Roleplay Cliches

[Demonhunter]

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Everyone's seen them, whats the craziest one you've seen? - I usually do fandom RPs I get irritated when we follow past fandom plots to a tee. like, make up somthing new! make new villains for the protagonists to battle, see how crazy you can twist the concept.


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[LegoLad659]

- I usually do fandom RPs I get irritated when we follow past fandom plots to a tee. like, make up somthing new! make new villains for the protagonists to battle, see how crazy you can twist the concept.

That does kinda bug me xD Though, as unoriginal as I am, I tend to use the fandom plot as a base and build another story around that. So I guess I can't really say anything in that regard ( )


For me, I've seen a couple of people try to make the plot all about their characters. In the case of one in particular, she didn't even think it through first, she just did it xD (@theManCalledSting will know what I'm talking about here ( ) I'm sorry)

 

[Phantom Thief of Hearts]

That does kinda bug me xD Though, as unoriginal as I am, I tend to use the fandom plot as a base and build another story around that. So I guess I can't really say anything in that regard ( )
For me, I've seen a couple of people try to make the plot all about their characters. In the case of one in particular, she didn't even think it through first, she just did it xD (@theManCalledSting will know what I'm talking about here ( ) I'm sorry)

Is it "No Effort" you are referring to?

 

[LegoLad659]

Is it "No Effort" you are referring to?

No, it's "I'm booored" I'm talking about.

 

[Phantom Thief of Hearts]

No, it's "I'm booored" I'm talking about.

Oh you mean the one who wanted to improve on her writing by leaving the rp and cutting all ties to us... Yeah... she's bad

 

[Demonhunter]

Oh you mean the one who wanted to improve on her writing by leaving the rp and cutting all ties to us... Yeah... she's bad

bwahaha gotta love those! i do feel bad, i had to step out of a couple/got kicked out of a couple after I had a botched wisdom tooth extraction that wound up causing brain damage. the combination of high powered medication and wacked out braincells didn't help my rping/character creation much. Hell I forgot how to grammar!

 

[LegoLad659]

bwahaha gotta love those! i do feel bad, i had to step out of a couple/got kicked out of a couple after I had a botched wisdom tooth extraction that wound up causing brain damage. the combination of high powered medication and wacked out braincells didn't help my rping/character creation much. Hell I forgot how to grammar!

Her main problem is that, when roleplaying a Fandom character (OC/AU or not), she does barely any research on them. "But I don't wanna do that!" Is usually her excuse.


Also she plans on pirating Undertale, of all games. Just thought I'd throw that out there too. (It costs all of $10 if you don't know)

 

[StoneWolf18]

Oh Dear Lord, I'll try not to rant too much.


One of the worst clichés, in my opinion, is when the character is quite young and has that stereotypical sweet, emotional an innocent personality, but for some reason once you anger or piss them off, they become the hulk and feel no remorse whatsoever whilst disemboweling you.


This is just one of many that will cause me to leave or not join roleplays all together, thus ruining the entire game.


Note: Most if not all of these characters will NOT have it specified that they are bipolar.

 

[call me rae]

For me the worst sort of cliches are the ones that are like :


Character A meets character B and instantly falls in love. Her ( as it's usually a female ) entirely life now becomes entirely about getting B to notice her / love her / make her the sole reason for their existence.


This regardless of whether or not B as shown any sort of interest in her at all.

 

[Phantom Thief of Hearts]

For me the worst sort of cliches are the ones that are like :
Character A meets character B and instantly falls in love. Her ( as it's usually a female ) entirely life now becomes entirely about getting B to notice her / love her / make her the sole reason for their existence.


This regardless of whether or not B as shown any sort of interest in her at all.

When Character A forces a Romance on Character B


When RPer A only wants to focus on the Character development of her/his character in spite of the fact it will ruin the whole story arc.

 

[Strawberry Ink]

One cliché that I seem to find a lot in threads is the teenage character who is the master of everything. I don't know many 15 year olds who are black belts in three schools of martial arts, a world famous assassin and president of a small country. I guess you have a lot of time on your hands when you are an orphan...

 

[StoneWolf18]

[QUOTE="Strawberry Ink]One cliché that I seem to find a lot in threads is the teenage character who is the master of everything. I don't know many 15 year olds who are black belts in three schools of martial arts, a world famous assassin and president of a small country. I guess you have a lot of time on your hands when you are an orphan...

