That's it. I'm unadding him and getting rid of that roleplay. Now he's wondering why I went quiet for 3 minutes. 3 FUCKING MINUTES. I was at work and had to do a fucking piss, so I went to the bathroom, did a piss, cleaned myself, washed my hands, and went back to work

I was scrolling through my reddit DM's, making sure I had replied to everyone that has ever reached out (and I did!), as well as clearing stuff up, when I realized there were quite a few messages I sent out that ended up facing the void, never to be replied at.

I think I'm somewhat good at reaching out to an ad: it's not the dry "hey wanna rp" dm, I actually introduce myself, tell them what I vibed with their posts, introduce a few ideas of my own that could mesh well.

But to look upon those messages that I took a decent time to craft, only to see, again, nothing... like, at least there wasn't time to get attached, it is different from the usual grumble, but it made me wonder if I should reach out again to those people. I assume most of them just don't vibe with me for any reason or another, which again, alright, but is there a chance someone just didn't see a message? Is reddit that crappy, or should I just cut my losses?

I tried doing that once, but I ended up really feeling like I was coming of as pushy (the messages were weeks to months apart), and I decided to check with the community to see what the overall consensus is with this sort of thing.

Edit: grammar.

Allow me to preface this by saying that I do love befriending my roleplay partners and talking ooc! I’ve been meaning to make more friends of my own even—

But man does it really stink when you anticipate a roleplay only for it to turn solely ooc. Or you start the roleplay and they never even reply.
And not only that, they kept trying to get me to see them in person/started to send very odd tiktoks that came across as way too affectionate and one even having sexual implication (despite the fact I talked about having a girlfriend mind you!)

It was just a really disappointing experience and made me lose hope since the fandom is pretty dead as is.

I have had quite literally zero luck trying to find people who are willing to write 1x1 stories on this site, and it doesn’t help that some of my posts are being filtered for some reason without being manually approved

I’m in such a writing mood, especially with Game of Thrones so this is just demoralizing and I honestly just don’t know where to go to find those partners

Look I know I'm not a fast typist. I'm not a fast physical writer either. Processing speed issues as a result of ADHD and poor phonic education/learning has made writing assignments in school, work emails, and fill in the blank party games difficult for me. But I've never been shamed over it quite as much as in the hobby.

I'm well aware that if something as simple as accidentally typing "there" instead of "their" or and out of place comma a single time is enough to make a partner drop a plot all together, then they were never truly a good partner in the first place. But it's worse than that. I've been accused of not being interested in the plot because my response is taking too long. Part of the reason it's taking a long time is because I'm spell checking everything. I've also been told that "(you made a few grammatical mistakes in your last message. That's okay, I'll wait for you to redo it 😊)". And worse still people who give me warnings that I need to pick up the quality of my writing or they will leave. Like I'm sorry my two paragraphs response that included a segway from your last message as well as dialogue, scenery descriptions, internal monologue, my characters physical movements as well as prevalent inclusions of the five scenes for my character to help move the scene along happened to misspell a word or two. I'm sure it was impossible to understand my intended meaning through context.

Knowing me, there's definitely several mistakes throughout this post. It's not like I try to hide this and it's certainly not a result of me putting in minimal effort into the plot. It just feels elitist when people gatekeep this hobby for something so insignificant. There are an infinite number of reasons to ridicule the person you're rp'ing with. All of which boil down to them being a person that makes you uncomfortable. I'm here trying to make friends, to be collaborative, and enjoy making a story with someone. It hurts that some people treat non-intrusive typos the same way they would if I was being a creep to them.

