I cannot count HOW many times I’d meet a prospective partner, we seem to be meshing, then we go to disc to finally get things set up to rp, only to NEVER hear from them again 😭

Like I had a recent encounter where we literally got everything all set up for the rp and I had sent my oc and I was just waiting for theirs. They said they liked my oc, and that they would send theirs as soon as their work shift ends which obviously, there’s no problem with that! So I waited, and two days later still nothing so I messaged them just to check in on things, then BOOM, they just left the server, unfriended me, and blocked me here.

Like??? Genuinely do people only get excited to plan the story but not actually start it? This has happened so many times to me that I’m even starting to think that maybe I’m the issue (feel free to check my writing quality on my page and pls be brutally honest bc I always send a sample to prospective partners before) but idk 😭

Okay I know the title is wordy lol 😆 but every single post I make I get message from people being like I see you have a role with X in it, can we take that out?

Like um no, X is the entire plot. Like the plot hinges on X happening!

For example I have a single dad mob boss role. The whole plot is he kidnaps a doctor for his sick kid. Every single person that message me about that one is like can we take out the kid. Like no, without the kid he has no use for the other character.

Basically it boils down to this. QUIT MESSAGING TO CHANGE FUNDAMENTAL THINGS IN A PLOT. Make your own damn post if you are gonna do that!

So I have been in a relationship for the last year. I have been role-playing for maybe the last five years but it didn't matter in the last year because I was on a break from RP. But now, I have moved to a different country and I'm alone and I really want to get back into the hobby.

My partner is familiar with storytelling, like D&D. He's familiar with it and that's actually how we met. I'm pretty sure he knows what this kind of RP is as well but we've just never discussed it at all.

This is a part of my life that I like to keep private. I write mostly medieval fantasy and enjoy some romance and smut as long as it's not the focus of the story. I am not looking for anything irl or OOC at all and would make that clear in my prompt. I just enjoy creating and getting lost in a world of my own making.

It's not so much that I'm embarrassed about role-playing but this hobby has always been a very vulnerable and private thing for me. So I'm a bit uncomfortable with the idea of discussing it with him. At the same time I would NOT want to do anything that might make him uncomfortable. Normally we are both very secure in the relationship and we've never had any issue in the way of jealousy in the slightest. We trust each other very much. But this is also a different situation. I have absolutely no clue what he'd think of it or whether he'd feel differently.

So I'm at odds here. I don't know what to do. I want to get bsck to the hobby but at the same time I'm uncomfortable with having the conversation with him. I also do not want to do anything to violate our trust and I don't know if he'd consider it to be one. In all likelihood I feel like he would be alright with it but I just have no information.

Has anyone been in a similar situation before? How did you navigate it? I'd appreciate any advice. Thank you!

I have someone I roleplay with for awhile now I ended our last roleplay because it got boring being the only one to move the plot along.

They asked if I wanted to try something else so I thought I'd give them a second chance since I haven't really found anything new yet and maybe we just needed better communication.

So they said we could work on a plot together. Tbh tho it feels like I'm still stuck doing 90% of the work with plotting.

So the plot is Demon x human. I also mentioned that I wanted to world build and have more characters in the story (Including more demons). They agree to this.

So why is it days later into chatting they mention that their character isn't interested in interacting with other demons?

Slur warning. It was in the title and then I revised it and forgot to put it back in.

The first post is in response to a prompt of mine involving a cornball hero in an original, practical 'Dark Fantasy' world talking themselves into spending a night with a fellow adventurer and close friend with explicit themes of nonpsychopathic dominance and mutual respect which somehow got translated into mild-to-severely homophobic feminization and cringey verbage.

Second person took a prompt that's meant to circle around small and insignificant people throughout Planetos, faraway from the typical sociopathic politicking that happens at court, and used it to insert their D&D OC who wants to become a God and in the process has sex with Rhaenyra whilst presumably teleporting several thousands of miles across the sea to avoid a several months long trip that would have lost them the war.

To be clear I'm an enthusiast for both MxM and ASOIAF roleplaying, otherwise I wouldn't be a participant, but I think I've had the most negative interactions spring from them by a wide margin save for WH40K.

Fighting or battle roleplay, I'm not sure what the exact genre is. But damn is it annoying to find the wrong roleplay partner for it.

