RPing pet hates

[Lace Neil Singer]

Just to get the venom out of my system. XD I still like to forum RP; it's just that certain things irritate me about it. XD

* Mary Sues. Gotta be at the top of the list. In an RP, a character can not be the focus of the RP or the main character who everyone else revolves around as tho they are the centre of the galaxy. I mean, there are dozens of guides about how to make a decent character so there really isn't any excuse for coming up with a Sue. I'm also not talking about original characters or characters who happen to be beautiful/clever/insert positive attribute here. Too many people get butthurt when their character is accused of being a Sue and claim it's cuz their character is say, super beautiful or talented. No, it's not. You can have a beautiful and/or talented character without them being a Sue; you just have to not be a lazy writer and to balance the character with faults rather than just positives. And I don't want them in my RP if you can't be bothered to do that, kthxbai.

* Constant lack of spelling and/or grammar. I'm not a nitpicking grammarian; I myself do shorten words out of laziness or misspell occasionally. I'm not talking about that kind of thing at all. What I mean is constantly posting with shortened words and ignoring proper sentence structure. Good forum RPs can be read as stories; bad ones are impossible to read at all. And please post more than just "he said hello"... I'm not demanding a massive ream; for one thing, asking for several paragraphs often just means that you end up with a post being a shitload of filler and purple prose. Just post several sentances and try to not just post dialogue; post what your character is feeling or doing as well and try to move the plot on.

* Lack of understanding. This pertains to a) misunderstanding the plot; b) misunderstanding what I mean when I say I want experienced RPers and c) a general lack of understanding about RPing. I realise that not everyone is an expert, and I'm perfectly happy to have someone less experienced RPing alongside me as long as they're going to be happy to take advice and edit their post if necessary. What I don't like are people who either try to completely take over the RP, which is just rude; or people who try and shoehorn in plots or characters which don't fit the RP at all. Like the idiot who tried to turn a Resident Evil RP into Happy Magic School. -.- Argh.


Will probably be more added on later; those are just the main ones and hopefully someone can make sense of my rambling. XD

[DrFaroohk]

I used to RP on an old BBS, until the other experienced RP'ers started hating on me cuz I didn't understand the Mists of Buttholia or something. So I started my own RP forum, and then they all started coming there to bitch about my rp. "You're doing this all wrong! Are you stupid? You had a DEMON on your first day you can't do that derp derp!"

[siead_lietrathua]

im used to table top, not forums, but alot of the same issues arise.

also i have to add in powergamers! great for when you are playing an mmorpg where you can solo it, but when you have a group and actually need to work together as a unit it can be damaging. my b-i-l is a powergamer, and he ended up making him self overly-specialized and useless to the team. and we were the team of weirdos! when the monk can out-fight the fighter its not a good sign.

also character flaws are awesome. our shapeshifter was neurotic, the monk was an egoist and i was a psycotically happy drow with a halfling obsession..... damn i miss D&D

[DrFaroohk]

Sometimes I don't like a lot of character flaws. Why does every character have to be dealing with some great internal struggle? I have internal struggles, I don't want to be reminded of them! Sometimes I just want a story about a guy who kicks ass.

[siead_lietrathua]

ya but a flaw doesnt have to be an internal struggle. it could be blindness, hyperactivity or a language barrier issue (like your dwarf never learned common language very well and has a hard to understand accent). little things that can make the game more interesting in the little downtimes between events. plus some things, like having a clumsy person along, can help trigger events. expecially when they trip face first onto the floor-trigger for a trap....
damn i really miss D&D, lmfao.

[Andara Bledin]

Sometimes I don't like a lot of character flaws. Why does every character have to be dealing with some great internal struggle? I have internal struggles, I don't want to be reminded of them! Sometimes I just want a story about a guy who kicks ass.

However, as noted in another thread (on fantasy stories), if your guy has no flaws, he's about as interesting as a cardboard cutout and spoken from the point of view of someone who has written one of those characters, very hard to design conflicts for that don't alienate pretty much every other player.

ya but a flaw doesnt have to be an internal struggle. it could be blindness, hyperactivity or a language barrier issue (like your dwarf never learned common language very well and has a hard to understand accent).

