your favorite roleplay moments/scenes/characters

[zomboid]

I was thinking really hard about which board to post this in so I hope this is an accurate enough one??? I spend the majority of my time in video game roleplay and I have a lot of beloved moments and memories and I'm sure that any and every roleplayer feels the same :)

to no one's surprise as of late i love roleplaying in project zomboid... i just really particularly love games where gameplay and roleplay hold hands and feed back into each other. where roleplay is compelled by a gameplay Necessity or where a gameplay necessity facilitates more engaging roleplay

it's really fun to me to roleplay as a zomboid survivor and to get in their head and think about what they personally would prioritize. i can be a minmaxer and i Want to immediately get everything set up to coast through the apocalypse but roleplaying helps force me to slow down and play differently ! instead of running to instantly find a generator and start grinding carpentry at all, for example, i just restarted a server on build 41 and im roleplaying as jaime .... he is not a very smart man and his priorities are notttt really focused on survival. his first and only goal was to Get as Much alcohol as possible, because hey, if everyone's dead there's a limited supply, right??

so that kind of mindset forces me to circumvent my minmaxer nature ! and it's a lot of fun :D

in a total 360, a couple of years ago i was playing on another pz roleplay server... it was a lot of fun, my character was named taylor, and she ended up living in a lighthouse on the island we were playing on :) but eventually the island became irradiated :( so all of the survivors had to hole up into a bunker so they wouldnt get irradiated... but i still have screenshots of when taylor went back to visit the lighthouse and say goodbye because she had spent two Years living there... sometimes it feels a little corny but hey... i spent real life months working on it and taylor spent in-game years of her life!! it meant a lot and it was really sweet to go back and revisit everything i had built and for taylor to say goodbye..

what characters or scenes have you all had that you still think about and reminisce over? any characters that you still remember fondly even if you dont use them nowdays?

[fairyrune]

oh! oh! i can answer this one.

i used to roleplay a ton in the past on forums. for a while in my later teens and young adulthood i didn't really roleplay at all. but about... four years ago, i got into a canon character roleplay for final fantasy on discord (i know, i know, but it is what it is). this has been my home for all these years and i've made so many memories here, both in in-character threads and out-of-character discussions! (i also met my girlfriend here, but that's an aside.)

i really like pushing characters out of their comfort zones. i think some of my most beloved threads have been like that; a more recent one is a character of mine confronting her "god", who... happens to be a normal woman. long story short, that lady transformed into a god eons ago to protect the world, and as my character has extremely complicated feelings about religion and the power given to her by that god, she was not happy to see her. they have... a tense relationship right now, but i think that over time, maybe they'll see eye to eye. they're a lot alike.

i've also had a lot of fun with silly moments; being a multi-game roleplay, there's characters who come from a more medieval-esque background, and ones who basically live in the modern world. with that comes some misunderstandings... i can't possibly count the amount of good threads i've had!

now, i've also done in-game roleplay - exactly once, in fact, in final fantasy xiv. my character there is a rather naive and fanciful young painter whose greatest wish is to travel the world, paint, and bring home her work so that others can see how beautiful the world really is. she went to a noble's party once... and was hit on by a married older woman, with her wife standing right there. it was so scandalous, i was almost stunned! but i loved it, and it's stuck out to me ever since, even if i felt a bit "thrown in the deep end".

i started roleplaying on forums again recently, but i've since left the forum for its transphobic moderation... i still had such a good time there, though, and i'm really pleased that the people i respected the most will be moving on to another forum with me. they all have such memorable characters. one of them is a sister of my character's (adopted, though), and she's all smiles and cheer and mischief, where my character is anxious, careful, and sometimes seems older than she really is (though she's really just as naive as her sister, if not more). they have such a lovely dynamic; they both have misleading first impressions, and they balance each other out so well.

this post got a bit long, but i like rambling about roleplay. i also play final fantasy xi, and there's a pretty small roleplay scene, from what i know. i'd like to get into that, but resources and references for lore are unfortunately pretty poor! i know some members of my xi community would love to work on bettering that, though.

