Other Does anyone else have story arcs in their roleplays?

[Scribbled Smouse]

The way I sometimes imagine a roleplay happening usually happens in arcs. Like in one arc the characters are students and then once that arc is over they're no grown adults. Or even with plots it can go from maybe a love triangle and once that resolves to an arc about the true past or something like that. Instead of the roleplay ending, it continues on with something else. Does anyone do this with their ideas? I feel it helps keep the roleplay fresh and avoids it becoming dragged out.

 

[Axel The Englishman]

Not having a story arc

I wasn’t aware there was a promised land for the filthy casual.

 

[rae2nerdy]

I don’t tend to have stories in my roleplays tbh. It’s mostly characters exploring the setting.

I do have plans for specific places that we explore though. So that might be similar.

 

[Scribbled Smouse]

Not having a story arc

I wasn’t aware this was there was a promised land for the filthy casual.

That's true I used to roleplay on sites not really dedicated to it so I'm more used to people not having extending plots and such

 

[Scribbled Smouse]

I don’t tend to have stories in my roleplays tbh. It’s mostly characters exploring the setting.

I do have plans for specific places that we explore though. So that might be similar.

That makes sense, I usually like having a guideline to follow with roleplays to keep it organized though it's always subject to change anyways

 

[Jaredthefox92]

I try to have them.

 

[rae2nerdy]

That makes sense, I usually like having a guideline to follow with roleplays to keep it organized though it's always subject to change anyways

Lol me too, it’s just usually broken up into like specific pit stops.

Like in my current roleplay I have plans for the characters to visit a zoo, a livestock competition, go on a nature walk, go to a family reunion, visit a town, maybe do a school activity (the characters are high schoolers), and I will probably think of more things as the roleplay progresses.

It’s a world with magic so each setting lets them meet magical animals or discover different kinda of magic.

But there isn’t really a plot connecting the various pit stops together or anything.

 

[Onmyoji]

Yes, story arcs is the main way I rp. And gladly, my current rp partners support this approach.

I like to have a "main" story that the entire rp would follow on a large scale and "arcs" that are like complete episodes within the main story. Which may even sidetrack from the main story but contribute to character development.

Basically, the way I rp is the way a series works. There is a story, complete episodes that progress the story and fillers that don't progress the story much if at all but add some flavor.

 

[Idea]

By nature it's unavoidable that a story has story arcs. Even a slice of life or explorational type can be broken down into the events or situations that need to be solved or other objectives, like an arc being about a button going missing or exploring X area.

Of course, this isn't to say that everyone does it consciously, as in, with the awareness that they are in fact building a story arc. I tend to view stories divided into arcs and to format my approach as form of matrioska of arcs and scenes, with an overall major arc as the topic of the roleplay and the core element, the atom of the roleplay if you will, being individual actions and moments that form scenes. However, it has only been in more recent months that I started really filtering out my partners with a full understanding of my needs as a roleplayer, how to get what I want and what I need to sacrifice to get it, so for a long time my viewpoint manifested less in direct discussion and more in my vocabulary choice, GMing and character design. I would use the terms arcs and scenes, I would formulate arcs as a GM, and my characters were and still are built with potential character arcs in mind.

 

[Count Gensokyo]

All the time.

 

[Caligula]

I usually sort of have an idea of how a character will end up, but not always definite arcs I guess. I mainly focus on individual scenes and like to set up a goal and some things that might lead up to it because I've been stuck in too many listless roleplays where neither me or my partner knew when to cut a scene and move on to the next.

 

[bool]

When I've done more moderated roleplays (basically a GM-type role with controlling the environment) I do try to incorporate character confronting their past and involving backstory in a way that forces the character to reflect on who they are and grow. Or reinforce who they are by staying course. That was mainly because people fell into bad habits of having backstories as a means to an end rather than informing how their character acts or what they do after?

 

[kevintheradioguy]

I wish more of the RPers understood this arc thing. All too many of them want to roleplay every hour of every day. Going along important parts is much better, as I do hate the page-long descriptions of dinners and idle chit-chats. Arcs help in that.

 

[Lord_Toast_Reborn]

Aren't arcs different parts of the story? How can you write a story without parts of the story?

 

[Sludge]

Aren't arcs different parts of the story? How can you write a story without parts of the story?

Forum RP Story Arc - a string of vaguely related events pieced together by a number of convoluted interactions that players sort of but don't really understand because their character was talking to someone else in the room and they've skipped all text but dialogue.

You can very much have a story without even knowing what the hell happened uwu

 

[SakuraBlossom28]

I tend to have them if the RP is supposed to last a very long time. Like this one I've been doing one-on-one since 2015 has shown our characters grow from being extremely distant and spoiled towards each other to more loving and warm to even their acquaintances. Obviously we planned it out as it happened, but we didn't go into the RP with that mindset. It's always so jarring to go back and read earlier RP scenes since the characters seemed so different back then