This.

Some of my best characters had unusual flaws.

One used an affected and difficult-to-understand accent just to be a prat. Another had an alternate personality that would cause trouble at interesting moments. Then there was the one that was terrified of letters on objects that could flex... such as books and paper money.

To add to the OT discussion:

Godmodders >_<

^-.-^

[lordlundar]

ya but a flaw doesnt have to be an internal struggle. it could be blindness, hyperactivity or a language barrier issue (like your dwarf never learned common language very well and has a hard to understand accent). little things that can make the game more interesting in the little downtimes between events. plus some things, like having a clumsy person along, can help trigger events. expecially when they trip face first onto the floor-trigger for a trap....
damn i really miss D&D, lmfao.

Had a pally from another realm (aka dimension) where all but clerical magic was considered 'evil'. He and the more wizened priest he was with wound up in our group where everyone else used non-clerical magic. To add to this he could also go berserker.

Queue the incident where we came across a pretty large stash of magical items and he proceeded to break a +1 arrow then drop it in the pile. Picture a small tactical nuclear weapon of arcane energy going off after 10 seconds.

[siead_lietrathua]

omg lord lundar that's hilarious!

i know once we had our monk throw the shapeshifter into a crowd. mid-flight he shifts from small form (serpent) to his biggest (bear).... SPLAT gobbos.

[Salted Grump]

Rp pet peeves.

Godmodding. DO NOT TAKE CONTROL OF MY CHARACTER FFS.

It can be something as simple as 'you pick up the shiny crown and die from the 5 billion poison needles that the party's thief didn't find on a roll of 85 against a DC of 20' to something more involved (read: collaborative novella), but for fuck's sake, if my character is being puppeted about by the whims of another, why the hell am i even playing?

[Amanita]

I used to do informal RP with a friend of mine, and oh lordy did she ever commit some of these sins!
I confess, our characters were unusual. Hers was a Saiyin (dragonball Z race), and mine were Skyscraper-Incarnates*

Mary-suing in spades, for one. Her character always had to be faster, stronger, better. And mine would need some lame artifact to catch up. And her character was always overpowered. For example, her character as a toddler throwing a telekinetic tantrum, and one of my adult (elder) characters trying to stop her. Now my characters are her race's equals in terms of power and ability, you would think an elder would have lots of experience dealing with and shutting down that sort of behavior. Nooo. Her character always had to come out on top and win.

And I suppose this would be a combination of mary-sue and god-moding:
Her characters were always controlling mine. When one of my characters went apeshit on an NPC who insulted him, she just had to be the one to forcibly stop my character with magic.
And when her character got married, she didn't like the idea of my characters (who were her friends) attending her wedding wearing their traditional robes. In fact, she told my characters that if they dared show up in anything except tuxedos, then she would be shamed and disowned from her society! Wow. To be honest, would being kicked out of a society control-freaky enough that it would punish you for your wedding guest's clothing be such a horrible thing? She even threatened to use magic to compel my characters to obey. Ugh, not cool!

At first it was fun having our characters run around visiting all manner of fantasy universes- X-Men, Star Trek, etc. But it got ridiculous when she started trying to insist my characters adopt pokemon (even though I had no interest in it).

And the retconning, oh gods, the retconning! First, her character was a Saiyin named Kayla. Then she completely changed her race to some other Anime type. And her name became Kitsuryin or something else like that. Make some new characters? Nawww. Just keep changing your original until it's unrecognizable. Not to mention unpronounceable.

Needless to say, I gave up RP'ing with her.

*If anyone's curious, here's what skyscraper-incarnates (and their contentious robes) look like: http://ladyamanita.deviantart.com/gallery/

[Hyena Dandy]

Alright, here's a few.

I do MLP RPs on Facebook.