[fablefound]

oh my gosh this is the thread i was MADE for.

like @fairyrune i spent a lot of my youth roleplaying on old forums. specifically, i was really big on the moshi monsters forums, which for some reason was home to a VERY vibrant and lively roleplaying community. i miss it. pretty much all of my roleplaying memories are born from there, or somehow linked to it. case in point, when i was going through a sort of "roleplaying highlight reel" in my head...

i got my start in warrior cats fan roleplays, which. you know. of course i did. i ended up taking over the roleplay after its original founder left, and i was very proud of myself for managing to get my oc, hawkpath, to become hawkstar, leader of wildflowerclan. i also founded a second clan, gmeclan, which went on to have lots of inter-clan drama and interaction with wildflower clan. in hindsight the wole thing was just me and like, two or three other kids running amok giving our cats crazy powers, but that was the fun of it!

also on moshi monsters, i took my first few shots at writing what i guess would be called campaigns? the one i remember most fondly was known as the "island of king," and it was about a mad scientist who summoned a bunch of people to an out-of-control artificial island because he wanted one of them to care for it in his stead. there were lots of plot twists and crazy mutant monsters, and at thirteen i thought i was very cool for writing all of it.

at the start of covid, me, someone else from moshi monsters, and a couple other internet friends did a virtual d&d campaign. when it was active, i genuinely thought about our characters every day and i remember it all very fondly. it had a bittersweet ending that i get a litte emotional thinking too hard about... we tried to do a sequel campaign, but life caught up with us. i don't really talk to any of them anymore, but i like their posts when i see them on socials and so on. i think we all just got pulled in very different directions. my clearest memories are how nice everyone was because i was very rusty at roleplaying and had never done real-time, voiceover improv... and how it ended with one of our PCs basically being sent to hell and how one by one, all of our characters stopped talking to him... we had charmed monocles that allowed our characters to see each other across the realms, and one by one, all of those gathered dust. even the guy's will-they/won't-they partner in crime. oh, the doomed yaoi of it all...

i really would love to find a nice roleplay community again. my girlfriend uses deviantart, but all their roleplays are about wolves... and i am not very into wolves... they're also super drawing-intensive and i don't draw much...
i've seen other forums but they all seem pretty, like, intense? lots of rules and systems and so on. and it's hard to jump in with folks you don't know--especially when you're, like me, very weird, very autistic, and very queer.
someday my roleplay renaissance will come... but not yet...

[monsterrobotics]

I have been nursing an urge to get back into roleplaying. I've roleplayed since the moment I had the knowledge it existed and people to do it with.

Long, long ago I used to roleplay on ROBLOX, back when it was still a site full of games for children and not trying to be a weird hyper-capitalistic "metaverse" nightmare-whatever-it-is-now. (In an effort to avoid sounding like the out-of-touch adult I am regarding it, I played over a decade ago and it was unrecognizable. As far as I remember, they don't even have tickets anymore?)

I loved to play on those servers for RP where you had little buttons you could step on to transform into "paper dolls", or, what was essentially a 2d png image of a character. I loved to RP Sonic the Hedgehog stuff. We were all kids and we had a good fun time. There was also a server with more traditional roblox transformations where it just changed your clothes to fit a setting, and I'd love to do these really well made apocalyptic servers. I'm a fallout lover at the heart of it all, haha.

I technically also love zomboid, but I've been too much of a recluse with no close friends who are into it to have a roleplay server or multiplayer in general.

Other than that, I'd just roleplay a lot on websites. Back in the heyday I loved doing stuff on tumblr, but I've never gone back to my full stride since I lost a friend who was my best friend and partner in crime in RP. Who could? But, I have been longing to again. I'm just so particular now, I feel. I love giant crossovers and silly things, and with everything on discord servers (that might be soon in jeopardy) I have no idea where to find a good fitting place. I've tried, haha!

[zomboid]

@fairyrune -

final fantasy 14 roleplay is a lot of fun!!! i was pretty into it a couple of years ago, i had, i guess a fanon Ishgardian... his name was soren de haillenarte and he was a bastard half-blood auri/elezen ... final fantasy roleplay is so much fun i love when people embrace you doing whatever the hell you want ... lore is fun but also it's so much more fun to go "but what if i did something CRAZY"

i used to be part of a roleplay server that had a similar shtick, too!! i tried to engage but they were friends of a friend, so i kinda fell victim to the #socialanxiety and didnt really follow through... i think in general i do better with single-verse roleplays rather than full-on mashups or crossovers unless there's really explicit reasoning for all these universes to be mixed together !

it really sucks about the moderation on that forum :( i hope you and your friends find greener and not-transphobic pastures to frolick in! 