[/QUOTE]
Well, you gotta also remember that the orphan had no official schooling whatsoever because they were abandoned at the age of 3 in the middle of the Australian outback. It makes complete sense for them to remember their parents and what to get revenge after somehow surviving on their own for that long and accomplishing all those amazing feats so they'd make their parents regret leaving them. (Please note the heavy sarcasm.)

 

[Sombra Arcana]

Don't forget the character that is born wit the complete control of his powers and no apparent psychological repercusion for knowing how to masterfully use it an kill thousands of enemies

 

[King Ad Rock]

I started role-playing in 2004 when I was 14 years old, so it's hilarious to see how many cliches I was guilty of. This would never be allowed on forums today, but back when I first joined my old site one of my posts was actually quoted (with my username) in a thread titled "Worst RP Characters". I remember that crushed my soul, but it was also a huge motivator. I thought to myself, "Alright, I suck. How do I fix that?" And from that point, character depth, character motivation, & making an effort to include other players whenever possible became my goal in every thread.

 

[Phantom Thief of Hearts]

[QUOTE="Sombra Arcana]Don't forget the character that is born wit the complete control of his powers and no apparent psychological repercusion for knowing how to masterfully use it an kill thousands of enemies

[/QUOTE]
A Character with a name that makes zero sense in the setting but was only given said name because it was cool


like


Ryu is a name given to a native american... for some reason

 

[Sleipnir]

—Dead family with no bearing on the story (Pass if the tragedy is relevant beyond angst points)


—Hollywood Insanity drives me crazy. I will proooobably leave the Roleplay if it gets in the way.


—Constant stream of drama to keep the attention on Character A.


Oh man. I was in this Roleplay on another site awhile back, and the characters were mostly sort of okay. Maybe not my favorite players, but tolerable because I liked the concept. It was a zombie game, and one facet was this sort of IZombie vibe where a character can become, in a way, "Half-zombie," where they're pretty much dead but not mindless and not fully able to control theirself. So I had one of them, and another player had another. Naturally, the other character — let's say A — was going to pursue a relationship with my character B. He was older enough that I wanted to handle this mature adult in a mature adult way, so when A proclaimed her love he gave a yellow light, so to speak, because he wasn't about to rush into this and he needed to sort some thing out with himself. Her response was to immediately engage in dramatic life-threatening scenarios, one after the other, over and over. Like rapid-fire; there was maybe three posts between events. Eventually it killed the game.


There was another time a similar thing happened in a supernatural summer camp type game where the same character kept losing control of her powers and trying to kill everyone over. And over.

 

[StoneWolf18]

Mmmm, @Sleipnir your post made me want to add a few more.


Power Abusive GMs: This isn't really much of a roleplay problem as it is when you give a small child too much power. Their character is the center of the plot, they have the most overpowered characters...hell, I've even had to deal with one of them putting up a bio as "to be RPed" and when only write a small summary for my character, I'm not accepted. A friend of mine also told me that they were in a roleplay once and the GM had all of the other characters fall in love with his regardless if you wanted it or not. Meaning he edited people's posts of he didn't like what your character was saying or it didn't go along with the current scene.


But...this isn't real life...: Basically, these are people who associate their real life believes into a roleplay setting where it wouldn't make sense. Now, I don't mean large things but more on the smaller side of the scale. For example, a while ago I had put up yet another science fiction experimentation roleplay. It was killed, because a player wouldn't give their character a middle name because they or their friends didn't have one in real life and there were other cultures that didn't give one. Uh...HELLO?!? They were all born and raised in a lab from mostly Americans with European backgrounds.


Stupidly Overpowered Abilites: Pretty self explanatory.


I'll add more as they come to me...

 

[Idea]

It´s almost a cliché for me to be mentioning this, but the cliché I find really annoying (well, one of them) is the "arbitrary character" as I called them. They consist of characters made in such a way that their CSs are basically meaningless. I´m talking about characters who are, for example "oh cold and sarcastic and shy on the outside, but inside they are really fun and kind and all". This is a huge problem for me, because that means they can give their character a 180 personality shift and go like "oh, they warmed up to you" for no good reason. These characters tend to just act according to what is convenient, rather than what they would be, and even more unfortunate, there isn´t a single group roleplay I ever went to without witnessing at least one of these for every like, four or five people that joined.

