Forums » RP Discussion » How old were you when you started rping? And...

I was about ten and roleplayed with school friends over MSN. It would be script style *like this*, which I think I picked up from Neopets and the YouTube comments of anime AMVs, and our original plots were pretty bad if we weren't simply retreading existing worlds in a 'sequel' with our superpowered self-inserts. Our characters weren't much different from us in personality because all of the thought went into giving them dramatic backstories and the coolest abilities, and they tended to be older than us by a few years to feel more mature.

One of the plots I came up with was that the heroes (our characters) gain powers one day from a Yuki-Onna, disguised as a woman running a jewellery shop who sold magic trinkets that held the powers of any god from any culture (an excuse to pick themed powers). The plot, much less thought out, it was literally "defeat the Death Dragon because he wants to destroy the world". My friend picked Fenrir to be a wolf girl and I picked Quetzalcoatl because DRAGONS ARE COOL.

Ragetyping epic fight scenes to Linkin Park or Three Days Grace was how I spent my early teen years

Sometimes I joined groups where there was one person significantly older than us in chat (basically an adult among a bunch of 12-15 year olds) and they would (un)subtly flaunt their age and experience to impress us. While there's nothing wrong with different age groups interacting, I always thought it was odd for these 'adults' to be playing among us while we talked about school drama and other typical things, and even if they didn't do anything it was awkward to play 'around' them because their level of literacy was so high when they knew some of us couldn't even spell consistently.

Someone mentioned LARPing here, it looks really cool but I have no idea how to get into it

Here's one place to start looking: https://larping.org/larps/

Though, as far as I understand, each group is responsible for keeping their own LARP listing updated, so it's bound to contain some that are no longer active or be missing some that might be near you.

If you're lucky enough to have multiple in your area, I'd suggest trying them all (or as many as you can)! There are some groups that focus mainly on combat, others that are almost all RP, and everywhere in between. Rulesets vary wildly too. Some are super rules-light and others have huge lists of defined character abilities.

If money is tight, some game organizers will allow you to come play as an NPC, monster, or similar for a much reduced price or even free. Which is a nice way to get familiar with their game and meet the people without too much up-front commitment.

I was about 16, and my first ever character was my wolf sona Shasta Moonpaw, i began rp on wolfhome, then irc clients and then forums and of course sites like here. Shasta is my oldest and most cherished character a reflection of myself in every sence of the word.

She is a kind, wise wolf with an air of youth about her, respected in her own right among so many who have had the pleasure of meeting her, i sadly donot play her as often as i used to, mainly due to the fact that most ive roleplayed her with no longer rp or i have lost touch with them. But because of how long she has been in exisitence ive started a book about her life, one day ill finish it perhaps when her exisitence actually comes to a fitting end.

For now she lives in the depths of my soul, sometimes i rp her just for the joy writing as this wolf gives me, who knows maybe some i rp with here will be lucky enough to meet the mysterious ebon fae.

I think it's really interesting to see folks on here linking RP all the way back to imagination-play from childhood. I never really stopped to think about it before, but in a sense it is like a carried over skill from that part of life. I'm probably a little older than most of the folks that have answered here already (at 35), but I can definitely verify that imagining yourself to be someone or something else during childhood is totally a common and normal part of child development. If we're counting that too, then I was definitely doing that as far back as I can recall.

On a personal level I feel that RP of varying types (like tabletop gaming, LARPing, online role-play writing etc.) is an awesome way to encourage and maintain creativity! Musicians make music, painters paint images and writers need to write!

I began some form of online role-play when I was just a little less than 16. Having the internet at home was uncommon at the time and though there were probably dedicated sites for it at the time, I mostly participated with friends in chat rooms or gaming lobbies (back when that was a thing). I can't recall characters or stories from that far back (that was over half my life ago), but it was probably just one-liners. I do recall that it was very loose/casual and not structured with plots or stories.

There's been a lot of years for me to learn, grow and change!

I was about 15 when I started roleplaying with my friend in high school. We sent replies over text or wrote them down and passed them between classes, I think there was even a short while we emailed to each other also. My character was basically a self insert but 'cooler' because I had no idea how to make an oc, but eventually she developed her own personality and after a few years of rewriting backstories and development she's become one of my most beloved oc's.

What my friend and I mainly roleplayed though was Hetalia, specifically Hetaoni which was a fanmade rpg game based off the series, and our ocs were fan nations we shipped with the actual nations. Now we ship those two oc's together and their ship name is actually my current username.

Oh my god. Okay. Just thinking about it makes me bang my head on the wall.

I was probably around nine or ten when I began roleplaying, but I actually didn't know that it was even called a certain name. I used to live in my home country, where I lived alongside my grandparents. They had a small laptop and I often played around with it as much as I can... And well, I was a huge fan of Adventure Time during my childhood! Specifically the ship Flame Princess and Finn! That was my first ever ship.

And well... I came across Adventure Time Wikia and joined the public chatroom. I saw a bunch of characters acting like that and I got excited so I tried to roleplay as well. I tried to act like Flame Princess and got myself a Finn, I think. Hehe. I was pretty prideful myself.

