Forum roleplaying as a hobby

Hi! Do you consider forum roleplaying (here especially) as a hobby that you decide to specifically dedicate time to, or just as something you naturally do now and then? How much time every week would you say that you spend writing RP posts here (or OOC/Theatre posts discussing RPing for that matter)?

I'm very curious to hear how people regard their activity and presence here (:

As of now, I wrote a single IC post and spent majority of my time chatting and drawing in OOC threads, while occasionally reading ICs that I am not involved in.

I've honestly been questioning my motives here and I'm not really sure if I'm being serious about this hobby. It's been bothering me lately since I obviously came here to roleplay, but I feel like I'm constantly expending my efforts elsewhere and I'm concerned thatall I'm doing is impeding others as well as myself.

I'm not sure I'm understanding your first question. I'm assuming you're asking about how much do we care to frequent role-play forums, indirectly about this one in particular, especially considering this forum has in a way "slowed down". I'm taking this away from your last sentence, so here I go:

For me, the answer is that I just consider very little, overall. This is just some place I visit on occasion with barely any attachment. The few people on here I am friends with, should I want any extended activity or contact with them, I can talk to them on Skype, call them on the phone, or in one case I can drive over to their house. That said, I have my own role-play whose majority is an active cast on and off-site (more so off right now, due to the bad handle on this site's server these few weeks), but that's only because we've built ourselves up into a kind of family niche the way we see our characters, so we have an investment out of interest in each other and the outcomes of our character actions. That, and I've personally made it a point to be accepting, social, and helpful toward all my players and those who have an avid interest in the RP as readers. I allow civil discourse with both players and visitors, and encourage everyone else in our group to be just as open.

I don't know how much time I spend every week on a post in this forum because I don't care to keep track. Niche internet forums, in truth, are about as much obligation as a social whim. The evidence would be in things like these Theatre threads for RP discussion, for instance. RP doesn't have much to lightly chat about if it isn't the inevitable "do you play as a guy or girl", "what race are most of you characters", and "what do you do for writer's block" topics, otherwise it's just someone sharing an idea for a character or their own hope for a new role-play. The real discussion is, admittedly, self-absorbed--but this is not a bad thing. Role-play is centered around itself. You can't quite make any conversation connections beyond itself, because it is only relevant to itself.

OOC threads are hardly used on this site, is the apparent trend. It's not used to discuss characters. That's all been moved to third-party instant messaging applications and sites, like Skype and Discord, out of the scope of the forum. For my own role-play, if I want to say something relevant to my RP, I keep it in an actual OOC and encourage my players to do so too, which helps keep the IC obligations in mind.

If you are concerned about the activity drop or the appearance of a "dead" forum, the mods of this section may want to organize a forum event to spark something, since forums are only as self-sustaining as the interest of the users.

I love RPing and it's honestly one of my favourite things to do. I've always enjoyed writing stories but this creates a social atmosphere that writing by yourself just doesn't have. So I try to dedicate a lot of time to seeing my stories come to fruition and I do what I can to help other people.

I would say I used to consider RPing a hobby but now, it's something I do when I can. I still love looking through the section and seeing all the great ideas and stories people come up with but I simply do not have the energy to spend here that I used as I have begun expending it elsewhere in a couple other sections.

When I am RPing, I typically spend around 2-3 hours a week on average writing posts and such, some weeks are obviously higher and some are lower.

A little bit of both. There are times when an idea for the way a post I've been putting off should go and I know if I don't act on it immediately it'll be gone forever and I'll forget what I was going to do and it just won't be as good. But then moreso lately I've been setting aside time specifically for RP since my 'free' time has been getting stretched even thinner these past few months. This past month I've spent maybe 10 hours total on RP. Mostly working on Riders and Gunpowder posts since I was waiting to jump in at a certain point of Titans and wasn't too worried about it. I'm very easily distracted too so I'll turn on some music to help me write and then end up getting sidetracked trying to find the perfect song and then I'll just get out of the mood altogether and end up watching netflix or youtube or something.

I do consider it a hobby. It started as just a way for me to do more writing overall, since I'm really a lazy writer when it comes to solo writing. Writing together with others encouraged me more. But I got stuck in the RP trenches and got modded and now I can't seem to get out. And it doesn't bother me the least c: But I do need to remind myself to put time into it actually, rather than just naturally ending up here. Most days I'm balancing my time between sitting online or hanging out offline and it's not always I convince myself to do the former.

I don't know how much or little time I spend on RPing every week or day; it really varies a lot depending on what is going on in my life offline. Now it's been a while since I was in a RP where I truly felt invested in the story and characters. I hope to be able to join or create something like that soon again.

Red's Hawt Chibi Pelippers said:

...since I'm really a lazy writer when it comes to solo writing. Writing together with others encouraged me more....

Click to expand...

The best part when you start RPing and you have to made up lines while doing it!

I do consider it a hobby, but more as a part of writing than as a thing on its own. Although I'm currently, well, inactive, I do really like it. It's social, and there's more of a world than just your own story. Although sometimes keeping up is tiring, and the varying reliability of players, from which I suffer myself too, gets annoying.

For how long I spend on a post, it depends. I'm really bad with them, writing etiquette-wise. I do no proofreading, and I trust on spellcheck to get the grammar and spelling mistakes mostly, so I don't have to spend any time on that. Overall, I think a 1.5k words post takes anywhere from half an hour to an hour and a half. I tend to write very quickly, though. Last month, I spend a stellar zero hours on roleplaying each week, but I hope to bump that up a little as I finally rediscover what the hell I was doing with Gunpowder.

I ben roleplayin as caillou for realy long time. I think its jsut something i do all te time now eve when not on the compyuter. when i was wear the caillou halloween costyume its just feeled write. i roleplay all day irl but only like not alot here cause haters.

I've never actually role-played here on PC. I started RPing on another forum years ago and have only ever done it there (once on another forum but with only people from the previous forum). Back in the day, Id spend hours on it a day; I was very passionate about it. In fact, it was RPing that made me want to be a writer and some of my projects are based on old RPs of mine.
Unfortunately, in college, I went trough several crises that made me take long absences from the site and my threads all died. These days, I want to go back into it but the RPing community on that site has almost completely died.
I've been considering doing it around here, but I need to see how PC RPs tend to be.

I specifically dedicate time to roleplaying online. By that I mean whenever the urge grabs hold of me, which is very often, since it's my favourite hobby.

I guess... two to four hours a day on average, ranging to account for days I RP a lot more and days I skip RPing.

Keep in mind that means roleplaying everywhere in total, not just on forums. I'm not in very many forum RPs at all compared to instant-message roleplays.