RPing pet hates

[Amanita]

^As one of my above posts said, I used to have a friend who was notorious for stuff like that, especially taking control of the RP and god-moding. Gee, wonder why I lost interest in RP'ing with her, or should I say, having my characters used as supporting cast in her Mary-Sue fantasy.

[Iseeyouthere]

I role-play a lot on forums.

Currently RPing as a human with a cybernetic leg and arm replacement in a world where the rain can kill you.

In previous experiences, my pet peeves are many:
People taking control of the RP so it goes THEIR way. This has happened a few times where someone else decided that a ship would sink when it wasn't suppost to... that RP died quick.

God-modding Mr Mighty never gets a scratch on him and kills 200 men with a snap of his fingers.

Spelling LEARN TO SPELL!

Amenisa. The source where anyone can pull super-powers out of their ass but couldn't before because they lost their memory but suddenly regain it.

[aurelemsrealm]

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!

I can understand why this quoted example of poor writing is cringeworthy. The notion of someone seriously writing such a passage certainly made my face scrunch. I've never done any role playing, but I do enjoy writing. I mainly write for myself as an outlet, but I have published some articles, poetry, and a short story locally. Really, I guess most of these rules could be applied to any type of collaborative work.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I'd agree with that. Whenever I'm RPing canons, I always try to keep in character. Even if said character has canon faults that make them irritating. XD

Another thing that bugs me about RPing is if someone you're RPing with just vanishes without prior notice. I understand that sometimes RL gets on top of you, or you're having computer issues, but for the love of cheese, try to get online at least once to tell your fellow players what's going on. You can go to a library or ask a friend to borrow theirs for a few minutes, or go to an Internet cafe... just please tell your fellow RPers why you can't get online for the moment.

I find it extremely annoying when someone just ups and leaves like that, especially if their characters were important ones to the fabric of the story. I've had a very fun and interesting RP having to be closed just cuz someone decided to bugger off unannounced. I'm not expecting people to stay on for the rest of their lives; it's just common courtesy to let people know that you're going to leave and to perhaps give permission for your characters to be temporarily played by other people so that they can be later written out.

[Hyena Dandy]

Okay, here's another one.

If you're RPing a character who exists, try to keep YOUR character close to THEM. Unless you're explicitly another version, you should try to keep the personality at least close to the original. And yes, that extends to fan-work characters as well. If you're playing a character from a fanfiction, or an ask-blog, then you should try to play that character.

Being OOC, that's fine. If you just never post AS that character, then I don't care. But if you insist on RPing as them, try to keep the personality close to the original.

You don't have to (as my friend Robert has) shut down your page if something happens to the character (he's not sure what's going on in the storyline in an askblog he runs a page for, so he's not posting at all on his page until he findsout) but you do have to at least keep the character the same, basically.

[Gravekeeper]

I will add one from my RP days:

Time-Travel.

Fuck. Time-Travel. As well as every other god damn stupid excuse ( Be it dimensional portals, acts of gods, whatever ) used to stick an out of genre character into an RP session. This use to drive me batshit as we'd have at least one dickhead a week wander into the middle of what was a medieval level setting with a farking assault rifle or power armour or a fucking robot sidekick or some other technology vastly superior ( and overpowered of course ) to everything in the current game world and try and say they're here from another world/time. Almost always used as a form of "Har har I can do anything to you cus my <insert future technology> is better than your primitive swords and armour!".

I use to ban them the moment they said anything. For I was a cruel, unrelenting GM.

Oh, one more thing, yes I coded an amazing NPC bot that did indeed fool a lot of people into thinking she's real. But....seriously.....please don't hit on her in PM. >.>

[Lace Neil Singer]

I admit to one lining occasionally when I'm tired, but as a general rule I do prefer to post more than one sentence when replying to an RP. It helps if you don't just post a line of dialogue but also something about how the character is feeling or what they're doing; also, not just posting the dialogue if more than one of your characters is speaking cuz otherwise it can be confusing as far as who is saying what.

This goes mainly for Sue characters; people who post endless descriptions of their character, especially about their looks and clothing. Yes, you do have to post a description to show other players what your character looks like, but endless posts on looks get a bit grating. I call this "My Immortal-itis" cuz in the My Immortal badfic there are endless looks and clothing descriptions thrown in for no good reason.

[LexiaFira]

want to ad to this
One Liners people that barely contribute to the rp by just posting one line, or one long sentence and nothing more. I don't expect a paragraph but something more than one line is nice. this is based specifically to a forum type or chat type rp.

Inattentive's: those that want to rp with you and do not pay attention to the details or reply correctly to your rp then get mad and throw a fit when you point it out.
a good example i have a para-rp going. that's a paragraph style role play that a good chunk of post is expected and not just sentences that have no connection to the rp.
Sometimes I get a few people that join and post one sentence or something not related to the scene or type at all and get so upset when its kindly pointed out. One person went so far as to drag a moderator into it. He lost because i had posted all over the first post what kind of roleplay it was.

after a while i began to not want to log in, it made roleplaying almost pointless

[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/

[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!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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/

[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?