Perhaps, I can chalk up this whole year as my greatest roleplaying failure. Since it's been the first one in a long while that's made me not want to keep trying. (A mindset that I acknowledge doesn't really help anything.)

Though I've probably written a full novella's length of content, with just all the introductions or beginning posts that have been almost entirely wasted. Due to usually unexplained reasons that I still understand wholeheartedly. But everyone else's motivation slump, has most certainly impacted my own. (With the single positive caveat, that I don't think any of them ended on bad terms.) But there's only so much a single man can hear. "Wow, your post is excellently written." from a partner that never ends up replying/posting more to it. Which feels like how half of my year was spent.

Yet the other half is arguably worse. Since almost all of my long-term partners have also needed to take a break in recent months. So, whether it has anything to do with me or not. I don't think that it matters. Since the worst 'failure' that can happen in roleplays, are things that kill the fun in them. (And boy, has this year managed to do its damndest.)

So I suppose my biggest personal issue that I can find and work on in the future, is that my time management has gotten abysmal. But the fact that I'm posting on a spam forum page at midnight, is probably not a good step to fixing that problem. (But there's always another day?)

Hm. My greatest RP failure is wanting to be in the perfect environment/head space to start writing.

Obviously based on my post count and registration date here, you can guess how that's worked out.

Across various sites, arenas/tournaments kept a kind of mandated frenzied pace / shit talk flow that would jar me out of it. And I do Pathfinder RP fairly often that scratches that creative bug, but it's easily my greatest flaw that I spend way more time thinking about than actually performing any writing.

I think I've even spent more time creating characters, video game RPG style and reiterating on them over and over and over, than playing them. That "taking the plunge" step eludes me. In fact I'm already thinking about making some characters before I shape up and go into an RP proper again. lol

My advice based on that is don't get into the habit of waiting for the stars to align like me; slap whatever shit down you can and be willing to fail sometimes. Because sub-optimal yet tangible beats optimal but at most hypothetical.

My advice based on that is don't get into the habit of waiting for the stars to align like me; slap whatever shit down you can and be willing to fail sometimes. Because sub-optimal yet tangible beats optimal but at most hypothetical.

Hella agreed on this point. The first few steps into a pool freeze you up, but after that it warms up quick.

Perfect is the enemy of fuck it it'll do

Perhaps, I can chalk up this whole year as my greatest roleplaying failure. Since it's been the first one in a long while that's made me not want to keep trying. (A mindset that I acknowledge doesn't really help anything.)

Though I've probably written a full novella's length of content, with just all the introductions or beginning posts that have been almost entirely wasted. Due to usually unexplained reasons that I still understand wholeheartedly. But everyone else's motivation slump, has most certainly impacted my own. (With the single positive caveat, that I don't think any of them ended on bad terms.) But there's only so much a single man can hear. "Wow, your post is excellently written." from a partner that never ends up replying/posting more to it. Which feels like how half of my year was spent.

Yet the other half is arguably worse. Since almost all of my long-term partners have also needed to take a break in recent months. So, whether it has anything to do with me or not. I don't think that it matters. Since the worst 'failure' that can happen in roleplays, are things that kill the fun in them. (And boy, has this year managed to do its damndest.)

So I suppose my biggest personal issue that I can find and work on in the future, is that my time management has gotten abysmal. But the fact that I'm posting on a spam forum page at midnight, is probably not a good step to fixing that problem. (But there's always another day?)

This may not be at least wise on my part when it comes to "quoting" but there is some things here that I can at least add on. I think this year for me is one of my greatest RP failures and it has me on not wanting to try anymore (past experiences) and even three to four years back I can put on this list as a failure also.

I never really got like positive feeback like "your post was written great!" or "Your starter is very good" [sample writing fits in the realm of it too].

Interest for me and what I like I feel is very small to like next levels of impossible [Though this year has been fucking bad]. Though I feel like my biggest personal issue is like getting into my own head and feelings with stuff and it gets very hard for me to come out or see things clearly. I don't know what to expect next year [upon me thinkin the same will happen] now it will just be like exams and holidays approaching...[shrugs]

My greatest RP failure is not being an assertive GM.