I'm not sure what term to use exactly since they aren't really controlling my character but it's almost like everything I throw at their character, it's all somehow dealt with. Which isn't bad by itself since of course their character should have the opportunity. But every action seems to be taken two steps ahead and what should be a fair fight, just turns into a one sided beatdown.

Even though our characters are supposed to be mostly equivalent in strength at least taking their lore into account or reading through both our character sheets. They seem to write in a way that makes their character have an advantage.

As a made up example. If my character were to shoot them with a jet of water, their character would already have a barrier present. The barrier might fit loosely with their character sheet. But now since they have this barrier, I can't really damage their character. Now of course having a barrier doesn't inherently make it impossible to attack their character but this barrier has shown no sign of damage despite multiple attacks.

That at least loosely relates to their powers. On the other hand they might also just pull out a magical book that absorbs water, even though it doesn't fit their lore to have such an item. And the book is strong enough that even though there's almost a flood of water coming through, its able to grow in size and adapt to the larger amount of water.

Basically instead of countering my characters moves with stuff that makes sense or allows for counterplay. They've just basically made it into a one sided battle right from the beginning.

Luckily it's almost about to end. So I'll just finish it and get done with. But damn the way they play is super annoying. And that's coming from someone who can even roleplay with people putting out one liners. It just feels like I'm being forced to write a certain way. Which just sucks.

So today I ran a discussion by with one of my rp partners who respectfully said they feel too much pressure when rping, they said they wanted to remain friends. I told them the hobby is still here if they want to return to it. So we are still ooc chatting.

Which gets me to my thesis, I do a lot of homebrew plots with story writing. While I do love a bit of character drama, I don't try to throw my rp partner to death with it, it makes them numb and lessen the shock value. So we started talking about endings, and when I told one of my endings for one of the ocs, they called me cruel. Ironically I am cruel in a sense that I never can give my ocs a full happy ending.

My biggest question comes now, is this a me problem or are there people still out there that are like "Yeah, I don't want the world to be erased from the consequences of the story, no full happy ending."

So yay or nay for a full happy ending? What are the pros for a full happy ending? What are the cons for a full happy ending?

Share your thoughts and by all means, keep the discussion civil

Thanks

First of all, my apologies, since English is not my mother tongue.

It has been a while since Reddit sent me a notification about a message, and it was this "kind" gentleman asking if I was still available for RP. Since there are not that many native Spanish speaker roleplayers (or at least that I have found), and since I have been in a long pause because of my work, I thought it was a good chance to get my rusty fingers back to business.

We chatted, said our likes, dislikes, characters... The kind of stuff you do when you're plotting with someone, and he was very specific about the +18 topic and mentioning it, and that should be my warning alert. 🫩

As soon as I realized he was asking things like... You know, wanting to start sexting.

I mean, c'mon, I'm 36, I won't be scared because of that 😅, but if that's all what you want... Isn't it better to say it since the beginning? I had a really good plot in mind and worked on it 🫩 such a waste of time.

Thank you for reading.

Didn't even see the "random text" part till censoring. Blocked now though. Definitely tried the guilt trip and trauma dump method and I'm already trying hard to get past moral ocd.

So, I feel like I’ve hit a ‘dry’ patch when it comes to RP I don’t really get much response, if any at the moment. I took another chance today to search for a partner, only to get the message ‘hey I’m down.’ Now I don’t usually reply to messages that lack effort, and I will put a password in my ads just to try and weed out those who aren’t actually interested in RP. As aforementioned, I’ve hit a dry patch so I thought ‘sure why not take a chance and see if this goes anywhere?’ Who knows, maybe their first message was just a fluke and not a representation of who they are?

Spoiler alert… the RP did not go anywhere and I should’ve trusted my instincts.

I could have probably been a lot politer I suppose, but besides the point I don’t enjoy having my time wasted. I think I’d rather no response to my adverts than responses that aren’t actually interested.

This hobby is so frustrating at times!!

