I'm using this as my foundation for something in-depth that I'm creating with a bunch of friends. Since there's going to be money down on this project, I would love a general census on how others feel about role playing and their experiences!

I want to know the good things you've experienced while roleplaying. What are some of your favorite scenes? Did you meet lots of good friends? What genres did you have the best experience with?

The bad things - just the stuff that gets confusing, or makes you skip over other peoples posts, or even not get involved in a specific topic at all.

Lastly, the ugly things. This is the stuff that straight up made you leave, get into fights with others, or other stuff that you would like to share.

There's no limit on posting on this or anything - and if you come up with new ones, feel free to share!




For me, the good things out-weigh the bad - but that's completely obvious or else I wouldn't still be roleplaying. I love that roleplay lets me brush on my language skills, rekindle my creativity, and just let go for a little while into a completely new place - much like reading does.

[+] People
I've also met great people, made amazing friends that I have gotten the opportunity to meet in real life (heck, soon one of them will be my roommate!) and open my eyes to so many different cultures and experiences that I would never trade anything for.

[+] Character Development
I love being able to develop characters, and help others build onto their characters and really get into the essence of who their character is - it's like a psychoanalysis - though filled with giggles and discussions on where this character is really thinking on going. It's great!

[+] Inspiration
Roleplaying also brings out the researcher in me - since I love being detailed to a 'T' when creating a whole new world. So woo for that! Roleplaying will forever be a beloved hobby of mine, especially since also ties into my career field - so it's a win-win for me!


My bad experiences mainly have to do with newbish practices around me, and just other little opinionated tidbits. Feel free to disagree and discuss!

[+]Random OOC
It's a pretty big peeve of mine when someone randomly inserts OOC in an IC post - especially when they influence a character's actions. It also can seem like meta gaming, which is no fun, and highly annoying.

Example:
Boky metaphorically flips the table, because she's so done with this shit. Oh, she also stabs the orc in the chest with her rusty saber.

[+] Going M.I.A
Personally, it's extremely rude to just disappear off the face of the planet without notice in the middle of an RP. If it's a post by post setting, I can wait - it's no big deal, though I'll only do it for maybe 72 hours before giving up unless notified. If it's a chat based post though, nah. I'll just ignore that person in the scene or log off after a couple of hours and no response or recollection.

Please don't be that guy.

[+] Hopeless Romantics
Okay, I'm not going to lie. I am a HUGE SUCKER for a really good romance roleplay. But to me, those things take a lot of time and patience to build up, making in my opinion - Romance being the hardest genre to achieve well. Unless I make a character that in personality is an inexperienced 'loves to be in love' person - I do not jump into the hot seat suddenly. Characters who get together after three days is just weird to me unless it's a hook up, and I prefer to know a person's whole story first.

So for those that jump into gushy scenes quick -

sorry.



This is the stuff that will completely deter me from even joining a roleplay, or just give up trying in one.

[+]Meta Gaming Admins/DMS/GMS/Whatever
Look. I have experience in being in all these roles, and yes you do have to set the tone, the rules, and enforce them. Yes, your enemies have to be scary - and honestly, if you make your villains super OP I ain't even mad, because nothing ruins the mood for me more than a villain that seems too easy; but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the stuff like:

Example:

Boky kills Yokb with one mighty swing of her axe.

or

Boky banishes Yokb because she needs to set an example with no real explanation.

When I see people do these things to others, it just makes me broiling mad. Nothing will ruin a good roleplay faster than not listening to your players, and being a total dickhole to them.

[+]Multiple Admins - Suddenly dating...?
This one is a little weird, but it's happened to me so many times I just avoid things like this all together. Unless a roleplay is made by an already established couple, I've found that admins/gms/dms who suddenly start RL dating in the middle of a good roleplay ends up ruining it entirely. I'm not sure if they mean to (I'm actually pretty sure they don't.) but something about being in the honey moon phase of a new blossoming relationship makes their judgement completely cloudy - and you see their partner getting away with everything, or duties not being performed accurately because if they have different opinions, one will always side with the other even if they disagree just not to fight. It's really frustrating. I'm happy for you two, really - but it's like seeing your mom bring home your soon-to-be step dad.

On the opposite of that spectrum, it also gets extremely messy when they break up, causing players to get into all this personal drama and start picking sides on BS. Which, is the last thing I need to see in my life - since I never pick sides on that stuff. It just didn't work out - it's not my business.

[+] People who take characters too seriously
This by far is the most odd, and hilarious thing to me. I will say this as many times as I need to so that people can get it through their head.

YOU ARE NOT YOUR CHARACTER.

keep on reading that til it sticks.

But seriously, just stop right now if that's what you do. I get it - your character is your baby, you spent so much time developing them and shaping their very core - props! I'm happy for you! Though if MY CHARACTER has a problem with YOUR CHARACTER, I promise it has nothing to do with ME not liking YOU.

