Why do people not want to do premade plots?

[Lady Selune]

Seriously, this is rediculous. NEVER has anyone gone for a 1x1 premade plot and I'm getting pissy. The hell is going on?

[ethanjory]

I may be an outlier, but when I take a look in the 1x1 section, I specifically look for pre-made plots and ignore all the pairings. At least with plots, I know that you spent some amount of thought on it.

[SleepingSilence]

@Lady Selune That's odd. D: I often come up with multiple plotlines and ask my partner does the same, and we just kind of go through whatever idea we like best. That basically counts as pre-made plots. Unless it's so specific and no one allows for alters and wiggle room, I see nothing wrong with creating a "starting point" of sorts.

[ClocktowerEchos]

Because smut doesn't need plot apparently.

[Todd Howard]

Because smut doesn't need plot apparently.

@ClocktowerEchos

It's sad that most people actually consider this true.

[ScreenAcne]

Shit. I don't, some. motherfucking. package punctuation, sister. I joined a duo or two every now and again.

But. I think it's like. People like to flex the text with enough space to make sure their showcase don't go to to waste. If you catch my similies and metaphorical mutterings.

[Todd Howard]

flex the text

@ScreenAcne

astounding

[Ruby]

Preset plots, or preset storylines?

I can understand not being wild about the former, though I'm not sure I've ever seen someone readily complain about the latter.

[ScreenAcne]

<Snipped quote by ScreenAcne>

astounding

@Raddum

Thanks, felix. Keep it all double helix.

[pugbutter]

Because under partners/GMs who compose pre-made stories, one or more of the following detriments tends to be present:

• Pre-established characters, which strip me, your RP partner, of my right to design my own character as I see fit
• Pre-established relationships, which strip me, your RP partner, of my right to decide how my character (also not of my design) perceives yours; whether their personalities clash or are compatible, for example, which basically decides where most of the conflict in an RP comes from. If you describe it as a romance RP then I have no choice in whether or not my character is sexually attracted to yours; if I don't fall in love with you then you'll accuse me of sabotaging your RP, or not reading its premise properly, or something along those lines.
• Alluding (probably) to the fact that you're an RP railroader; after all, if you've already thought of my character and the story in which he's participating, all on my behalf, then it's not unreasonable to think that you already know how his story will end, too. The more pre-made plots your thread has in it, the madder you tend to be when I end up wanting to deviate from your narrow parameters for where a story is "allowed" to go.
• Autonomy in general. There's an attitude of whether or not I match the exact persona which you want for this RP, as opposed to whether I'm a good writer, whether my character and his personality are compelling, etc. You're basically presenting a job opportunity and picking the person whose résumé best matches your "ideal" employee, instead of letting us use RP as a creative outlet where we're supposed to be able to roleplay whoever we damn well want.
• And if any of the above is somehow not true, then you're communicating poorly, since you're giving the impression that they're true by using the exact same methods to search for RP partners as the egregious fuckheads who actually do all this.

The worst example of this, which happened to me personally, was when she propositioned me for a historical RP based around archaeology in ancient Egypt. She mentioned that she more or less wanted to recreate one of her favorite book series (red flag #1), which was some kind of pulpy adventure series where the snarky British girl and the snarky British guy fall in love while excavating tombs and deactivating traps and stuff. She mentioned romance as a "maybe," which I thought was fine, since that gave me the option not to fall in love with her, right? So I made my character and sent her the CS, but she took offense with the fact that I wanted to play a character in his fifties. Which is clearly too old for a woman in her twenties to fall in love with. (Fun fact: for the Victorian period that wasn't true at all. So her historical accuracy readings weren't even that great, for someone who purported to love history so damn much. Red flag #2.) I informed her I had no intentions of letting this be a romance story, since it was initially pitched to me as a historical RP, which is why I agreed to join it and seemed interested in it in the first place. Well, she pretended that was fine, and that she would write the thread and send me the link soon, but that was two months ago and I'm pretty sure it's not happening.

As a matter of principle, all these factors and more are why I never, ever describe characters in my 1x1 plot prompts; no gender, no feelings toward the other main character, and certainly no assignment of roles to myself and my partner. (I will, for example, let the partner choose whether she's the prisoner, or the guard with whom the prisoner develops an unlikely camaraderie.) Even the plot is left deliberately vague, as I never want to direct my partner's character's feelings or actions. I will say "Character A is in prison and character B is his/her guard" but I won't explain how they feel about that or what will result from it. I give the circumstance/premise without giving very much actual plot.

TL;DR RPers appreciate creative freedom.

[Ellri]

Another reason that many avoid pre-made plots is actually deceptively simple: The plots do not match their interests at the time.

The interests of RPers—especially RPers on the search for new stories—are notoriously fickle. There is no telling what it'll take to make a plot that is "acceptable" to the general RPer because of that. What attracts one will definitely push away another.

[The Harbinger of Ferocity]

An added element to keep in mind with premade plots is that they, depending on the partner, can become exceedingly rail-roading, to borrow a tabletop term. In essence, you are stuck to your plot's progression with little to no time or opportunity to err off it and when you do there are always those sorts who become immediately infuriated that you are not playing out their exact wishes with each action, or go out of their way to "correct" the manner in which you portray or play out a character.