The uncommon one first: Don't try to sing if you don't know the words. Not a metaphor, I mean literally don't try to sing. One Pinkie Pie page and I spend a lot of time rewriting songs from TV shows/Musicals/Etc. Its EXTREMELY frustrating when we're trying to do a song and someone joins in singing without putting any thought into the line. Songs, in general, have a rhythm to them, and rhymes. These take EFFORT. If someone added in a line which matched up well, then I would have less of a problem. But when we're singing from a song we want you not to just throw in your own music... But I understand if you do, everyone wants to be part of the RP. Besides, we can just not pay any attention to it.

The first time we just started singing, and people joined in. So we figured, okay, this time we'll announce that we're gonna start singing. That didn't work either. I think NEXT next time, we're gonna have to specifically ask not to join in the songs unless you have lines... Anyway, that we can deal with.

What annoys me much more (because it happens much more often) is when people don't get the mood of the RP. There are times when an RP is clearly comical, and there are times when we're trying to be serious, or romantic, or adorable, or any number of things. You can PROBABLY guess by reading what's going on, so I would ask you to try to keep the mood.

While you could have someone trying to cheer someone else up, that's very different from saying "Woo! Let's get drunk!" When someone is traumatized because someone else just threatened to destroy her family.



I don't have a problem with someone who wants to be the center of attention, really. I believe that every character should be the center of their own story arc. But I do ask that you only try to be the center of attention on a post either

1) You made on your wall
2) I made on your wall
3) You made on my wall
or
4) That I tagged you in

If I made it on my wall, without tagging anyone, I'm engaging with everyone equally. If I made it on someone ELSE'S wall without tagging anyone, assume that person and I are the center of attention for that thread. You'll be the center of attention if you post on my wall, I promise.

Another one I don't like

RPing differently. That doesn't mean having a different character, or a different tone of character, or what have you. That means that if this is an RP where everyone else is doing short-form, don't do long-form. (short-form is the "*walks up to Andara* Hi" style, whereas long-form is the "He walked up to Andara and said 'hello'" style). If you do short-form when everyone else is writing long-form, then you look like an idiot. If you do long-form when everyone else is writing short-form, you look like a show-off. We can all write that way, we aren't for a REASON.

Another one: Don't kill someone else's character (without permission). The only time someone should be killed off without their player/admin wanting them to is if the RP you're in is that "Survival of the Fittest" forum, or something else where there's a random generation. Otherwise, get CLOSE, but don't pull the trigger.

Another another one (I only intended to post 2 of these)

Sex. Keep it private. Yes, sex is good, natural, and I have no problem with your characters having sex. It allows you to explore a character in ways that not-having-sex wouldn't. But if you do, don't do it where everyone else can see. Unless, you know, you're in an erotic RP forum.

Final one.

COMMUNICATE. Please, if you don't like where an RP is headed, tell me OOC. You can talk like [this] or like ((this)) or like OOC: This but however you do it, communicate. If you don't like how something is going, let me know. Or if you don't want me to do something, let me know. Or maybe you really want a story to go in one direction. Fine. Tell me OOC. OOC talking exists for a reason. If you try to drop hints IC about what you want, I MIGHT pick up on it. Or I might assume you're just saying what you want IN-CHARACTER.

So those are things that annoy me.

WAIT! Thought of another.

Piling on cross-overs. Again, this happens mostly in the MLP RPs. I don't mind a cross-over if I'm expecting it. If your character comes from another universe, or is involved with another universe, then go for it. We all assume Doctor Whooves is really The Doctor, so when he does timelord shit nobody's surprised. But don't just suddenly get powers from an anime or novel or videogame because you just played it and thought it was cool. It probably is VERY cool. But that's not the fandom you're RPing in, and its getting REALLY tiresome that you're just throwing in all these abilities from out of nowhere.

Okay, now am I done ranting?

I think I'm done ranting.

[lordlundar]

omg lord lundar that's hilarious!

Yeah, don't put me or my RP friends in a pre-made module. We find new ways to break them.

