What was your first Roleplay?

[Sunstone]

Don't have to go into too many specifics if you do not wish to. I was just wondering where we all began...if we can remember the beginnings of our Roleplaying careers. xP Was your first RP on EcchiDreams? Outside of EcchiDreams? How long ago? What did you do in it? o.o So many questions~!

For me, the very first Roleplay I ever did was here, on EcchiDreams, in the first week I joined. I did a Steven Universe RP with @SMFoxy, with the characters Lapis Lazuli and Peridot. ^.^

Looking back on it now, it's quite astounding just how far I have come and how much more 'adapted' I have become to Roleplaying. It's a bit tricky to explain, but I'm sure you know what I mean. It's been an experience!

[SMFoxy]

I honestly can't remember my first RP ever; it was so long ago.
I know I was RPing before I joined EcchiDreams, probably not long after I officially became a teenager?
So I'd say I probably have over a decade under my belt? I put it 'vaguely' because sometimes it's on-off.
But somewhere between it being so long ago, and having done so many, I have no idea what my first was.

[Kalvoras Vertal Banned]

My first roleplay was about three years ago. It was about a small, shape-shifting cat that had gotten lost and then picked up by a little girl and taken home. It was all over the place and was filled with one liner responses and horrible grammar. God it scares me to think how incompetent I was back then at making a decent roleplay.

[Aura]

My first roleplay was on this Pokemon Mystery Dungeon-inspired sight about Pokemon trainers being sucked through a portal into a second dimension entirely inhabited by oddly-colored pokemon. The site was really interesting, but I was really young at the time, so my roleplaying skills were... garbage at best. I remember looking back at my earliest posts and cringing so hard. I didn't put spaces after punctuation, I didn't use capitalization, the whole thing was just a mess. >.<; I can't recall how old I was... maybe around 13-14? Anyway, I believe the site is dead now, unfortunately, so no rectifying that.

[SnowFall]

Oof, the first roleplay I did was actually just a Dangan Ronpa roleplay... lol. I've only been roleplaying for like 8 months and I'm still trying to improve. Honestly I was GARBAGE when I first started. I was close to the level of this one guy I knew who typed "Husky thrusts at a fast pace" when they did some erp, then thrir character passed out right afterwards and I'm just, what. I'm not trying to offend anyone like that though it's just he's not improving and still types like that so I just cringe, it's funny though. Honestly I struggled to improve over the past few months and only got better by trying to mimic people's writing. In the end now my writing is a mixed back of other people's styles and so I end up just adapting to whoever I'm roleplaying with. They start writing long paragraphs, I do the same thing. They write in two lines? I start writing short responses too. Looking back at how much I've improved though I'm like DAMN.

 

Hoo boy I started ranting kill me ;w;

Edited December 7, 2017 by SnowFall

[SMFoxy]

13 minutes ago, SnowFall said:

In the end now my writing is a mixed back of other people's styles and so I end up just adapting to whoever I'm roleplaying with. They start writing long paragraphs, I do the same thing. They write in two lines? I start writing short responses too.

I don't wanna derail the point of this thread, but I just wanted to say:

I'm guilty of this. I try to give as good as I can, as much as possible, but I usually settle into giving as good as I get. At least I try.
I'm sure people bring their best, so I usually just match: length, style, so on. I tend to find it makes for a more equal experience.

[Aura]

I wouldn't say it's derailing the thread. It's par for the course when reflecting on your past roleplays. I think it's normal for your writing style to be a mixed bag of everyone you've roleplayed with. It's only natural that you take after those around you. 

I always match what the other person gives me, not just out of spite, but because two completely different styles don't match well when you're writing a story. I can't give a detailed response to "*hugs and kisses*" but that doesn't necessarily mean I don't enjoy the simplicity. Trying to match the first poster's style is important. I almost feel insulted if I write out two paragraphs and get a line or two in response consistently every time.

[SMFoxy]

On 07/12/2017 at 23:50, Aurafox1 said:

I wouldn't say it's derailing the thread. It's par for the course when reflecting on your past roleplays. I think it's normal for your writing style to be a mixed bag of everyone you've roleplayed with. It's only natural that you take after those around you. 

I always match what the other person gives me, not just out of spite, but because two completely different styles don't match well when you're writing a story. I can't give a detailed response to "*hugs and kisses*" but that doesn't necessarily mean I don't enjoy the simplicity. Trying to match the first poster's style is important. I almost feel insulted if I write out two paragraphs and get a line or two in response consistently every time.