@fablefound

OMG SAME  i started roleplaying in the warrior cats general RP board on dragon cave  as a 12 year old my roleplay posts were not very Good, mostly 1-2 sentences about cats mostly just messing around rather than any real conflict because i had no idea what to really do... i did also used to do a LOT of wolf-life-rp on roblox when i was a kid GFDGDFJ

i totally get what you mean about hyper-intense roleplay scenes... like i have admiration and respect for full-lit multi-paragraph rpers but im kinda Casual you feel me... i really enjoy semi-lit & script-style roleplays! the faster pace feels a bit more engaging to me personally :) maybe i should try to get back into forum rp...

@monsterrobotics

YESSS OLD ROBLOX MORPHS... just the other day i was talking with someone about those old sphere-mesh-based wolf morphs on the aforementioned wolf life roleplay games i used to play!! i do remember floating through some of those fandom-oriented roleplay games but they were never quite my thing like the wolf ones were...
and you're right, they did get rid of tix! :( everything has been going crazy downhill with roblox recently... i tried to visit some animal roleplay style games a few years ago and 1. they looked freakishly polished 2. it didnt seem like many people were roleplaying 3. they seemed very cliquey, so all in all it was kind of a bummer...

ohhhgh fallout mention... making me realize how fun it would be to have actual fallout roleplay... top 10 things to rotate in my head...

also.....  you are always welcome to come play zomboid with me... i love making friends and i love surviving together ! the antics that survivors get up to are unmatched in my opinion.

i finally got a day off today and to no one's  surprise i spent like 8 hours straight roleplaying in zomboid <3 i missed jaime and dennis so much... they're both stupid annoying assholes to each other and it's so deeply entertaining. when you might be the last 2 people on earth and all you do is consistently piss each other off. we've had a couple different zomboid verses and even rp'ed these two in baldur's gate 3 and they're ALWAYS like this.

[fablefound]

OMG SAME  i started roleplaying in the warrior cats general RP board on dragon cave  as a 12 year old my roleplay posts were not very Good, mostly 1-2 sentences about cats mostly just messing around rather than any real conflict because i had no idea what to really do... i did also used to do a LOT of wolf-life-rp on roblox when i was a kid GFDGDFJ

i totally get what you mean about hyper-intense roleplay scenes... like i have admiration and respect for full-lit multi-paragraph rpers but im kinda Casual you feel me... i really enjoy semi-lit & script-style roleplays! the faster pace feels a bit more engaging to me personally :) maybe i should try to get back into forum rp...

omg dragoncave... that takes me back too... i never interacted with the forums but i played that game obsessively as a kid, right around my moshi monsters era. i was really into the adoptables sites back in the day--i think when we mentioned the topic on this very forum i got quite nostalgic lol, all the memories came rushing back. i was on dragoncave, ponyvalley, bellasara, meerapets... a BUNCH of stuff.

and yeah literally!! i think i could do multi-paragraph responses and such, ad i think the style of just pinging prose back and forth is called "play by post" or something...?
but yeah, some people are REAL intense with it. my girlfriend's roleplay groups have, like, "point systems" where for every post you make, you get "points" you can spend on perks for your characters, like pets or superpowers or something? all very intricate and impressive. but i genuinely just yearn to have a little forum where it feels like i'm passing a sheet of paper back and forth and watching a story unfurl 

[zomboid]

omg dragoncave... that takes me back too... i never interacted with the forums but i played that game obsessively as a kid, right around my moshi monsters era. i was really into the adoptables sites back in the day--i think when we mentioned the topic on this very forum i got quite nostalgic lol

but i genuinely just yearn to have a little forum where it feels like i'm passing a sheet of paper back and forth and watching a story unfurl 

thanks for reminding me about the clicksite thread ! LOL

now that you mention it im almost incentivized to start a generalized rp forum where people can request boards or subthreads for certain games or genres... the chatter is making me yearn for forum rp...

