Message Board Role-Playing

Message Board Roleplaying. Where I got my start. Of course, I did roleplay before I found MBRPing, but it was when I started playing my first MBRPGs that I started to learn how to roleplay well. The first RPG that I join was called Crossover Into Balinor (Yes, it's still around, though I haven't been there in absolute ages.). It was based off a popular book series called Unicorns of Balinor about a girl named Arianna who is the princess of another world called Balinor, but she is in a car accident when she goes to earth and gets amnesia. She returns to Balinor and finds it being slowly overrun by a villian named Entia. It was one of my favorite series, and I was google-searching for it when I found Crossover. I read the rules, got excited, and immediately joined a character. I remember my first character with a sort of exasperated fondness. Faiquii, the White Unipeg. Perfectly sweet, absolutely gorgeous, and name thrown together out of random letters that looked cool together (it's pronounced Fay-kee). She was complete passive and, overall, eventaully rather boring to play. At one point she made friends with an evil unicorn... but that comes later. For now, I'm going to stop rambling about MY past and begin explaining Message Board Roleplaying. I'll put up a section on my roleplaying life so far later. ^_~
Message Board Roleplaying! It's fun, though it's the slowest form of roleplaying except for doing it by email. You join a character on a certain board, the Joining Board usually, after reading the rules and maybe glancing around to see what other characters are like. You'll probably want to look at the other members to make sure none of them have the name you were going to use, because people can get very offended if you use their name. In Crossover, there were so many people with 'Storm' in their name somewhere, that things were getting seriously confused. (I had a character named just Storm, actually, that I still use today).
Sometimes after you join you have to wait for the owner of the site or one of his/her trusted friends to approve you before you join. This is mostly for RPGs that require you to write a post as an example of your skills before you can start playing. Others require you to put a password in your post (this password is usually found in the rules to ensure that you read them). Others yet have the joining boards password protected- again, the password and username is found in the rules to make sure you read. Some just let you join and start playing right away.
Most MBRPGs are centered around playing a certain species, or a few different species. Surprising, most of them are NOT about humans- a lot center around horses, wolves, unicorns, dragons, elves, and unique kinds of fantasy monsters. There is one called Griffinwood that is about big cats like tigers and lions. One, now closed, even centered around rats. MBRPing is probably the most unique of all kinds.
You'll want to think of which sort of RPG you want to join before you go searching for them. The best way to find lots of RPGs is to find an RPG 'alliance', which is a site that lists RPGs of all kinds. Also, if you find ONE RPG, they will most likely have an Advertising Board, where other RPGs can post plugs for their websites. Its hard to find RPGs with search engies, though.
You should try to make friends on RPGs. There's almost always an OOC ('Out Of Character') board where you can talk to other players out of character. You could even arrange little plots with their characters and arrange for your characters to meet somewhere. Be careful that you don't get dragged