I should have worded that more carefully, I think. What I meant to say was:
"While I understand that the point of this is to talk about your first RP, your comment about improving yourself and matching others was a good one that bears responding to."

Further, you have a very good point there, too. In a way, I feel it would be more spiteful to not match, if that makes sense? An RP, to me at least, is a story written between two or more people. If you can match, it just makes the story flow, and read, so much better.

[SnowFall]

8 minutes ago, SMFoxy said:

I should have worded that more carefully, I think. What I meant to say was:
While I understand that the point of this is to talk about your first RP, your comment about improving yourself and matching others was a good that bears responding to.

Further, you have a very good point there, too. In a way, I feel it would be more spiteful to not match, if that makes sense? An RP, to me at least, is a story written between two or more people. If you can match, it just makes the story flow, and read, so much better.

I would agree about it being more spiteful, though some people don't have the experience to adapt to what the other person is doing. Sure they can try to adapt to the other person but sometimes it just can't be helped can it? So I wouldn't really blame people if they couldn't adapt so it flows better.

I myself actually struggle now to respond to something around two or three lines since over time and experiencing roleplaying with other people I got used to doing one or two paragraphs. 

I roleplay with my gf a decent amount, one with years under her belt and as we keep doing it the length of our responses gets longer over time as I get more experience and start naturally writing longer responses. In turn it made me worse at smaller responses. Not everyone can make their roleplay together flow perfectly by writing in somewhat similar ways since some people can't do that as well. Though that's perfectly fine and in my opinion it's all a part of the experience.

Edited December 8, 2017 by SnowFall

[SMFoxy]

On 08/12/2017 at 00:04, SnowFall said:

I would agree about it being more spiteful, though some people don't have the experience to adapt to what the other person is doing. Sure they can try to adapt to the other person but sometimes it just can't be helped can it? So I wouldn't really blame people if they couldn't adapt so it flows better.

I'm just rife with poor wording today. To be more specific: "If you can adapt to other people, it's more spiteful not to."
Though the caveat to that statement would be: "Unless you're trying to help them get better, especially at their request."
'Forcing' them to adapt to you is a good way to go about that, especially if you can ease them into it.

[Aura]

Well, like I said, it's not that I don't appreciate the simplicity of a short response, it's just that I literally can't do a detailed response to one. It can be really exhausting and make the roleplay feel extremely one-sided regardless of how the other person is enjoying it. At the end of the day, it's about meeting in the middle. If you're roleplaying with someone better at writing than you, you should strive to challenge yourself and try to write longer responses than you're used to. And if you're playing with someone who's not as good, you should try to ease them into it rather than just smacking them with a wall of text. And if meeting in the middle is impossible, I really don't think the roleplay is going to be enjoyable for one, or both, of the participants. 

It's also perfectly normal for replies to vary in length over the course of a roleplay, especially long-term. Like, in my experience, action scenes generally have shorter responses as you have to make sure to give your partner a chance to respond to every move you make and some details are inevitably going to be left out as a result.

[PixelBoi]

Oh boy.. my first rp took place about eleven years ago. I remember it being the most cringe thing ever. I tried to be as detailed as possible but my partner kept altering my posts and making them her own. If I remember right our characters met in a forest, my character jogging and hers a girl looking for her dog. They fell in love, stopped looking for the dog and then a lot of badly detailed sex before she just decided my character was her lost pet turned human without even asking or informing me. It was fun.

[SMFoxy]

That sounds like a really cute idea for an RP if that's what you were expecting/agreed upon.
I can imagine it coming out of the blue like that though kinda threw you off.

[PixelBoi]

I agree. The only things that weren't planned at all was the copious amounts of sex and me being a dog. It was supposed to be a cute quick help this person find her dog but it very quickly changed. It did throw me off for a bit but it was just a game so I went with it.

[SnowFall]

Holy heck that actually sounds really interesting, I wish I could come up with more ideas like that actually- I'm just EDGY AND DARK WHEN I MAKE OCS AND IDEAS. I can try and make less dark and edgy characters but I always end up with this screwed up backstory.

[PixelBoi]

I don't see anything wrong with dark and edgy. Well not too much wrong. Sometimes a nice happy-go-lucky story is just what you need. I definitely prefer darker and edgier stuff most of the time.

[lVergill]

To tell you the truth, this place was my first RP with someone...

W-What! RP was new to me!! (＃`Д´)

[Rachel Chan]

My first RP was me playing as a maid in facebook group a long time ago.

