Discussion Past and current experiences with other roleplay communities?

[Subject 648 Slipknot]

I started out on Star Wars roleplay. I started out using Wattpad. I think that's really where I felt my pull towards "genetic experiments gone horribly wrong" type of vibe. For some reason, I enjoyed that kind of stuff. The sciencey background and tone of it, before descending into horror like elements just seemed cool. It was kind of appealing to me, in a weird way. I don't know, I've always liked the thriller/psychological horror type stuff in a professional-ish type of way. Wattpad was also where the first instances of my Subject characters started appearing. They were basic, and not as in-depth now, but that was really the basis for what kickstarted my Subject narrative.

Eventually, that got boring (You could only make like a paragraph for each post which kept things incredibly slow). And a couple years back I stopped using Wattpad. After that I got involved with the SCP Foundation wiki. I know, I know, that isn't a roleplay community, at least not in a normal sense. But it does feel pretty important for me to bring up. Like I said, I was really into that science gone wrong type horror vibe. Getting involved with the SCP stuff was an obvious direction for me. Had some good times there, and I still do.

Eventually, by sheer coincidence and luck, I found Chaos. Decided to rework and recreate my Subject characters, and started creating an in-depth narrative for them. And now we're here, nearly two years in the future, and I'm still here, somehow. This place definitely appeals to my simple, primate, monke brain that likes to make things go boom.

Plus people here actually put up with me and my garbage, so that's a win in my book.

Oh yeah and I'm also staff on a sandbox site called Storyteller's Circle.

And that's about it.

 

[Vora Kaar]

Most of the sites I have been to I bounced around for a couple months then left.

Gungan Council, StarwarsRP, SuperheroRP, did a couple Skype/Yahoo/Gmail boards off and on, have done a couple Discord boards, and as much as I regret saying this, I did a number of Anime boards of which the anime had depictions of adult content, with the basis of many of the members not vetted for that kind of content. The board in question, as far as I am aware, is still up, but I will only say that Alkor Centaris (Strawberry Jam for those who know.) and I were both on the board for a time. (Unknowingly we were on the board but at different times and only crossed paths later on here on chaos)

I have been writing RP myself since I was in 7th grade, and I am 25 now.

Most of the boards I have been to I joined I bounced from either because of school, toxic behavior on the site, or I lost interest due to a lot of the rulesets they had created. After finding chaos and its open nature, even way back in 2013, I enjoyed it from then on. While I have had multiple LOAs that lasted for some time, I have always come back because I have enjoyed the community for the majority of it.

I am just glad I don't have to have my threads judged for points, or be forced into having a strict form of a character creation process.

 

[Tearstone]

My online RP journey started in 1997. I'd already been into tabletop games for around three years, and I'd been writing for at least two. I discovered internet chat rooms that year through high speed computer labs at my high school. Being something of the school outcast, and somewhat socially-starved, an environment where I could chat with like-minded people across the globe was a great hook.

Almost imemdiately I stumbled into the Yahoo chat Roleplaying Games rooms, and the world of RP presented there. It was a wild west of possibility where anything could happen. You lived on your wits and how fast you could gun down or slice up your opponent with them slick T2 or Tech-2 rules. Like Tefka I proved to be notoriously fast, and tended to enforce some measures of order when necessary in the public spaces. The user-made rooms branched off from the main Roleplaying Game rooms. Quite a few of them took on a tavern or cantina orientation, and I 'worked' as a bouncer for a few of them. On more than one occasion, I found myself dealing with two belligerents alone and dealt with them both. At one point, I had to handle three.

But like any gunfighter, they get old. They get slow. And eventually, they get much wiser.

I graduated high school in May of '01. And like all things, seasons changed. I was forced to move, and lost computer access and the internet for months. When I came back, the sword was not as swift. The gun was slow. And there were a lot of youngbloods that had moved in. I'd seen another side of the coin there, T1/Tech1, or para-style RP. It always interested me, and I'd seen these people cranking out, what I thought, were amazing descriptions, and great stories. They painted images in my mind in ways that I'd really only enjoyed in novels, and creative writing classes.