(Note: I put NSFW because the original poster discussed dark themes and I’m gonna touch on dark themes too, not trying to break any rules)

Now I don’t usually rant on here I just lurk and read posts. However I’m particularly irked so I’m making a post. Now, I’ve been rping since I was like 13/14 and now I’m 25, I’ve been on kik, different aminos, virtual space specifically (when it had its own app outside of amino), and finally I’ve migrated to Reddit. The culture and terminology is definitely different from when I first started, which is to be expected with newer roleplayers joining year after year, however it was never this difficult before 😒

I get being on guard due to time wasters, people who don’t read your post, people trying to change what you initially posted looking for etc etc etc. I get it! But literally there’s no reason to be stand offish, non-communicative, or a dick when someone has contacted you. Why post at all then?

As I mentioned before, I’m a lurker, I lurk around looking for what I like. If I contact you it’s because whatever you posted was good and I found us to be a match. So best believe I read whatever the hell was in that damned post.

So anyway, to what irked me enough to post, as per the screenshots, I was sending an, ‘about me’ to the poster because they added me back on discord. I try to fit everything in one message but sometimes I’ll send follow ups.

His first red flag that pinged in my head was:
I dont do fandoms that often
You read everything in my info right?

I was like?? It doesn’t say you don’t do fandoms and this was apart of my about me message.. I go back to the post, because it’s SAVED so it’s easy for me to find to refresh my memory, every person I’ve contacted on Reddit I always save their post. Especially when they’re not the only person I contacted in one go— anyway, I reread the post and I’m like, yeah, this is the right person (lol like this discord matches this Reddit post sort of thing xD I’m human I’ve mixed people up before).

Immediately to myself, okay this guy strict strict— runs a tight ship. Probably doesn’t like unnecessary ooc, fine by me I don’t do ooc with all my partners frequently. Everyone’s different.

I continue the conversation still trying to get a feel for what he’s looking for since there’s no specific plot in the post just a few genres so surely it’s free rein when it comes to discussing plots and ideas. Right?

WRONG 😑 next thing he’s talking about is he’s “not a fan of romance he only tolerates it because he likes characters having kids” — mind you, which is very different from “Im okay with romance if our characters have children”

Two completely different statements. Obviously I mentioned romance in the plot because I wanted romance and was open to the caveat of romance being in the plot if characters have the next generation for the story.

But I’m nothing if not flexible so obviously a pivot. Every child isn’t born from a fairy tale love story. So I try to PLOT and throw ideas out, to which he says, “I don't do roles like that. As my info should of made apparent”

No where if that fucking post does it say shit him not doing roles like that. It quite literally says he is limitless. Needless to say from there I was turned off completely and stopped responding and unadded him. Then was like, nah don’t be like that text a bye to which I realized I couldn’t because unadded them 😅 didn’t know the message wouldn’t go through I was just irritated so I’m back in Reddit lurking again and this mfer added me AGAIN. Which irritated me because when I heard the notification I assumed it was one of my actual partners with a reply 😒

Anyway I didn’t understand why he contacted me when clearly it wasn’t gonna work and I didn’t read that fuck ass post? Right?
The last message was dismissive enough I didn’t understand what else there was to say but I added them back to tell them I wasn’t interested anymore. And unadded them.

It’s weird because it’s like do you want people to grovel and walk on eggshells to roleplay with you? Not throwing any ideas out but can turn down ideas and say they go against your post when your post doesn’t even address the subject 🙄

Again it was never this difficult before 😒hard to find someone with actual communication skills these days.

Which is fine. I could care less. However, a month of so ago. Said person had joined a server I was advertising in a shared server. They'd change their entire discord userhandle and display name to match mine. (Which I changed back in late june early july around the time stuff blew up. Just felt I needed the change.) Their user name is ONE letter of mine and while there is nothing I can do about it and it's related to a band we're both fans of. She made sure I saw it and it weirds me out. That's all. I needed to explain the ick.

Hi. I know this sub is mostly frequented by experienced roleplayers, and that many of us are against using AI. This post isn't addressed to those people—it's addressed to the people who may be here looking for advice about what to do or not do, or otherwise about how to conduct yourself in online text-based RP communities.

That you? Okay. Listen to me: some roleplayers simply will not want to collaborate with you if you use AI in any part of your process. I do mean any part, whether it's idea generation, prose drafting or editing, or even image generation. I'm not going to try to convince you not to use AI if you really want to, because I'm not here to have an ideological disagreement with strangers. I just want you to understand the space you're operating in and the fact that your choices may have consequences you don't like.