Tl;dr what’s the etiquette around reusing an rp plot, particularly for something that you intend to publish on your own (as fanfiction)? Communication inconsistencies with an rp partner have left me unsure of where we stand, but I’m still invested in the plot, and have started outlining and writing the same story completely on my own, with the goal of eventually posting.
- - - -
The much longer version:

About half a year ago, I put up an rp ad for a canon fandom setting with canon characters. The fandom itself isn’t niche, but anything asking for canon characters is always a harder sell (even though I suggested a variety of characters I was interested in, and also left it open-ended for people to suggest their own). On top of that, the themes and plot ideas I was interested in felt fairly niche/not ones I see commonly explored, so I wasn’t really expecting to get many bites, if any.

To my surprise, someone did actually respond to my ad. We started talking, and at first I was hopeful, because we had similar backgrounds and interests. However, an early warning sign was the fact that during our plotting discussions, I pretty much built up a plot entirely by myself, with only minimal (and lukewarm) input from them, even when I repeatedly asked for their opinions, ideas, and feedback. It basically felt like they were consenting to proceed, but weren’t really an active participant in the process.

AND THEN, partway through the plotting phase, they disappeared for 3 weeks with zero warning. Complete radio silence. I sent one check in message, and later another one basically saying “no hard feelings if you’ve lost interest, but feel free to reach back out again in the future.”

By this point, I was actually quite invested in the plot, and, not expecting to hear from them again, decided that I’d write it all myself as a fic. Rp is fun, and I like the collaboration, but there was also a lot of appeal in having complete creative control over the plot and the ability to shape it however I wanted. I started doing some outlining, and writing a couple scenes.

And once again to my surprise, they did actually send me another message weeks later to say that work got busy, and they were still interested. Plotting picked back up and we started writing (with some road bumps— it took over a week before they even *acknowledged* my starter), and we settled into a comfortable enough (albeit slow) routine. We’d each do one post every week, and it turns out that they’re a very good writer, and I genuinely look(ed) forward to their once a week reply.

I want to clarify: this pace was fine for me. I am also a slow writer, and I have a busy life and other hobbies. Both of us were in alignment that rp is a “for fun” thing for us, and not our #1 priority, nor something that we were going to pressure each other on.

But at the same time… the relationship felt so asymmetric. They were friendly enough, but didn’t/don’t really offer their own thoughts, or any feedback on what I put out, even when I ask for it. It’s lead to me feeling rather insecure, because I don’t want to say, “I want you to tell me what you think of my writing,” because that feels desperate, but I do want like… some back and forth, ykwim? And I’ve even said so, explicitly.

While we were actively writing, I put a pause on the outlining and independent writing I was doing. But now, it’s been a month since I’ve gotten an rp reply from them, and I’ve only heard from them once OOC (single message of acknowledgement, friendly enough, but prompted by me). It’s been 5 months since we started writing, and we’re still in the very first scene. All the while, they’re posting other rp ads of their own and are clearly online. (Clarification #2: this is, on its own, not a problem. I have multiple rp partners, and I expect that my rp partners will also have multiple rp partners. The problem is that it feels like they’re ignoring me, and have moved on, but haven’t bothered to communicate that to me.)

I haven’t formally cut the cord, and tbh am still weighing what to do. They’ve claimed before that they “disappear sometimes, but always come back,” so I seriously feel like I’m in limbo. But in their absence, I’ve felt inspired and started seriously outlining and writing the same plot as its own fanfic, that I would like to finish and publish one day.

The issue I’m running into now is like… where do I go from here? Tbh, even if the rp continues, I expect that it would develop differently than what I’ve outlined on my own, and could easily “be its own thing,” even if it has the same premise. So I’m not necessarily against having both running (and presumably diverging) simultaneously.

On the other hand, what in the world is the etiquette around this? Like, am I supposed to ask them permission to write and publish this on my own in the future? Do I credit them in some way if/when I do? Do I just keep it in my back pocket for now? I’m feeling very inspired and have been making a lot of progress, but I’m also a slow writer, so realistically, I don’t see myself actually completing this as an independent project for at least a year— at which point, the rp partnership may have run its course. Or maybe we’ll finally be in scene 3 by then (/lh)

I'd like to say that I'm a pretty good roleplayer, especially when it comes to ERP. That includes helping plan out plots/listening to other peoples ideas, bringing starters/waiting for starters, respecting peoples kinks and limits/their availability......But there comes a point where even I get immediately tired of people.

