Idea
The Pun Tyrant
As for my own opinion on school RPs, I think they can be a really cool setting. They can be great for exploring lore, magic systems and such, and are a prime place for characters to have steady progression in terms of what they can do. Furthermore it’s a familiar environment which serves as a nice staple setting for more slice-of-life or romance oriented RPs.
However, they also suffer from a few fundamental problems, most of which tends to pertain to the players who often engage in them:
A) School is boring. Most players going into school roleplays aren’t actually in it for the school aspects of the roleplay, and 90% of the type they are even less interested in respecting the hierarchies and dynamics inherent to the setting. Simply put, the characters and their actions are framed at odds with the setting and not playing into it most of the time, forcing GMs to either put the core concept of the RP aside or have to railroad players into basic engagement with it.
B) By nature school RPs have a lot of interrupted scenes. This may not seem too bad until you realize even just a few players may be engaging at entirely different paces, meaning it becomes an impossible task to really give players time to wrap up their interactions without leaving others to hang for ages. As result, school RPs tend to be rife with awkward small time skips and unfinished business.
C) Despite how character-centric they usually are, these RPs have a tendency to feature players who come in seemingly expecting to have their hand held all the time- they design characters ill-suited for prompting interaction or having unique or engaging problems or arcs, then do not attempt to engage with others, and after that say they aren't posting because they don't have anyone to interact with. If you have maybe one is 8-10 players who is actively trying to engage with others, this is not going to be something they can handle. The issue only gets more exacerbating when one adds extreme character freedom. All in all, the moment there isn't something specific happening, school RPs tend to quickly become zombiefied.
D) I was guilty of this myself once, but perhaps adding to what I wrote in (C), both players and GM have a tendency to expect others to behave not in accordance to what they are portraying but in accordance to what they imagine or stated they should. GMs often exploit GMPCs just to put themselves in an edge above the players, or expect players to react in a certain way and refuse to change course when players don't. Likewise, a lot of players expect other player's characters to have a particular unwarranted attitude towards theirs.
Of course, a lot of this is just my experience, but I think it speaks to the very nature of school RPs. They aren't attracting an audience that likes them per say, they are attracting an audience that finds them convenient. School RPs are goldmines of potential if used right- even if tropish, in fact. But they have to be done by players who want to make characters to learn and form interesting character dynamics (and yes, everyone wants this of course, but I'm saying "want to make" as in an active priority and pursuit of these things rather than just expecting them to fall on one's lap), for starters.
However, they also suffer from a few fundamental problems, most of which tends to pertain to the players who often engage in them:
A) School is boring. Most players going into school roleplays aren’t actually in it for the school aspects of the roleplay, and 90% of the type they are even less interested in respecting the hierarchies and dynamics inherent to the setting. Simply put, the characters and their actions are framed at odds with the setting and not playing into it most of the time, forcing GMs to either put the core concept of the RP aside or have to railroad players into basic engagement with it.
B) By nature school RPs have a lot of interrupted scenes. This may not seem too bad until you realize even just a few players may be engaging at entirely different paces, meaning it becomes an impossible task to really give players time to wrap up their interactions without leaving others to hang for ages. As result, school RPs tend to be rife with awkward small time skips and unfinished business.
C) Despite how character-centric they usually are, these RPs have a tendency to feature players who come in seemingly expecting to have their hand held all the time- they design characters ill-suited for prompting interaction or having unique or engaging problems or arcs, then do not attempt to engage with others, and after that say they aren't posting because they don't have anyone to interact with. If you have maybe one is 8-10 players who is actively trying to engage with others, this is not going to be something they can handle. The issue only gets more exacerbating when one adds extreme character freedom. All in all, the moment there isn't something specific happening, school RPs tend to quickly become zombiefied.
D) I was guilty of this myself once, but perhaps adding to what I wrote in (C), both players and GM have a tendency to expect others to behave not in accordance to what they are portraying but in accordance to what they imagine or stated they should. GMs often exploit GMPCs just to put themselves in an edge above the players, or expect players to react in a certain way and refuse to change course when players don't. Likewise, a lot of players expect other player's characters to have a particular unwarranted attitude towards theirs.
Of course, a lot of this is just my experience, but I think it speaks to the very nature of school RPs. They aren't attracting an audience that likes them per say, they are attracting an audience that finds them convenient. School RPs are goldmines of potential if used right- even if tropish, in fact. But they have to be done by players who want to make characters to learn and form interesting character dynamics (and yes, everyone wants this of course, but I'm saying "want to make" as in an active priority and pursuit of these things rather than just expecting them to fall on one's lap), for starters.
