiles like? What is he all about??
As a creative writer/roleplayer, I have been around (constantly) for a longgg time, (like since AOL Hell Daze at the Rhydin Inn, Medieval Tavern, or the plethora of other chatrooms... and yes, I have seen, and endured, a lot of changes...
I have run my own groups, both as sole owner and co-partner... and have been a plain member in quite a few others. So, my background in creative writing and roleplaying ... and the managing thereof, is not lacking... butttt, I am not the expert in one thing; sorta like a Jack-of-all-trades, Master of None.
My choices of Roleplay? Oh, lets see… I believe I must consider my favorite genre as AHISTORICAL.
What the heck is that, you may ask?
First is the Real Life genre… and being around a while, I have, and do, live it... and that itself comes the needed escapism. To me RP is a hobby... a way to relax telling a story... paradoxically living a character vicariously through my writing. Real Life RP is like RL... pass...
And with that, comes the fact that I have delved mainly into historical and Ahistorical themes, (1870s Old West, 16th century Venetian Empire, Napoleonic and Victorian eras, Pompeii (70AD), Britannia (circa 470s AD), and yes, even attempts at the Fantastical: light desert fantasy, Gothic Fiction, and even a *tiny* bit of medieval fantasy (but not too good at the fantasy or magical aspect).
For me, fantasy and magic is my weakness... as it varies soooo much... and to join a fantasy genre group or one with magic, there is so much, much-too-much, to learn for group is different… especially if it is big group, which fantasy and magic usually are... Soooo, if I get involved with a fantasy group, I limp along until I hook up with a writing partner that understands me and urges me onward in fantasy or magic... and yes, maybe I will LEARN something....
Now Whereas, Historical and Real Life offer much more of a solidified structure, I must defer to history as the preferred subject of the two… with it I can massage it, change it, push dates and times one way or another (eventually turning it into "ahistorical"... to suit the plot and story, hence making History = HIS STORY... my character’s story !!
With that in mind, tis why I prefer history... to take facts as they are... then at some point where I want to RP, I begin to alter it toward my envisioned theme or ideas of characters and plots... then I twist it more, if I deem it so, to make it an alternate history !!!!
Then one day, several years ago, I came across a word --- AHISTORICAL --- and it made me think !!!!
And the more I dug into the definition, relating it roleplay, the more interesting it became... books and movies took on a whole new aspect in my mind… and with such, I found that more folks used it, not realizing it !!! Could I have been so blind, so ignorant to the fact? Probably so. LOL
So to me, Ahistorical Fiction is a roleplaying genre where we deviate from history, even to the disregard of historical facts, in which the literary plot and setting inclines toward an altered path of history, historical development, and tradition. Of course, in today’s RL, being “Politically Correct” is often averse to historical roleplay, thus the Ahistorical RP genre, regardless of era or theme, is our way being contrary to the perceived idea that the historical genre is non-inclusive and limiting to minority groups and women.
And with me, though I, the writer and roleplayer, will primarily use essential elements of historical accuracy of the selected periods of roleplay such as the prior history, social and governmental structures, manners, traditions, and other details of the depicted time period, where I and my co-writers may have chosen to explore the melding "historical" and "fictional" into our roleplay period and base the fictional works of our characters' lives, even possibly reshaping the plot and setting; all for the personal, non-profit, enjoyment for our creative writers and roleplaying audiences.
Also, my emphasis on RP is welcoming diverse participants, particularly my CO-WRITING PARTNERS, regardless of background or experience level, with the intent to foster a friendly and enjoyable roleplaying environment by offering them with a“work-favorable” and "hobby-based" approach to RP, encourage people to create diverse characters from different backgrounds, cultures, and social status, enabling a rich and dynamic storytelling environment.
INTERESTS:
In writing stories, I love to do romance and love-stories…
Why you may ask?
Because for every great adventure and fantastic story such is derived from or comes forth, from a type of love and its nemesis, hate... whether is love lost, abandoned, in search of, or feared to love, or actions and reactions caused by it, or motivated by it... or if it is countries lost, wars fought... love has the ability to mar minds, cause likeable folks to be mean, for mean folks to be kinder... for greedy men to be more giving... the giving to be more stringent...
Now back to the years of RP... well, age is but a number... and so goes the years of RP and creative writing... more than 10... more than 20... well let us just say... "I have done my share of both... and I love it... and hopefully til the day I pass from this realm to the next !!!!
Thank you for your time...
Playerfiles !!!
So what is Playerfiles like? What is he all about??
As a creative writer/roleplayer, I have been around (constantly) for a longgg time, (like since AOL Hell Daze at the Rhydin Inn, Medieval Tavern, or the plethora of other chatrooms... and yes, I have seen, and endured, a lot of changes...
I have run my own groups, both as sole owner and co-partner... and have been a plain member in quite a few others. So, my background in creative writing and roleplaying ... and the managing thereof, is not lacking... butttt, I am not the expert in one thing; sorta like a Jack-of-all-trades, Master of None.
