Advice/Help finding the right rp partner.

[puriinyan]

hello !
i've had a few burning questions for a while so here I am since my thin patience always gets the best of me .

for those out there, have you found a roleplay partner with who you still share a wonderful experience through yours ocs, lore, hyperfixations and world-building? like they were meant just for you?

I used to have these kind of people when i was a tad younger, and it used to be fun. then i took a break, came back yearsss later and finding roleplay partners is very much a struggle.. or maybe standards went up during this break of mine.. or maybe it may aswell have been my own standards.

reading the interactions between the ocs of so many users here is refreshing though, and it keeps me motivated since they're all so cool !
but i wonder when will it be my turn..

i did try with many wonderful people but our vibe either doesnt match or— the rp gets stale
does it usually take this long to find the right person or am i too impatient?? (SCREECHS)

anyways, enough yapping, how do i deal with this frustration please

 

[nerdy tangents]

So I think it’s less a question of roleplay partners and more a question of making new friends.

So one thing to keep in mind is the danger of rose colored glasses. Where your friendships really so much stronger when you were younger or are you just remembering the good times and forgetting the bad?

I would say a big part of it is that as you get older most people have to split their energy between more and more people. I can’t just hang out chatting excitedly with friends whenever I’m bored. I have a job which is pretty mentally taxing. I get home and maybe I have the energy to get a post up or some world building but I don’t have the energy to gush for five hours about a fandom anymore. Heck I also just plain don’t physically have the time (I work eight hours and on my days off I’m usually running errands).

Even if it’s not a job folks are starting to have kids, get married, enter higher education, etc.

Now that’s not to say you can’t find someone who matches your energy. It’s just going to be something you have to work at and you might need to adjust your expectations a bit.

Like is it important to you that a person responds every day or is it important that they are enthusiastic? Because you might not be able to have both.

That sort of thing.

 

[Idea]

I've really had an uptick in the ratio of partners that I really found to be great partners over my time gaining experience in RP. I think a big part of that was just gaining an understanding of my own preferences, and I would absolutely recommend that for everyone. Knowing your preferences, having an understanding of what you like and don't like, what you can or can't compromise on, what really gets you motivated, what bores you, what you want to see, what you want to explore etc... The more of an understanding you have of these things, the more you can tell what to offer yourself and whether you'll enjoy the offers of others.

That being said, knowing your preferences, figuring out what you want, is not the end of the story. If I know I like coffee better than tea, I can't buy tea and expect it to taste like coffee, nor can I walk into a tea shop and expect them to sell me coffee. Once you know what kind of RP you're after, what kind of partner you'd enjoy having, you'll need to tailor what you search for, what you accept and how you make your own pitches to that information. It might go a long way to try to get a rudimentary grasp of what appeals to potential partners that fit what you want, things that are within their comfort zone, and what might push them away. Any decision in an interest check will loose you some people, but the better you can target the kind of people you want, the better. If you're going for a fandom roleplay, what do people usually like about that fandom? If you're doing a knight x princess pairing, is it a good idea to have the knight be humiliated and treated like a joke, is that the kind of thing someone you'd like to play a knight would enjoy happen to their character? Are you going to appeal to people with novella writing lengths by posting a 2 sentence interest check? Personally, I use length requirements are a filter for mindset in writing, which helps communicate to people looking to do the kind of posts I don't want to engage with that it might be better to look elsewhere. At the same time, I don't have time requirements for posts in my 1x1s to allow for quality and length. These among other reasons I feel are a big part of the success I've had in finding a lot people I could really work well with.

Naturally, this isn't an exact science. But attracting the right partner for you and signaling who they are, and why you are a good partner for them as well, is crucial. You're always searching in the dark, but I do think at least having a lit match is still better than stumbling around blindly.

Even if you do find the right partner for you, however, there is another crucial thing: You need to be able to adapt and compromise, in which I would include proper communication. Knowing your preferences is helpful here since you can distinguish between what's non-vital and what's crossing a line, but that can still mean doing things you aren't super pleased by. With the right partner more often than not you'll at bare minimum find some way for everyone to get their way or close enough, but I can't stress enough how important cooperation is in both group and 1x1 RP. Proper cooperation between players I would say is often the difference between an amazing story where everyone is involved, and and people doing their own disparate little things until everything just fizzles out.


While I would consider those the two major points, I will also point out that patience is definitely important, in this and all aspects of life. Things do get a lot harder if one assumes things about others or other things based on not acting within an unreasonably fast degree. If one has a hard time telling what a reasonable time is by feeling, I'd say to try to get some hard numbers down and make sure to leave some margin for individual circumstances.

