Oh and then there was Alarayne! Another pokemon RP, Kogenta's character totally pwn't mine in every tactical thought process, which was an ordeal, since my character was supposed to be kinda smart. Again, the character outwitted me, and I actually officially left that RP. It didn't really... die, but it certainly didn't... live.
Try 'it suffered an agonizing death of withering away on a slowly failing life support system'. I and Kogenta tried our best to keep it going, but when our esteemed RP master disappeared as well, there really wasn't much we could do. D:
And you don't beat Kogenta in smart characters; you just don't. No-one does. If he's in it, just resign your character to always being outsmarted by someone. It's a lot less depressing that way. ;P
Most of the RP's I make die though. I usually don't think it out enough, or it just... somehow doesn't work. I'm a terrible RP Master, but everyone who's RP'ed with me seems to understand that. ;; The members here are too good to me. ;;;;; [/tears]
More like they die because you tell yourself 'this isn't going to work' the moment something goes wrong, you silly girl. *swats* I still maintain that the only thing wrong with your RPs is that defeatist mindset.
Anyway, I've had my fair share of this thing. Mostly, it's the RPs I'm in withering away because the members just poof for undisclosed reasons. It's not really a level issue, because this happens even with people who I regards as at least my equals in writing and they assure me that it's not me, but more like people just...drop. *shrug* At other times, real life decides to toss a roadside bomb at me and kill my attendance ability.
There have been some cases where things got uglier, though. I recall one RP where this other person's character picked a fight with mine and the person just refused to back off from it even after being told by both RP master and everyone else in the RP to do so. The whole thing escalated into an ugly slug match and continued until we got modly intervention. Yeah. Not my most pleasant RPing memory.
Another one I recall quite vividly was the most ugly case of powerplay I have seen to date. Things were going quite well from the start, it was an enjoyable RP with a fairly original plot and the writing seemed to be up to scratch. I even had an RPing friend whom I had done a little character coordination with and we were genuinely having fun with it. That was when the RP master decided to go mad. Mine was a fairly authoritative and forceful kind of character, and apparently this didn't strike the RP master's fancy, so she PMed me and asked whether my character and hers could get into a fight where
mine would be thoroughly beaten, in order for her character to be, and I quote, 'Taken seriously as a leader'. Never mind that my character was A) by all logical sense the stronger fighter of the two
and in posession of a clear strategical advantage over hers, B) not particularly confrontative with people she considered allies and unlikely to pick that fight in the first place, and C) loyalty-bound to protect hers, making said fight about the last thing my character would do. Well, obviously I declined the offer and thought 'okay, weird...but that's that, right?'.
Well, guess again. :O First our dear RP master did some minor bunnying, forcing an opinion that was not 100% to my liking on my character, but close enough for me to let it slide. The next thing I knew, the same RP master had dragged both mine and my friend's characters through a random plot hole and blatantly bunnied them on top, which was the point where I - being in no mood for that kind of crap - dropped out of the RP and made it quite public why I had done so. Friend went with me, and many others followed suit in the ensuing drama as said RP master began ranting in the thread, so the RP basically went down with us. Shame in retrospect, but it felt strangely satisfying then. :x
Moral of the story? Powerplay is bad for you, kiddies.
The third and most recent of these was an RP where I just dropped out when I realized that it was not really a roleplay at all as much as a group of people writing mediocre fanfiction in the same thread. The closest thing to interaction that I ever saw was when one RPer wrote that their character had seen another one, but as far as I could see, not as much as an exchange of three posts between RPers had been conducted within the first two
pages of the RP and the RP master was doing his best to ensure that this state of affairs would persist by enforcing constant jumps through time and space and strict post limits for everyone. Did I mention that the 'everyone makes
one post and then we move on to the next area! =D' is the silliest way of running an RP that I have ever witnessed? They say it's 'to keep the plot running' but talk about throwing away the baby with the bathwater. Roleplaying is about the
interaction; if you don't want any between posters, you may as well just be writing fanfics instead. D:
There are others aplenty, I'm sure, but those are three biggest RP failures that spring to mind. :x
