This has serious “Bitching Thread V3.0” energy, but if we all act like adults maybe it won’t get locked.

For the time I’ve been roleplaying, many of my pet peeves have come and gone. I’ll often move past some only for others to spring up in their place. But the one thing that consistently bugs me is people who publicly complain. We all talk about our grievances from time to time, but I feel that is best done as privately as possible. If a player or GM has an issue with a post, it should be a matter addressed between those people in PM/DMs. If you just want to vent, one on one with a friend or group is fine for that. Matters involving an entire RP (which rarely happens) could be hashed out in the OOC, or preferably over an IM service like Discord. But I see little reason to vent one’s grievances to everyone.

The status bar is probably the most egregious example of this. You have people taking to the status bar to overshare family drama report every time their writing partner does something annoying. Why are you trying to put this in front of a stranger’s eyeballs? Are you trying to validate your position by fishing for a few likes? Do you hope that your writing partner will see you complain and change because you can’t talk to them directly? I have a hard time finding flattering reasons for people to vent in this way even if they have a good reason to do so.

Another problem with complaining, and especially chronic complaining, is that everyone has learned to read between the lines. Complaining about ghosting creates the perception that you are impatient and/or not worth playing with. Rushing to the status bar to mention icky writing practices makes you come off as a Mark Twain wannabe that can’t write to your own standards. Complaining about the size of a long post can oust you as someone who finds it painful to read. Your complaining might resonate with a few, but every time you do so you alienate a group of potential writing pals. It’s the same reason most people won’t join RPs where there are 20+ rules. Even if half of the rules seem reasonable, it starts to feel strict and controlling when taken too far.

If a status bar complainer saw this post, do you think they’d change their ways or just write me off as a jerk?

As someone who's gone to the status bar more than once? This actually has me engaging in some needed reflection... -_-U

This has serious “Bitching Thread V3.0” energy, but if we all act like adults maybe it won’t get locked.

I'm genuinely surprised this is a thread that still exists. Maybe we're doing it. Maybe we're actually doing a character development everyone.

I had peeves. I think I had two major ones, but ever since I caught the old, I've learned that my day to day is easier just letting things be. The first peeve I had were character sheets that were obsessively too long. Packed to the brim with information that was neither needed or ever going to be used. I found that they ended up being a waste of time (especially when an RP never got off the ground) or robbed players of organic interaction within the game. All the information is already there. I think a part of that peeve came from my inability to write a detailed backstory for every character I came up with, especially when I first started roleplaying. It was a lot of work trying to dream up a whole previous life in a new world I'd never been in before. I couldn't figure out how so many people were so quickly turning out the volume of information they were, and back when I was in upwards of ten games, that much prework before we even got started was daunting. But then I learned what I thought was happening wasn't always the case and CSs aren't all made for the same reason. For groups that have been going on much longer than others, these long CSs were a record of their past. All the organic information has already been hashed out beforehand is now being put to paper. This also includes characters created outside any game that are then used in any number of RPs the player thinks they can fit their character in. Maybe across all those worlds the character has walked, some of the stories made there stuck and the writer made it a part of their past. Then, all they had to do was copy and paste it into the next world and they were ready to go. Then, there's simply the love of character creation. Writing is an artform, and the character you're going to play is an essential part of the picture you want to paint. It's got to be right. The more information you have for them, the more fleshed out they are, the more the writer knows this character and the easier it will be for them to play as them. It's why long CSs can be good. It's also why I spend hours character creating in BG3 and giving my creation a backstory that no one is ever going to learn about.

And this leads into my next peeve which is players refusing to let players RP the way they want to RP. The need to judge other people for wanting to play someone perfect, someone edgy, someone too happy or too sad is missing the whole point of roleplay. This also extends to games that use character sheets that are obscenely long. It's what they want and that's okay. They want all the information or they want to play a specific type of character and if I don't want to, I don't have to join.