If my CHARACTER wins against YOUR CHARACTER, it's nothing against YOU - as well as that's vice versa.

So much drama happens just because people get super butthurt of their characters didn't get the result they wanted, and it's seriously the biggest turn off entirely to me. I will call people out. I will rage. I'll suddenly be filled with teenage angst I haven't felt since I was 15. Please, don't get your identity mixed up with something you've fictionally created - unless you literally based your character on yourself entirely - which shame on you, and you should invest in a Mary Sue test.

This is an amusing topic, just in concept. Because so many of us have extremes in each of these categories that we have experienced personally or there is enough common ground that we have observed them as well. I haven't the time at this moment to share a few, but I will here in the future.

Interesting topic. Got a few things I'd like to add.

The Good

To start off with just simply creating some amazing characters and seeing others enjoy my creation. It's nice when a roleplaying partner is willing to team up with your character because they want to explore them more. That little bit is just enough to make you feel like you are a part of the roleplay rather than an NPC. One of my favourite scenes was when another player knocked me off a building because of a parachute incident. It was fun and ended amusingly.

Following on from that I've had a few RPs where similar members have joined and it's nice to set out on a new journey with such members. You know their style and how they work so teaming up is quite the enjoyable task.

The Bad

Here is where the problems start. Most of the RPs I have entered have died. A few are due to GMs leaving and some are due to the drop off in players which have changed the dynamic of the RP. It just gets frustrating when you spent this effort and it all falls to shit. I know it's the nature of roleplaying but there needs to be at least one RP I join that doesn't end for silly reasons.

The next point I'll make is the way some people operate a roleplay. Some of the roleplays have had less than desirable players or GMs. One roleplay I left was due to the players speed posting and what started off as a cool concept, died, because people didn't have the restraint to not manage their post speed (multiple times per day). I don't know of many people that leave for a day due to to life and when they come back there's 2 pages to read up already.

This also comes down to the GM and their ability on when to manage the members or the story. So often I'll see a GM that doesn't know what they are doing, or runs the RP like a player. Starting a story with 1 character perspective doesn't always lay the scene for the others to enter, unnecessary time skips don't give people the opportunity to complete their interactions, and holding back the mystery can often leave people confused and uncertain with what to do. I'm not saying every secret in a roleplay should be explored and explained, but not being clear about it can risk having a player undermine that secret if they do something unexpected... which they will.

The Ugly

People...
Some of the worse things I have seen are just the people in a roleplay who have single handily ruined a roleplay. I've seen GMs swear at other members, I've seen people powerplay, metagame, godmod their characters and get all snarky when they are told that what they did was wrong, I have even seen someone in an OOC chat ask invasive sexual questions to a minor.

If I could have a roleplay that I enter where it lasts a while with no, or at most, a few minor problems... fine... but there always seems to be one arrogant asshole who has the sole desire of single handily ruin a roleplay.

@NuttsnBolts

I completely feel your pain with the dying. I lost a character I FINALLY GOT TO PLAY because the GM left. I never get to play them so it broke my heart. Ugh.

Very nice idea and I would be interested in what the bet was. Of course, that would be after the bet is settled, I doubt you want the bet influenced.

The Good

I love seeing the characters that people come up with and the worlds that the host build. Watching a group of characters interact can bring up some interesting situations. I enjoy creating the world, setting, and characters even more. My favorite part of role-playing is creating a world and seeing how people react to it, what characters they make, and how the world I started transforms. Another thing I enjoy is the friends you can make along the way. You never know who you might run into, or who they are, until after you have started role-playing with them or have created something interesting.

(Now, time to rant? not quite yet...)

The Bad

Poorly made or explained worlds hurt to see. Especially when they are based on such a good idea. I would much rather see a repeated design that is well made then a good idea thrown in the trash because the person that came up with it wasn't able to put the idea in their head on paper (or in this case on the forum) or they just didn't think it threw. Poorly played out characters are almost as bad.

Players dropping out or arguing OOC is another annoyance, as are GMs.

(Now I get to Rant, Right?)

The Ugly

People. People will always hold this spot on my list. Specifically the people who just don't work well with others. I'm talking about the host that don't bend, the players who think they are the center of the universe, or even worse, the host that if anything makes joining or participating in their game even harder when you try to point out a problem or mistake.

I have this one time (I won't use names) when a game was hosted by three people. The RP was an interesting Idea, the world was fairly well constructed and explained (though looking at it now I see one or two things that should have been explained better) and the characters looked like they would be fun. So I went to start playing. Made my character. The host didn't like some of it, so I changed or explained what I didn't like. Instead of working with me to allow my idea to work (which was actually quite easy to do) I was forced to make my character the weakest in the RP. While others had the ability to destroy buildings and city blocks, I was only slightly better then a normal person.

