Deal Breakers. What makes you "walk" away?

[Ferociousfeind]

What makes me walk away? Not much, as I'm pretty tolerant of a lot of stuff. Once I've joined a roleplay.

But there are a lot of criteria that go into picking RPs that I'm interested in.

I'm trying to expand my interests, but as of now I won't even look very far into your roleplay if it is too serious. It's just a roleplay!
But I'll also overlook it if your interest check is no longer than the title. Come on, let's put some work into it, no?
And if there are frequent grammatical errors I might just ignore your character. Sorry pal, but your character's actions are literally incomprehensible.
Or if you're always using one-liners. "'Hey' he said" is not a good response. Come on!
Or if you're just using fluff to bolster a one-liner. I want content to work with, not just meaningless content for the sake of a personal paragraph minimum!

However, I do always appreciate well-written, detailed, content-full posts by my partners. I'd like to commend E50M for being a good example with their "alien" (robot) civilization the Ari-sejk. Very nice posts, and plenty to work with even if you were to condense it into as little space as possible. Thank you!

Of course, I often have trouble writing more than a short paragraph on-the-go, and instead opt to work with my concise style and provide stuff to work with already in a condense form. For example, I might post this;

"Hey, where are you going?" the officer shouted to the suspicious figure, "Get over here!"

When a few more hours of work could produce something more fluffy, with no real extra content besides world-building.

"Hey!" the man shouted, "Where are you going?"
The officer squinted as he pinpointed a shadow skittering from alleyway to alleyway.
"Get over here!" he reiterated. While normally something like this could be forgiven, the threat of infiltrators was too high at such a pivotal point in the war. The other day the officer had led an assault on a suspected agent's home. Dozens of enemy civilians were discovered. The government wasn't heartless enough to kill them, though the escort back to their home country wasn't a luxury cruise. And shadows of this nature often mean real threats to the civilian population, whether it was a thief, a hitman, or a drug dealer. Even if nobody was there - as the officer half expected - insubordination and ignorance to probable cause was punishable by death, and this particular officer had a family to feed.

Damn, I wrote more than I expected. Well, you can't always drone on about the government and your family, so don't expect huge posts like that from me. Ever. It's a nice treat I whipped up over a few hours, enjoy it and go back to accepting minimum-length, high-quality posts. What was I talking about?

 

[Coreonysis]

As mentioned by the above poster, I usually won't walk away from a roleplay that I've joined. I've made a commitment, and won't break it unless it is blatantly ignored by the other person.

Please, please have good grammar. A roleplay is a collaborative story being created by more than one person. It looks sloppy if one person has nice grammar, and the other uses abbreviations, text slang, and things along those lines. I don't mind a typo here and there; hell, I make some myself, because my proofreading is shit. But if you consistently misspell common words or phrases, I will have a hard time taking you seriously as a writer.

If you use asterisk format (e.g: *puts on clothes, smiling*) instead of paragraph format, I will not roleplay with you. It is a lazy way of writing, and I simply don't like how it looks, don't like how it develops, and will not be a part of it.

I do not like it when my character is controlled by you. If I leave you in an awkward position, I don't mind small things; you can make my character move out of the way, or say something slight, or nod. But please leave bigger plot ideas to me. It's my character, after all.

I sound like such a snob, and I'm sorry, but roleplaying is something I do for enjoyment. If you do something to make me not enjoy it, then I will not roleplay with you. Simple as that.

 

[Risk]

1. Private Messaging/Discord roleplays. If I express interest in a roleplay and it ends up being hosted on Discord or PM, I'm going to drop it. These writing settings make me uncomfortable due to past experiences, and I usually only take them on with people I find I can trust to a certain point.
2. Repeated responses that give me nothing to work with.
3. As I'm someone who is dyslexic and still struggles with a few things, I know that errors are sometimes unavoidable. I'm pretty tolerant towards them. However, If your responses are unclear or entirely incomprehensible, I will not interact with your character or will drop the roleplay completely.
4. Writers who can't tell the difference between themselves and their characters will make me drop a roleplay quicker than you can say "check please!"

 

[Zelda]

Well, this isn't a common dealbreaker, I just wanted to rant about this one really weird experience I had.

I used to roleplay with this guy who, if I didn't respond within like three hours, he thought I hated it and would CONSTANTLY say, "No, that was a bad idea, nevermind..." Then proceeds to do a 180 on where the whole plot was going. His original ideas were great. I already told him I had busy classes. When we were actually moving the plot forward, his messages were 70% OOC and only 30% roleplay.