Then here I am now, doing mostly sexual RP serving my 'master' up until today >////<

[Angela Daring]

My first website-based roleplay was as a young realmwalker first exploring a new world and stumbling on a beach party.

This was on GaiaOnline back in 2004, when there were so many people posting that you could hardly keep up.  That sort of thing just doesn't happen in this day and age on that site.  You'll be lucky to join a group on there where people post more than once a day.

My very first roleplay was as a thief, the first time I played Dungeons and Dragons back in the late nineties with AD&D, before best edition came out a few years later.

[onearmeddruid]

i cant remember some random rp on roblox years and years ago

[Alexander Bodide]

Hmm, my first RP of any kind wasn't sexual, and it was on a forum I used to go to, aaand I quickly lost interest. I'm pretty sure even to this day a non-sexual RP can't hold my interest.

My first sexual thing was about ten years ago, on Second Life...sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little thinking about SL. That was more "cyber" than "RP", though. And it was really basic stuff.

My first real sex RPs, where we would decide on a scenario and then act it out, were in the chatroom of an online flash game about strip poker. Those were pretty bland and vanilla, and then one day I wanted to see how a tentacle RP would go. No girls were adventurous enough to try it, and so this lead to me posing as a girl requesting tentacles. I don't like to misrepresent myself but I was so curious! I wound up with a fairly literate person who wanted me to play as his IRL wife. It was pretty fun, and I've been hooked on tentacles ever since.

 

To respond to the other discussion in this thread, matching the level of detail of your partner is a great trait. One time, I was in an RP with someone very literate, and we both wanted to "live up to" each other's responses and do them justice. The replies got longer and longer, and by the halfway point, each of our replies could've been a full page out of a novel. That was fun. It's a bit exhausting, though; I don't want that every time.

More than level of detail, though, I appreciate when the other person is willing to RP "actively" instead of purely "reactively". Role playing is best when each party contributes something, instead of "here's my reaction to what you just said, now continue to write me a story by yourself". That just makes for a predictable RP on my end.

[CuppyPotatoes]

On 12/7/2017 at 15:25, SnowFall said:

Oof, the first roleplay I did was actually just a Dangan Ronpa roleplay... lol. I've only been roleplaying for like 8 months and I'm still trying to improve. Honestly I was GARBAGE when I first started. I was close to the level of this one guy I knew who typed "Husky thrusts at a fast pace" when they did some erp, then thrir character passed out right afterwards and I'm just, what. I'm not trying to offend anyone like that though it's just he's not improving and still types like that so I just cringe, it's funny though. Honestly I struggled to improve over the past few months and only got better by trying to mimic people's writing. In the end now my writing is a mixed back of other people's styles and so I end up just adapting to whoever I'm roleplaying with. They start writing long paragraphs, I do the same thing. They write in two lines? I start writing short responses too. Looking back at how much I've improved though I'm like DAMN.

 

Hoo boy I started ranting kill me ;w;

I SEE U. 
My first roleplays weren't any better though lol, I've been doing it since I was little so that's probably why I'm a little more inclined to like writing more than the average person. 

[Eilauver]

My first roleplay was on a friend's board a while ago. I forgot the name but it was like a very out of pocket American television show, you know when you have the seasons different plots. Only our plots were so weird. My character was a painter coincidentally the main character from the game Xenogears but in reality he was an assassin. He ended up getting challenged by his children, dying, and I brought in so many other characters lol good times.

[Novaer]

On 07/12/2017 at 07:14, Sunstone said:

Don't have to go into too many specifics if you do not wish to. I was just wondering where we all began...if we can remember the beginnings of our Roleplaying careers. xP Was your first RP on EcchiDreams? Outside of EcchiDreams? How long ago? What did you do in it? o.o So many questions~!

For me, the very first Roleplay I ever did was here, on EcchiDreams, in the first week I joined. I did a Steven Universe RP with @SMFoxy, with the characters Lapis Lazuli and Peridot. ^.^

Looking back on it now, it's quite astounding just how far I have come and how much more 'adapted' I have become to Roleplaying. It's a bit tricky to explain, but I'm sure you know what I mean. It's been an experience!

This is a good topic; and I'll be happy to answer this in great detail. Because it has a bit of a back story, and it's why EcchiDreams exists... So a bit of EcchiDreams Historical Reading too. It's also got love and heartache, and love again. I think it's actually a good story of my past too, despite the shit going on around me at home, when I was younger. 