[fablefound]

now that you mention it im almost incentivized to start a generalized rp forum where people can request boards or subthreads for certain games or genres... the chatter is making me yearn for forum rp...

if u do PLEASE let me know... there's no way we're the only two people who would be down for something like that. i think a lot of people would like an rp space that's straightforward and fun and accessible :']

[monsterrobotics]

@monsterrobotics
[...]
ohhhgh fallout mention... making me realize how fun it would be to have actual fallout roleplay... top 10 things to rotate in my head...

also.....  you are always welcome to come play zomboid with me... i love making friends and i love surviving together ! the antics that survivors get up to are unmatched in my opinion.
[...]

I love wolves and I was (am!) such a wolfaboo. I also now recall some wolf rps I did with some of those morph rp games.

I'd love to do a fallout RP and also play zomboid with you sometime!

also, re: last two posts. I've also been hankering to help curate a space for a nice welcoming RP forum. Discord's no longer viable (and I've always been ehhh to the platform) in the coming months anyways. I'd be down to help out somehow.

[haumeaGeth]

This reminds me very strongly of my Minecraft roleplaying days. Not in a server or anything, just by myself, in single player xD

I didn't have any specific named characters, just vague self-insert adjacent figures that fit into the stories I invented in my head.

Actually... Now that I think about it, I still roleplay while I play. On the save where I started turning caves into fancy hallways and ballrooms, I pictured my character to be an eccentric, rich sorcerer. On the save where I built a giant windmill on the edge of town, with a hidden basement full of magical alters and shelves upon shelves of herbs, I pictured I was the village witch. The villagers were maybe a little wary of her, but knew they could always rely on her to help and protect them. Little things like that. I think I do that in just about every game I play.

The memories of when I did it as a kid, though, are the most special. It gave me a whole new sense of creative freedom. I could still play pretend in "nature", even if the weather was crappy outside in real life.

[zomboid]

Actually... Now that I think about it, I still roleplay while I play. On the save where I started turning caves into fancy hallways and ballrooms, I pictured my character to be an eccentric, rich sorcerer. On the save where I built a giant windmill on the edge of town, with a hidden basement full of magical alters and shelves upon shelves of herbs, I pictured I was the village witch. The villagers were maybe a little wary of her, but knew they could always rely on her to help and protect them. Little things like that. I think I do that in just about every game I play.

oh man you just made me remember the solo rp i used to do in minecraft too :'D its so much fun Making A Guy(*neutral) and then playing and thinking about what they're feeling and thinking. i had a really cute fox girl type minecraft character (crossed between minecraft dungeons & minecraft basegame) and i remember doing some solo roleplay as her when the caves and cliffs update came out...! i actually made a drawing of her exploring one of those really big caves looking around in awe. she built one of those cool ravine-cave-houses with bridges going back and forth. really acrobatic kind of girl :'D it really is all those little things about imagining that make a game so much more engaging...

[pepper]

I love roleplaying in video games! I have a lot of stories I can tell, primarily FF14, Pokemon, DnD, and more recently MotW. In video games I don't roleplay with others or on forums so much as, just engage with games with my own imagination as a collaborator. Tabletop is either in person with friends or online over video chat and theater of mind with close friends. I do want to get into Zomboid multiplayer rp though!

For FF14: I mostly roleplay my WoL internally as she goes through the MSQ. Of all my PCs in video games, she is the one I'd say is actually an avatar for me. I LOVE glamour, and her main outfit (her BLM job outfit) has at least one thing for each expansion or each thing that's effected her: (no spoilers!) scars from ARR (I have facial scars irl), Redbill scarf from Heavensward, Staff from Stormblood (relic weapon for BLM), necklace from Shadowbringers as well as needing to wear glasses now, and the bird minion she usually has out is from Endwalker. I just got the wolf cut hairstlye for her which has a little feather and braid, I'm roleplaying that as the feathers being a gift from Wuk Lamat :3 She wears an earring she was given by a Voidsent she knows, and on other glams she wears her BLU Whalaqee ring, but her primary glam she wears fingerless gloves that don't display rings. Oh and also Pepper and Raha are a something or other (not necessarily a selfship more casual OCxcanon but i just really like the catboy lol)

DnD stories I'll write separate from this post bc there's a lot lol

Pokemon is also a lot:

My partner is HUGE into Pokemon and does like OC art with impressively well thought-out character histories and visual designs, roleplays occasionally on Discord, and is into shipping and all that. I don't get into the shipping stuff myself too much and he avoids the more toxic parts of that community like the plague (and that's all I'll say on that subject LOL) But because of him I started playing through all the old Pokemon games I never played growing up and made my own OCs to roleplay as I play through them.