I remember adding those roleplaying accounts on Facebook (such as Starfire from Teen Titans!) and I was actually convinced they were real. I would PM the accounts and just ask them a bunch of questions... Geez, I don't even wanna know what I replied to.

i was ? ?? 9-10 i think ? It was on roblox. It was this generational Soul-eater/Fruitsbasket/Oc mix (it's actually where my user comes from), and it was extra funny bc i had never seen either anime beforehand. My oc changed a lot but they were typically Very generic bc i was 9 and not yet as extra as i am now. Usually they were a girl idk if i played any boys during that time, and I didn't even know what 'non-binary' meant at the time lmaoo. They often followed well inside tropes like mystery girl/ tom boy / best friend and whatnot bc, again, 9.

Hmm maybe 16? I still count my first RP partner as the best one I've had to date. They were really active had good ideas, and we actually wrote like 10 times per day. So yeah, we were really into it. I wish we still kept in touch.

I started around 12 or 13, and being a cringy weeaboo, my first "character" was just an anime character from Fairy Tail. A friend and I creepily decided we each dated said anime characters in real life and it got to the point where we actually believed it. But eventually, I actually made some good characters with a previous friend of mine and matured a hella lot (thank god).

The 3 years or so of angsty characters was rough, but you know everyone goes through that phase.

I can't reply to each one of this, but I've read all your stories! Thanks so much for sharing, you guys!

I started RPing in early high school (I would have been about 13 or 14), after my mum's friend got me a copy of the PC game Neverwinter Nights.

It's a fantasy RPG (Dungeons and Dragons, like Baldur's Gate), and it has a multitude of online worlds you can create characters in and RP with others in real time, as well as a really good single player campaign.
Needless to say I got really into it! I believe my first character ever was an elven ranger - I got her name by typing my own name into an "elven name generator" online and the name just stuck, haha! Admittedly she was a bit of a mary sue; I did eventually develop her into a more genuine character though.

The atmosphere and immersion was just so amazing; I'd come home from school, abandon my bag at the door (bad role model - homework comes first kids) and log on to play until my parents interrupted me for dinner, and then shooed me off to bed, eventually.
I transitioned from there when our computers crashed and I could no longer play, to RPing in some forums. I'd absolutely love to get back into it though, seeing as the game has been released on Steam again! I wonder if the Amia server still exists... ahh, nostalgia!

My characters name was Braegor, made in 2007 or 2008 (I was born in 2000 so take a guess what age I was .) He still exists to this day, though under a different name. He's gone through a lot of changes, to the point of where I actually made 3 characters out of him.

He has been:
Braegor
Braegor Anglaias
Anglaias Braegor
Sarobando Anglaias Braegor
Sarobando
Sarobando Bassiss

Nowadays, I have Sarobando Bassiss, Anglaias Bassiss (his younger cousin) and Braegor Bassiss (Ang's father.)

Plus the Bassiss family has 16 named characters in it, and in my lore, 16 is only 1/3 of the families number. I'm just too lazy to make profiles for the other 2/3.

I've come pretty far tbh

I started roleplaying around 11-12 years old.. iirc my character was a fire goddess and could turn into a phoenix. But I played "pretend" way earlier than that, making up stories with my friends that weren't written down with videogame-based ocs.

Oh geeze I think I started seriously roleplaying via forums and neopets when i was around 10?-11 years old. Before that I was playing alot of pretend, making comics and generally being creative.

I think the concept of written roleplay online I was around 10-11. I think my first ocs were edgelords and over-the-top supernatural hybrids. I've got a brand(tm) though and it's usually broody old men and ridiculously overcooked concepts.

12

and it was this hulk like character where whenever he got mad he would turn into a werewolf basically

Well I guess since I was 13/14 years old on specific anime forum with strict mechanics(I think it was Fairy Tail), he didn't had personality(aka I copied various wiki's personality and appearance pages? I think) I got bored after few months because I didn't capacity to write 500 words at that time and my grammar was really bad, I only wrote 26 posts. Although he wasn't half bad for my first try. my second try wasn't so fortunate as he was Kirito clone and that really embarrasses me to this day. I hid it in my folder which even I don't know where it is.

I was about 8 years old. My friend, Vanessa, had a character named Mia who was an angel. She was the perfect fit for Laz, who at the time was a cold, heartless demon. Both of them were a bit overpowered, but they were somehow friends. After a while, her friend lied about me, making her hate me. They moved shortly after, but I never forgot. I made a character named Mia, almost as a tribute, who was also sweet hearted. However, she had a hidden side. Sometimes I look back at that time, wondering what would've happened if I could've made her forget about that friend.

Lazari was eventually revamped, her past forgotten with another replacing it. I do have to say though, I am glad because it made me a better writer and person as a whole.

I was around 11-12 years old? I liked playing pretend with an online friend of mine, and it eventually developed into a sprawling story about two friends saving the world.

This is was back when Minecraft first blew up, so all of my stuff was based off of the little stories I made while playing. My character's name was Lime Slime, based on my Minecraft username, but at some point I renamed her Epoxy because I thought it would be cooler. She was a sort of zombie-like thing. She got attacked by an eldritch horror and it burned away most of her body, but a bunch of slimes revived her and turned her into a slime person. Her hands and feet were made of slime, she wore a leather shirt and denim shorts, she had two ponytails and her eyes were green, and her one main power is that she could shoot slime.

We had this big arc where my character got killed off, but then we found out she was secretly a goddess and was able to reincarnate. I remember my friend being amazed at that plot twist, I still play/write characters with the 'make a sacrifice and unlock your true power' trope for sentimental reasons.

i think i was nine and my first character was a self insert of myself, really. i rped with this guy on an app called "monsters paradise" and he was my so called 'boyfriend' lmao