I’ll add to this thread.
Back in 1996-2000, I was RPing in AOL chat rooms and starting my MU RP journey. I had a number of cyber/TS scenes throughout that time when I was 15-17 with people who were admittedly in their 20s and 30s. There were people who knew I was not 18 and would still engage. They presented as female.
At the time, I thought it all very fun and exciting but I was also a horny ass teenage male, so you know, my brain wasn’t thinking of whether or not such things were appropriate. My brain was very much like sexsexsexsexsex.
I lived in rural Atlanta at the time and I even had invitations to see some of these people at Dragoncon. I never went, and over the years I’ve wondered what might have happened. Now, I just look back on it and am kind of like “What the fuck”
As an adult, I’ve strictly tried to keep any RP with people who are 18 and up. I think 18+ is generally the best policy for a MU or RP game simply because there ARE people who would do creepy stuff. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that I think RPing as underage people is super borderline to me and I will never play someone who isn’t at least 18 or 19.