TL;DR

I have been roleplaying non-seriously since I was eleven years old. My first serious roleplay was started in 2006 when I was sixteen. Then when I met @Neptune in 2008 (When I was 18) and it got more serious to the point of where it is today; an empire that spans galaxies. That we've been trying to build and articulate all our ideas since 2015, and still at it today. (I think I can speak accurately when I say we're both loving it.)

Fully Story:

My first roleplay was technically not so much a roleplay as such... I used to frequent a chat room site that used a notoriously exploitable Java application called Digichat. Oh I have a few stories about that website and how it was run; but let's just say, No names, no lawsuits. Basically it looked something like this:

 

Despite what happened to it during 2003-2007, back when I first started on that site, it was pretty decent. The year was about late 2000, or mid 2001, so I'd have been either ten or eleven years old, those major social networking sites you see today were not a thing back then... Oh and I used Internet Explorer.  

I was a bit of a gobshite back then too, and a bit of an Edgyboi. So that's something... I'm glad I somewhat grew out of that.

On that site: I didn't like the Kids Chat, the mods were over zealous, and censorious at even the slightest 'off colour word' yet they had allowed frequent 4ChanPartyVanMan's to run around with impunity. The letter of the law seemed unbalanced, to me. I am talking about Kids' chat because it was the only chatroom people in my age range at the time could actually use, but because they were talking about some of the most insanely dullest bullshit you could think of... About pop-bands I had no interest in, and shows that were exclusively in America and I'd never heard of, with the occasional 4ChanPartyVanMan roaming around... I started bouncing between the Adult and Teen Chat rooms... even though I was under 13 and should not have been using it. Edgy.

Of course I'd have to fake my age; which could technically call roleplaying I suppose, but I don't, really.

But this is where it all started; I think my first one was actually a Yaoi one; featuring two characters, that went as far as name and age... That's it. I was roleplaying with someone who claimed that they were a female in real life. I claimed that I was the son of a Nigerian Prince; so who knows what or who I was really chatting to. But then that's the fun in that.  I'd log in after school, or on the weekends to chat to her... And it pretty much became a creature of habit; I found someone I was comfortable with and roleplayed with them. Unfortunately she stopped coming on and eventually I had to look for others, which I did. Of which I started roleplaying with most of them, as well... This is actually important here, because one of the new people I met was @Casey.

In December 2001, my dad upgraded his PC and I upgraded my laptop to Windows XP, because it looked freaking awesome at the time, and as soon as I got it installed on my laptop I went back to the chat site. Once I got in, I found Casey who suggested that I should sign up for a Hotmail account. Under that suggestion, I signed up for something called MSN/Windows Messenger, which looked like this:

Whilst I was also on "ntlworld" as my ISP at the time, (Fun Fact: Later became Virgin Media) this is not my screenshot; this is one I found online.

This was a useful tool for me; because it meant that I could use the rather resource hungry and often laggy Digichat Site to get people, and use Windows Messenger to roleplay with them, lag-free, without going back to the site. I had become effective at this and had about twenty or thirty different role plays going on entering 2002. One of the reasons I decided to go for this method was because Windows Messenger logged everything in little log files that I, and the person I was roleplaying with could refresh our memories as to what happened "Previously: In the roleplay". It became very useful and allowed me to do as many roleplays as I did. Of course my roleplays started to get quite sexual; and first person. But to make it clear I wasn't going to be twelve until May 2002, but even then I was doing this with adults who thought I was a fellow adult. None of them suspected how old I really was. Although I exclusively "typd lyk this", text speak. ~shudder~

So my first roleplay(s) in the strictest possible sense was on these chatrooms, and it'd be about anything; really. Usually life shit without sex. But it quickly evolved to cybering over Windows Messenger. Of course then you started having the Chatroom Scare stories in the news... ~sigh~ 

Things pretty much remained the same until around the end of 2003, when we moved, my father was posted in the RAF to another location in England; and we were stuck in an area that had Dial Up Internet only. Previously I was on 128kbps DSL (I think) broadband, so this was quite a slow down. The chat site still worked, but by now were starting to become shit, every time I visited it from 2003 onwards it just got shitter and shitter. That said @Casey and a lot of my friends had become increasingly unhappy with the way the chat site was being ran, and I just came out with "Why don't we do a better job? Make a website and do better than them" Originally I was laughed at by some of them, but I started tinkering with making more complicated websites in the background. As experiments I had been doing simple websites on free site providers (Freespace, I think) had been pretty successful for my interest projects (IE: I got them up, online). Again; this is important. Because EcchiDreams will be involved later on.

