I forgot to use commas in that sentence and now I feel like the world is crashing down around me.

oh

Oh boy oh boy oh boy

I was pre-Guildfall. I had experienced Free, Casual, Advanced, and 1x1 before the site crashed and only recently came back (like a month ago or something). That said, this opinion may be outdated (5 years outdated) but it is mine and it holds the reasons why I do not meddle with most of this site.

I participated in 1 free RP and it was hell. I had barely made my character and the rp was already well on its way on the adventure of which by the time I was ready, was 5 pages long (it had been active for maybe 12 hours). I tried politely stepping out, giving up my spot, and was hammered by other players demanding why I felt I was better than them. I hadn't even posted; I was so overwhelmed and couldn't keep up with the pace. It was so chaotic, I had no idea what was what or who was who or even what the goal was anymore. But I was the asshole for leaving and got chewed out. So. Never again.

I spent most of my time in causal and met the greatest people there, participated in the best rps with imaginative worlds. It is the best place, in my opinion. I have not returned because I can't handle a group RP right now. My time is limited and I need it for items I've committed to already.

Advanced is filled with elitists. I tried joining some rps to "play with the big boys" so I can improve my writing (you can improve only so much with others on the same level as you, I felt the need to challenge myself) and was rejected many times and most in not-so-nice ways that really killed my confidence in writing. So, f*ck advanced never again. I took some classes and courses instead to improve my writing.

I live and breathe in 1x1s now. But I'm rather choosy and tend to go to you rather than set up an advertisement. It is a mixed bag, though, and you have to set up boundaries, limitations, and expectations right off the bat. That said, I have a few people who I love to RP with and tend to go to them first with ideas before I branch out to new (new to me) players.

I have had no experience with other parts of the site and have little interest in them.

Wow, this actually is a great thread to read, especially for someone like me who is only 2.5 months in since joining Guild, so thanks to @HaleyTheRandom for bringing up the topic. And clearly it's an opinionated one, lol.

But, while I may not be the best person to have an opinion on the different writing forums/subforums (and hopefully I'm not off base) I suppose through my point of view there has been a common denominator amongst most of them, and that is the failure of many good RPs to stay active. It's almost as though the GM comes up with a great idea, gathers enough interest, pours their soul into a killer story (and I've read some great story ideas so far), and generally spends a lot of time crafting a world that I (and many others) would love to play in. All the players initiate their IC posts, and then...there is nothing after that point. Or, the GM never started an opening post, despite the fact that there are players eagerly waiting with their characters to dive into the world.

Not that I'm picking on GMs per se, because I suspect the success/failures of RPs are generally equally distributed between GM & Players, but I also feel the GM is the one to "herd the cats" so to speak and get things back to normal.

In any case, I hope I didn't just derail from the main point, but I suppose this is what stuck out the most for me during my short time.

@Dread The best one that lived for years that I was apart of was more communal than having 1 GM. While the GM held the mysteries and shit, the plot, world and characters were developed by everyone so everyone had "a say" in the RP. Funny thing is, it was only 3 of us because the original had like 15 players then boiled down and in the end there was the trio. Great fun. So maybe the size is a factor in the life of the RP. The only reason it died was because I left/stopped coming to RPG. Now that I'm back, the other two seem to have been gone for some time. I don't know if we'll ever bring it back to life.

There's another reason I don't play in advanced. RPG is not a medium I use to improve my writing, nor it is somewhere that I put a grandiose amount of effort into my writing. It's my escape from more demanding work, a place where I can just write without thinking too much about it.

@Dread The best one that lived for years that I was apart of was more communal than having 1 GM. While the GM held the mysteries and shit, the plot, world and characters were developed by everyone so everyone had "a say" in the RP. Funny thing is, it was only 3 of us because the original had like 15 players then boiled down and in the end there was the trio. Great fun. So maybe the size is a factor in the life of the RP. The only reason it died was because I left/stopped coming to RPG. Now that I'm back, the other two seem to have been gone for some time. I don't know if we'll ever bring it back to life.

This is the kind of environment I try to create with all of my roleplays. Unfortunately, it's hard to find people that are willing to put that kind of effort into anything. People care more about themselves and their characters than they do about the story or the world, usually.

This goes back to what I'd mentioned about role playing being the main focus of role playing. People want to play their roles first and foremost. That's the most entertaining part about role playing, and it's likely why writing suffers in a lot of cases. Sure, a lot of role plays die because of it, but with the right people, this mentality works splendidly.

RPG is not a medium I use to improve my writing, nor it is somewhere that I put a grandiose amount of effort into my writing. It's my escape from more demanding work, a place where I can just write without thinking too much about

Kind of the mantra of casual in one way or another, isn't it?