I knew I had the skills and imagination to step into the space. And in short order, I began to evolve. I gained several new faces - a shrewd but power-hungry sorcerer, an X-wing pilot, a dark and brooding vampire, and more. I made some great friends during this time, and quickly became a skilled writer painting imagery in the minds of others and telling stories as fast as we could churn out the words.

And then, a great cataclysm befell us all. The mighty, but unseen Yahoo! gods struck down the user rooms. We soon learned of their magnanimous wisdom that their was purpose in their madness. They sough to clean out the seedy back corners of their chat system from pedos and stalkers. We didn't have such problems, but it was understood.

Nevertheless the Roleplaying Games rooms turned into nothing more than a pandemonium of sound and fury as there was no sorting the madness. Many of us fled to a realm called Ayenee. (The Arts & Entertainment chat rooms. or A&E... Ayenee.) Life continued on, and the influx of seasoned folk from all over, including Eden saw a brief renaissance.

It was around this time that I made contact with a few other Star Wars RPers. I stumbled into a revival of a board called Expansion of the Force, which then rolled into just Star Wars RP on proboards. And for the next eight years, SWRP would consume much of my life.

I also stumbled into a place called NeverWinter Nights. (Not to be mistaken with the modern Neverwinter MMO). More specifically, I found myself playing online in a persistent RP world called Blackstone Keep or BSK. Along my journey I'd ventured into MUDs, especially Waterdeep MUD, RIFTS MUD, and a Star Wars one I cant remember the name of. (I'm old, Gandalf.) MUDs had scratched my chat-rp itch, but this was a whole new level.

I was also an avid D&D player at this point, playing mostly face-to-face in the real world. NeverWinter Nights (NWN) was based on the 3.X ruleset. I could make characters in game that matched up perfectly on paper. And vice versa. But more over, BSK had an active RP community, and a good one. I quickly fell into one of the main guilds/groups on the server, and ascended the ranks. My roommate at the time, and arguably closest friend wound up joining the Dungeon Master team, working as an admin, hosting and organizing events. Eventually they took over and became the lead DM.

But with the changing of seasons, these things too shall pass. Shadow (my roomie and bro) had to move. I also had to step away due to real life, as well as betrayals within that world. I managed to at least keep up with Star Wars, but it began to die as there just wasn't enough fresh blood coming in.

That cross-pollinated with some of us old-timers on the site getting into other forums and RPs, we had m ore options than just Star Wars, like X-men/Marvel, and more.

The dark times... Beyond 2006, internet access is limited until part way through 2007, and folks have moved on. I find myself being pulled into World of Warcraft. It's a completely new and different experience, but I quickly adapt to it and find myself drawn into the Horde. I sink into the skin of a Sin'dorei war mage and for the next few years when I want to escape, this becomes the place for me.

I'm still doing Star Wars stuff. I also branch out into Champions Online to scratch that old marvel/superhero/cape RP itch. And Star Trek Online. Star Trek was about the first sci-fi that I ever loved. (GASP! HERESY DETECTED!) It engaged my young five to seven year old mind in ways few things did. Fast forward to age 28, and I still love it. Through one of my Champions friends and RP partners they find out about my love of Trek, and turn me on to Star-Fleet. One of the oldest, longest-lasting, still-present Trek RP forms around.

And I dove into it hard. Still RPing in WoW. Around this time the SWTOR beta came out and I hopped into it, and played for a good while. Left, vowing to return when it was more ironed out.

Through Star-Fleet I heard about a Star Wars rp site which was supposedly massive, and was well organized. I joined it, to find it had some decent activity, but there had been a mass exodus, largely due to management conflicts and micro-managing of the admin. That same classroom-like place Caltin Vanagor mentioned earlier. Through some of those folks I found out about Chaos, but when I initially began to nose around it, I bounced off it. It was too big, to enigmatic in many ways. I think I'd seen the site once or twice in my own ambling around the internet.