[Lace Neil Singer]

However, as noted in another thread (on fantasy stories), if your guy has no flaws, he's about as interesting as a cardboard cutout and spoken from the point of view of someone who has written one of those characters, very hard to design conflicts for that don't alienate pretty much every other player.

^This. No-one's saying that all RP characters must have wangst; just that if they're perfect in every way and have zero faults, they're very boring and it doesn't really lead to much conflict or character development later on in the RP. Not to mention the small fact that it's irritating for the other players if one person has their character be the bestest at everything and with no flaws. -.-

To add to the OT discussion:

Godmodders >_<

^-.-^

Oh god yes, pardon the pun. I almost forgot about those and it is irritating when someone tries to take control of your character and control how they react etc. Once this girl tried to have one of my characters swoon over hers. I pointed out that a) he doesn't swoon over anyone and b) he's gay, and her character was a girl. XD She got butthurt and withdrew from the RP; no-one missed her cuz that wasn't the first time she'd tried that trick on people.

RPing differently. That doesn't mean having a different character, or a different tone of character, or what have you. That means that if this is an RP where everyone else is doing short-form, don't do long-form. (short-form is the "*walks up to Andara* Hi" style, whereas long-form is the "He walked up to Andara and said 'hello'" style). If you do short-form when everyone else is writing long-form, then you look like an idiot. If you do long-form when everyone else is writing short-form, you look like a show-off. We can all write that way, we aren't for a REASON.

This, definitely. Also, if it is made clear in the first post that the RP is third person, don't start posting in first. -.- I personally prefer third for my RPs cuz it makes it easier to see which of my characters is being RPed. Some people prefer first. But whichever it is, it's the RP owner's decision. Don't join my third person RP and immediately start posting in first, cuz you'll annoy me.

Sex. Keep it private. Yes, sex is good, natural, and I have no problem with your characters having sex. It allows you to explore a character in ways that not-having-sex wouldn't. But if you do, don't do it where everyone else can see. Unless, you know, you're in an erotic RP forum.

I personally dislike lemons in RPs so I do a *fade to black* when sex happens. I don't see the use of it unless, as you said, you're doing erotic RP.

[Amanita]

On sex in stories and RP, I believe that it can serve a purpose, in both character development and plotline. But it can also come across as gratuitous and fan-servicey if it's not well handled. Unfortunately a lot of RP'ers and fanfic writers tend to come across as the latter. Perhaps the worst case being the Harry Potter fanfic "My Immortal". I'm sorry, but if you are writing a sex scene as "He put his thingy in my you know what and then we did it", you don't need to be writing about sex in any context!

[Kaylyn]

I RP in WoW, and have just come back to the game after a hiatus kinda centered around a bunch of RP drama.

My paladin was in a relationship, and I quickly got extremely annoyed with the other player just throwing all kinds of stuff (family drama; her character's sister regularly tried to murder both our characters) in that made me uncomfortable. Then she got all defensive when I reacted to her stuff in character. I respect her right to roleplay her characters however she wants to, but she's gotta understand that my character will eventually say, "Enough is enough!" and walk off. Which he did, in a way. I quit the game for several months, and I will be deleting that character eventually. If she gets back in contact with me, I'll just say that he died in Northrend or something.

This was all coupled with the guild I was in. RP guild with an evil bent. At the time I joined, I mainly did so to start up a story with my husband's character, and I gave my paladin several issues that made him not really question what he was doing in such a guild. But my character grew, and wanted out. I felt that the guildmasters were giving me a really hard time about wanting to leave, threatening stalking, torment, and death if I dared speak of their secrets. Now that I'm back, I tried to speak to them on another toon and one of the guildmasters got really upset that I left. Excuse me, sorry for not being able to predict the VERY LAST DAY I would have any desire to log in, even to say goodbye and make arrangements to leave the RP.

I'm back, Wyrmrest Accord horde-side mainly, still interested in RP, but I'm not going to let other players control my roleplaying anymore. If they don't like that I don't like what they do, I suppose that's their problem, not mine, I'm not going to let them control my enjoyment of the game and the roleplay anymore/