Advice for getting into roleplay?

[BiggestBear]

I've been passively interested in roleplaying. I was very briefly on a warriors roleplay forum when i was 11 before i ended up trauma dumping and running (....i still feel really bad/embarrassed and it's been many many years ;-;) and i've played like the tiniest bit of dnd

But two big things hold me back

1. I am terrible at backstories, horrible at them even, only one of my oc's really has a fleshed out backstory and thats after years of thinking about them (...and it's an edgy mess of subconsciously venting my mental health issues to boot) So most of my characters just have superficial ones that are maybe like a paragraph at most.

2. I'm terrible at making personalities too! Most of my characters just have "vibes" and i can only really answer the question of "What would they do in this situation" with confidence like 50% of the time (mostly it's just "...Well i mean they wouldn't not do this/that/other thing)

The worst part? Because i'm bad at making these, i don't find it fun to do so and while i've tried to force myself to practice i just give up and move to the fun part of making a story with them (...i once spent six hours straight with only like two short breaks just zoned out making a story lol)

I'm also very unpractised at writing (i am working on it though!) but everyone has to start somewhere and i don't think i'm terrible just not good either, Mediocre if you will

and i have self-worth & fear of judgment issues which hold me back but those apply to like every hobby i have so i'm used to dealing with them

Any advice you think would be relevant would be very much appreciated! (and sorry if anything was worded weirdly or if anything was off in general i've not really made any posts like this before)

[Maeevee]

Hello there! I'm Maeevee, I may be new to the site but I've been roleplaying for about fourteen years now. I am dyslexic and terrible with grammar so please bare with me.

You seem like you're good at stories, so let's see if we can make this a fun task for you rather than a grueling one. A backstory is just the past story of that character summarized. Some people like going into depth and making it very long, personally I love reading these the most, but others choose to make it brief with room to expand on points farther down the line. It's simply just a short story. Now this character was born, raised, and maybe even had conflict in this history. How does that affect your characters personality?


To start, this character probably didn't have much of a personality, a blank slate if you will, but as their story progresses, their personality will change. Sad background with lots of family members gone? Well now congrats that cat probably values family, or maybe it despises family thinking the family members didn't love them. It's all up to how you see this individual would react and respond to every piece of information you put behind them.

Let me know if this helps at all!

[BiggestBear]

Let me know if this helps at all!

Your advice reminded me that the only character who has a backstory has one because i made one story with him in my mind and then i moved on from it and started focusing more on his future, so the old story sorta became his backstory, so i could just do that for characters, make little stories from their past in my head, and eventually make a backstory with them. :>

[amenaita]

new to this community, but and oldie in russian-speking frpg. very curious to be taken 'under the wing' of somebody experienced here - in my native language i'm considered to be a really good player writing post from 3k to 19k symbols.
if interested - can briefly translate those in english.
please? )))