But eventually the siren call of Chaos began to draw me in. Once I started to really learn about this place through my own investigation, I found my imagination sparked and the freedom available, combined with the map game, the Factory and Codex (I always loved making tech and lore submissions for SWRP) ... and to find I already had friends here? Yeah. I was in, circa February 2020. Not long now, of course.

Now, I did have a stint of RP in SWTOR, and a lot of other places I haven't even mentioned, like The Roleplayer Guild.

I've been a roleplay teacher/guide/coach, I've worked moderation and admin for places. I was a builder for Waterdeep MUD for a time, helping build zones. I've been guild master of guilds or co-GM. I've seen the gamut.

I love Chaos, as it is big enough that I have room to do what I want, when I want, without much interference. I can find people to write with. I can choose not to write. I can take a break and things will still be here. Virtually every single person I've met has been great, understanding, patient, enthusiastic, and creative. The staff here too are generally great to interact with.

I will say my time in SWTOR doesn't match what was described earlier. Perhaps I got lucky with the Sith guild I fell into. I had a great time, and didn't experience the same toxicity others have claimed. I miss my old guild there. There's a lot of folks I've missed along the way. And a lot of douchecanoes I'm better off without. So far, amount of good in Chaos far outstrips any of the bad.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

 

[Hailyn]

I started role-playing pretty much by accident when I was about 12 or 13 years old, I think around 2006 anyways so like 5th or 6th grade if I have my years lined up right, when I was looking for "[Insert kids tv show] online game" on google (I can't be the only person >> <<) and got sucked into a community that made what google is telling me are/were "MUD-like games", or basically multiplayer RPG games, where you have a "map" representing your location in-game, a box for stats and buttons and stuff, and a box for text to scroll for chat.

basically I started RPing in a glorified chat room, because, lol, the "games" were just a visual medium for the people who hosted them to add I guess some kind of further immersion or something (gameplay mechanics? stats? idk) to their RP beyond it being just a chat room or going full-forum. Think of it like minecraft with graphics from the NES era, that's basically where I got my start.

Anyways, long story short I got more interested in RP and less interested in whatever it was I had been looking for in the first place and stuck around there until about the time I was mid-way through high school. Started to lose interest as friends online started dropping out of the scene to go to college and stuff, that sort of thing. The climate there was definitely the most toxic thing I have ever experienced though, everyone harassed or bullied everyone, it was pretty wild-west because anyone could host their own game or server for a game or whatever and there were hundreds of little mini-communities (not all RP, there were actual games there too and some that blended both together sort of like how there's RP servers for some popular MMOs today).

I had rejoined that whole place again in like 2013 or 2014 I guess, right before I joined Chaos, and was kind of not liking that it was still the same immature/toxic playground it was when I was a kid. Some friends were talking about Chaos one day in a skype chat, I said I was interested, and ended up here. Haven't seen/heard from them since, tbh, but this is a much better place than where I came from. Everything I came from was stat-this, stat-that, and the continuity of servers were wiped clean every month or two by erasing everyone's saves and starting over again with brand new characters, though sometimes some of us had recurring casts, so-to-speak, like a bunch of alternate universe stories.

Not gonna lie, most of the stuff was anime. I liked it, not as into it anymore, and it wasn't what I had been looking for initially, but it was simultaneously how I discovered the wonderful world of anime so while I am fully aware that the community there was pretty bad and the quality of, well, everything, there was pretty bad too, it's always going to have a tiny bit of nostalgia for me. Not enough to go back, but enough for me to still have the client installed on my PC after 7 years (haven't used or updated it since, tho).

 

[Jsc]

A long time ago... (2008)

I accidentally came across a StarWars fan wiki while searching on google for StarWars fan art. The wiki profile I stumbled upon was that of a character named Satkia and was amazingly well done. I read the whole thing and thought, "this seems totally legit. This writer is really good. Now? What is StarWars Pbp RP and how do I get on this train?"

So I visited the fansite link they had on their wiki and signed up a few days later. Long story short. I've been wandering RP sites in multiple genre's ever since.

