Geeking Out: Online Roleplaying
As “Speak Out With Your Geek Out” week continues – you can read my previous post here - it seems only fitting to begin with my longest, most geeky hobby. Online roleplaying.
How It Happened
I started role playing online well over a decade ago, around the year 2000. I was in Middle School, and as anyone who has ever attended Middle School will tell you – it sucked. I was in the sixth grade, and we were doing this “Battle of the Books” thing and a friend of mine wasn’t allowed to read Harry Potter because of her religious practices, and so we swapped. I was instantly hooked.
As I mentioned in my first Geek Out post, I’ve been using the internet since way before many kids in my generation had a home computer. After I read Harry Potter and devoured the two sequels, I was bored. In the months before the fourth book was released, I spent my time writing out lists of things that appeared in the books in a single notebook. All of the spells, all of the sweets, all of the books. My own little lexicon. I had no idea I was setting myself up for a life-long hobby.
Eventually I found my way to the official Warner Brothers Harry Potter message boards, and stumbled across a few people pretending to be witches and wizards. They’d write up paragraphs describing themselves in the house common room for my favorite house, Slytherin1, and interact with each other. I thought this was pretty cool and watched for a long time before deciding to jump in. I called myself “Malanda Riddle,” deciding to play a twist that I hadn’t seen anyone else use yet – I was going to be a relative of the dark lord Voldemort. Back in those days, this was a new and exciting idea. To my knowledge I was the first person to try this concept on the WB boards. I didn’t know I was playing a “Mary Sue” character. In fact, I didn’t even know I was role playing.
Eventually I learned how to write better, how to create a better character. I figured out that what we were doing was called role playing, and even joined a different Harry Potter site with some friends, one that I would eventually take over and own. I even tried a few different genres with the same friends; high fantasy with elves, daring (and sometimes comedic) pirates on the high seas. Mostly I just stuck to Harry Potter.
Then and Now
These days, I’m still running the same site, with some of the same people from the very beginning. You can find me over at Vault 713, where we have added some structure since the old days. Mary Sue’s long gone, we now have a staff team dedicated to helping our players create characters that are interesting and fun so that they can explore the wizarding world. Instead of just wandering aimlessly, we follow the Harry Potter books one at a time. Right now, we’re on Order of the Phoenix.
I also started up Roleplay Hub this year, a place where role players of all walks of life and all styles – including tabletop or video game role playing – can come together and make friends. It’s not just a message board so much as a community of people ready to welcome you in with open arms. One Big Happy Geek Family.
Something that I’ve learned over the years is that you really have to have fun while you role play. A lot of role playing sites speak a lot of drama or other issues – online role playing is, interestingly, something that many different sorts of people are into. There are forums for younger children to play as wolves, horses, or bunnies. There are forums where tween girls can pretend they are Gossip Girl-type, diva teenagers. Forums where grown men can strategize wars, or younger boys can pretend they are famous wrestlers. But all of these share one common thread – they are all games. Games need to be fun. You can’t focus on the writing style or the goodness or badness of characters, you just have to enjoy yourself, whether you’re playing an elf, a human, a horse, or an alien from outer space. It’s all about the fun.
Get Your Geek On: Join an Online Role Play
No matter what your flavor of geek, there is an online role playing game for you. You don’t have to be good at writing or even know anything about role playing to get started – role playing is sort of like acting or writing a story. You just tell about what happened from your character’s perspective. If I was playing a girl named Emily who’s secretly an assassin, one of my posts might look something like this:
Emily quietly climbed up the ladder, waiting. She heard someone in the room above, and all she had to do was attack.
Then, someone else would come along and say that their character was the one up in the window, or that they climbed the ladder after Emily. It’s easy. It’s fun. You can play while you’re bored in the office, between essays, or from your smartphone while waiting for the bus. It’s Geek Casual.
If You’d Like to Participate:
- Check out sites like Roleplay Hub or RPG-Directory to find a forum to play on.
- Look for tags like #rpg or #roleplaying on Tumblr or Twitter.
- If you’re a Harry Potter type, come on over to Vault 713 - we’ll get you started!
- Leave a note in the comments of what you’d like to play, and let me find you a game!
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1 – For the curious, when I finally “received my letter” a decade later and registered for Pottermore, I was given the choice between Slytherin and Ravenclaw. I chose Slytherin.
Nice post, I’m working hard to get my D&D group to roleplay more by “playing” the NPCs. My acting and voice skills are severely underdeveloped yet I persevere!