I have an OC named Olive that was my character in XY, who is now immortal and desperately trying to find Arceus so she can die.

I also have an OC named Tarragon that was my player character in Ultra Moon, Shield, and ZA. Her cousin is named Saffron and was my player character in Omega Ruby. (Can you tell I have a naming convention for my characters?) These two I have the most written about! Here's a summary of Saffron's timeline, which touches on Tarragon's a bit. It's just a summary so there are named canon characters that I don't describe in the summary (sorry!)

Spoiler

Born: 1987 in Kanto

Childhood: troubled child, acted out to get the attention of her father, who was obsessed with work and emotionally neglectful of her. Her mother was equally uncaring, supporting her husband Norman (he’s a gym leader! Such important work you should be proud of him and want to be a trainer just like him!), and blaming Saffron for her acting out, punishing her for just being a bratty kid instead of teaching her how to handle things, etc. In her preteens, she comes out as gay, which her parents outright reject her for, pushing her away.

1999: Events of ORAS (age 12)

Her family moves from Kanto to Hoenn, Saffron hates it there. Forced by her mom to meet Birch and begin pokemon training, she is very reluctant to do so, but is happy to have an excuse to be away from home.

When she meets Maxie, she is almost immediately on his side. Doesn’t understand why Steven Stone is so against what Maxie is doing, she believes a strong trainer should be able to control Groudon and that Maxie’s plan will work

She befriends Latios, who sees what she is capable of as a trainer, and she takes this as confirmation that Maxie will be able to control Groudon (she’s able to control a legendary, surely Maxie can too?)

Meeting and talking with Professor Cozmo about his own family history with his own neglectful father further confirmed to Saffron that she doesn’t need her parents and is better off without them

She befriends Zinnia (2 years older) while helping her deal with the Delta episode, immediately has a crush on her

After events of the game she introduces Zinnia to her parents who further reject her for being gay. They have a huge falling out, she lashes out at her father, accidentally injuring him in a pokemon battle. Her father hits her, she runs away from home.

Saffron runs away with Zinnia, who helps her get in contact with Archie and Maxie, who let her stay with them. They then convince her to get in contact with her aunt and uncle in Sinnoh, who work out an agreement to adopt her from her parents, who at this point want nothing to do with her, and provide her financial support. Saffron lives with Archie and Maxie in Hoenn and grows to see them as her fathers.

2000 (age 13)

Mars hears about Saffron from an ex-Magma grunt that recently joined Team Galactic in Sinnoh, Mars begins grooming Saffron to join a Hoenn branch of Galactic

Saffron and Zinnia attend a speech given by Cyrus as he is recruiting for soldiers in Hoenn. Saffron is bought into Cyrus’s ideals, Zinnia is skeptical.

2002 – Events of DPPT (age 15; Tarragon is born)

Saffron joins Galactic amid the events of DPPT and begins training as a grunt, despite objections by Zinnia, Archie, and Maxie.

After Cyrus’s disappearance Saturn takes over the organization, claiming to have had no knowledge of Cyrus’s true intentions. She assigns fall-guys as being responsible for bombing Lake Valor, and cooperates fully with Sinnoh police in order to gain legitimate control of Galactic, which is able to continue as an energy company with much of the same structure as when Cyrus had led it. Mars convinces Saffron that Cyrus was driven mad by Giratina, and that Saturn is returning the organization to its original mission of building a better world for all.

Saffron officially joins Team Galactic as a full member. Zinnia does not trust Mars, and infiltrates the organization to find some information to prove her suspicions. Archie and Maxie do not approve but continue to provide Saffron a stable home. Saffron meets baby Tarragon and promises her she will make a better world for her.