How has it been? Well... It's still the internet. So... It's been, everything. Really. Like. From great to... Um. Bleh. Not so, great. Lol. You get the picture. It's a mess. The people are a mess. The threads are a mess. Everything is a mess. Expect it, embrace it, enjoy it. Or gtfo and go somewhere else. No biggie. It is still, the internet. So you know... Do stuff or whatever.

Anyway. The best thing Tef ever did was name his site Chaos and understand that is the high bar. That is the human race. Chaos. So, why did his community turn out so good? Well, we didn't. We're nuts. We sling posts like brain dead apes on WallStreetBets sling mad money. But at least we've embraced it and moved on. Found a few diamonds in the rough to call Staff and volunteers. Or better yet, writing partners, real people, and friends.

The funny thing about me is though. I often return to these glorious wastelands of imagination that I've visited before. Only to find that someone actually remembers me positively. Years and years and years later.

I don't know what that means but. It feels good. Nice to know you'll be remembered for the all good times we had IC and not the grade school drama that happened on Skype.

And. Friend to friend.

I'll remember you that way too.

So here's to good memories. Cheers!

 

[Ala Quin]

So. I was lonely. I joined a chat site. Will not embarass myself by saying which one. Needless to say, this was 2008. On this chat site, I found forums where you could role play in various settings. The Role Play was MEH, but it started something in me that I could not deny. I needed a creative outlet.

Star Trek: Horizons
So. I took my character from my half finished novel (yes it is still half finished). His name was Hadion Fare. And I registered to a Star Trek RPG in early 2009. Hadion Fare was a half Vulcan half Human with the twist that he struggled to connect to his VULCAN side, not like Spock struggling with his humanity. I thought I was clever. This site was where I met Caltin Vanagor and Oshil . The structure of this site was intriguing but ultimate infuriating for me. Everything was written in a constant timeline, so if you character was in engineering you could not write them anywhere else, at any other time in history. You just had to wait for people to post so you could move on. And because it was a military setting, my junior officer character had to wait to be dismissed before exiting a thread. If the other character didn't want to dismiss you, you were stuck in that space writing. Honestly. It was a struggle. I just wanted to write. I found a fellow rebel who wrote a rather spicy Andorian woman, and I didn't care that it was a male Doctor from India that wrote her dammit, she was worth fawning over. Mostly because she was willing to rebel with me. Sorry Caltin. Apparently there was a lot of behind the scenes drama going on, and the board imploded. So I was homeless.

SWRPG
Caltin had moved on to this Star Wars site, and I loved the freedom that it offered compared to what I had known. So I created Ala Quin in September of 2009. I. Went. WILD. 2 years later I had something near ten thousand posts on the board. Don't ask how many of those were in the spam section, but truthfully a ton of it was actual RP posts. I met so many fantastic people there. However as time went on, I began to tire of the intense requirements around ranking up your character. Several factions had leadership that seemed very exclusive and hard to crack if you weren't 'in' with the leaders. There was also issues with leaders just being absent from the board for long stretches of time, including the board owner who was truly lovely, but simply absent a great deal of the time. Many suggestions were made to attempt to streamline and update the board, but change did not come. I left the board around 2013 which is when I registered at Chaos...which got me immediately banned because I chose a last name for my new iteration of Ala that was apparently the last name of a very naughty players main character, so Tefka thought I was trouble? HA. It is funny now, but at the time it kind of prevented me from trying to get into Chaos, and I was probably a little burned out on the hobby at the time. I did go back to SWRPG around 2015-2016 and had a burst of creativity with Brandyn Sal-Soren, but was burned BIG time with a writer I was close to that changed very quickly in their temprement towards me and I quit RPing altogether for a while, despite attempts to restart on Chaos even then.

STAR TREK SIMMING
I did a fair amount of writing on the ship USS Archimedes and Kepler Station. These were more Joint Post focused, and the people on the site, though a small group, were close knit and were all genuinely trying to break into some form of fiction writing. Three of the writers are currently publishing books for Kindle etc. This community fell apart when the original owner resigned to take up writing their books full time, and the replacement owner died of cancer a year later...heartbreaking. I loved this community, and they made me better people.