The next worst thing a host can do is ruin a players planned arc when they were obviously working with another player on it. For instance, in an unnamed RP, When I tried growing a character through interaction, the host caused an event that threw hours of planning with another player out the window. This lead to a creature described to be very powerful that fell in maybe 5 seconds IGT, while at the same time causing a panic that killed people. Things went downhill from there and when I pointed out this was a bad idea IN PM they got annoyed and ignored it only to have several others make similar comments in OOC.

The worst thing a host can do however is not know their own RP, and when a player points out a mistake change the world to make it fit, rather then change the mistake.

Ahem, enough about host. Now onto other players.

Where to begin? Oh. There. Players making characters that are not only based on, but meant to be, a character from somewhere else and they change some key element. For instance, having Link (from LoZ) trying to conquer the world, or Mario (from Mario) actually be some kind of [Redacted] that hides it all of the time, only to have the character break cover in the very first post. The next worst thing is when the player obviously doesn't understand their character (yes, this happens even when players make OCs). If you make a character, you should know who they are and what they would do. Someone should be able to put you in a situation completely unrelated to the RP, and you would be able to have that character interact with its surroundings without having to change anything about your character, or breaking your character.

Oh, I'm out of stuff to say off of the top of my head? Guess I'll come back later and edit if anything else occurs to me.

Hmmm...most of what was said already I am in total agreement with, so I'll hit on a few brief points that stick out to me...



I love a well developed character with a lot of layers that pull you into their story, unraveling their own deep-seeded history one post at a time (rather than front loading their entire story). I am a huge advocate of well written character descriptions, but not over doing it to the point where I can't use a bit of my own imagination to fill in the blanks.



With regard to character descriptions, I don't mind having a photo attached to compliment a well-written description, but when it is used as a replacement, then I find that to be a let down and frankly it shows laziness on the authors part.

Also, I'm not a fan of using different color fonts to distinguish between dialogue, as I find it to be distracting. However, I can tolerate it as long as the colors contrast well enough that I don't have to strain my eyes to read it (sorry @Zardoric, lol...I now you love that dark purple...). And also, I can't only handle the dialogue being one color. I don't want someone's post to look like a Christmas tree O.o



Hmmm, Probably when people disappear (especially a GM!) with no rhyme or reason for their absence, allowing the RP to slowly diminish. Life happens and we ALL deal with crap every day, but if you can't post then please just bow out gracefully and let everyone else know. If you make a nasty habit of joining and leaving RPs, then it will eventually kick you in the ass and no one will want you around.

Here are but a few I have to start off with as this topic builds in time.

The Good

There are many, many, many roleplayers within this community, some more at some tiers than others, but this is not one of those locales where you only find certain types of people and style. Diversity is plentiful, which in truth is rare to come by in the roleplaying world of old, wherein you very much had certain enclaves and nearly all were distant from each other. My experience, but others I know say similar things now.

There's no lack of talent, expertise or creativity, you just need find it and hope those people dedicate to the story at hand as well.

The Bad

The Guild is vastly overpopulated with anime, fandom and slice-of-life stories. There's nothing inherently wrong with roleplaying this way, but their trending nature makes them a siphon from original material and original content. Many require explicit and oft intricate knowledge of the scenario at hand to function and are not lacking in vastness, making any even remotely interesting idea too difficult to even approach normally even if one were not familiar to the series. With regard to the slice-of-life settings, there's tons upon tons of "school" environments with almost identical plots for example; they become so mired down in their own massive numbers that the particularly good ones get overlooked - but that is my experience.

The Ugly

The simple truth is that people vanish or become disinterested without rationale or explanation. One day the story and characters are moving along, then the next, a player does not post, continues to not post, then continues to be elusive, nonresponsive or they finally admit they are no longer involved. By this time, several days, other players begin to drop the roleplay, rather than making the more rational decision to stay and keep their numbers up. Even if the Game Master leaves, nothing changes in truth; the plot can go on, just with a player leading the front as a de fact Game Master. But such is not the norm here and people are content to let things die.

@The Harbinger of Ferocity You hit "The Bad" right on the nail, dude!

Well said my friend.

I appreciate the agreement, @Rawk. There's a fine line in that area currently, as I can understand anyone's want to roleplay a certain thing and or a certain way, but I am the sort who is all for original content. Of course it will be inspired or very similar to other content, as are all aspects of creativity, but it has a newness and dynamicness to it. You're building a world, story, characters and more. Why stymie that by rehashing already established stories when there are so many others doing the exact same thing?

That's just been my sentiment on the matter for a long time.

@The Harbinger of Ferocity I echo your sentiment on fandoms. The issue I see with them is that they can take alot of work to grasp the material required to engage with the story. I use books/tv/anime as inspirations all the time in my own work, but don't expect other players to enjoy or bother to consume the same media.

