Experiences Why did the roleplay you were in die?

[StAmuriah]

I feel you there and I hate it when that happens. A part of the fun is torturing your characters XD

But anyway, another thing I remembered is that someone gets bored and ends up trying to rush through the RP because people are going too slow for them, so they end up destroying chances of having their characters interact with anyone due to be a few days ahead and being in a completely different area.

100% agreed. Rushing things is ne er advised. But there certainly is a difference from development and stalling. At some point description and exposition is only an attempt to fill space to meet a word count quota. Another reason why while I respect everyone wanting little or more writing per response, I personally do not. I simply ask that you pull your weight. I dont want one word quips or 3 paragraphs ramblings like the Sxsrlet Letter. Organic conversations that have shirt or long responses I find so much more engaging without always having to have clavoinet interspection. Its not always necessary.

 

[neonink]

It takes a lot of time and juice to keep writing posts even once or twice a week. The GM and the players need to keep at it. Also keep the expectations lower than face to face gaming. If you have to write ten paras to even get the idea across, it's too much. Simpler character sheets help too. I've given up on games I'm running when none of the players have posted in weeks and then someone posts. "I shoot at the bad guy." or something equally lame. Keep the story fresh. Keep it moving. Minimize the die rolls. Waiting days for that last roll to come in can kill all the sense of action.

Just my $.02

 

[Merciless Medic]

100% agreed. Rushing things is ne er advised. But there certainly is a difference from development and stalling. At some point description and exposition is only an attempt to fill space to meet a word count quota. Another reason why while I respect everyone wanting little or more writing per response, I personally do not. I simply ask that you pull your weight. I dont want one word quips or 3 paragraphs ramblings like the Sxsrlet Letter. Organic conversations that have shirt or long responses I find so much more engaging without always having to have clavoinet interspection. Its not always necessary.

Ah-hah! Another reason why the RP dies! Too much exposition and purple prose for simple or casual RPers to decipher so they either feel inadequate or uncomfortable. XD Or the other way around where there isn't enough for people to go off on.

But I do agree that conversations with people that seem to drag on and it is just dialogue and no action interspersed between spoken words to traverse the plot is just stalling. While having funny and cute conversations for our characters to mesh together and learn about each other is great, all talk and no action can kill a group RP. Much less 1x1's because that happens all the time.

Another one is just too many characters. Too many things going on. Too many to keep track of. And also too many times having to reference a character sheet in another thread due to the sheer amount of characters. Or having a person play way too many characters. Two things can happen:

1) The player playing a lot of characters ends up burning themselves out and then having to leave the RP. If their character is an integral part of the plot, it is pretty much dead.

2) Other players start to get confused and end up needing to reference back to character sheets. While trying to make two full classes, teachers, villains, and staff for a high school RP (like My Hero Academia for example) or Pokemon where you have lots of monsters to control, that is bound to happen. But when you have three people playing 5 characters from each person and there is no need to have that many characters, it gets really confusing. At least for me, that is.

 

[StAmuriah]

Ah-hah! Another reason why the RP dies! Too much exposition and purple prose for simple or casual RPers to decipher so they either feel inadequate or uncomfortable. XD Or the other way around where there isn't enough for people to go off on.

But I do agree that conversations with people that seem to drag on and it is just dialogue and no action interspersed between spoken words to traverse the plot is just stalling. While having funny and cute conversations for our characters to mesh together and learn about each other is great, all talk and no action can kill a group RP. Much less 1x1's because that happens all the time.

Another one is just too many characters. Too many things going on. Too many to keep track of. And also too many times having to reference a character sheet in another thread due to the sheer amount of characters. Or having a person play way too many characters. Two things can happen:

1) The player playing a lot of characters ends up burning themselves out and then having to leave the RP. If their character is an integral part of the plot, it is pretty much dead.

2) Other players start to get confused and end up needing to reference back to character sheets. While trying to make two full classes, teachers, villains, and staff for a high school RP (like My Hero Academia for example) or Pokemon where you have lots of monsters to control, that is bound to happen. But when you have three people playing 5 characters from each person and there is no need to have that many characters, it gets really confusing. At least for me, that is.

YES!!! I end up playing too many roles and I get burned out because the other person can't be bothered!!!

 

[Jannah]

So I have this system I do every time I decide to come back here. I go to the 1x1 interest check and reply to the freshest and /or loneliest RP that no one has joined yet. I figure "hey, if no one wants to play with them then I'm certainly up for the challenge." Problem is that No matter who I play with I always run into the same problem:

People are too concerned with characters and likeability and not the story making them more reactive than proactive.

