If you're leaving Facebook roleplay, look for a home where characters can have their own profiles without breaking the rules, threads stay in order, and your writing can't vanish when an account is removed.
Facebook has hosted roleplay for a long time: character accounts, roleplay groups, fandom pages and Messenger threads. But writers keep hitting the same walls. This guide is about what to look for when you choose your next home.
What Facebook roleplay did well
- Everyone was already there. Friends, fandoms and roleplay groups in one place.
- Groups. A group could hold a whole roleplay world: rules, character lists, plot posts and threads in the comments.
- Notifications. You knew the moment someone replied.
- Pictures and reactions. Easy to share faceclaims, moodboards and quick reactions.
What was painful
- Character accounts break the rules. Facebook's policy expects people to use the name they go by in everyday life. Character profiles get flagged, locked or deleted, sometimes taking years of friendships and threads with them.
- Comment threads are hard to follow. Long threads in group comments collapse, reorder, and get lost under newer posts.
- The feed decides what you see. Your partner's reply might never show up in your feed.
- Real life and roleplay mix. Family, coworkers and roleplay partners all share the same network unless you're very careful.
- No real search. Finding an old scene, or a partner in your fandom, takes a lot of scrolling.
A checklist for your new home
- Characters are allowed. The site should be built for writing as characters, so your muses can't be removed for not being "real".
- One account, many characters. You shouldn't need a separate login for each character.
- Privacy from real life. Your roleplay identity should stay separate from your personal accounts.
- Threads that stay in order. Every reply in one place, in the order it was written.
- A feed you control. Following someone should mean you see what they post, not what an algorithm picks.
- Whose turn is it? Some way to see which threads are waiting on you.
- Clear content rules written for fiction, so you know what you can write.
- Backups. A way to keep a copy of your own writing.
How RPL fits
Roleplay//Lives was built for writing as characters, and we've been at it since 2014. One author account holds all your characters (up to 25 on a free account), each with their own profile, bio, followers and writing. Your author is your roleplay identity, not your legal name, and it never links to your personal social media. Stories keep every reply in order on one page, Your Turn on your dashboard lists threads waiting on you, and you can set each piece to public, followers only or private. Our rules are written for a fiction site, and the Site Guide covers everything else.
Moving your roleplay over
- Save your threads first. If you still have access, copy the scenes you care about before an account is locked. Screenshots work, but copied text is easier to repost.
- Bring your group, not just yourself. A roleplay group can move together: one person posts the setting and rules, everyone else makes their characters. Group Roleplay covers running it.
- Write fresh bios. Facebook "About" sections were short. A full profile gives you room to do more. See our copy-and-paste bio templates.
- Find new partners too. How to Find a Roleplay Partner has tips and a request template.
Coming from somewhere else as well? We also have guides for leaving Tumblr, Twitter/X and Jcink and forum roleplay, plus a fair comparison of roleplay sites and Discord.