CHAOS
2018 was when I started trying to write here again, and I thank Amz entirely for it. You are a fantastic friend, and I love you like family. I was in and out a lot struggling with not having found my niche or place to feel at home. Chaos can be really daunting at times. And I am wary of it not being simply that I want people to know me and love me...there is a very real aspect of my personality that craves that. Such is the burden of all those that bare insecurity issues, but knowing is half the battle, right Mr G I Joe? Tefka was encouraging in his own bare facts, tell it like it is and don't mince words kind of way, after I posted a profile post saying that Chaos was a 'tough nut to crack'. Since then I have just worked at establishing friendships with writers, building a small community around me, so I can feel at home, and doing my thing. The Sal-Soren Saga is my big project, and I have said that its completion may be the end of my time RPing. We shall see. Factions are still hard for me to feel comfortable in. Invasions intimidate me. But I feel like I have a place here. Thanks team Chaos.

Some words of advice to anyone that bother to read this:

• truly collaborate. Even with your In Character enemies. This will require compromise. But it is healthy for your development as a person to do this.
• be willing to lose in character, and frequently. Losing makes the wins so much more triumphant.
• when you see something you like, don't just give it a like, or a hearty-eyes react. Tell the person.

- people need so little encouragement, and it is sad how much less than they need that they actually get.
- take criticism maturely

Also, Jsc - I changed my mind about the LotR tour. You can crash on my couch if you have too.

 

[Okkeus Dainlei]

.

 

[Quartz_Soldier]

Tacking onto my previous post:

Not everything was bad.

Before that particular event, I used to frequent Fanfiction(.)net quite a bit and had a lot of fun. I regularly posted in the Beast Wars/Transformers forums and built a new linear canon alongside the official series with several other writers.

The second FFNET forums I hit were the Storm Hawks Forums and that was a blast, at least one of the forums I posted in had no rules and everything got out of hand very quickly, it was fun and Chaotic.

OC Forum became 1st in the forum listing and it up until recently held that spot.

Due to the disgusting fandom incident, I stopped Roleplaying or at least had little interest in it.

Now I am here, somewhat recovered and ready to begin a new.

 

[Amani Serys]

Oh gee, I had nearly erased this from my mind, but back in the day my first experience with any kind of RP writing was in an Elder Scrolls themed subreddit of all places, back when I was pretty into that. Whatever qualified for writing on my part was probably very not good and nobody needs to see it ever again.

It was fun at the time, a decent enough gateway and really my only experience with RP of any sort until I started DMing D&D years later. The subreddit was pretty streamlined, the community was much smaller and all characters were essentially part of the same guild, with a pretty small area of RP involved. Hardly had any OOC interaction involved either. People just came in to write and that was more or less the extent of it. Probably wouldn’t hold my attention nowadays but hey I was into it at the time. It didn’t last all that long, I’m sure it still exists but it's been more or less dead for years.

This site has been my first foray back into that territory since then. I do really appreciate a lot of the freedom Chaos offers, I’m very much of the mind that restrictions on RP such as this tend to inhibit enjoyment significantly. Still have to say I enjoy D&D the most of all my RP experiences though, in no small part thanks to the more intimate setting and playing with close friends (no offense), and the larger D&D community has also been pretty solid in my experiences. Hasn’t wronged me yet!

 

[Tathra Khaeus]

I don't have the energy for all the details but I'll keep it short and sweet.

I started roleplaying at the very young age of always with my sister, playing with toys and making up stories to entertain her when we were very young. I used to set up live action diorama's of my bionicles and jump between each POV. [Sounds familiar, right?] Anyway, after that I finally convinced my mother to let me use her laptop circa 2010-12 and started with Star Wars combine, didn't do much as it didn't hold my 10 to 12yr old attention span.

Then, the trailers for the Old Republic started coming out. I joined the SWTOR forums and I started doing post by post rp on profiles. Nothing serious, just crap. Introduced me to the concepts of powergaming and such. Nothing special. Then, I set up a single thread for Halo RP. The mind of a young teen is wondrous, indeed. I started writing with a friend; Tony. We wrote a whole saga in that one thread with the occasional trolling from a forcefully homoerotic pink font'd Spartan. But all the same, I had a great time.

