I didn't read through the whole thread but still wanted to gripe about something that bothers me sometimes in fights.



Glad to have that out of my system.

Ever have that moment when you players a MULTIPLE CHOICE on what party to start in a rp? And then half the rp backs out immediately because they shot themselves in the foot and try to blame it on you? That just happened to me. Not happy about it at all. Half finished a Cs, made an OOC, and thought out some of the stories just in time to have it all get thrown into the garbage can because people don't know what they want.

I didn't read through the whole thread but still wanted to gripe about something that bothers me sometimes in fights...

This is why when a fight arises, I always have a nice discussion about what should happen with the other person. usually in Pms or over skype. I haven't ever needed to take it to a GM.

<Snipped quote by The 4 Winds>

This is why when a fight arises, I always have a nice discussion about what should happen with the other person. usually in Pms or over skype. I haven't ever needed to take it to a GM.

Yep, I've had the same experience in about 8-9 years of RP'ing. Collaboration is key to a RP, so I find it best to engage whomever you are dealing with directly so that you can air out your issues (if there are any) and see where each person is at. I must be lucky, because when it comes to it, I've yet to encounter another RP'er who has issues with their character losing. In fact, in most cases everyone is really eager to have their guy/gal lose, because it's pretty solid way of character building.

The only "fights" I've ever gotten into has ironically been with my D20 group, which is mostly composed of RL friends. Sometimes, you can't handle your mate wining, I guess

There is a tactical advantage to letting yourself get beaten though, @Vor. The second time you encounter each other, you get to play the "You won last time, now I win this time" card!

But it's not just you, people have been pretty chill about losing with me too. I think everyone is okay with it, it's just how you lose that really matters. If I'm playing a bruiser, I have no problem being "outsmarted" as an example.

@The 4 Winds Yeah, nothing kills the drive to keep with a roleplay when you are dealing with people who treat roleplaying as a video game where they're the protaganist in their minds and so have to always win. It takes the stakes out of the situation and just ruins everyone's enjoyment.

I honestly don't mind my characters losing and in some cases dying in a roleplay. It can give emotional weight and drive narrative.

Just to add on to this little discussion that's going on here, I don't mind my character losing fights and all but don't expect me to just sit there and do whatever you want when you haven't discussed it with me first cause that's not cool either o.o

I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but a lot of RPs I've been in seem to have died off lately, and many of them before the ten post mark is met or, in some cases, even before CS' are completed. There are a ton of different reasons this could be happening, but it's still nothing short of dispiriting and demotivating when it just keeps happening. I haven't been able to find energy to post for the few things I'm in that are still moving along now partly because of this.

@Graviloquence

Holidays are coming up. It could just be that people are tied up with IRL stuff. I wouldn't count any of those RPs out until January.

@BrokenPromise For a couple that's probably true, but the majority of the ones that have ended for me are 1x1s, some of which had been going for over a year. The people in those contacted me directly, most of them mentioning being too busy to continue or that they'd simply lost interest. And while I understand and respect those reasons, it's just managed to happen more or less all at once.

Why are some people cool OOC, but total retards on third-party chats?

Just because there exists a maximum timeframe of how long you have between posts does not mean you should always use the full extent of it. I can sympathize with being preoccupied with real life, that I take no issue with for the most part, but when you always respond after being prompted constantly that your "Post is coming, soon!" then fail to deliver, always awaiting the final deadline, there is an issue. Likewise, I can understand that some Game Masters are more willing to put up with such behavior than others, but I am not; my patience can only wear so thin and I see excuses as little more than that - excuses. The argument of "advance the story anyway" does not work when others too will not budge, trying to provide more grace than is due.

It is one thing to waste the time of say, another person, but several others? Frustrating. Some of us do legitimately look forward to our limited time off to roleplay, write and be generally creative. College I can understand being "busy", but it has nothing on some of the work conditions others of us put up with on a routine and even prolonged, at times random basis. I have said it before, but if I am away for days - even a week at times - from the internet and in the middle of the wilderness, still managing to find time to write when not working, I am fairly unforgiving for it being a stock reply.

Correct yourselves.

TFW people plagiarize the various shit you do on here

and are too lazy to even make it seem like it wasn't stolen content

makes me



can u not?

TFW people plagiarize the various shit you do on here

and are too lazy to even make it seem like it wasn't stolen content

Is using the same character sheet format really "plagiarism," though?

Unless you mean actual plagiarism but I didn't see it in the brief and admittedly lazy scan I did of your post history.

<Snipped quote by HalfOfLancelot>Is using the same character sheet format really "plagiarism," though?

