Advice/Help Scheduling Conflicts

[ThePastelWitch]

Hey all! This has happened to me time and again and I was wondering if anyone had any advice or tips in general for me.

I'm an adult who has two jobs, technically two roles within one, have a healthy relationship, have a social life (go to conventions, play DnD, be with friends, etc.), also has other hobbies (video gaming, perler/pixel art, learning some coding, world building, DMing, etc.) But I'm a writer. Always have been and have RPed on and off for about fifteen years now. But due to my schedule, I find it hard to find people who want to RP around my schedule. I still post at least once a week (as long as my partners have had time to finish what they need, so as not to be rude) and if it's my world, I put in TONS of detail to help with immersion (but also because I love world building). But rarely do the RPs last long or even take off if it's a group. And it just makes me feel real cruddy about it all, like I didn't work hard enough or I waited too long for other people out of trying to be considerate.

I don't know what to do.

 

[Malphaestus]

Some things cannot be helped, and feeling bad about it and attributing your own insecurities onto it (like being unsure about your shcedule) seems unhealthy if you want to enjoy the hobby. Finding good partners always takes time, for all people, and people leaving is a fact of any roleplay. Some roleplays luck out and find themselves with a good collection of individuals, but most don't, and it's really no one's fault.

 

[ashwynne]

With a hectic schedule I’d suggest that groups might not be a good option. Moving too slowly is one of the big group killers and it’s not going to be enjoyable if they move at a faster pace that you can’t keep up with. My advice would be to stick to 1x1 and be very clear in your interest check (or when contacting potential partners) about your posting schedule.

As with most things, I think it comes down to partner selection. Personally, I’ve had the best luck when browsing through other people’s interest checks and contacting those who have similar posting requirements and genres/plots that interest me. Oftentimes I’ve found that people who message ME based on MY interest check don’t always read everything etc etc. You’re prone to get people who just want to roleplay and are impulsively adding onto their plate without actually being a good fit. Going through other people’s interest checks puts the onus on YOU to be a good fit for THEM and since you’re choosing based on compatibility with your preferences, you have a lot more control and therefore increased likelihood to succeed.

Apart from similar posting requirements, look for checks that have a good amount of detail, are not bumped excessively, and ideally have been floating around for a couple days at a bare minimum. I also like to check to see how active the OP is to ensure it’s not someone who IS making an impulsive decision to look for roleplays when they aren’t actually active at all.

Finding someone who ticks all of your personal boxes sets you up for success. It’s less overall work to plop an interest check of your own down and wait and see, but if you’re not having success with that method then this is what I’d try.

 

[Crayons]

In my experience there's quite a lot of RPs/roleplayers on here who are fine with once a week as a posting frequency. It could just be general "people are unreliabe" syndrome and you just need to keep looking.

 

[Onmyoji]

I agree with ashwynne as in, you might find better luck browsing other people's threads yourself and looking for someone that would match your requirements AND schedules. Such people exist for sure.
I'm having similar schedule issues (12 hrs work, friends, other hobbies etc) and I have no search thread of my own. At all. All I've been doing was browsing 1x1 search threads contacting people whose rp expectations were similar to mine and who didn't mind slow replies. Had a lot of success with that approach. Some of my rps have posts once per month or two but are ongoing for more than a year.

I also believe that such schedule would only work well with 1x1, as lame as it may sound. If you can't sacrifice other hobbies and friends to dedicate extra time to roleplaying, this time won't magically appear out of nowhere. And groups have a lot more unpredictable and managing factors, you're dealing with a range of people with different activity times, expectations, and so on. A lot harder to keep up than with one rp partner. Unless the whole group consists of dedicated slow-posting players (which also can happen but hard to come by), it will either die out or your character will be forgotten in a week.

If you really want to stick to groups, maybe becoming a GM who doesn't play actively and only directs players through plot could be an option.
Or can have several slow-posting 1x1 rp partners / play multiple characters so that it doesn't get stale.

 

[Malphaestus]

Weekly posts for group roleplays is hardly something that is more likely to kill a roleplay compared to people just leaving because. I disagree with the notion that this somehow makes group roleplays a bad option. You just have to be selective, just like you'd need to be with selecting 1x1 partners. Not much difference ultimately.

 

[ashwynne]

Weekly posts for group roleplays is hardly something that is more likely to kill a roleplay compared to people just leaving because. I disagree with the notion that this somehow makes group roleplays a bad option. You just have to be selective, just like you'd need to be with selecting 1x1 partners. Not much difference ultimately.

While it's true that there are some that move at a weekly pace while still remaining active, these are incredibly difficult to find. A lot of group roleplays operate off of hype and having longer spans of time between posts leads to them dying out as the excitement quickly fades. If someone is dead set on finding group roleplays then sure, be discerning and maybe one will pop up (as reference, the ones I'm in with slower posting schedules are the first groups I've joined in years) but if OP wants to start roleplaying sooner and have better odds of success, chances are a LOT higher in 1x1 where you only have to deal with one person.

Most adults with busy schedules tend to prefer 1x1 anyways, because they are so much more flexible than groups are, which means you're statistically more likely to find a good partner in the 1x1 interest checks.

Group roleplays in general are a hell of a lot harder to get off the ground than 1x1 (for a huuuuuuge list of reasons) and even harder to keep going long-term.

So, again, it's not that group roleplays are a bad option... but based off of OP's actual question (which is asking for advice in finding partners that will work within their schedule) groups are going to be a much more difficult option when it comes to finding one that will work.

 

[Malphaestus]

I cannot disagree when presented as such.

 

[rae2nerdy]

Yeah I have done moved through a wide variety posting schedules and they all have something in common :

9/10 role plays don’t get farther than planning stage. It doesn’t matter if you say you can post once a day or once a month.

So I would say that the best thing is to make sure you and your partner on the same page for posting and just hope for the bedt