The RP's that I've join 80% of the time die because my partner is more interested in making a character that wants to wax rhapsody about their character, state of mind, past, hopes, dreams, fears, wounds, morning rituals, etc inside an internal monologue rather than figure out what the goal, problem or quest is that needs to be done. I feel that partners in generall are more invested in their characters that they forget that a story requires them to put these perfect specimens in troubling situations that will test their charcaters actual merit. Then when met with conflict be it personal, verbal, physical, internal, external they have a tendency to fold and act out with much angst. Lots of reactions to problems rather actions to solve them. It gets tedious and boring, I really do try and help the situation a lot by playing as many roles as is necessary in order to create setting, a cast with 3D personalities on the fly and a plot that is plausible enough for both of us to get invested in, but then I get used as a crutch to create the conflict for them to react to, resolve it and then move on; rinse, repeat. I am by no means saying I am an amazing writer at all, but I feel many people come to places like RP nation to engage in a an escapist fantasy to play characters they enjoy. The problem is they don't have the instinct or the know-how to put forth the other crucial parts it takes to make a story besides characters. You need a plot, a setting and themes to anchor them down. This isn't an MMORPG for your to let your OC's just run around and cause havoc. And even in group RP's where something like that is more plausible where you theoretically have a better chance of having more people to bolster the story instead you end up babysitting an entire group of literary LARPers rather than a group of writers. You don't need to be good, but my point simply is:

-interesting characters are not always likeable, only sympathetic. In fact, the more interesting characters are unlikable and watching them grow is what is captivating. In a word, Pathos.

-the point of a story, let alone partnered RP's is to have strangers get into strange problems together that they need to solve. By definition conflict is inevitable. particularly external. At some point characters, and by extension, the writers will be put in an uncomfortable situation they need to get out of and solve. Getting messy is part of the fun.

-Character foils are more interesting than bubby-buddy characters. The buddy-cop trope is proof. Good cop, bad cop routine and how they play off each other. Characters that are opposites so that way they can test the other character's moral truth's and ethical integrity while trying to solve a conflict. They don't hate each other, but being agreeable.... it's just plane boring. Everything going according to plan. Might as well read a math book to see how to solve any problem devoid of personality.

*sigh* I'm sorry. I know I must sound crazy and demanding, but all I'm trying to say is that rps, especially my rps, die because they get boring. They get boring because characters have nothing to do. They have nothing to do because everything is awesome. And everything is awesome because either A- no one wants to be disagreeable or B- playing with someone who is or who is playing a disagreeable character is uncomfortable because of the emotional investment in the character anyone is playing. No one is willing to sacrifice their feelings for the sake of an interesting story. I'm not saying teo hell with triggers. I'm saying no one likes being disliked. But that's why we like our media. Because we watch characters go through some mess and come out the other end. When RP writers do it THAT is the secret ingredient they are missing.

I feel like you and I would make decent partners some day because I 100% agree with this rant. It's far more fun to make characters suffer, especially since they usually grow in the process.

 

[StAmuriah]

I feel like you and I would make decent partners some day because I 100% agree with this rant. It's far more fun to make characters suffer, especially since they usually grow in the process.

Feel free to hit me up any time down for any story to do any job. Thats why I call myself a RP Merc.

 

[Jannah]

Ah-hah! Another reason why the RP dies! Too much exposition and purple prose for simple or casual RPers to decipher so they either feel inadequate or uncomfortable. XD Or the other way around where there isn't enough for people to go off on.

But I do agree that conversations with people that seem to drag on and it is just dialogue and no action interspersed between spoken words to traverse the plot is just stalling. While having funny and cute conversations for our characters to mesh together and learn about each other is great, all talk and no action can kill a group RP. Much less 1x1's because that happens all the time.

Another one is just too many characters. Too many things going on. Too many to keep track of. And also too many times having to reference a character sheet in another thread due to the sheer amount of characters. Or having a person play way too many characters. Two things can happen:

1) The player playing a lot of characters ends up burning themselves out and then having to leave the RP. If their character is an integral part of the plot, it is pretty much dead.

2) Other players start to get confused and end up needing to reference back to character sheets. While trying to make two full classes, teachers, villains, and staff for a high school RP (like My Hero Academia for example) or Pokemon where you have lots of monsters to control, that is bound to happen. But when you have three people playing 5 characters from each person and there is no need to have that many characters, it gets really confusing. At least for me, that is.

On another site I'm on that is based in the HP universe there's members with like 20+, even 30+ characters. One even had 50+ at one point before dropping a bunch. A trend I noticed with these members is that either their characters are all decent quality but never get written(usually due to lack of time) or they're all carbon copies of each other. The member with 50+ definitely fit into the latter category. Her posts were all garbage and poorly written in a few minutes tops. Eventually she finally accepted that she just doesn't have the time to keep up with that many so she dropped about half of them.

 

[Daisie]

But anyway, another thing I remembered is that someone gets bored and ends up trying to rush through the RP because people are going too slow for them, so they end up destroying chances of having their characters interact with anyone due to be a few days ahead

I know this isn't what you're talking about here, but it reminded me of an encounter.

I once roleplayed with someone who rushed things so much that the entire plot (a pretty bare-bones one) was finished in 2 pages. And some of that space was probably used for planning.

I was... very confused. And a little ticked off, lol. My character did basically nothing while their character fought some giant creature. I think she fired her gun a few times. I'm still very confused, and wish I hadn't left the PM so I could look back on it to try and figure out what the heck they wanted, lol

 

[Mollberg]

The GM didn't deal with any of the massive amount of drama that happened OOC, preferring to shove his fingers down his ears and hoping that it'd all just magically disappear if he ignored it long enough.