In every RP I've either served as a Co-GM for or have been the sole GM of, I've had great turnouts and had a solid cast of characters, but some things would happen and I would just...not be assertive. I'd just let it fizzle out or succumb to the majority's opinion. I know this is my own fault and it has been something I've wanted to correct. But the thing with me is I've never known the line of "what is too assertive" and "not assertive enough".

Another level of this is how I end up being bored with my own ideas. This could happen either through repeated drops draining my inspiration for a roleplay and not feeling confident in the idea anymore, or feeling so drained creatively that I close it because GMing is stressful.

Biggest GM failure:

Lack of preparation + Murderhoboism = Treefolk NPC burnt to crisp & Mass Kobold genocide.

Biggest GM failure:

Lack of preparation + Murderhoboism = Treefolk NPC burnt to crisp & Mass Kobold genocide.

This be true because it was my first time Gming Pathfinder.

Jeez do I include my D&D table stories here or not? That is the question. I have stories from both my own and an outsider POV for both here and some other places, plus my 5th edition campaign table, but I usually make it a point not to drag out the buried history of other forums I've been on.

Just from this place from a GM perspective, the two things that have killed my stuff is 1) too much lore, not enough plot, and 2) being too slow to convert interest to action. Honorable mention to struggling to find a balance between rails & player freedom, since it seems like every group has a different ideal balance and I can never quite nail it down.

As a player, I'm entirely too uncompromising probably from having been burnt a few times in the past. I'm very quick to pass on something from a relatively minor issue unless I'm actively committed. I tend to assume it will become a major sticking point, even though statistically it isn't likely to, and don't like taking the chance. I really need to let things slide more easily.

@fledermaus I'm pretty sure I remember reading the main post for that once a good while back actually.

@Sierra I'm not the OP but I'm not going to let that prevent me from speaking for him.

Share those D&D stories!

Share those D&D stories!

lmao you beat me to saying that

Yeah, I usually classify TTRPG stories differently in my mind, but don't let that stop y'all from sharing those too!

I mean easy answer for your problems fellow Dm/Gms:

Rocks fall everyone dies

I mean easy answer for your problems fellow Dm/Gms:

Rocks fall everyone dies

And forgot to mention Wisdom damage.

Representing 1x1 RPers, I'd say the failures I've run into are with consistency, especially if the RP lasts for a long time. I've been super disorganized for years and often forget key details in the plot or about my characters, so I spend way too much time going back through pages and pages of posts to find what I wrote like a year ago (thank you, control F) whenever it becomes relevant again in newer scenes... Or sometimes I just don't bother, and my partner reminds me that the post I just wrote contradicts something important, and I have to rewrite it xD I'm getting better at it now that I've started taking notes, but it's still a struggle because I don't keep up with them very well.

My biggest fail as GM was quite a few years back when I was quite active in the RP community. I made this entire fantasy world from the ground up. I gathered a group of experienced, accomplished writers. They had their shiny new characters made. First posts had been launched. Everyone was hyped. I thought I was going to be amazing and drop a bomb shell on them that one of the group members was a traitor. They all collectively threw up their hands and walked out.

Spoiler, there was no traitor. It was a good lesson for me in showing, not telling in OOC chat. Because if I had the group find out via IC that there was a potential traitor in the group I think they all would have been into that. Instead I thought I was so smart and just dropped it in the OOC.

So yeah, worst fail in my book. Never had so many people get pissed at one OOC comment and walk off in unison. It still haunts me.

My biggest fail as GM was quite a few years back when I was quite active in the RP community. I made this entire fantasy world from the ground up. I gathered a group of experienced, accomplished writers. They had their shiny new characters made. First posts had been launched. Everyone was hyped. I thought I was going to be amazing and drop a bomb shell on them that one of the group members was a traitor. They all collectively threw up their hands and walked out.