@Inkarnate

To some extent, perhaps? But I've been told that my casual posts could fit just fine in Arena with minimal tweaking, and from I've seen from the less detailed subject matter in advanced, I don't disagree. If I were to redefine what 'advanced' should be, it would in fact be just that: and environment where people collaborate to improve their writing.

I would however argue that this isn't the case, currently. Instead of cooperation to improve writing, there seem to just be standards set in place already. Although you can improve your writing by just writing, I don't think the practice is simple enough to make strides in without engaging in detailed discussions regarding the use of prose.

Something that I highly doubt happens on a regular basis on this site in general. I don't expect it to, and I wouldn't want it to, though. I think the majority of people would agree that they don't come here to have their writing criticized constantly.

Some people improve by RPing with other writers, others don't. I know one dude who is a friend of mine and has been RPing for sixteen years who literally still writes at the same level. He's in it for the purest definition of casual fun. I, however, ended up writing alongside some talented folks throughout a similar amount of time and have only improved my vocabulary, use of language, and grammar. I have the drive to have fun and become a better, more interesting writer at the same time.

Those are just two anecdotal examples.

As for the criticism thing, yeah, probably. Most people kind of find it adverse and confront what they feel is unwarranted criticism with criticism of their own. No writer on this website is 100% objectively sound and without error.

Really? I don't feel that at all. I stopped participating in Casual about five years ago and every time I've tried to go back, the roleplays have too many people participating that roleplay at a level I'm not comfortable with. It's not about their English skills or even their writing skills but the characters they make and the things those characters do. It's often so immature that I just can't be bothered.

On the other hand I also only participate in two Advanced RPs with some very strict application procedures (to the point that I was myself rejected the first time I applied to one of them). My experience might be skewed towards the absolute "best" (or most elitist, depends on how you look at it) the Guild has to offer.

This. Particularly as a GM, I've come to really value what I can get from players in terms of storytelling, worldbuilding, and character creation quality. While I theoretically could get that from the casual section, with a much larger audience to draw from to boot (and as a GM that audience is massively tempting), but I would have to be more of a hardass in a section supposedly with lower bars to pass, in order to run a roleplay that is worthwhile in my eyes. And for the record I am already a bit of a hardass of a GM (and it's honestly tainted my ability to put up with a ton of things a lot of GMs here do).

The audience that frequents Advanced is a population I can innately expect to bring what I'm looking for without having to weed through a lot of sheets that don't. I don't uphold length standards the way a lot of Adv. section RPs do but I can't reliably get the kind of thoughtful writing I want elsewhere. I want content to be meaningful; it should have a clear purpose to its inclusion. To name a few major ones: it should advance the current story, it should expand upon the picture of the scene, or it should develop the character in some way. Disclaimer: list is far from inclusive.

Like @Odin said, Casual often contains decisions in posts that scratch heads, don't fit, or otherwise feel like they served no meaningful purpose to the larger picture. That and in my own experience (anecdote warning) I often recall seeing decisions that were rather selfish, serving to push one character's story along to the detriment or exclusion of others. Just by being around that I ended up doing it sometimes myself, and I think catching myself doing it is more frustrating than someone else doing it, because I like to think that I can be better than that.

#notallcasual

#makecasualgreatagain

I considered joining a great looking advanced RP at one point a couple years ago, but decided against it when I noticed how infrequently players post as a whole in the subforum. It's worthy to note that, despite how much effort went into the lore and world building, the RP died shortly after.

I considered joining a great looking advanced RP at one point a couple years ago, but decided against it when I noticed how infrequently players post as a whole in the subforum. It's worthy to note that, despite how much effort went into the lore and world building, the RP died shortly after.

A casualty of the hobby. That said, there are some long-running advanced games that happen (some of which I read). So, much like any RP it is hard to predict when you hit the right amount of timing, people, and luck.

Hounding your players about it seems to be working out pretty well so far. :P

But in all seriousness, pacing is a shortcoming of the advanced section, and part of that has to do with the burnout incurred by writing massive posts. I don't even write massive posts, but I would probably struggle to sustain a post a day long term. So while it does move slow, I make it a point to keep pushing my players along with me so the inexorable march of progress actually remains inexorable. The moment I as GM stop doing that is the moment it will die of inactivity. Of that I am certain.

There's another reason I don't play in advanced. RPG is not a medium I use to improve my writing, nor it is somewhere that I put a grandiose amount of effort into my writing. It's my escape from more demanding work, a place where I can just write without thinking too much about it.

Something I started recently due to my other writings getting a little too stressful.

Like @Odin said, Casual often contains decisions in posts that scratch heads, don't fit, or otherwise feel like they served no meaningful purpose to the larger picture. That and in my own experience (anecdote warning) I often recall seeing decisions that were rather selfish, serving to push one character's story along to the detriment or exclusion of others. Just by being around that I ended up doing it sometimes myself, and I think catching myself doing it is more frustrating than someone else doing it, because I like to think that I can be better than that.