Sometimes, he would change his mind after I've already responded. Sometimes he went back by 5 messages just to completely change what progress we made in the past week.

So then, obviously I stopped responding, saying my classes were really just getting too busy. He proceeded to tell me how he sits at his computer all day and made a special notification just for my messages. He would message me like two times a day, saying how amazing the roleplay is, how he is always awaiting my response every day - we had only gone two messages into the roleplay by this point.

 

[rae2nerdy]

Well, this isn't a common dealbreaker, I just wanted to rant about this one really weird experience I had.

I used to roleplay with this guy who, if I didn't respond within like three hours, he thought I hated it and would CONSTANTLY say, "No, that was a bad idea, nevermind..." Then proceeds to do a 180 on where the whole plot was going. His original ideas were great. I already told him I had busy classes. When we were actually moving the plot forward, his messages were 70% OOC and only 30% roleplay.

Sometimes, he would change his mind after I've already responded. Sometimes he went back by 5 messages just to completely change what progress we made in the past week.

So then, obviously I stopped responding, saying my classes were really just getting too busy. He proceeded to tell me how he sits at his computer all day and made a special notification just for my messages. He would message me like two times a day, saying how amazing the roleplay is, how he is always awaiting my response every day - we had only gone two messages into the roleplay by this point.

I’m never sure which explanation I find more off putting

That people like this are just trolls deliberately trying to wind you up because they think being an asshole is cool or superior or whatever

Or if the person is really so unsocialized that they don’t realize that that is basically the mentality of a stalker and is going to get them blocked by anyone with half a brain.

Either way that is not how well adjusted people behave. The second “he” said that bit about waiting on my messages I’d have blocked him, left the convo, etc.

If he wants to bitch about me being rude for it fine.

I’m just not dealing with anyone that unaware of personal boundaries

 

[BackSet]

Romance RPs and high post limits.

 

[Killigrew]

Roleplays involving characters that all come across the same. Basically, a setting where literally every character is a clone of each other with no defining features whatsoever, only with different faces. I like to go for witty, sarcastic, or impertinent characters because of how defining those traits can be. Some people just don’t seem to try and carve out their characters, whilst also doing things would seem quite out of place regarding the previous actions of that character.

You GM, right? How do you make sure no normie characters sneak in?

 

[Axel The Englishman]

Killigrew

PURGE

 

[Killigrew]

but what if you're wrong and theyre actually a gold nugget DISGUISED as a normie??

 

[BackSet]

but what if you're wrong and theyre actually a gold nugget DISGUISED as a normie??

Well, we'll probably never know will we.

 

[rae2nerdy]

Romance RPs and high post limits.

Never heard of high post limits. Do you mean when people are like - You must write twenty pages single spaced before I deign to acknowlege your existence ( okay sliiiiiight exaggeration but like are you talking about when folks want multiple paragraph per post? )

 

[BackSet]

Never heard of high post limits. Do you mean when people are like - You must write twenty pages single spaced before I deign to acknowlege your existence ( okay sliiiiiight exaggeration but like are you talking about when folks want multiple paragraph per post? )

Yes. On a good day I can manage like 2-3 max but that's rare.

 

[rae2nerdy]

Yes. On a good day I can manage like 2-3 max but that's rare.

Ah yeah I think I mostly see that described as a post limit or word count ( since again it usually comes with that attitude of if you don't make XXX paragraphs / write XXX words you can't join the roleplay )

I agree though that can be kind of annoying. I usually just stick to -
- Can I read it?
- Does it give me something to respond to?
- Will you change it / answer questions if I'm confused?

If the answer to all those questions is yes than you can write two sentences for all I care I'm not super picky.

 

[TheRockInception]

Never heard of high post limits. Do you mean when people are like - You must write twenty pages single spaced before I deign to acknowlege your existence ( okay sliiiiiight exaggeration but like are you talking about when folks want multiple paragraph per post? )

I've seen at least once someone demanded their potential RP partner literally write a novel for each post. I wanted to have a heart attack.
Anyway for me its:
-requiring me to reach a post length requirement
-telling me to play male or female
-requiring me to double
I mean like this is a hobby, not a job?

 

[Epiphany]

My dealbreaker?

Interest Checks in which the creator uses any variation of "Open world", "Player guided" or "sandbox style". Because invariably that means the host isn't interested in hosting, they just want you to do the writing for them.

For those into that kind of thing, more power to you. I grew up in the RP tradition though that players handled their characters and a GM handled the world. That's what I come to play. And one of the big reasons 90% of Rpnation's RPs to fail within the first month comes down to players waiting for the host to animate the world and the host...not.

