shallow grave

Wardens of the Glade: A Light Fantasy RP

Really enjoying reading this, but like... How long does it take you to write each response? It takes me over an hour to hit 300 words, including my drafting, proofreading, cross-referencing, revising...

These are long, long posts. How do you manage to do so much without manipulating other characters, or stifling their players? Whenever I write more than 4 paragraphs I feel like I'm doing too much in one post and I need to cut it back to let others respond.

Do you send your responses accepting that large parts of your post simply won't be addressed as other players perform their characters in incongruent ways? Do you just trust each other to read everything multiple times and look for stepping stones to your next posts?

Sorry for all the questions (especially as I'm not even playing) but I'm just getting back into RP and these longer posts have always fascinated me, and I'd like to do it myself, but I want to do it in a way that's considerate, where I've always found myself becoming domineering.

Anyway, again, I'm enjoying the read. Great work, really.

Chapter One: The Arrival

I'm Chris, usually go by "asshole" or "that bastard" but go ahead and apply your own terms of affection if you'd like.

I've known about and participated in roleplays for probably 15 years now, though I've never been very good at it. I have a tendency to bury myself in the nitty-gritty and lose the forest for the trees, so you may find I have a keen understanding of the most random and inconsequential things.

For example, I like to break my paragraphs often, they just *feel* easier to read and digest – most likely gonna be broken up for what I think looks acceptable on a phone screen. I color-code dialogue, thoughts, and general narration because blocks of white text hurt my eyes.

I often catch myself yapping on and on and just rambling, plainly speaking, and I'll spend more time trimming my responses than I spend actually getting the words out of my thick cranium. I use a lot of weird metaphors, very miss and miss and miss and miss.

In spite of how long I've been doing this, I've never "taken it seriously." I've always been disdainful of short responses, I think you should be able to at least muster a paragraph or two — I prefer to aim for four just for lack of skill, I've never been able to do more than that without controlling other people's characters to some extent or dominating the whole scene. That's too oppressive for me so I try to cut it down to 4. A quite-approachable volume of words, I think. Other than that I'm basically a noob.

I've never taken part in long-term plots, I've never written "doubles" or worked with Fandom characters. Only ever played fantasy types, magic in a medieval world or whatever, though I'm interested in sci-fi and horror stuff.

I'm open to a lot of different kinds of things because frankly I lack the experience to heartfully reject them. Except romance. Never again.

If you happen to have an idea you think is too bizarre to ever lead to an actual story, I'd say it's worth a shot to pitch me your idea. I'll probably have something for you.

As far as characters go, I've only got the one, and he's literally just a rip from a novel I began writing a couple months ago. Came here looking for a way to "act out" my character for a better understanding of who I want him to be, I guess. I'm working on another character, but I don't do well scratching them up without a plot premise, so it's going nowhere.

That's 'bout it, if you have questions and therfore interest in my further yapping for whatever reason, I'm always open to talk to new people and delve into my particular brand of autism.