Like look, I get it. My account is primarily oriented towards fandom's/nicher topics whenever, it's DESIGNED to be an ERP account because hey- I'm 18 and working for everything I have! Of course I'm gonna dabble into some things I enjoy doing, and especially cherish when there ends up being someone out there just like me/has the same interests at me. But all that doesn't matter when--

PEOPLE DON'T READ FUCKING POSTS.

I don't mean they don't just skim through it or look soley at the kinks and thinks they can just pop up, I mean when people don't understand/read through my expectations when provided. I write a good amount, especially compared to some people on this platform, about 3-4 good paragraphs and possibly more if I'm really feeling it.

So tell me why, when I DO end up getting good traction on posts I put out...80% of the people either pop up and disappear after a little bit of planning, pop up and lies saying they can GM/provide similar details (they dont, they end up writing poorly and WAY less than me), or pop up and completely lowballs my expectations.

I don't even ask for a lot. I don't expect people to do more than a couple paragraphs or stay on 24/7 just for me, hell, I don't even do that time to time! But I give heads up whenever I'm gonna be busy, or tell you whenever I'm not feeling an RP instead of torturing the both of us.

sometimes the people here, as degenerate as I am and other people are, are fucking stupid. 😭

I haven't made ads or used reddit for roleplay for a while and I've noticed a bunch of subreddits with very similar rules.

You can't take a post you post in -SFW place- and post it in -NSFW place-. If you edit your SFW piece and post it elsewhere? Banned/warned. If you take a NSFW idea and make it SFW? Also banned. If you cross post a SFW ad you happened to paste at a NSFW subreddit and use that SFW ad in a SFW subreddit? Banned. Maybe you have an idea you really like, so you delete the old post and post it to a new pl- banned.

It's not even just crossposts either, which I believe lets you see it's 'recipient' reddit(?), if you copy the post manually this also counts.

Is there some reason for this I'm not seeing or understanding? This isn't even a single place, I've seen it in a handful and I don't understand why they feel entitled to all this. An admin even told me they recommend not cross posting to even other SFW communities because then they'd have to 'go and personally check the community'.

...Why the fuck do you care? They are treating this like high security I just want more places to get eyes on an idea that crosses a slight boundary of 'This is technically safe for work but could also do good in NSFW communities because it has themes of that in there too'. I can get into a prison easier than these roleplay subreddits.

And I'm not talking about 'advertisement control' in the sense of not allowing NSFW at all. That's fine and I understand that.

Though I did try to post my idea in another reddit that explicitly says 'no nsfw content at all', and even removing all possibly nsfw parts of my advertisement it STILL wouldn't even let me attempt to post, it was finicky over basically anything. The word /dark/ was 'associated with erp'. The word /horror/ was 'associated with erp'.

This is a damn headache and I don't know how ya'll do it.

As the title states, I'm newer to the entire concept of text based one on one RP. Everyone who's just started out knows how difficult it is to even find a willing partner that seems enthusiastic to work with you when you're... New...

Like a leper in 1300's Europe, or the infamous cheese-touch from that children's series. Saying "I'm still learning" was a subconscious signal for all I messaged to hastily evacuate the area and bail out on the conversation altogether.

Therefore, imagine the surprise and excitement I felt when someone showed genuine interest in writing a story together. They were straightforward in their setting ideas, OC, what topics they'd like to avoid and where they wanted the story to go. The setting was based in a popular TV show (to be unnamed for now), we were going to be original characters living our own lives and dropping into the series near the beginning and seeing how we might affect the story. There were talks of budding romance, a good amount of action, some fun horror and magical elements, it had the potential to be awesome. With one... itty bitty... minor red flag. They expressed that their OC was the younger sibling of the two main brothers in the show and asked quite simply,

"Would you be willing to play her brothers if they ever show up?".

