[@Tsar Gatto]
If we're talking strictly play-by-post role-playing like this, then I started by accidentally finding a Final Fantasy role-playing site a little over ten years ago (I'm thirty-three), while I was more or less just browsing the internet (I'd only started using a PC for the last few days) for Final Fantasy information/pictures/et cetera due to enjoying the series. I mistook the site for some sort of 'wiki' website until I quickly realized what people were doing, at which point I got intrigued and joined up. It was, ironically, an advanced role-playing site. My history with play-by-post since then has been... well, incredibly rocky, I suppose.

Assuming you're not strictly referring to play-by-post, I've technically been doing this since I was a child. Even now, I'm a writer before a role-player, which is why my main story project is my priority over role-playing here or anywhere else; however, even when I was a child I used to 'GM' role-playing games for my two younger siblings. Naturally, the stories were a lot more simple back then than they are now, but the characterization and plot twists were still surprisingly complex and creative back in those days too -- not to toot my own horn or anything. I honestly had no idea people did anything like this over text until I discovered it a little over ten years ago, as I mentioned previously.

I had very little experience (the closest I had was a short story I wrote for TAFE, which was received really well) with written-based storytelling up until that point, since most of my storytelling was done verbally (though the old stories I created as a child did sometimes include comics, character sheets, et cetera), but soon after getting into role-playing I committed to making my main story project a novel series -- prior to that I hadn't found my 'calling' if you will, so I wasn't sure what medium I'd use to tell my story once it was fleshed out.

How about yourself?