Over the year, someone was leaving the RP scene because they had got a job at an upcoming tech company, that was making online applications. Then another to deal with family matters. Then another because they were getting married. All of a sudden my list of roleplayers started to dwindle. I had my Windows Messenger on, but more and more of them were showing red icons all the time, meaning that they were offline. I tried to go back to the chat site in question but it was mainly "PRESS 111 FOR CYBER WITH 23/F/UK" or "PRESS 666 TO SEE MY 25/M/USA COCK AND SWAP PICS" and each of the hundred of the variations weren't content with submitting that once in the main chatroom - oh no. They had to spam it for hours on end making chatting with anyone impossible or extremely difficult at best. There were no serious roleplayers on there anymore. Or it was all drowned out. In the end I was forced to come away from roleplaying completely...

But that's fine. Because I found fucking Runescape. u_u; Fuck me; that's a blast from the past... For uniformity, this is about how I remember Runescape:

Young me... Why did you waste your life with this?!

It wouldn't be until late 2004 (December 15th, I know because of something unrelated and significant happened) that I'd come across a player who I was talking about my roleplaying past to; and he was also a roleplayer who came about it a different way to me. He used to roleplay in something called UseNet groups; similar to Casey. Well this guy turned out to be someone that the Ancient EcchiDreamers would be aware of as NekoLust, and he was telling me about a site that also used Digichat, and was something for "Alternative, Goth, Emo, Punk, Vampire" or whatever; as I was a metal head myself (Some of you may have guessed that already), I found the site appealing and had (Other than the Emos) a generally mature crowd, and was moderated fairly. Firm but fair. He showed me the ropes; introduced me to some staff and I introduced him to Casey. Remember: It'll come up... Casey doesn't know much about me as a person at this point. She doesn't even know how old I am (14). 

We joined a group chat conversation on Windows Live and got stuck into group roleplaying when we were all online. NekoLust was living in the UK at the time and was on usually when I was, as I lived in the UK too... Casey, on the other hand, was in a different time zone, in America. But there were people we'd meet on Haunting Echoes' that would come and join, and all of a sudden Runescape was just something I went on when things were quiet. From the new chat site we were on we met a user who had a bit of a foul temper but she roleplayed exceptionally well and exquisitely with elegance in her vocabulary that just wanted to make you read her detailed long posts. This is of course; Illogically Logical; another part of EcchiDreams, that I will get to later.

Casey had managed to befriend Illogically Logical, and brought her into the chat. She didn't have a good thing to say about me, and said that; "He roleplays like he's constantly got his hand on his cock". Which was fair; I wasn't detailed, nor was I in anyway good. Hell I was barely better than "*moans*"... ~shuddering intensifies~

I would have liked it put more nicely, but I knew her reputation and just dealt with it. I replied that I didn't have a hand on my cock at all times; (I didn't. This was on the only computer in the house that could use the phoneline. Dial up = Usually one computer online at a time) but I wanted to get better at roleplaying, and that she roleplayed in a way that I had never seen before; it was almost story like. 

Unfortunately she didn't give too shits; but Casey and NekoLust were willing to help teach me. During a conversation of our roots one day, it had come out that Illogically Logical was well versed with the first chatsite that Casey and I were on, and usually hanged out in the forums rather than the chat, and she proved it by showing us her posts. [[Side Note: I also learnt what a Neko was from NekoLust, and fell in love with Catgirls!]] She also felt that it had gone to shit, and left. This is where I brought up again - We should make our own; and this time I had the ammunition to back that up, a website that had been up for a year. I showed them a clone-almost. A chat site I had made up, that was similar but had slightly better technologies running it. Although it used FlashChat by TuFat... Not ideal but I was on a tight budget, which I blew out on getting a vBulletin Forums License, as well as somewhere that hosted all this. I won't name my old chat-site... Because I think it's best we left that to relics of the past. 

To say that they were surprised was an understatement. Even Illogically Logical remarked on how good it looked and how quick it was. But she again; was going to steer clear of the chatrooms. She apparently hated our chatroom software more than Digichat. But she loved the forums; which I had set up. I made the three of them staff so that they could play around with it, and test it all out. This is also where I pointed out how old I really was, which took all three of them back. I was by far the youngest of the group. I told them that ever since I first brought it up to Casey that I had actually been playing around with basic websites and WAP (Ancient: Wireless Access Protocol; the internet of mobile phones in the day.) I had been working on more and more complex websites and scripting code, namely PHP. The one thing we were lacking was a roleplay suite; which we didn't know what that would look like on a forums. How would it be structured and so on. By now it was 2006, and my chat-site had picked up attention from the media, as we promoted Chat Safety, and taught people how to respond to certain requests. Something that apparently... They had never seen before. I handed control of the site over to someone else, completely as I was looking at moving out of my parents (16 years old), and I wouldn't be able to stay on the site. Of course when I say moving out; I went to quietly live with a few friends because I wanted independence from my parents. Which at the time I felt they were over-bearing, censorious, restrictive and hypocritical. I lost all respect for them at the time and I was a right little fucking shit to them. Home life for that period of my life; since becoming a teenager was hell for my parents, hell for my sisters, hell for me, and hell for our neighbours. 