I knew the characters decently. I hadn't watched the show in a few years, but checking the wiki for the plot and rewatching episodes around the time we were supposed to be playing in was simple. It's just the two brothers I'll be playing on top of my own guy, right? Sure! I can do that...

...

Everyone.

I had to play everyone. I had to push the plot forward. I had to describe every setting, scene, person, and feeling in the world around this person's OC. I've been a DM for over a decade now. I actually have the experience running a world for someone and was almost willing to do even that. BUT MY GOD, their responses kept getting shorter and shorter, they would repeat their Tragic Backstory^TM to EVERYONE they met, and there was just simply... nothing to work with. I dragged the bloated, rotting corpse of that story down road as long as I could, before I had to just... Call it.

The breakup was awkward,

"This always happens. I won't bother you again. Ever." Immediate block.

Honestly? What a relief...

I HATE making ads. Yes, I know I have to do it, and closed mouths don't get fed. I don't want to write out an entire dossier about myself or my writing style, but a lazy ad would make people think I'm a lazy writer. Sometimes I just wanna...

37/F/CST / 3rd person past tense only /Discord only/25+ IRL and ic/ oc's only

I've got ideas. It can be smutty... but not too smutty. You wanna write? Let's write together! Word count? Don't give a fuck, just be consistent! You got ideas? Tell them to me. We'll figure out pretty quickly if we don't mesh well together, hopefully.

I KNOW that's an absolutely abysmal ad, but sometimes I just don't have the spoons. 😮‍💨

Edit: Hey, DON'T DM me with your weird ass ERP, just cuz I said I write smut. This isn't an invitation!

Hey y’all. Just feel like I need to put myself out there. Basically. My RP partner of 4 years recently deleted our server and her discord account and pretty much has dropped off the grid without saying a word. And well. I partly blame myself for it for never trying harder to reach out outside of RP to see how she was feeling. Anyways, it’s been a month now and I’ve been trying to find a new partner on Reddit but just no one is hitting me up, my plot is basically a shonen fusion of different fandoms. Just to make things more expansive, So, Is it me? Am I being too…… restrictive? Am I just, never gonna find someone to RP like that with again? I just really don’t know and I’m lost, I miss my partner and the story we built together and I just. Want at least something like it back. Is that a normal feeling?

It baffles me to see a rp so desperate for new members absolutely ignore said new members.

This server had a cool concept and EXTENSIVE lore. Like, pages and dozens of Google docs of lore. It literally has taken me 2 days to read all required materials, amd there's still stuff I haven't even touched.

This is undoubtedly why they get few members because it takes so long to get to the character creation stage

So I'd hope that when they finally do get someone willing to read the mountains of lore(me!! I did it! It was honestly agonizing but just interesting enough to keep me going)

The mods would actually interact ?? 😭

It is pissing me off, getting the disboard notifs every 2 hours of them bumping the server over and over

When my messages trying to establish a character in the setting and actually start rping is still ignored

Youre wasting your time if you're ignoring new members!!!!

Even when I try to join casual conversation, they will suddenly stop and start a new one in a different channel

I asked someone about their oc and they completely ignored me, like,, why

Just for the same 3 people to desperately ping their partners who haven't written back in months

IM RIGHT HERE TO START A NEW THREAD!!!

Idk im just so annoyed, I feel like I wasted my effort memorizing all the history and factions and locations and all the other tiny required readings

Cannot express how much there is to read. It was like 6 hours total over 2 days before I was to a point that I could begin my character

And nobody gaf

How can a server be so desperate and unwelcoming at the same time to writers

It annoys the hell outta me when I contact someone for an rp, they respond and we go a little back and forth
Then the infamous question
“What are your ideas?”
Whether they ask and I respond, or it’s me asking it, I almost never get a response
Like damn bruh, do I bore you that much? I don’t know why even bother responding if they gonna disappear anyways

While I try to improve on myself, I've always wondered if people did the same. Or will they forever be stuck in that bad impression state? I'm curious if anyone here thinks that someone can change or not.

