JadeGreen17
Chimeric Spirit
It might just be my personal bad luck; but it seems to me like the world of RPing is built on being active for awhile before gradually decreasing your turnaround time before completely vanishing, and I think the longest I've managed to keep an RP going was about two months, with most RPs I've done lasting only a few days when they were clearly laid out to be long-runners.
If you're lucky you might hear from them that their cousin's girlfriend's stepdad's dog ran away from home and they were going to be out of town for a couple of days to help to find where it ran off to or something to that effect, and them promising to return in a couple of days to pick up the story but never keeping said promise. Though more often than not people seem to just prefer to vanish and never return-- or even worse-- return excited to continue months later when all parties involved have completely forgotten about the story at hand and moved on to other things.
I hear a lot of people say that sometimes they will get busy with school and/or work and be gone for a couple days, and I am understanding of that. I myself might be on the more active side of roleplaying, and I personally have had to put RPs on hold for a couple days during the busier parts of my life. But it's never more than that, and I always diligently return to pick up the story as soon as it is convenient for me.
Just as bad--maybe even worse-- are the people that don't vanish, but have a short attention span and are constantly growing bored with RPs. Just as soon as an RP is starting up; the character establishment is out of the way and the world and storyline are set up and you're just getting to the good parts of the story. Then the person decides they're bored or not really interested in the story. Now I could forgive this if after two or three false starts you got the ball rolling for real, but these people (Not naming any names here) have racked up a dozen or more incomplete RPs.
Personally these are my thoughts: If you're in an RP, you have a responsibility to the other RPers to continue to provide responses. If you're not enjoying the story or know you won't be able to post for a long period of time, then you need to inform the others in OOC, that way arrangements can be made so that the others can continue and isn't held up by your mysterious disappearance, and if your character already had a key stake in the plot, you can arrange what will happen with them and how the story will continue without your input.
So what I want to hear are your stories from either end. Have you ever flaked out of an RP? Why? Have you ever had to deal with a really flaky RPer which would disappear for long stretches of time and constantly hold up the story?
If you're lucky you might hear from them that their cousin's girlfriend's stepdad's dog ran away from home and they were going to be out of town for a couple of days to help to find where it ran off to or something to that effect, and them promising to return in a couple of days to pick up the story but never keeping said promise. Though more often than not people seem to just prefer to vanish and never return-- or even worse-- return excited to continue months later when all parties involved have completely forgotten about the story at hand and moved on to other things.
I hear a lot of people say that sometimes they will get busy with school and/or work and be gone for a couple days, and I am understanding of that. I myself might be on the more active side of roleplaying, and I personally have had to put RPs on hold for a couple days during the busier parts of my life. But it's never more than that, and I always diligently return to pick up the story as soon as it is convenient for me.
Just as bad--maybe even worse-- are the people that don't vanish, but have a short attention span and are constantly growing bored with RPs. Just as soon as an RP is starting up; the character establishment is out of the way and the world and storyline are set up and you're just getting to the good parts of the story. Then the person decides they're bored or not really interested in the story. Now I could forgive this if after two or three false starts you got the ball rolling for real, but these people (Not naming any names here) have racked up a dozen or more incomplete RPs.
Personally these are my thoughts: If you're in an RP, you have a responsibility to the other RPers to continue to provide responses. If you're not enjoying the story or know you won't be able to post for a long period of time, then you need to inform the others in OOC, that way arrangements can be made so that the others can continue and isn't held up by your mysterious disappearance, and if your character already had a key stake in the plot, you can arrange what will happen with them and how the story will continue without your input.
So what I want to hear are your stories from either end. Have you ever flaked out of an RP? Why? Have you ever had to deal with a really flaky RPer which would disappear for long stretches of time and constantly hold up the story?
-Friend on discord. Has never managed to carry an RP more than a week or two. Some of the RPs we've run have been insanely fun and had really interesting setups but this person always manages to lose interest.
-Another Fourm RP. Was going great. The fourms went down for a couple days and when they came back up everyone had vanished. Despite waiting patiently for over a month not a single RPer returned.
-Fantasy RP on discord. Was a part of a server. I created a character in a fairly exhaustive CS. The opening scene of the story played out and then everyone simultaneously flaked out and vanished.
-Scifi RP on discord. This was exceptionally infuriating as I had to create an entire civilization and several characters to participate in this. We had just gotten through our first space battle which was meant to be a taste of things to come and was absolutely amazing as many characters utilized unorthodox tactics. Our main characters got separated from the fleet and were stuck on a ship together far away from home off on an adventure and everyone disappeared.
-Scifi RP skype buddy. We created a really detailed scifi universe and characters in it, and wrote our characters meeting and escaping on a ship. Then the guy vanished and though he was online a lot after that he never responded to my messages ever again.
-Superhero RP. I was on a superhero RP discord server. After creating CS and writing the opening scene everyone abandoned a really interesting RP without ever giving a reason. What was really infuriating about this was people continued to talk in the OOC chats for weeks, bantering on about RL stuff and posting memes. Something I wouldn't have a problem with except the actual RP never got continued, and when I tried to ask everyone why we weren't continuing the RP they just dodged the question.
-Nightmare Hunter RP. This site. The only reason this one lasted as long as it did was because I kept pinging people constantly reminding them to post. But eventually folks fell into the habit of saying they were going to post but never actually posting.
-Another Fantasy RP buddy on a fourm. I had been consistently RPing with this girl for about two months, and I thought for once I might actually finish a roleplay. My characters were on THE HALLWAY TO THE FINAL BOSS when she said she had to go eat dinner and that we would be finishing the story that night, but she never returned. As of me writing this post its been three years and her last activity was still Febuary of 2015.
-Another Fourm RP. Was going great. The fourms went down for a couple days and when they came back up everyone had vanished. Despite waiting patiently for over a month not a single RPer returned.
-Fantasy RP on discord. Was a part of a server. I created a character in a fairly exhaustive CS. The opening scene of the story played out and then everyone simultaneously flaked out and vanished.
-Scifi RP on discord. This was exceptionally infuriating as I had to create an entire civilization and several characters to participate in this. We had just gotten through our first space battle which was meant to be a taste of things to come and was absolutely amazing as many characters utilized unorthodox tactics. Our main characters got separated from the fleet and were stuck on a ship together far away from home off on an adventure and everyone disappeared.
-Scifi RP skype buddy. We created a really detailed scifi universe and characters in it, and wrote our characters meeting and escaping on a ship. Then the guy vanished and though he was online a lot after that he never responded to my messages ever again.
-Superhero RP. I was on a superhero RP discord server. After creating CS and writing the opening scene everyone abandoned a really interesting RP without ever giving a reason. What was really infuriating about this was people continued to talk in the OOC chats for weeks, bantering on about RL stuff and posting memes. Something I wouldn't have a problem with except the actual RP never got continued, and when I tried to ask everyone why we weren't continuing the RP they just dodged the question.
-Nightmare Hunter RP. This site. The only reason this one lasted as long as it did was because I kept pinging people constantly reminding them to post. But eventually folks fell into the habit of saying they were going to post but never actually posting.
-Another Fantasy RP buddy on a fourm. I had been consistently RPing with this girl for about two months, and I thought for once I might actually finish a roleplay. My characters were on THE HALLWAY TO THE FINAL BOSS when she said she had to go eat dinner and that we would be finishing the story that night, but she never returned. As of me writing this post its been three years and her last activity was still Febuary of 2015.