To date, the best experiences I have had in roleplaying were collaborative efforts combined. The initial posting person might have the majority of the work done, but shuffling out the inclusions, ideas or desires of the other participant or members does not bode well for longevity. A starting point and background, as others before me said, is a fair way to meet the desired objective.

[The Elvenqueen]

@pugbutter and @The Harbinger of Ferocity have essentially summed it up. I avoid excessively-detailed premade plots because it means you've already decided what you want my character to be like without letting me dictate that as it should be well...my character.

One of my biggest pet peeves is somebody running off with my character and turning them into something they're not just to suit what they wanted out of the story. For instance there is an experience currently where I set up a character to be a side-character to our mains and yet this person seems intent on focusing in great detail on these side characters which I never intended to do nor got to give input on. Not to mention when I first created said character I thought I made it abundantly clear she was NOT interested in kids and yet that was pushed onto her anyway and now she's been forced into being this woman who's happy to have a baby because that's what my rp partner decided he wanted and I'm just kinda being dragged along because every time I bring it up he kind of goes "well I was just letting them leave off properly" and we jump back to the mains for a while only to have that sidelined a week later to go back to these side characters again.

Don't get me wrong I'm happy to talk and compromise on stuff but when you're dragging my character along for a ride they didn't want to ride, it becomes a bit ridiculous. The best 1x1s I've had were where somebody came to me and said "here's a general outline of where we could go, here's my character. What's yours and what do you think we could add or take away to make the plot better?"

That RP specifically even went in a totally different direction to what we had originally planned out, but you know what, it was actually GREAT because we both went "well this is unexpected....ah well, let's just go with it!" And neither of us was forced to act in a way that would be out of character for either of our characters just to suit the other person because we talked about every idea and plot point beforehand and agreed on a final rough "outline" to follow while leaving it open for the other person to edit it a bit if they felt they needed to.

Tl;DR: saying "this is the plot we're following and you will do what I say" or completely twisting every idea your partner throws at you to suit your predetermined agenda for the plot is bad and of course people are going to avoid that. You need to leave stuff open to being changed and let them feel like they have some creative freedom to decide some aspects of the plot WITH you without forcing them to make their characters something they're not by expecting them to do what YOU want them to all the time

[Ellri]

The difference between a good pre-made plot and a bad one is often how open it is. Whether the characters are overly defined by one party or not and whether there are available plot hooks for the other player(s) to either easily implement or grab onto. If neither of those are present, it can typically be a poor pre-made plot, though we suppose exceptions can exist to that too.

However, with sufficient amount of hooks and character options, an RP isn't doomed even with the final result of the story set prior to launch.

[pugbutter]

That RP specifically even went in a totally different direction to what we had originally planned out, but you know what, it was actually GREAT because we both went "well this is unexpected....ah well, let's just go with it!" And neither of us was forced to act in a way that would be out of character for either of our characters just to suit the other person because we talked about every idea and plot point beforehand and agreed on a final rough "outline" to follow while leaving it open for the other person to edit it a bit if they felt they needed to.

@The Elvenqueen

This is the best! One of my favorite RP partnerships is the one wherein we both feel comfortable doing character-building on the other person's behalf. My character struck her as being a lazy slob, so when she walked into his apartment she commented on how he needs a maid. Her character struck me as a workaholic trying much too hard to impress everyone, so when RPing my main character I can sometimes do little things to try to calm her down, like bringing her coffee. But when I'm RPing the NPCs (a shared responsibility), especially ones ranked higher than hers, and especially males, they just think she has a good attitude which will get her places in the company, a good excuse to pile up more bitchwork onto her day. So all the characters in the story react to her personality differently, and it's a personality which I helped to develop. She does the same thing, except my character is a loser who is content with mediocrity, so he never goes out of his way to please anyone or to do more work than necessary, so under her command, the NPCs, when they recognize him as their coworker at all, pay him little or no mind. He's not juicy gossip-fodder, after all; worthy neither of partaking in it nor of being its subject.

So we're not necessarily even opposed to other people writing characters for us, but if you do that then you have to be open to your character being altered too; which you probably won't be if you're molding your RP partners to fit your preconceived notions of how the story "should" look, instead of letting us play off your creativity and vice-versa.

[ArenaSnow]

I wouldn't say I make premade plots, but much of what bounces in my head is a detailed context and set of characters where someone else can throw their own character into and change the dynamics. I believe I do a fairly good job of letting folks carve their own paths, and my ideas for a particular story/character shift on minute details all the time. That said, I'd probably just leave them vague, and let the lore/details come out upon the RP's start.

[Foster]

Seriously, this is rediculous. NEVER has anyone gone for a 1x1 premade plot and I'm getting pissy. The hell is going on?

@Lady Selune

>tends to stack as many premade plots/pairings on top of each of each other as possible until it hits a c-c-combo-breaker.

This gets balanced-out by almost-instant plot-derailment the moment someone finds something fun.

[silentmusician]

I tend to believe it's mostly because a lot of rpers are fire and forget. Meaning they care less for plot, and just the one-off interaction they have with people. Kind of reminds me of the bar social life.