I developed my writing from one-liners to multi-paragraph posts that to this day were larger in scope than most of what I write here bar perhaps Invasions. Just had so much more drive back then. After a while, the Halo story literally finished - an uncommon sensation. After some time of not having a laptop or something akin, I joined up to Chaos in early 2014. I was nothing great, but I was delighted with Chaos.

I don't remember if I wrote on chaos throughout the entirety of the year and into 2015 or not, it's a bit of a blur to be honest. But I enjoyed it, quite a lot. I was in Fel chat, I was memeing - I loved the community on skype, as crass and immature as it was. I enjoyed it and uncanny dodging all the soft-rp. But then, some really bad shit happened and I left for three years.

My drive to write, pulverised. Took me three years and sheer boredom to even consider coming back but then I did. Three days after I came back, Srina Talon joined and has been one of the best friends and people I've met, period. Only written with her properly once but it set the bar so damn high for Jedi that most haven't been up to par.

Then, as we're all aware I took the mad undertaking of my current faction. And, I've had the pleasure of writing with people like Osam , Sethrak , Ostak Cl'mana and so many others. Its been my privilege to write with and for these people.

Anyway, not much of a history. And the rest is filler!

 

[Barbie Barnabas]

Speaking for my writer as my alts are always IC...
I started off at The Gungan Council...did some moderating there, then administration. Didn't much write there though, but did extensively and with awesome writers at boards called The Oaken Dawn and Star War Tales, which the latter became EPICS. My other beloved boards which I also helped with administration was Circle of Healers and The Jedi Academy. There were also some other boards which at the top of my writer's head I cannot accurately recall...then went on a 2-3 year sabbatical before I had the urge to scratch that itch again.
Went to visit the old boards and sadly found them just barely breathing. Was directed here by a fellow writer who happened on me there and ...and... and I think maybe I'm due for another sabbatical soon.

Oh, and there was one vampire board that was awesome and enjoyed writing there... The Savage Garden.

 

[Strider Garon]

My first RP was Zelas Slayers based on the Anime of the same name. Learned very quick that being a power player was boring and no one liked you for it.
New Imperial Federation (NIF) The birth place of Strider Garon. Fun times but was slow paced.

THe Gungan Council: This is where Strider made a name for himself but like many of us that had been there had suffered at the hands of site leadership.

Then there was the adult only star wars site that Shery made: Good times, good writers.

Tal'adine: Short lived mando only site for those that were exiled from TGC

Aelyria: Was a unique and fun medieval fantasy, but also was a money grab with the Companion perks.

Mizahar: Another unique medieval fantasy site, like Darth Metus mentioned, horrible leadership. I ended up getting banned from there.

Chronicles: Amazing medieval fantasy site that i wish i put more time into.

 

[Cathryn Stellaris]

Started in 2000 something on TGC. Community was great until it became pretty toxic. Got banned, came back took a break. Went back to try and do it again and the place was deserted but I got pulled over here by a junior RPer I had mentored over there. Ported RC 212 to here and went wild. Been on and off with a billion char concepts ever since. I think this is the primo board out there for RP. I've looked around and there's nothing quite like Chaos.

Cheers

 

[Davak]

Hey thought it was a great place to share some ancient knowledge, been enjoying reading up on all your history.
Also, there are honestly not a lot of places in my life to talk about forum-based roleplay so feels good to take this one.
I actually learned English this way, I am a native German speaker, and my teacher at the time thought it would be a good way to help me get a grip on my terrible grades. I started my journey on The Ninja Forum (Somebody pls tell me you know this) and I've been Davak ever since.

Mebe it's the german in me but I love that heavy system-based roleplay, the almost DnD like "you can" and "can not" based on character stats, weapon (in my case Jutsu) numbers, and rules sets.