As someone that roleplayed in casual for literally years pre-guildfall, I can 100% agree with this. I've moved onto advanced roleplay ever since and ocasionally dip into casual to GM because muh roleplays need players, and what I think is interesting is when you see this change in people -- for me it wasn't because of advanced roleplay to be honest, but it was a particularly good 1x1 that made me rethink what it means to collaboratively write. Where as before I (as the GM) set certain plotpoints in the ground as a sort of 'checkpoint' and generally did not have much help in that regard (casual roleplayers are nothing if not passive in my experience, and require more handholding than either free roleplayers or advanced roleplayers), this time I was actually, shock gasp horror, plotting very far ahead into the roleplay with my partner and discussing potential situations in the future for our characters to run into.

That's not so special, but what was was that we actually set out to do those things.

I think that's when I stopped writing for myself/my character and started writing to form a more cohesive story around all the characters (or trying to, I'm arrogant, but not so arrogant as to propose that I am always taking into count everything and everyone) where sometimes my character ends up on the shitty end of the shovel/stick/utensil.

I'm thinking of what could potentially cause this and I think it relates perhaps to the.. fragile nature of roleplays particularly in casual RP. We all know RP's die quick, but I think casual really is one place where they die quicker than anywhere else. Take a week to start the IC, and your players are gone, that kinda stuff. So perhaps players just don't have the time to get attached to the roleplay/the cast as much as they do their own characters. They did, after all, just spend about an hour or so making that character.

I tried something new the other day in a casual RP I hosted where I forced people to come together and discuss some sort of cohesive 'theme' for their team. While the RP still died I think this was pretty succesful in at least tying together some of the cast by forcing them to come up with a connected backstory or some other tidbit of information that extended beyond 'we were all in the same school a year ago.'

Errr, that was kinda rant-y, but whatever. Have fun decyphering what the fuck I'm trying to say.

The difference between a good casual post and a good advanced post is that 99% of the time in casual, even if a post is otherwise faultless and contains a very well realised character, it won't develop anything in any way. It'll be a static snapshot of what this character is thinking, feeling, and doing at this exact moment. The character at the end of the post will be identical to the character at the start of the post. And there's nothing wrong with this in casual.

Quality should always be a primary concern. Much can be conveyed in even a handful of sentences with enough flow and context. As long as points are addressed, the categories ultimately fall onto expected capacity.

Free: Some people have the time to knock a dozen posts out per day, regardless of length. With some threads that break my only rule, it might not even matter and may just serve the purpose as a supplementary 'post rate farming ground' for those less inclined to set a scene so much as invest themselves in what their character is doing in the immediate tense.
I've never participated in this site's Free RP and have no right to talk about it, though I respect any measure of investment in the art. We all started somewhere and I'd be lying to say I oozed from the woodworks with wholly comprehensive elaboration and cohesive grammatical enunciation.
I started here back when Quizilla's RP forums were a thing.

Casual: The trenches.

Advanced: Some people are allowed the time to knock out books. 2-5 pages in a word doc, meticulously looked over with spell checks and oral re-readings to pick apart loose ends to form 'perfection'. I've never participated in this style since the length could just as easily be supplemented with collaboration to give communication a more real feel to it.
Idk how it works. Its like speculating what goes on in a nebula based on what you think should be going on.
To each their own.

So I'm sure you've all wondered my thoughts on the subject, seeing as I madee the topic. I'm probably flattering myself again.

I can't weigh in on nation, tabletop, or arena, seeing as I've never realy done anything here. I admit that I have heard some things about arena, but they haven't all been bad. I've actually always wanted to try my hand at arena.

Moveing on.

Free is a bit to fast paced for me. I actually was in one or two stories here way back when I first joined up. Super fast paced and I always had plenty to read through, but sometimes I wish they'd implimentt the collabs for those 5 page one liner conversations. My other issue is there's almost no character substance and/or development, which is a must for me.

Casual is my home. Decent pace, pretty well thought out characters, decentt stories. My issues here is that people tend to flake on ya. They'll make a chacter, post the intro, and then poof. I find it irritating to be a GM here sometimes. It's irritating to be a GM period. I will say that I have met some of the best people here.

I recently joined my first Advanced RP. It takess me more time to get through and write posts, but the community from what I can tell is really chill. I'd say it's 50/50 when it comes to the purple prose situation.

I've been lurking a bit too long, so I suppose it's time that I weigh on this. Now, whether or not this thread has run its course or not is not a concern to me. I just want to give my two cents.

Free


Casual


Advanced


Arena


1x1


Nation


Tabletop