To be blunt, if I wanted to write my character interacting with NPCs and the world around me...I'd just write a story or work on a book.

 

[Kingdom of Prussia]

I'm sure this has been said plenty of times before, because honestly it's a common problem, but I hate when people dictate how others RP.

On one occasion, I was PMed by a guy I was RPing with, telling me exactly what to do next. He wasn't the owner of the RP, and was actually newer than me in this particular RP. I didn't check my PMs before replying to his post and he freaked out on me. Granted, both this guy and I were relatively new to RPing, and I ended up changing my post to appease him anyways (which lead to a short tangent which went nowhere), but hey.

Some people don't really understand that big group RPs are meant to create a fun experience for everyone, and not just themselves.

 

[BloodWolfRising]

My deal breaker is when you look over a character sheet and they want every single little detail about that character wrote down. Like aren't we supposed to build the characters throughout the story or even break them down. I sometimes find it hard to write down my character's personality, because I tend to have just a general thought in mind and then play it throughout the story. And their personalities could expand and grow or even change completely.

As for writing requirements, if they want an endless supply of paragraphs I won't go for it either. Now, I myself try to ask people to at least write 3 sentences because I've had a couple of rp's ruined thanks to one liners. Or thanks to people not waiting for anyone else to respond and just two characters going 7 pages all with one liners.​

 

[BackSet]

One of my deal breakers is the requirement of face claims. It's not a super deal breaker but it still annoys me because my Google fu is not strong (I'm surprised I managed to find this site)

 

[BackSet]

Interest Checks in which the creator uses any variation of "Open world", "Player guided" or "sandbox style". Because invariably that means the host isn't interested in hosting, they just want you to do the writing for them.

Huh. Usually when I say player guided I mean the story. Other than that the world is mine and I'll do what I want with it (of course when people chime in with ideas that were better than what I was going to do I'll do that instead).

 

[Epiphany]

Huh. Usually when I say player guided I mean the story. Other than that the world is mine and I'll do what I want with it (of course when people chime in with ideas that were better than what I was going to do I'll do that instead).

In theory, that's a fine approach! And it's far preferable to a host who has a very rigid plot in mind who railroads players into playing the story their way. In execution though, I have yet to see an RP that was "player guided" that didn't devolve into the players having to decide everything, up to and including animating the background characters that their main characters talked to. If they don't, the game stalls because the host basically seems to want to kick off the setting and then just play in it too instead of running it.

Which is fine if that's your cup of tea. It's very much not mine, though.

 

[Fondezer]

People with bad spelling and post restrictions.
I can't deal with any of those.
I see a good roleplay I like, about to message them, then I see the words.
"At least 7 million words per post please" or some shit like that.
I can manage a paragraph and a half.
Maybe two at most.

 

[Lexielai]

Any roleplay that spells out "literate" as a requirement. I understand what they mean, but I am disappointed that they use that particular word. I find it rather disrespectful.

 

[BackSet]

People with bad spelling and post restrictions.
I can't deal with any of those.
I see a good roleplay I like, about to message them, then I see the words.
"At least 7 million words per post please" or some shit like that.
I can manage a paragraph and a half.
Maybe two at most.

Man. I wish I had good spelling. But unfourtanetly autocorrect does more harm than good.

Any roleplay that spells out "literate" as a requirement. I understand what they mean, but I am disappointed that they use that particular word. I find it rather disrespectful.

Why is that even a requirement. Of course someone has to be literate to roleplay! That's what Roleplaying is!

 

[StaceyAnimeKpopFan37]

rudeness excessive violence not being heard....

 

[rae2nerdy]

Why is that even a requirement. Of course someone has to be literate to roleplay! That's what Roleplaying is!

Different contexts. In the context of many roleplay sites literate does not mean able to read and write but more able to write a specific amount of words.

On a site I was on before this that was basically the roleplay categories ( instead of detailed / casual / simple ).

Advance/Elite Literate ( very detailed ) - must be able to write at least five paragraphs, have page long character sheets, and make pretty post layouts. Bonus if you could contribute to the plot and world building.

Literate ( detailed ) - must be able to write at least three paragraphs, have detailed character sheet, make pretty posts ( not a requirement on this site as far as i know ), and help with the world building and plot.

Semi-Literate ( casual ) - usually at least a paragraph per post, some kind of character sheet, decent grammar, and optional involvement in world building or the plot.

Casual ( simple ) - write whatever you want, quick roleplay with little planning but open to anyone who wanted to join.​