I had to do the whole start all the way at the bottom thing back then "Academy Student" and it took me 3 years to reach a point in which I was taken seriously OOC and IC. As a fifteen year old that was okay though and I liked grinding out threads to make points and do "trainings" to advance etc. Also, PvP made a lot of sense to me, it wasn't a game of ego, but a game of numbers and scenarios.

From there I tried a LOT the next thing was actually a Star Wars forum that one of the admins of the TNF had set up. Then chat-based Supernatural stuff (this is my big ouch), then Harper Region (medical pokemon), One Piece RP, Tokyo Ghoul, you know the anime stuff, don't know why the hate for this community tho =P I am in my mid-twenties now and look back at over a decade of this stuff.

Anyway, when I came to Chaos in late 2019 I didn't like how freeform everything was but dammmmm the lore drew me in. You people went hard, along with the map game, the super accessible factions, and the chance to just "do" whatever you feel like while easily finding someone to do it with I fell pretty hard.

I will say that it does at times feel more relationship-driven which personally can be a con if you're not in one or another "clique" but overall the users here have been super open and inviting and hella collaborative.

Anyway, this was "mein krug bier" to the whole thing, I really wanna say that I am thankful to have found this place. This is a wonderful community and a special little spot on the internet for me and as it seems many others.

You have all done a tremendous job and should remember just how much of a feat that really is, managers all over the world broke attempting to lead and build cultures online in the last year. And you have done and continue to do exactly that. Congratulations.

 

[Dantum Kryszar]

I started roleplay with Wings of Fire roleplay. Being a book nerd, I wanted to see if other people wrote fanfiction about WoF and found a website. It was a good introduction to roleplay, but there was rarely any activity, and the site was far from the greatness of Chaos. I had been on a few other sites (Pokemon roleplay, other book roleplay), and I was largely ignored as a member. As soon as I joined Chaos, many people made me feel welcome, and I could make a character and put him in threads very easily and with acceptance from others. Even thought it has its flaws, Chaos has been my best roleplaying experience so far.

 

[Ducha Relina Zhan]

Inspired by Caedyn Arenais

Question: How has your experience been with other RP communities, both Star Wars and non?

Some of us have been at Chaos so long (me), we've forgotten what the world of Jcink, freeboards and other sharks in the sea even look like. The Wild West can be exciting, excruciating, glorious, or leave bad tastes in our mouths with the amount of hours devoted.

Obviously you're here, so we're your current preference at this moment, and we can make a separate thread to moan and groan about Chaos's flaws. So let's stick to the outside of this realm for this thread, for the most part.

But the question does arise every so often. How was your experience? Did they do things better or worse, were the people way more chill or super try hard? Any ridiculous rules you came across? Any tangible experiences you made?

Feel free to share.

My history in SWRP revolves around military roleplay, mostly. I have always been a part of the Hapes Consortium, too, so I got to move warships on a glorified chessboard in Second Life (and still do) as well as roleplay as a leading military commander. I'm at my best (and enjoy best) Naval warfare and matching tactical wits with other players. I seem to recall that, a while back, Chaos did something similar, although not using miniatures in a 3D environment.

Now, since we have a dice roller here, it follows that the creation of a fleet and combat system which uses it (particularly useful in major warfare engagements) ought to be done if it hasn't already. On that matter, I have a bit of experience! If you need a fleet and personal combat system made, I'd be happy to help in that regard!

 

[Hwo]

SWFans - Found in early 2000 at 12 years old, continued on and off until maybe 2004 or so. Much less active after it left ezboard in 2001.
The Gungan Council - it was part of SWFans, spun off into its own universe in 2001 when SWFans left ezboard. Stayed there consistently until 2006 or so, then on and off until the end. I mostly stopped RPing in 2006 except for 1-3 month stints every couple of years.
The Rebel Faction - on and off for a couple years after it spun off from TGC.
Chaos - former TGC folks sent me here in 2014. Too old/busy to RP these days.