During this time I made contact with someone, a girl from Texas. I won't name her. I think it was originally to swap Neko Pics with each other to help our collections because she was big on Nekos too. Her first words to me was "I've already got a boyfriend." To which I grinned and typed back "Well that's fine... Because I only want to trade pictures of catladies; to build a collection of pictures." To which I think is a moment we'd laugh back at, today. She was happy with that and so we started. Every now and then I'd see her online, and we'd synchronise pictures and exchange pleasantries. When I moved into friends place though... It was revealed that her boyfriend had dumped her, and I had just suffered a break up as well at the time... She asked if I had ever roleplayed before. To which I had, and we started exchanging stories.

This was my first; serious roleplay. With an actual character, a picture for him, a persona, a life, a history of his own. His name was Neko Chan... Neko Chan Keza'maraki. I don't really know how but this is where Roleplaying took an addictive turn for me. Yep. I'd say I was pretty into RPing... We'd get on daily and start roleplaying. For me - until the sun rose up again in the morning. She and I started hitting it off and I thought she was the one. Young, stupid love. 

So I had been waiting for her to come on, when she did, she immediately asked 'roleplay?' to which I asked if I could talk to her first, and she agreed. I pointed out that we were both single and that we had both hit off quite well, and asked her out, to which she said yes. Things went smoothly at first; she refined my awful spelling and grammar (Something I still have a problem with today) and other such things. I had asked her to, as she revealed that she had been irritated by it... Nicely. So I told her to correct me; and if I was confused to be patient and explain it to me. My written English had improved drastically. We'd roleplay even more and some days that's all we did. Happily. It was about two Keza's in the Neko Resistance; brother and sister fighting against all odds, against Humans for oppressing them. These Keza's weren't in it for the oppression though; Neko Chan was a disgustingly violent person. Things that would no doubt put me on watchlists today, just for writing it. 

Of course we've since done a massive plottwist with that, that I will get to later.

Around this time I was introduced to a hentai site that had a roleplaying suite; something I introduced Casey too, because she loved the hentai scene which she had gotten into from Manga, where as I was pretty new it to completely, other than Pokémon, which is an anime. But I had come into it from the catgirls. This hentai site was just a forum no chat rooms but it had the missing piece of the puzzle of roleplaying on forums; although by now my chat-site wasn't mine anymore and the person that took over had ran it into the damned ground. This is where Casey started brainstorming what would become; EcchiDreams. For the meantime though I was on this hentai site; (And I shouldn't have been, I lied about my age), a behaviour I don't encourage by the way. I've grown up since then. This site had a roleplaying forum where people came into to roleplay and they had side stories for sex and such. I checked the rules, and found that canonically there was no principle to the school/college; so I had my character rampaging through the highschool on what I can only describe as Killbill does Roleplaying, and murdered his way to the principal to become the principal. He essentially pirated and taken over the school, and started running it...

This is where I met @Manni. Needless to say; Manni and I got off on the wrong foot. He was another roleplayer that was less than amused by my antics. And rightly so, to be fair. It takes a lot to piss Manni off, and I think I pissed him right off. 

I was hoping that the moderators and administrators of the site was going to bring in an armed police unit and re-take the school, you know, make it realistic. But instead after much debate of where any logical and reasoning was out of the window, and that got brought up; Zero times. They decided to let Neko Chan be the principal; as long as I didn't break the new rules and kept him in check. Well. Roleplaying became less fun for me on that site, and I came away... Especially after I found out that one of their moderators - Again will go unnamed - was apparently in a relationship with another member who was apparently literally twelve years old. Lo' and behold the site today is offline, and dead. 

