Roleplaying history

[Kyle Alcott-Ward]

The other day I found myself wondering... How did all the people on HNZ find out about roleplay forums?

I know my background isn't one I'm likely to find in anyone else on here, but I'm interested to see how everyone started out.

I first started RPing on Neopets, back in the day, when I was about 10 (and totally lied about my age to get on the forums... what a rebel ) It was never particularly literate or long-lasting, but I was super passionate about it.
After Neopets, my next online obsession was the dolling community, which I'm still sorta part of. (The Wikipedia page doesn't really do dolling as an art form justice though - this is my most recent doll, a self-portrait for a sig on a forum)

Base
The dolling community had a whole roleplaying offshoot of rather elite, exclusive forums, where two paragraphs was a short post, all sigs/avs had to be pixelled, and biographies had to be detail approved by staff before you were allowed to start RPing. I started going on them when I was about 12 or 13, and got COMPLETELY hooked, to the point of adminning for quite a few RP forums over the years. That whole elitist, SUPERLITERATE community is where I really got hooked on RPing, though I was taking a long break from forums (Though I was still RPing daily on MSN with friends) after an ugly betrayal by some forum friends when I found HNZ, and it was kind of a culture shock after only ever RPing on sites with such tight rules about every single thing. I find it slightly frustrating sometimes RPing with people who have such short (by my standards ) posts, and seeing characters that wouldn't have made the cut in terms of backstory, but it's also a relief to be somewhere so relaxed and friendly, where people just don't mind what you're doing, as long as you're having a great time. (I sound like some stodgy old professor talking about all the Rules Of Roleplaying when I get into it ) And to be honest, even though I get cravings for all the super-strict rules sometimes, I really prefer the way things are run on HNZ Everyone getting a chance to have fun and learn about RPing and writing and character development is a much nicer way to do things.

So, what about you... what started you RPing?

 

[Nicolas King]

HNZ was my first text-based RP anything.
I did Neopets back in the day, but just the main site - not the forums.
As to dolls, HNZ used to use those instead of actors/actresses to portray characters.

Regardless, HNZ really has been my only real experience at roleplaying (I've played like D&D once in a blue moon with some friends but that's about it for other roleplaying forms, too).
I know of at least one person who used to be a regular on HNZ who did some Live Action Roleplaying. (That's much of why she left the board. She was LARPing. ) But you don't want to hear what I know about other people's history.

 

[Isabella Chaos]

I'm the same as Nick. I played Neopets too, but I never even knew the forums existed.

I stumbled upon HNZ sometime in '07 and just lurked until I got the point of it and joined! Been hooked ever since.
I've tried various other sites and other forms of RPing, but HNZ has always been my #1
I was lucky that this was my first, favorite, and best role playing experience.

 

[Alyssa Chevalier]

HNZ wan't the first RPG site I had been on. I was on another one but quit sometime before I joined HNZ for personal reasons. Things were a bit different there though, so when I first got on HNZ there was a lot of new stuff I wasn't used to.

I was first introduced to HNZ by a family member, but we were out of town when I was shown so I spent two weeks just lurking. Finally sometime two weeks later when we got home I joined and I've been hooked ever since. This place is like a home to me and all my characters have become something I hold very dear. I haven't really been on any other RPG sites since HNZ because none of them really seem to compare to this site.

 

[Hoshi Icchihara]

Neopets was where I first got into RPing, this was before they got the stupid "you can't portray Neopets as human" rule which really killed a lot of what I liked about it.

From Neopets I moved on to Gaia online which really got me hooked on Rping. On Gaia I would have to have sevral pages open because I had several going on at the same time real time and some going on over PM's which was crazy. Then again this was also the time of my internet addiction so meh.

When the quality of RP fell on Gaia I moved on to HNZ by accident really and I liked the rules here and the community in general so I stayed. This isn't to say that I was good when I got here, goodness knows I had some horrible one line-ers when I first got here but over all things are good here. I've tried to stay with other sites but I keep right on floating back to HNZ. Maybe it's Nick who cast some spell on Crackwarts

 

[Poppy Bloxam]

My first RP started in the forums of fanfiction.net when I randomly stumbled across an RP forum. I really enjoyed RPing with the people who frequently used it, and I invented the character of Larissa then and there. (Though she was a little bit different to HNZ Larissa) I then roped Phoebe in (Mwuhahaha! ) and we both became frequent RPers in the forum. I would normally play Larissa, but one night, when Phoebe couldn't get online, me and this other girl (I only know her as 'Envy Lestrange') started RPing a really ridiculous version of the events of OoTP, and the bit with Sirius' death. In that, I switched between several canon characters. But after that, I just stuck with Larissa. (And occasionally Remus Lupin :3 )

I then found out about RP on Bebo, and I began that with a couple of people. Again, I dragged Phoebe along for the ride, and we both really enjoyed it. This was where Larissa gained a little more backstory to her character, but she was still not the HNZ Larissa. I then, while searching for Bebo HP RP groups, happened upon 'HNZ'. Curious, I checked out the site. I then spent the next six months ( ) lurking the site. I was too nervous to just dive in, because there were actual rules, and everything was so much more formal. At long last, as the year came to an end, I decided to sign up, thinking that, at the very worst, I would ditch it after a couple of days. But then more and more days passed of me being on the site. Days turned into weeks, weeks to month, and months, to years.

I did try out other HP RP sites when I had been on HNZ for a couple of weeks, but this brief affair did not last as I soon came to understand that there has been, and will never be, a site quite so genius and addictive as HNZ. I still have times when I wonder what life would have been like, had I not found HNZ before another site, but I think that, one way or another, I would still have ended up here.

/NoRegrets