 

[Arwen Hamenick]

Where do I even start? I started role playing around the age of eleven (a long 15 years ago) on Habbo Hotel. I joined a couple of communities during my time there, however, I only dedicated time and effort to one of them and that was MobLife. There were a couple of role playing communities on Habbo; Star Wars, Hogwarts and MobLife were probably the most popular around at the time. Star Wars wasn't exactly a friendly community so I didn't last long over there. For some reason it wasn't about the story-telling or the development of a character which is what I perceived as at first, it was all about who could smash their keyboard the quickest in combat to win and get the W against the other player.

After Habbo, me and a couple of friends decided to start role playing on LS:RP (a heavy text based role play server on GTA:SA) and boy do I wish I didn't discover it. I spent six years there and made a ton of friends that I still speak with to this day. The community had 600 active players, some were nice, some weren't. I stuck to my circle and surprisingly did really well as my character of three years progressed all the way from the bottom to (almost) the top. I took a year break from role playing due to extreme burnout and then a new era of GTA roleplay started, I was invited to GTA:W to roleplay with the same friends I had on LS:RP. I stayed there for just under a year as I didn't have enough time to dedicate to remain active on my character.

So, I come from a text based background and this is the first time I've done role play like this. The community has been really welcoming and even though I've only contributed to my own private thread I feel like it's the start of something really great.

 

[DeadpoolMLP]

I've been bouncing around RP groups since about 2013.

Started strangely enough by accident when I decided "deadpool" was gonna be the username I chose one night to go on the Cards against Humanity website, and came across a bunch of people who were roleplaying the characters they had also chosen playing CaH. It was a strange time, but we just kinda went with it. That ended up with me continuing to run into that group, and we formed a small, tight nit group. Course, that didn't last. Internal rifts formed, people had creative differences, and naturally, we were awful at communicating. Normal RPer stuff. Had that been the end of it, I would've just kinda accepted that I wasn't cut out for RP.

But then I ran into another group. My first exposure to multiverse RP settings, and...that didn't end well for me. My first exposure to RPer power scaling, and the dick measuring contest that it becomes. I was a comic book nerd at that point, and so my character was naturally at that scale. Apparently that was 'wrong'. It led me down the slippery slope of wanting nothing more than the approval of my fellow RPers, and it sent me into a massive inferiority spiral that really only caused me grieve in the end. I got kicked out of that group, because as they put it, "We're not here to be your therapists", which...fair. I guess. Part of me still holds a bit of a sore spot for abandoning me at my lowest mental moment, but I can see where they came from.

But low and behold, another group popped up in the meantime. My old CaH buddy, the one I had been closest to, wanted to do an Edge of the Empire tabletop campaign. I had never been a huge star wars fan, more a casual who watched the movies and left it at that. But I'm a lore sponge of all things nerdery, so I dove in best I could and made what would become Jonyna. While my Multiverse group left me out to dry, the EotE campaign just kept chugging, and I really got invested in Star Wars as a setting. It's a really cool toy box where you can just pull out whatever action figures you want to give them whatever accessories you want, and at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter.

Then I went looking for art.

And, as the joke goes, I found Valery Noble art, which led me back here.

I did try to fill the void of my multiverse RP with my own RP group, but turns out, taking on teenagers who want to RP their power fantasy and trying to mentor them in the ways of RP, isn't gonna yield great results if they're so far up their own ass about how awesome their character is, that they can taste it.

 

[Delila Castillon]

So glad to see this!

I was first introduced to Roleplay via Pirch98 - Talkcity. It was a live chat with various rooms including a Starwars one where everyone used it for RP. The concept blew my mind at the mere age of thirteen and I quickly become addicted much to the dismay of my parents who needed the phone, running on a 15kb dial up connection xD

Hey a fellow Talkcity user!

I started out on Talkcity with a chaotic group in the Star Wars chats. There were various rooms, like Naboo and such, and somehow people had sectioned themselves off for RP. Had a lot of fun and was sad when it ended.

Moved on to The Gungan Council and various other smaller forums. Did that for a while before calling it quits and giving up RP for years.

Wanted to RP again and went back to TGC and was there for a bit when this site was catching traction. Joined here and straddled both for awhile until this was my main source for RP.