But this is where EcchiDreams comes back into play; whilst the other site was online, I started on working to bring a developmental version of EcchiDreams online. I won't say if I got paid or how much, but lets just say I was happy. I had taken up smoking at the time and it cost to feed that addiction, especially here in the UK, where it's taxed to bollocks. It was called "Project: Ethereal Dreams"; a roleplaying forum only. For what we wanted at the time, just somewhere were our friends could roleplay in, instead of MSN Messenger, I worked long hours on building a server up, which initially was only accessible through the IP Address... It also had a bit of a problem...  As I said the site was ominously named Project: Ethereal Dreams. Something that just didn't jive with us at all, it felt... Dystopic. So we looked at the site I had just left and wondered if we could incorporate a hentai theme into it, as it was something that Casey, NekoLust and Illogically Logical had all liked in one form or another. We had a meeting about it over a group call app, but it was Casey and I that came out with 'EcchiDreams' On the Twenty-Ninth of June, 2007, we had brought the Domain; EcchiDreams.com. It was originally private, and registrations were highly controlled; only those that were allowed in were those already registered. So it was a bit... Exclusive. But this was whilst we were working out all the bugs and kinks to the site. It went live in August on the Sixteenth 2007. (Fun Fact: Anniversary to when my old site which started; August 16th 2004). We also used the resources of @SMFoxy who I had met in college. 

Things didn't work out between the Texan gal and I, though. She cheated on me, and really I allowed it to fuck me up, mentally. So I became pretty useless to the EcchiDreams front; and I didn't visit it for long periods of time. Although I still did favours when Casey emailed me, it took my mind off it all.

But I dealt with it maturely... </sarcasm>

My relationship with her from that point on was off and on, and I was bouncing around relationships like no ones fucking business. On and offline. Each one quite bad, and one extremely so. I settled down again mid 2008; shortly before my eighteenth birthday, and I registered on my eighteenth birthday. So I'd be on it officially at 18 rather than using the site's DEV account. Honestly I liked doing that work as much as I liked roleplaying. I was also back with that Texan girl shortly after my birthday. What a fucking moron. But this didn't last long and the summer I broke it off with her permanently. Cheated again; of course. This time whilst my granddad was dying in a hospital.

This time I took revenge for once, there was an inkling on one of her other accounts that she didn't like me chatting to other women; which I returned in kind and said she wasn't allowed to talk to other men, then. I'd hoped she'd see how ridiculous her ultimatum was, how illogical it was. Which went down well... So with this in mind, after we broke up finally I went to Bebo (A social media site in 2008) and searched 'Neko' and 'Roleplayer' and added everyone I could find; male and especially female. This is where met @Neptune! I think she was called 'Smexy Neko Master' or something, as in the sexy master of all nekos. She was a big Yaoi roleplayer. But she had her Yaoi fill from the group she was in. We chatted about the relationship I was in, and how it just went from bad to worse, and she seemed to be on my side for a lot of it. Although she didn't feel afraid to point out where I went wrong; because towards the end of that relationship there was blame on both sides. A lot of it.

I was in the aftermath of my granddad's death and Neptune had suggested that we used the roleplay that I used to roleplay with my ex, and explain to her about the world and how it worked, it wouldn't be the same, but it'd be our spin on it. After a lot of conversation on the issue we got down to making a character each. Her: Toriana Keza'maraki. Me: Tripp Keza'maraki. (Hence my old forum name: Tripp). She had picked a picture - completely independently of a Catgirl - that was first in my collection and a very... well liked image. Lets just leave that one there. She hadn't done it intentionally and she didn't know about it. It was just one of those coincidences. 

We also hit off pretty quickly, and my previous relationships didn't seem to matter all that much anymore. It also helped me cope with what was going on around me, to the rather tragic death in my family. On the first of August 2008; I asked her out and she said yes. We've been together ever since. She started teaching me about the story format; because I was doing "~He went up to her and petted her head softly~ Hello Toriana, ~Tripp said~" where as she felt that the story format was infinitely better; which is what Illogically Logical's was like. Except Neptune taught me; and encouraged me. Which in turn I encouraged her, and we started encouraging each other, improving each other, and evolving our RP together. Neptune is where I started taking Roleplaying quite seriously. Sure I had a serious roleplay, but I never took it seriously until now. It's why I admit to Manni and everyone else that I was an arsehole on that other site, and I'm sorry for all the rules that were put in after me; because of me. It ruined it for everyone. 