Spoiler, there was no traitor. It was a good lesson for me in showing, not telling in OOC chat. Because if I had the group find out via IC that there was a potential traitor in the group I think they all would have been into that. Instead I thought I was so smart and just dropped it in the OOC.

So yeah, worst fail in my book. Never had so many people get pissed at one OOC comment and walk off in unison. It still haunts me.

Woah that's pretty awful, feelz bad man.

*Slides back onto RPG after ghosting my partners for 7 months*

Failures? Me? Don't know what you're talking about...

*Sweats profusely*

@NeverEnding oof, that does suck.

I did something very similar in one of my RPs, only it had to do with everyone voting for a character to kill off. Though it went a lot better for two reasons:

#1: As you said, it was handled mostly ICly, with some details being spread OOCly so that the players would know I was serious.

#2: The players were all notified up front that player character death was part of the deal.

Though in truth, the vote was going to get interrupted when my "PC" flew off the handle, and ended up being the one executed, rendering the votes pointless. But I decided not to do that in the future because one of the players PMed me and was upset because they had a falling out with one of the players in the group and suspected they had voted for them. I decided to ease on the OOC drama moving forward.

Heh, I've had many frankly terrible experiances in my what 7-8? I think now (god I feel old) years of rping, on most sites I've used. Though quite a few I don't chalk up to failures, they were good learning experiances, especially my first few rps. I learned a lot from those.

I'm not really the most active in the rp community anymore, but I would like to share a few stories so I can continue to pretend to myself that I haven't dropped out completely.

My first biggest failure was in playing characters I thought other people would like, rather than ones I enjoy myself. For so long I placed myself in a mindset where I had to write a certain type of character, because that's what other people on the site were using (different site) so these characters became just horrible for me to write and I didn't realise this. Eventually leading to me ghosting more than my fair share of rps mostly because I just got so tired of playing my character I would try to get out of their headspace and leave it. (And I was an idiot 15yr old)

My second and probably biggest failure is not understanding when to step back from an rp and let people know about problems going on behind the scenes. Or just have eyes bigger than my stomach.

I had an rp back on a previous site, probably my second biggest rp I've been in, or at the very least the largest I dmed. It started pretty well tbh, it was just meant to be a small thing I threw together after watching a really cool sci-fi based video on Youtube. I watched it and thought "oh, that looks like a realy cool setting" I should start an rp.

And that was initially it, me and a few others chugging along in what was essentially an entirely character driven mostly slice-of-life rp, set in a semi-interesting setting.

It was at that point things got a bit out of hand, the big sci-fi rp on that site had died and I'd (kinda) become friends with many of the people from it at which point my mind came up with the best possible decision. Why not try and have my rp become this "big" rp and do an rp for all the old rpers, bring them in? Needless to say this didn't go too well.

I'd just started Uni at the same time and life got a bit ... overwhelming, But because I refused to take a step backwards, Order 227 style I ended up stretching myself a bit thin. Led to a few fallouts which ultimately ended the rp. Tbh after that and another rp slowly dying I've rarely had the energy to get myself back into rping. Occasionally I try, but RL and gaming with my mates seem to have become more and more my main outlet, especially as life has gotten busier.

So if there's any reccomendation I can give from this whole ramble, its don't be afraid sometimes to take a step back and give yourself some "you" time. You'll almost certainly be better off because of it.

I've been roleplaying since I was about 13 years old and I had a few forums of my own starting around 16. First was a pokemon fan game project and then later I had roleplay boards. There were a lot of mistakes along the way, but I made some good friends and remember it fondly.

I quickly became known as the "evil dictator". I was a little too strict with rules and activity requirements, and a bit pushy demanding results and posts. Worked a little too hard to get things moving. Unfortunately, this took some of the fun out of it and I lost some members because of it. At least the few who stuck around with me were close and productive. Too bad life got in the way and I had to give up my forum.

Another big mistake was trying to merge my real life with online life. Having IRL and internet friends on the same forum didn't work out so well. They formed cliques and eventually the forum died.