Unless you mean actual plagiarism but I didn't see it in the brief and admittedly lazy scan I did of your post history.

Eh, I'd argue that, but it's been a recurrent thing that's happened in the past.

Have had a character blatantly copied not a few months ago, I think a few sheets* , and a few sections of a character copied for a female character of the same concept. Words and all. It's annoying to deal with, perhaps not as often as I'm making it sound, but any form of plagiarism is shitty to deal with - it's like a thing that occurs once every few months.

Admittedly, receipts should have been gathered (as one instance, the individual erased the character entirely), but I didn't have the mind to do so in the moment. Can only take my word for it, but, yeah, it's been more than just a CS formatting. This one instance kinda just tipped the scale.

<sub>*if the sheet formatting, itself, isn't as generic as they usually come, I'd go as far as calling it plagiarism if it's taken without permission; but, I guess it can be argued that that might be an extreme. I mean we all use gifs, memes, and various pictures we find on the internet without permission, so. *shrug* I'll toss it up in the air, but it's an annoying thing to deal with when one decides to strike something up that looks aesthetically pleasing, is fun to fill out, but still retains enough simplicity that it's easy to fill out, and is also not very conventional in terms of CSes (essentially, just something someone's taken their time to work hard on writing up) someone just decides, "oh that looks cool," and takes it.

I think this is a different conversation, however, and will stop there so as not to fill this thread with off-topic conversation.</sub>

I'd be simultaneously flattered and disgusted if someone outright stole a segment from my character sheets. Didn't know anyone around here had that sort of audacity, tbh.

Thanks for clarifying, and sorry that it happened to you.

@pugbutter

It's cool, bro. It's nice to be hip-checked for jumping on here and just mindlessly complaining when you're angry, so thanks for that. Kinda mellows you out and makes you go, "Whoa, is... is this justified bitching?"

But, yeah, it was... a surprising endeavor to deal with. Like a simultaneous "my character's good enough for someone to steal," and, "wtf that's MINE, how dare you."

And here's my bitch for the day: when an IntChk or even an established OOC thread looks fucking awesome, but the players who have applied for it don't understand how tone and atmosphere work, so their characters don't match it at all. So basically it's not the RP itself which sucks but the characters who belong...somewhere else; who would be good in a different RP, with a different mood to it.

Generally I'm talking super-serious grimdark tragic past both-my-parents-died-when-I-was-three stuff in a campy tongue-in-cheek setting, and vice-versa. More specifically I'm talking about an RP I was gonna join until I read the character sheets. Because sometimes you see trouble before it arrives and just have to duck out of its trajectory. It's like worcestershire on ice cream or Hershey's syrup on a perfect, medium-rare filet mignon; it's good on other shit but it doesn't belong here.

TL;DR Wasted potential makes me sad.

To be fair it is exceedingly easy to just hang around a couple of days, feel the waters, and if that doesn't settle well with ya, just leave.

There are dozens of cringey things I for example do not approve but this was never about setting examples , but having fun, so let it be.

However, I will put forth my bitching two cents. I dislike people who try to undermine the gm decissions just to keep the self-perceived snowflake coolness of their character. Moreso if they throw snide meta remarks in the IC.

It is kinda obvious and annoying.

In the RP community I perused before this one, that was called "teleposing." I was accused of doing it, and I didn't realize it was so annoying until someone did it to me, but it has both benign and malignant faces.

The beauty of the "teleposed" insult is that if you call it out and attempt to confront it, they accuse you of metagaming, since you're getting fussy over an internalized thought within the character, not an external action or dialogue which can be construed by your avatar. But in theory there's a line to be drawn between, "My character does not like his character, or the position they're in together," and, "I'm frustrated with something this player just did so I'm gonna take it out on him by having my character think his sucks. Gee, don't you feel shitty now?" This line is blurred easily among people in whom the broader IC/OOC boundary, too, is blurred; the people who roleplay as prettier, more talented versions of themselves, Mary Sues and the like, who will take offense to critique of their characters because in essence you're critiquing them personally. Then the people who take writing seriously enough to care about what they produce, but not seriously enough to receive and accept criticism, whether from the player or the character, because they know what they're doing with their own intellectual property, and outside opinions will be wrong no matter what, and they're the serious deep artist who knows more about writing than you do.

But then, sometimes a cigar is a cigar, and sometimes it's just an IC conflict which needs to evolve organically.

So even though it felt shitty to glare through what were obvious OOC grudges materializing as IC contempt, which I view as blatant metagaming, it's a tricky situation to actually resolve. I for one know that I was just roleplaying an asshole character who kept his insulting thoughts to himself, not a mouthpiece for contempt toward the other roleplaying party.