I invited her over to EcchiDreams; and brought her in just a few days before Casey announced that she was going to have to step down; due to some serious job opportunities that would keep her busy. She then made the fatal mistake of handing over the site to Illogically Logical (The "Second Administration"); who Neptune and I came to quickly despise and welcome when she started never being on. Things would always be better; like there would be no tension in the air when she wasn't on. People were relaxed and happy. I was a Forum Administrator at the time, and before Casey left she made Neptune an Administrator too, to sort the roleplay suite out. This is why I am confused when people say we ripped off the other website; because Neptune has never been to that other site, and it was her that took what we had done and turned it into something that I'd argue was better than the other hentai site. So... Yes. It was her own thing; what would later become Blackberry Falls - her signature roleplay. It wasn't some High School. It was a whole damn city.

During this time my RP with Neptune was evolving. There was new plot twists, new things to explore and opening world just unraveling into the Universe of an RP it is today. We introduced new species; turned the Neko Resistance into something that wasn't pretty and built an empire within the roleplay. An Empire with it's own races of people, that would come to have deep, rich, historic and intricately linked cultures, and diverse ideas. We had Mako'demeri, Coda'zotoxi, Zeta'muluri and so on. And it just evolved from there. Illogically Logical asked me to revamp the site in July 2009, to which I did, I spent a lot of time and many a sleepless night designing it and working out how to proceed. I also moved it from vBulletin to Invision Power (What we use today, IPS); which I paid the licence for, and set it all up, with server access. I never transfer the licence to her, because she never asked me to. She wanted me to administer that stuff and to keep it looking good. Then would go offline for ages.

However in 2010; NekoLust (The "Third Administration") took over EcchiDreams, he was given it by Illogically Logical; and then she promptly deleted the site. As in she deleted everything from ther server, including the database. NekoLust employed the help of Neptune and I to bring it back, and we did what we could. Unfortunately after opening and getting the site back up and running he pretty much stopped coming on. I'd cover for him, just like I did before with Illogical Logical, at least publicly. Of course, we'd later find out that his father had Alzheimer's and that he was caring for him twenty-four seven. In 2011, with heavy heart, he handed it over to me. EcchiDreams has been in Neptune and My Administration ever since. I mainly deal with server shite, dev things and wild shiney's in the code. Neptune tends to deal and talk to people - as I am usually shit at that. We kind of complement each other very well in that regard. 

But my roleplaying never stopped either, not really anyway... By 2013/2014 I stopped roleplaying on forums for a few years to focus on that universe I was talking about, and in 2015 making major updates to EcchiDreams. Neptune of course split herself into two; doing that and working on the RP we have today. We started roleplaying over Google Docs; writing pages, and pages of story. Because we're actually in the process right now of turning it into a club and what we're writing is just the back story; how everything exists and what it's purpose is. The Lore. It is so big now that it requires a private Wiki just to catalogue all the information. It's our roleplays universe, and one that we're very protective about. This had been something that had started off as two Keza's fucking around, and grew with a family in the RP that I did with that "Ol' Texan Gal' and exploded into the universe it is today; it's so much bigger than just those two, and the grand scheme of things Neko Chan was nothing. Now they're in space and it's a bit of a Sci-Fi, although there are snippets of their past in Blackberry Falls (The UFF) and Craethiel (The Sin Clan of the Keza'marakian Royal Empire), as well as (The Mako'demerian Wolfhound-Wraithers of Nordivaar) after the fall of the great city of Vorserend. I've also branched out into doing other roleplays recently, such as EcchiTown, and I might branch further in the future. I just don't know yet.

EcchiDreams has also continued to evolve, and we hope to one day get the chronicles detailing our universe's existence posted in my private roleplay club; which I will invite roleplayers into, if we ever find someone with similar interests. Who can stomach a new universe as well crafted as that... Even if it's someone who is immigrating in, or is a friendly species nearby to that group or whatever...

So that's pretty much it.

[Sunstone]

Wow~, man...

That was quite a sentimental read-through, with many ups and downs. It's fascinating to know just how much the past can have on the outcome of the present. To think EcchiDreams started out over a decade ago, and has evolved through several administrations to where it is today, still standing very strong; I'd say that is a pretty incredible attainment. Your introduction and evolution in regards to Roleplaying was also quite a fascinating read, just, knowing that it all goes so far back... and was kind of made possible with meeting a collective of like-minded individuals communicating through early chat clients like so.

Kinda wish I could have been around to see EcchiDreams earlier on, but, the very earliest I could have been involved without breaking the rules would have been March 12th, 2016 (my 18th birthday), so... I mean I can still look at screenshots in the Internet Archive, but, yeah.

Thanks for taking the time to write up this post and offering a historical, personal take on the origins of the site, @Temaelrin. I highly appreciate it. 😄