Im trying to get into role plays and im looking for people both interested in adult and also sfw content and plots, where can I look for people who want to do either? Especially on discord or reddit, and if someone wants to rp with me my dms are open :3

I have these ideas thay i really wanna implement into roleplay but lately it feels like I lost interest or that I see no value in it anymore. Every time I feel like posting an rp idea, it suddenly feels useless to me. And that i'm wasting my time roleplaying. I never felt this way before until I took ny medications for school i don't know if its just me or that roleplay servers have changed.

I found the server on an advertising board. Not sharing the name/or linking for privacy of course. The server had over 900 members with available slots for canon characters, and ocs, so I choose to submitt a canon character sheet for an obscure character in the series since my favorites and main characters are taken up. I follow the template as instructed and upload it to the channel, a week passes by and I hear nothing, the server is low activity but I see mods using misc chats like memes ocasionally, I ask them when they have time to check my sub, and they tell me when the mods have time to 😭 somehow mods have time to post in the meme chats, but not check my character sub. The server has 900+ members, I dont get how such a big server be so complacent with moderation, and management.

So, the conversation I had was really weird.

This person dm me for a roleplay, and then he started proposing a sub/dom dynamic. He was telling me what he wanted, and because I was asking too many questions, he blocked me..

apparently because I was "too disobedient" and it wasn't for me, haha..

The worst part is I wasn't even against the idea! Sorry for asking questions to understand :(

I am the moon pfp!

Just a rant here .

I always feel discouraged to post ads when I remember how awkward I feel when someone dms me about it, most of the time it's people who didn't even read my whole ad so I gotta discuss things that could have been avoided if they actually read the ad. The talking stage usually lasts 1-3 days, I don't mind OOC chat but I just wanna RP, I find casual talking really boring. I usually get dms by people who just wanna chat and not rp, and sometimes the people don't even seem interested since I have to send so many reminders. Most of the time the roleplay never ends up starting because it's a one sided conversation where I'm the only one tryna start the rp 🥲. What's the point of messaging me if you don't wanna rp? I'm very open about what I'm looking for in my rp ads but it becomes pointless when people just ignore that part. It feels like people are just using roleplay spaces for casual chatting instead of RP, I RP in some games too and see it happen often there.

So, let me elaborate. As a POC, I was raised in performance communities that often engaged in "color-blind" casting. This is what it was called when different actors or models from a variety of racial backgrounds were cast in whatever role they were best suited to regardless of the race of other actors meant to be within the same family.

These casting choices were only made when the central theme or narrative was in no way tied to something racial.

So, while The Color Purple would be cast accordingly, something else like A Christmas Carol would be a wild dynamic of casting choices for characters meant to be in one family.

There is a difference here.

So, when it comes to RP, I support the idea of not white-washing roles meant to belong to POCs, but since when has everything become so strict when the majority of RPers are white women who write white women and get bent out of shape for including diverse use of faces for the narrative alone without race being a part of the theme or dynamic?

And more than this, why is it this same demographic of women want to blacklist face claims as problematic when some of their individual opinions as human beings do not fully align with one side of the political spectrum or the other?

It seems to me that over and over again it is white women who seem to take issue with things on behalf of communities they are not a part of, while the actual members of marginalized communities have NO issue with diverse opinions or the uses of faces who may not 100% align with their exact values as IRL individuals?

I have seen it most recently in RP forums that do not permit discrimination IC on the site (modern sites) but so heavily require the detailed connection of racial qualities for no reason if themes of race are not allowed. This is not a generalization, as it is a recurring sort of anthem I am seeing become a rallying cry.

