Your Roleplaying gripes

We all probably like to roleplay over here, but everything you love isn't perfect. What are some things you don't enjoy about roleplaying as much?

When players use bright text on dark backgrounds ;)

Or do you mean if there's parts of the phenomena of forum roleplaying that I don't enjoy? There aren't, I suppose. I love it. I only hate not having time or energy to sit down properly at a computer and write long nice posts more often than I do.

Roleplaying... gripes?
Huh?

MorallyIncorrect said:

What are some things you don't enjoy about roleplaying as much?

Click to expand...

RPing involves GP :/

Foxrally said:

RPing involves GP :/

Click to expand...

Disrespect to members elders.

Adventure said:

Disrespect to members elders.

Click to expand...

Mom you're embarassing me >:T

One of my biggest peeves in regards to forum roleplaying is NPC inconsistency between players. It's hard for me to get around when each player gives certain NPCs different personalities and speech patterns.

GreyBidoof said:

One of my biggest peeves in regards to forum roleplaying is NPC inconsistency between players. It's hard for me to get around when each player gives certain NPCs different personalities and speech patterns.

Click to expand...

Oh yeah. In Crossroads, we solved that by delegating the gym leaders to players xD I (the GM) shaped Falkner's and Bugsy's personalities, and once we get to Goldenrod someone else will be the first one to write a post as Whitney and set the tone for how she should be played.

In general though, I think this problem is best overcome by having the GM play the "NPCs". It's not always possible, or efficient, but it's the best solution I've found.

Adventure said:

Oh yeah. In Crossroads, we solved that by delegating the gym leaders to players xD I (the GM) shaped Falkner's and Bugsy's personalities, and once we get to Goldenrod someone else will be the first one to write a post as Whitney and set the tone for how she should be played.

In general though, I think this problem is best overcome by having the GM play the "NPCs". It's not always possible, or efficient, but it's the best solution I've found.

Click to expand...

If an NPC is important enough, I ask the creators to play them where possible.

My main gripe is more to do with timezones than anything else. xD

Whenever an RP really kicks up all the action tends to happen when I'm either asleep or working/at school. I can't even count how many times I've checked an RP only to find that all the action was already over and there was no way for my character to have taken part.

It's nobody's fault and it can't be helped, but I would still like to grumble about it. :P

GreyBidoof said:

One of my biggest peeves in regards to forum roleplaying is NPC inconsistency between players. It's hard for me to get around when each player gives certain NPCs different personalities and speech patterns.

Click to expand...

This is a good one, I'd say. It's hard to get NPC's right if you only seen them for a small amount of time. You don't have a detailed description, so it's hard to get them to align with how the original creator intended them to be

Sweet_Dreams said:

My main gripe is more to do with timezones than anything else. xD

Whenever an RP really kicks up all the action tends to happen when I'm either asleep or working/at school. I can't even count how many times I've checked an RP only to find that all the action was already over and there was no way for my character to have taken part.

It's nobody's fault and it can't be helped, but I would still like to grumble about it. :P

Click to expand...

Gimmepie solved this very well by becoming nocturnal

MorallyIncorrect said:

Gimmepie solved this very well by becoming nocturnal

Click to expand...

Well I'm on my way now, but back in the day I had to go to school at like 7am and I didn't all-nighter at least once a week.

Thank you for the helpful life-ruining suggestion though! xP

One that I've run into a surprising number of times: roleplays where the GM put a lot of thought and creativity into creating a plot, but the RP itself barely gets off the ground either due to lack of participation/interest from everyone else, or everyone being busy and not having time to post. I've seen a lot of RP threads go down this way on an older forum I was a member of, and sometimes still have that extreme feeling of "what could have been," man..

Another is when the [physical] pace of the roleplay is too fast to keep up with; I've been in a couple where the other members would post so quickly that, by the time I'd finally gotten a response ready to submit, there have already been a couple others ahead of me and I'd had to go back and change up my message a bit so that it matches up with the current action. x.x And when I missed a day - or even a few hours - entirely, the others have already cranked out multiple new pages of unread material.

xVirusx said:

Another is when the [physical] pace of the roleplay is too fast to keep up with; I've been in a couple where the other members would post so quickly that, by the time I'd finally gotten a response ready to submit, there have already been a couple others ahead of me and I'd had to go back and change up my message a bit so that it matches up with the current action. x.x And when I missed a day - or even a few hours - entirely, the others have already cranked out multiple new pages of unread material.

Click to expand...

I think a good way to get out of this is to join a roleplay where bigger posts are the norm, as they tend to move slower. In RP's like Gunpowder and Titans, people post around once a week, but a post is a real story, and interaction is dealt with through Joint posting via sites like etherpad. RP's that have shorter posts, and rely on a new post to show interaction, Darker Than It Seems is a good example here, are harder to keep up with. It all boils down to personal preference in the end.

Ice said:

I think a good way to get out of this is to join a roleplay where bigger posts are the norm, as they tend to move slower. In RP's like Gunpowder and Titans, people post around once a week, but a post is a real story, and interaction is dealt with through Joint posting via sites like etherpad. RP's that have shorter posts, and rely on a new post to show interaction, Darker Than It Seems is a good example here, are harder to keep up with. It all boils down to personal preference in the end.

Click to expand...

I definitely couldn't have agreed more; this is exactly what I resorted to doing after a while, haha. When I got a little older, I generally grew to prefer roleplays with longer post requirements over short-format for both that reason and others. Not to mention, longer posts make for some more memorable and enjoyable reads later on.

I have a hard time finding RP's that I am interested in participating in. (In truth, I have only recently joined this site and am still in search of something that piques my interest) More often than not, I wind up having to play the role of the GM of my own RP creations, but I find this to be frustrating and to be honest, I'm not well suited to keep up on such a task. I don't have the time or patience to deal with organizing everyone else and their plot posts, and keep them in theme as well.

However, when I peruse the things that other people have going on, I can't really get into it. It's not that what I see is uninteresting or unoriginal. It just generally isn't my cup of tea. I tend to look for violent, grim, and debauched RP's. More often than not, the stuff I see out there isn't sardonic and/or dark enough for me. All that notwithstanding the issue of plot and setting, of course.

The other issue that I have is that I am generally restricted from posting as graphically as I'd like to. The only RP forums that I find that have no qualms about my 'true' writing style are those of adult orientation. However, my intent is not to write smut. Since that is the general consensus in those forums, and the typical focus of posting topic is sex; I feel like I am casting pearls before swine, so to speak.

Murdergurl said:

I tend to look for violent, grim, and debauched RP's. More often than not, the stuff I see out there isn't sardonic and/or dark enough for me. All that notwithstanding the issue of plot and setting, of course.

Click to expand...

*points at gunpowder*

*runs off*

Foxrally said:

*points at gunpowder*

*runs off*

Click to expand...

I plan on eventually making an RP that's rated M for a reason to solve that problem. Not in a sexual way, but God damn it it's going to be violent, disturbing and somewhat terrifying. As I also occasionally have the issue of RPs not exactly being dark enough for my liking.

Essentially, a horror RP. Since those are very uncommon nowadays.

under_score said:

My main gripe is more to do with timezones than anything else. xD

Whenever an RP really kicks up all the action tends to happen when I'm either asleep or working/at school. I can't even count how many times I've checked an RP only to find that all the action was already over and there was no way for my character to have taken part.

It's nobody's fault and it can't be helped, but I would still like to grumble about it. :P

Click to expand...

is this still an issue? i thought it was resolved with Apotheosis' suggesting a posting order ( ´ ▽ ` )ゞ might be nice to use that to prevent anyone from being left out anymore?