 

[puriinyan]

YOOOO
thank you for your input on this silly little issue of mine, I really appreciate it !

to be honest i did think similarly when it came to my preferences— except that I didnt label these thoughts as such.. so i didnt actually know what I was trying to pinpoint all along.

but ill go get to it from now on !
I appreciate the little analogies sprinkled here and there, i was able to understand what you meant thanks to that.. and well— patience is not my strong suit but I guess ill have to make it one.

thank yaaa, have a cupcake lol ️

 

[Idea]

YOOOO
thank you for your input on this silly little issue of mine, I really appreciate it !

to be honest i did think similarly when it came to my preferences— except that I didnt label these thoughts as such.. so i didnt actually know what I was trying to pinpoint all along.

but ill go get to it from now on !
I appreciate the little analogies sprinkled here and there, i was able to understand what you meant thanks to that.. and well— patience is not my strong suit but I guess ill have to make it one.

thank yaaa, have a cupcake lol ️

You're welcome. I wish you the best of luck and happy roleplaying

 

[puriinyan]

So I think it’s less a question of roleplay partners and more a question of making new friends.

So one thing to keep in mind is the danger of rose colored glasses. Where your friendships really so much stronger when you were younger or are you just remembering the good times and forgetting the bad?

I would say a big part of it is that as you get older most people have to split their energy between more and more people. I can’t just hang out chatting excitedly with friends whenever I’m bored. I have a job which is pretty mentally taxing. I get home and maybe I have the energy to get a post up or some world building but I don’t have the energy to gush for five hours about a fandom anymore. Heck I also just plain don’t physically have the time (I work eight hours and on my days off I’m usually running errands).

Even if it’s not a job folks are starting to have kids, get married, enter higher education, etc.

Now that’s not to say you can’t find someone who matches your energy. It’s just going to be something you have to work at and you might need to adjust your expectations a bit.

Like is it important to you that a person responds every day or is it important that they are enthusiastic? Because you might not be able to have both.

That sort of thing.

well— thats fair.
I can see that more people are getting busier and busier, which could contribute to an rp slowly dying.

Ill make sure to keep that in mind since I sometimes get forgetful.

sure then, ill try to find my way around and work on that, thankss !

 

[Edric Blight]

I’ll give my two cents cuz I always like writing and responding to these types of posts, even if no one cares or reads it or even disagrees. So to answer your questions, in my humble opinion, no, you’re not too impatient. I’m the very same way.

I can confidently say though that finding that perfect RP partner is a lengthy process. It truly is like finding a diamond in the rough. You really have to click and bond with a person for stuff to go really well and to go on for a long time. I personally feel that open communication and even building a friendship outside of the RP thru OOC is super helpful too in terms of keeping an RP alive. For me at least, if I’m friends with my partner in OOC, then they’re the right partner for me.

I know some people aren’t a big fan of OOC or friendships beyond just the business relationship of writing with each other but for me personally, the right partner has to just click with you in OOC- and those types of people can be hard to come by. The right partner for me is someone who is super passionate about our story and communicates open and honestly whenever possible. Everyone has their different preferences so it makes finding the right partner (meaning a serious writing partner that isn’t just a ghost after a day or two or a week) very difficult.

So, like I said, no you’re not impatient and yes it takes very long to find the right person, at least in my personal experience. I need someone who can match my energy and it has taken me a long time to find people who do. I’m actually fortunate enough where my first roleplaying partner ever from years ago when I first started writing on another site became not only my go-to long term story writing guy, but also a good friend. We vibed together well and honestly became best friends over the internet. I still talk with and write with him today! I wouldn’t trade our friendship for the world, he’s an amazing dude!

And sometimes you’ll run into people you think you click with but end up not for whatever reason. This can be frustrating and just leads to the lengthy process of finding that right partner for you again. As of now I have about two people I really think are the right partner for me, and it took a long time to get them. Just months of searching. So yes, it does take long to find them, at least in my experience. With these two people on RPN (in addition to the dude I’ve spoken and written with for years off of this site), I really vibe with them in OOC and they’re just as passionate about the story and characters as I am!

And so far so good! These two stories are going really well and both partners are friendly, passionate, honest and communicative whenever they can be. Crossing my fingers I’m still writing with them for years to come! But unfortunately you also have situations like I mentioned before where you THINK that partner was the right one for you but it ends up never being meant to be. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a partner that is seemingly just as passionate and giddy as me about our story and one that is super friendly in OOC and it ends up ending in ghosting after a few weeks or even months. It sucks when you think you’re vibing really well with a partner you think is the right one for you, and then it ends up being nothing. I’ve personally had a few experiences with this.

I’ve even had a partner I thought was truly like THE ONE because I really clicked with them well, role played and wrote with to much success (even completing multiple different stories), and developed a rather close friendship with over the course of a year or so in OOC that ended up dumping me. :/ But that’s a story I’m not gonna dive into. Point is, finding the right partner is HARD! Admittedly I’m a bit jaded from my experiences but I write all of this to get my thoughts down and hopefully provide some sort of insight into the original topic of the post in this thread. Now this isn’t to make you think “omg I just found the perfect partner, what if this is all fake and they’re gonna ditch me after a year of writing and friendship?” It’s more just to stress how difficult finding that perfect partner can be.

So I close with expressing my sympathy for you and also telling you that I genuinely don’t think you’re impatient. The process of finding the right partner for you is a lengthy one for some and it’s honestly one that’s different for everyone. So I say, keep searching and hopefully you DO find the one! I wish you the best of luck in your search for partners you really click with and are compatible with! (:

Thanks for listening to my little rant. :3