Experiences People who reply after long periods of inactivity

NotPoisonousIvy

NotPoisonousIvy

Friendly Alien NPC
Roleplay Type(s)
It's story time.

I can't be the only one who experienced this.

So you've been craving some kind of RP for a while now and you've finally found yourself one -or maybe several- partner(s). You start discuss possible plots together, make character bios, all that fun pre-RP stuff.

Then, you start the roleplay. Things seem to be going good so far. You managed to exchange several replies with your partner, so it's all fine and dandy. Your partener may not be the best writer you've ever seen, but they give you decent replies at least once a week, so you keep it going.

Then, all of a sudden, your partner stops replying. You've experienced this many times before, and maybe you're guilty of dropping RPs without a proper explanation yourself. For many reasons, you decided not to bump the thread. Maybe your RP partner got some personal issues they don't want to talk about ... or maybe they simply grew bored of the roleplay. To be honest, you didn't enjoy it that much either, so it's understandable. You might also be a bit of a pessimist, so you'd prefer to keep the reason a mistery rather than receiving a nicely-worded "your replies were not good" as an explanation.

Life moves on. You come up with new ideas and find other people willing to RP with you. It's been over a month since that one RP fell out, and you've pretty much forgotten all about it by now.

Only, the story doesn't stop here.

Out of nowhere, you receive a reply to that particular RP. Your partner gives no explanation for their absence, and acts as if nothing happened.

My question is: why? Is this karma geeting back at me for not being 'nice enough' to question my partner's absence?

This happened to me more than once, and I thought I might as well just write about it, see if there are others who experienced the same thing. :P
 
It's sort of happened to me. I usually do ask though. Then when I get a reply I feel like it's not genuine and I never respond back.

I don't want to nag anyone into roleplaying, but there needs to be more communication OOC.
 
Probably because its not as big of a deal in a 1x1. Since you don't have multiple people impacted by an absence its fine to have long breaks without massively impacting the story. That is what I would imagine at least.
 
I often have such experiences, and a part of such games myself.

For me, it really depends on how high my interest in the game is, as, although sometimes it might take weeks to reply, there are games where I write five to ten posts daily. And not one-liners as well. I've two on-going games of this sort right now, with an amazing partner, and I love it. I often mirror the post frequency of my co-player, so if they replied in a week, I've read the reply, and took a week for myself. I am not sure why this happens, but it does.

It is often too hard for me to get into such games, as I lose the feel of it, so to speak. It might be very interesting plot-wise, but it takes too long to get back to the particular 'feeling', atmosphere of the game. However, there are exceptions. I had two games (one still going) where we post once every week or two, sometimes even going for monthly breaks, but it's good. I guess it really depends on a partner.

From my own long pause perspective, here are some reasons:
◌ Losing track of time. Sometimes life gets to me, and I think "it won't hurt if I have a good sleep, and write the reply tomorrow", and the next thing you know it's been two weeks instead a couple of days like you planned.
◌ Forgetting to tell your partner about some troubles you're having. I've recently disappeared from a game because of health issues I had to deal with, and when I came back and checked PM history, I realized I have forgotten to warn about it.
◌ Feeling ashamed to mention why you need a break. I've started a game, and in two days hit artistic crisis. You can imagine how it looks from another person's perspective. So I try to squeeze the game out of me, or just hope it'll pass in a few days. It takes weeks. I feel even more uncomfortable writing "You know, three weeks back I hit artistic crisis, and couldn't reply, and it's still going". I embrace my label of an asshole.
 
Last edited:
kevintheradioguy said:
I often have such experiences, and a part of such games myself.

For me, it really depends on how high my interest in the game is, as, although sometimes it might take weeks to reply, there are games where I write five to ten posts daily. And not one-liners as well. I've two on-going games of this sort right now, with an amazing partner, and I love it. I often mirror the post frequency of my co-player, so if they replied in a week, I've read the reply, and took a week for myself. I am not sure why this happens, but it does.