 

[call me rae]

To piggy back off @Idea the "true love fixes everything" trope. Where your character can be built with the most anti-social / tragic backstory / horrible personality on the planet. And yet magically when they see a character they like their suddenly a totally different person.


Like I'm sorry that's not how people work.


Also characters that exist for validation. Like the player makes them as super something ( smart , powerful, beautiful, etc ) and rather than contributing to the plot they pretty much exist only for everyone else to validate their relative smartness/power/beauty/whatever their special snowflake thing is.


Those are at least slightly more realistic than the first example ( their are people that do need validation to feel good about themselves ) but they are also super annoying to roleplay with.


Because like the world does not hinge on how special your character is.

 

[-.-.Lucifer.-.-]

Characters who don't have quirky interests or characteristics.


I have a character the who really likes sweets. I have one that can't stand silence. One of them is terrified of being alone... like even for a few seconds. One is afraid of heights but is a pilot, another is terrified of snakes. I had one character who was always scribbling things in a notebook (for plot purposes obviously, but he was the kind to remember small details but not the bigger picture).


Hell I had one that was a boxer because she dropped out of ROTC.


One will listen to you without looking at you and respond mostly with less then 5 words but shows a lot of emotion in their body movements.


I have another who chews on toothpicks or gum, or anything he can because he's trying to quit smoking.


I feel like there are too many average Joe's out there?

 

[Phantom Thief of Hearts]

An issue in Multi-fandom RPs


An RPer would instigate a story halting fight just because they want to prove how cool their fandom is...


Thanks Death Battle...

 

[StoneWolf18]

Mmmm, I have three others.


Using a fandom cannon character in a roleplay that's specifically not a fandom roleplay. This really pisses me off, when someone either just uses the character in its entirety or changes little thinks like the name. I don't like using cannon to begin with but this is just disgusting to see.


The despised, using your username as the characters name. I mean, I could see a few special areas where this is actually specified, but if not, are you really that desperate? Seriously, what the hell, we aren't LARPing.


And finally, acting In-Character when in the OOC. Is that really necessary?

 

[Idea]

Mmmm, @Sleipnir your post made me want to add a few more.
Power Abusive GMs: This isn't really much of a roleplay problem as it is when you give a small child too much power. Their character is the center of the plot, they have the most overpowered characters...hell, I've even had to deal with one of them putting up a bio as "to be RPed" and when only write a small summary for my character, I'm not accepted. A friend of mine also told me that they were in a roleplay once and the GM had all of the other characters fall in love with his regardless if you wanted it or not. Meaning he edited people's posts of he didn't like what your character was saying or it didn't go along with the current scene.


But...this isn't real life...: Basically, these are people who associate their real life believes into a roleplay setting where it wouldn't make sense. Now, I don't mean large things but more on the smaller side of the scale. For example, a while ago I had put up yet another science fiction experimentation roleplay. It was killed, because a player wouldn't give their character a middle name because they or their friends didn't have one in real life and there were other cultures that didn't give one. Uh...HELLO?!? They were all born and raised in a lab from mostly Americans with European backgrounds.


Stupidly Overpowered Abilites: Pretty self explanatory.


I'll add more as they come to me...

"Oh, we all know the world is full of chance and anarchy,


so yes, it´s true to life for characters to die randomly


but NEWS FLASH:


The genre´s called fantasy!


It´s meant to be UNREALISTIC


you myopic manatee!"


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[RedneckLurves]

I hate it when evil characters have killed their parents/entire family in their background and there's absolutely no emotion, no feeling, no reaction at all. They're just evil and unappreciated and hate their family so they kill them and move on with their lives. It adds nothing to the character and is seriously so cliche.

 

[Idea]

And finally, acting In-Character when in the OOC. Is that really necessary?

I personally find the reverse a lot worse: for characters to act differently cause their player feels in different that day. Or because it´s not so "convenient". Like, metagaming when a character gets "a hunch" of something they couldn´t possibly know, like someone trying to set them on a trap and the other character magically finding out about it cause "hunch".