2007 – (age 20; Tarragon is 5)

Saffron has made good progress moving up the ranks within Galactic, has moved to Sinnoh, becomes close with her aunt and uncle and babysits Tarragon often. Saffron is working closely with Mars at this point. She is still in the dark regarding Galactic’s true motivations (genocide, new world order, Giratina, etc)

Zinnia steals from Mars enough information to confirm her suspicions, and confronts Saffron, giving her the same “ideals and truth” speech she gave her during ORAS. Saffron is distraught, but ultimately she believes Zinnia and agrees to leave Galactic. However she feels that she can’t just leave Galactic without making Mars suspicious, and feels some responsibility for what Saturn has been able to accomplish. Saffron asks her dads for help.

Archie and Maxie contact Looker. Looker meets Saffron, tells her he had never believed Saturn’s story when she took over after Cyrus, and has been trying to investigate her ever since, but Saturn is too careful and he can’t prove anything. Zinnia’s information, while compelling, is legally questionable at best and not usable by Looker. Looker proposes to recruit Saffron as a member of the International Police, as an undercover spy to gather enough legitimate hard evidence against Galactic to bring them down for good. He gives her the task of becoming an admin in Team Galactic. Saffron agrees.

2012 – Events of XY (age 25, Tarragon is 10)

Rumors have spread of Galactic’s shady dealings with teams Plasma and Flare and their financial involvement with those catastrophic events. Saffron’s extended family believes she is too far gone, becoming corrupt by whatever it was that drove Cyrus mad. In order to keep her cover and continue her mission, Saffron needs to let her family believe this is who she is. She loses contact with her aunt, uncle, and Tarragon. Saturn demands full dedication from Saffron, and demands that she cut contact with her fathers. Her only family she has left is Zinnia, who is able to stay with her without blowing her cover. Looker promises Saffron that he will keep an eye on Tarragon.

Saffron is made an admin in Team Galactic.

2015 – Events of SM (age 28, Tarragon is 13)

Tarragon’s parents move with her to Alola, in part to put distance between Saffron and them. Looker sneaks a pokeball containing an eevee that belonged to Saffron into Tarragon’s luggage, along with a note from Saffron telling Tarragon that she can become whatever she wants, and assuring her that she loves her.

Shortly after the conclusion of the Ultra Wormhole events (with Tarragon’s help), Looker returns to Sinnoh with Anabel.

2017

Saffron, Looker, and Anabel are finally able to secure hard proof against Galactic, incriminating all members of the organization, including Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter, and are able to prove a conspiracy that had been supporting their actions to open a portal to Giratina and fund chaos across the planet, linking them to Plasma, Flare, and even Team Rocket. Saffron’s mission comes to a close.

She remains estranged from most of her family, but reconnects with Archie and Maxie, as well as Tarragon. Saffron and Zinnia get married.

2019 - Events of SwSh (age 32, Tarragon is 17)

Saffron and Zinnia move to Galar to support Tarragon while she attends high school there. Tarragon becomes involved in the Gigantamax Pokemon events, becomes Galar League Champion, discovers fame, and graduates high school. She hates being famous.

2021 - Events of ZA (age 34, Tarragon is 19)

Saffron and Zinnia choose Lumiose City to retire to and settle down in, and Tarragon comes with, having graduated high school and choosing to study university in Lumiose.

Saffron and Zinnia, along with Tarragon’s Calyrex, travel to Lumiose ahead of Tarragon to secure housing, but get lost on their way to Kalos (Calyrex’s fault). Tarragon arrives in the city without any of them there. An annoying young man gets her involved in local politics. ZA happens.

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Edit 

Just cause, here's some images of my two pokemon characters I mentioned above, as well as my FF14 WoL   

Spoiler

 

The art i got as commissions from a friend

[close]

[candycanearter07]

More of a general feeling than a specific moment, but there's this old game I used to play a lot called Space Station 13, and a lot of the time I had played it late at night instead of going to bed. The sheer vibes of hanging out with a skeleton crew and doing silly things to pass the time since there isn't any chaos was unmatched, and I really miss those days.

(ss13 requires windows to run properly since its on a 2003 game engine, there is a remake on steam (ss14) but the vibes are completely different and im a spess 13 purist)