It is often too hard for me to get into such games, as I lose the feel of it, so to speak. It might be very interesting plot-wise, but it takes too long to get back to the particular 'feeling', atmosphere of the game. However, there are exceptions. I had two games (one still going) where we post once every week or two, sometimes even going for monthly breaks, but it's good. I guess it really depends on a partner.

From my own long pause perspective, here are some reasons:
◌ Losing track of time. Sometimes life gets to me, and I think "it won't hurt if I have a good sleep, and write the reply tomorrow", and the next thing you know it's been two weeks instead a couple of days like you planned.
◌ Forgetting to tell your partner about some troubles you're having. I've recently disappeared from a game because of health issues I had to deal with, and when I came back and checked PM history, I realized I have forgotten to warn about it.
◌ Feeling ashamed to mention why you need a break. I've started a game, and in two days hit artistic crisis. You can imagine how it looks from another person's perspective. So I try to squeeze the game out of me, or just hope it'll pass in a few days. It takes weeks. I feel even more uncomfortable writing "You know, three weeks back I hit artistic crisis, and couldn't reply, and it's still going". I embrace my label of an asshole.
Click to expand...

This is probably the best answer I received. I see how everything you mentioned could happen. You make some very good points. Thank you for taking the time to reply (:
 
Loyola said:
It's sort of happened to me. I usually do ask though. Then when I get a reply I feel like it's not genuine and I never respond back.

I don't want to nag anyone into roleplaying, but there needs to be more communication OOC.
Click to expand...

I guess it's a fair point, although sometimes it's hard to tell how much OCC communication is too much. Some people seem very could outside the RP, when they are in fact quite friendly and vice versa.
 
Randomfella said:
Probably because its not as big of a deal in a 1x1. Since you don't have multiple people impacted by an absence its fine to have long breaks without massively impacting the story. That is what I would imagine at least.
Click to expand...

Still, a warning would be nice, no matter what kind of RP we are talking about.
 
I hate this. Experienced it many times before. Off site, I started a roleplay and never got a response for a while. I reminded said partner, they gave me a reason. Fair enough. I accepted that. They bump the thread asking if I want to continue, I said yes. Next thing I know, no reply. At all from partner. I gave up on them.

Also experienced it on this site. Yes, an explanation would be nice. I would never do it to them, and I would tell them if I needed to stop for a while. I hate it more when you see them online, and they don’t talk oorp and don’t reply to roleplay. My patience wears thin when it’s been weeks, going onto a month or two with nothing.
 
BeccaChanelxo said:
I hate this. Experienced it many times before. Off site, I started a roleplay and never got a response for a while. I reminded said partner, they gave me a reason. Fair enough. I accepted that. They bump the thread asking if I want to continue, I said yes. Next thing I know, no reply. At all from partner. I gave up on them.

Also experienced it on this site. Yes, an explanation would be nice. I would never do it to them, and I would tell them if I needed to stop for a while. I hate it more when you see them online, and they don’t talk oorp and don’t reply to roleplay. My patience wears thin when it’s been weeks, going onto a month or two with nothing.
Click to expand...

Ah, yes, that's an experince many of us go through. It sucks, but being ditched mid-rp seems to be commonplace. :/
 
My favorite thing still is when you're roleplaying with someone and everything seems to be really
going well, and all of a sudden they just absolutely disappear. Like, gone. They don't log back into
that account seemingly ever again, no word, nothing. And it usually happens early on in the RP.​
 
sad boy said:
My favorite thing still is when you're roleplaying with someone and everything seems to be really
going well, and all of a sudden they just absolutely disappear. Like, gone. They don't log back into
that account seemingly ever again, no word, nothing. And it usually happens early on in the RP.​
Click to expand...

When this happens, I tend to assume something went extremely wrong with the other person, so I can't bring myself to get mad.
 
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