"Write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it;
Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it."
Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it."
My choices of Roleplay? Oh, lets see… I believe I must consider my favorite genre as AHISTORICAL.
What the heck is that, you may ask?
First is the Real Life genre… and being around a while, I have, and do, live it... and that itself comes the needed escapism. To me RP is a hobby... a way to relax telling a story... paradoxically living a character vicariously through my writing. Real Life RP is like RL... pass...
“Real life has taught me that in the adult world, fate is chaotic and ambiguous.
Strategies for success are subjective.
But in the world of Creative Fiction, at least there is role-playing,
where we are in control, and our characters...
wander through places of danger, their destinies,
superficially, within our grasp.”
Strategies for success are subjective.
But in the world of Creative Fiction, at least there is role-playing,
where we are in control, and our characters...
wander through places of danger, their destinies,
superficially, within our grasp.”
And with that, comes the fact that I have delved mainly into historical and Ahistorical themes, (1870s Old West, 16th century Venetian Empire, Napoleonic and Victorian eras, Pompeii (70AD), Britannia (circa 470s AD), and yes, even attempts at the Fantastical: light desert fantasy, Gothic Fiction, and even a *tiny* bit of medieval fantasy (but not too good at the fantasy or magical aspect).
For me, fantasy and magic is my weakness... as it varies soooo much... and to join a fantasy genre group or one with magic, there is so much, much-too-much, to learn for group is different… especially if it is big group, which fantasy and magic usually are... Soooo, if I get involved with a fantasy group, I limp along until I hook up with a writing partner that understands me and urges me onward in fantasy or magic... and yes, maybe I will LEARN something....
Quote:
Now Whereas, Historical and Real Life offer much more of a solidified structure, I must defer to history as the preferred subject of the two… with it I can massage it, change it, push dates and times one way or another (eventually turning it into "ahistorical"... to suit the plot and story, hence making History = HIS STORY... my character’s story !!
With that in mind, tis why I prefer history... to take facts as they are... then at some point where I want to RP, I begin to alter it toward my envisioned theme or ideas of characters and plots... then I twist it more, if I deem it so, to make it an alternate history !!!!
Then one day, several years ago, I came across a word --- AHISTORICAL --- and it made me think !!!!
And the more I dug into the definition, relating it roleplay, the more interesting it became... books and movies took on a whole new aspect in my mind… and with such, I found that more folks used it, not realizing it !!! Could I have been so blind, so ignorant to the fact? Probably so. LOL
So to me, Ahistorical Fiction is a roleplaying genre where we deviate from history, even to the disregard of historical facts, in which the literary plot and setting inclines toward an altered path of history, historical development, and tradition. Of course, in today’s RL, being “Politically Correct” is often averse to historical roleplay, thus the Ahistorical RP genre, regardless of era or theme, is our way being contrary to the perceived idea that the historical genre is non-inclusive and limiting to minority groups and women.
And with me, though I, the writer and roleplayer, will primarily use essential elements of historical accuracy of the selected periods of roleplay such as the prior history, social and governmental structures, manners, traditions, and other details of the depicted time period, where I and my co-writers may have chosen to explore the melding "historical" and "fictional" into our roleplay period and base the fictional works of our characters' lives, even possibly reshaping the plot and setting; all for the personal, non-profit, enjoyment for our creative writers and roleplaying audiences.
Also, my emphasis on RP is welcoming diverse participants, particularly my CO-WRITING PARTNERS, regardless of background or experience level, with the intent to foster a friendly and enjoyable roleplaying environment by offering them with a“work-favorable” and "hobby-based" approach to RP, encourage people to create diverse characters from different backgrounds, cultures, and social status, enabling a rich and dynamic storytelling environment.
INTERESTS:
In writing stories, I love to do romance and love-stories…
Why you may ask?
Because for every great adventure and fantastic story such is derived from or comes forth, from a type of love and its nemesis, hate... whether is love lost, abandoned, in search of, or feared to love, or actions and reactions caused by it, or motivated by it... or if it is countries lost, wars fought... love has the ability to mar minds, cause likeable folks to be mean, for mean folks to be kinder... for greedy men to be more giving... the giving to be more stringent...
What binds a man to his land?
What power within allows him to give his life to preserve his land and the lives of the families who work it?
It can only be LOVE!
Love is... Love does... Love has...
And no world, fictitious or real... can do without it !!!!
What power within allows him to give his life to preserve his land and the lives of the families who work it?
It can only be LOVE!
Love is... Love does... Love has...
And no world, fictitious or real... can do without it !!!!
Now back to the years of RP... well, age is but a number... and so goes the years of RP and creative writing... more than 10... more than 20... well let us just say... "I have done my share of both... and I love it... and hopefully til the day I pass from this realm to the next !!!!
Thank you for your time...
Playerfiles !!!