What fandom can offer though, in my opinion, is a world. A roleplay that uses a setting from a particular work of fiction, without using the events or characters, can be enjoyable. It's also much easier to read up on the setting of a work than to consume all of its events, lowering the bar significantly for player entry. If one doesn't just end up including all the relevant facts in their original OOC post. (which they should)

As for slice-of-life? I think its much harder than most people think to keep one of these going. I see this perception that slice-of-life means 'drop some characters in a scenario and watch'. These types of RPs still need regular prodding from the GM to introduce new sources of drama when things get stale.

I like this. I can get on board.



I started off RPing in MMO settings. I was playing City of Heroes when I was younger, and I stumbled on a group of people talking and interacting with each other. I didn't know what was going on so I pestered one of them, and they in turn introduced me into the wonderful world of RPing.

Now before you say anything, I know that RPing in a game and RPing on a site like this may SEEM different, but it's quite the same. The only major difference is on here, you can post and then log off and return later, whereas you need to be in the actual game to be able to RP.

Be that as it may, I've had lots of good things in RPing on MMOs as a starter. I've made a few close friends who I still play with (not necessariyl RP with, but I play other games with them).

I think the biggest good to come out of it was how I expanded my writing. I LOVE writing. Love it so much. I love creating characters, places, things, worlds and establishing them and expanding them. I was able to increase my skills in writing from all the RPing I did. I learned what to do and what not to do when making characters, I learned how to emote better, and I made some good friends out of playing with people.



While RPing on here and in other games, I've seen some bad things. The biggest thing I have noticed is when people up and leave with no notice, other than long periods of silence. I mean, I get it, and I've said this in countless other threads, Real Life comes first in every regard, but some notice is appreciated. Heck, even if you have to disband the game because of RL, at least say something so I'm not on here checking everyday for a post.

I also have the biggest pet peeve of Mary Sues. But not just the character concepts themselves, I also don't like it when people accuse others of being a Mary/Marty Sue because they don't understand the character. I've been accused of this, and in some ways, I can see where they were coming from, but other times I can't. Being a "special snowflake" is one thing, but no one wants to be a copy of something else (unless you are playing that character in that specific setting). Being different is great but being REALLY different just for the sake of it is cringe-worthy. But I hate it when I am told my character is a Mary Sue because I added something to make him/her unique.

Lastly, I don't enjoy being put in uncomfortable situations without my say so. This can be violence, sex, etc. I don't know if anyone on here knows what ERP is, or Erotic Roleplay, but in the MMO RP community, it is a thing. Now, I don't mind ERP at all, I've done it a few times, but it's always been with my go-ahead. When someone decides they wanna "do" my character without my say so, I get defensive and a little pissed off. Same with character deaths. Deaths can be great for storytelling, but unless I say "I want my character dead" DO NOT kill off my character!



I have a story to share with everyone. I've never told anyone about this thing that happened to me, save for some friends, but this is the reason why I no longer play MMOs, and why I don't RP on them anymore.

I won't say the name of the game, but I was RPing in this game for a bit now. I was in a group of RPers, I was enjoying myself. We were a small, somewhat close group, but things were going pretty smoothly.

What I didn't know was this game's RP community was one of the worst I have ever seen. There were vicious rumors going around, insults, drama like you wouldn't believe, all on the community website for anyone to see.

Side note for reference. I don't use voice chat. Or I should say, I RARELY use it. I don't like doing it, for my own personal reasons. And I get where some people come from, but at the same time I am a person and I deserve the respect others get.

Now, I don't know how it started. To this day, I still question it, but some guy in our group noted that I never speak in the groups's voice chat. He went on to say how he didn't believe I was a girl, I was lying to the group, and proceeded to call me a surplus of names. Now I expected the group to back me up. Was I wrong! Instead, most lashed out at me, being quite rude and vile towards me. They even took this out of roleplay drama and inserted it into the RP. Meaning they all of a sudden wanted nothing to do with my character, despite anything!

Lots of drama ensued. I was called a whore because I was talking to a fellow group mate about doing a relationship RP with him (he was the leader's best friend) and I was called a slut for it. They went on the community site and called me out in front of everyone on there.

Long story short, I ended up leaving the game and the site. I went to another game, but they found me over there and started this drama bandwagon again. So I left permanently.

Now...I am not saying everyone is like this. I know there are GOOD RPers in the MMO worlds out there, but I just cannot bring myself to do it anymore after the vileness I witnessed in this game.

So that is what brought me to RPing on sites like this. I still wanted to RP and I needed a way to get my fix. So here I am.

Moral of the story: Be respectful of others. If you have questions. Ask. Don't talk about others behind their back because you don't understand something. Be kind. If you don't like something I or someone else did, say something instead of voicing it to anyone else. And most of all, if you're going to be a jackass, expect a bitch slap in return :)