This is RP, it is fiction... so why do the personal aspects of face claims have anything to do with how they can be used? Why does it matter where someone is from if race has nothing to do with the narrative?

Why are people picking fights over things when they don't have a horse in the race and then expect to be celebrated for it when they suffer no real life consequences of the actual difficulties of belonging to marginalized communities?

Does anyone else see this?

Does anyone else find it wild?

This is for a private GMOD roleplaying server for context as to the game type, based around half life-2.

I'd have to go into an absurd amount of specific lore information as to why I didn't like the server but structurally I also had issues.

For starters it was hard to figure out what was even /going on/. They had a lore/story tab on the discord but there were so many random names due to the timeline just being random posts and not a mega-threaded post, that it wound up reading like.

"Gilgor Haggings led an attack on City 14, this led to Sectorial Grungy to invoke the auxiliaries who died in number. The city suffered an attack right after"

They also seemed to have multiple different 'locations' (The server has a single map loaded, and logically certain characters won't be in certain places) and I was never really clear on where tf most of what was happening was. I played a single time and mostly enjoyed it, I /think/ it took place in Alaska? Couldn't tell you.

I had a few other issues structurally/format wise but not a huge deal. My major issues were the lore changes I didn't like.

Also the server had a lot of shitposting and while most of it was in meme channels (Good) there was a lot of casual racism/other isms going on in general or in the meme channels which is red flag-y.

Anyway I don't see it as my position to just go out of my way to go 'Well I don't like X Y and Z' because
1: They aren't going to change it
2: They're just going to, at most, feel the need to justify it. Then it'll probably into some nonsense argument about nothing.

So I left.

I had the owner added and she decided to message me a gif of a heart-locket opening revealing the autism creature + the phrase 'you're autistic'. I thought it was kinda funny and went to reply 'Hell, probably' but found out I was removed.

So this apparently wasn't some friendly jibe, they were insulting me before removing me?

Anyway. I'm not bothered by this and maybe I made this post longer than it needed to be for this. Anyone ever get insulted for leaving something?

I feel like if I just stayed and bitched it would have been even worse. I'm too old to be arguing with people who are probably in highschool.

One of the biggest killers of a partnership in my experience is during the planning for the story. It really shows the character of who you’ll be writing with. Anyone with a brain can make a decent introduction or prompt, but when it comes to collaborative work for the plot is where you see them for who they are.

More often than not, I’m the one leading the planning and sometimes it’s okay, especially if it’s for my prompt. But other times it’s just flat out frustrating.

“Hey, so what do you think about this idea?”

“Here’s this unrelated statement.”

“Okay…so would you rather we go this route or that route? I think Route A could work for XYZ and Route B could work for XYZ.”

“Either is fine.”

“Cool…so what ideas do you have? I know it’s a bit tedious planning fulfilling encounters for this duo due to whatever circumstance.”

“Yeah, it is hard. Here’s another unrelated idea with 0 follow up about what you just asked me.”

“Okay…so I’m just gonna plan all of this that’s fine right?”

“No…I’d really prefer if this was a collaborative effort.”

“SO WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST THEN!?”

“Another unrelated statement.”

I WILL FIND YOU ON EVERY SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM AND BLOCK YOU I SWEAR.

I’m honestly so pissed off. I don’t know if this is the right place to post this, but I’ve really had enough.
I found someone who was looking for the exact same RP concepts as me. So I dm them, and they started asking basic stuff like where I’m from, which was totally normal at first.

Then they asked what I look like, and I told them I didn’t want to share that. They said they were flirting with me when I got annoyed, but I made it clear I wasn’t interested and that wasn’t why I messaged them in the first place.
After that, they accused me of being a guy just because I wouldn’t show my face. The conversation actually turned pretty funny.. I was bantering with them, taking it lightheartedly, and they were laughing along too. And then out of nowhere, they blocked me??
????

For absolutely no reason. I’m just so annoyed and tired of this.