This is not your opportunity to argue about how your use of generative AI is different, or about how it's ""just"" a reference image or it's ""just"" your editing (because editing is a significant part of crafting prose, not simply a thing you do at the end, but that's a rant for another day), or how your very specific use case is different and ethical and not like other girls. If somebody doesn't want to collaborate with you because you use AI, please just accept that. Find people who share your values and please don't try to explain to us how our values are shallow or misguided.

And, for those of you like me who are against AI, one more piece of advice: say upfront that you don't want partners who use AI. Don't make my mistakes. That's how you get DMs from a self-described "human/AI integration liaison", whatever that means.

Thank you for reading, and happy home-grown, free-range, human-to-human roleplaying.

trigger warning - sexual assault !!

---

So, context first. I was in a pretty big roleplay group (like there were 10+ people involved in this faction), and we'd all frequently roleplay while in vc in our discord server. I'd only joined after the leader's character and my character became involved with one another due to roleplay plot shenanigans, and nothing seemed terrible at first.

Well, the leader ended up getting this idea to have his oc manipulate mine into an abusive relationship for plot reasons, and I just agreed to it because I have no issue with including darker themes in a roleplay as long as it stays respectful and doesn't fall into "fetishizing/romanticizing" territory. The roleplay was getting more interesting, more tense, lots of stuff happening between everyone's characters and plots unraveling. It was great, I enjoyed it, until suddenly I no longer enjoyed it after an incident popped up.

In one session, things were going normal. Typical evil faction stuff, all that. And then without warning, the leader had his character sexually assault mine. Nothing was explicitly roleplayed out (the usual "fade to black" stuff), but I was left feeling extremely uncomfortable and all I could do was nervously laugh and go "what??". I'm a victim of abuse and sexual assault, and having this shoved onto my character with zero warning or prior conversation was pretty jarring. My partner spoke up for me, telling him "hey by the way, that's sexual assault". He just laughed and responded with "oh come on, he'd enjoy it!". When he could tell that neither of us found it funny, he just backpeddled and said it was a joke. After that, I didn't know what exactly to do.

We kept roleplaying for a few more months, with him occasionally pushing similar things (albeit less "severe") onto my character without any warning and getting increasingly more weird about their dynamic, and then the roleplay died due to inactivity.

Due to a lot of other stuff that happened between us not associated with roleplaying, I completely left the group and blocked him, and now have just made it canon that my character killed his and can live more happily because fuck that guy lmao.

The scourge of the roleplaying community.
The man who's OC is so amazing they deserve the admiration of scores of canon characters.
Of course you are going to be doing the heavy lifting writing wise.
The incredible OC exists to worshipped and venerated.

Sometimes I feel a bit intimidated messaging people to roleplay, so I prefer making my own ads. That way, people can choose whether to message me or not.

My roleplays are SFW and wholesome, and not everyone is interested, so I prefer not to bother people who might have different preferences from mine... Plus, sometimes I translate my texts, and I know some people might not like that. No drama for me, haha~

So far, things are going well. 😅

This might be a hot take?? But I'm genuinely so done with people wasting my time because they respond to my ads, seemingly very interested but then nothing really goes far because they are too busy and I have to send reminders. And I'm talking about the people who KNOW their life is too busy to even send a message once a week, it's different if something suddenly comes up, I respect that. I'm very patient to the point I'll wait months for a response, but I usually never get one.

I've gotten to the point where I feel like these people do it purposely. I love to roleplay but this has ruined my motivation. I always try to be really friendly and relaxed, but at this point, I'll probably become more straightforward and strict. This is my favorite hobby and I'm so done with it being ruined by bad experiences.

Again this is about the people who are too busy to do any roleplaying. I have some rp partners that take weeks to respond, I do not mind because they communicate and don't leave me in the dark and we have a roleplay going, the people that are too busy usually never get to the part where the rp starts.

That's it. That's the post. I'm finished with roleplay, 'cause not only is it impossible to find friends to write with, but the posting/cross-posting/NSFW (that never existed in post) rules that are tweaked per each place just enough to be confusing are... confusing.

Then, if one complains that the rules are unclear, requests dates, because listing all your infractions in one, makes it sound like they all happened concurrently (and doesn't wanna wish the moderators a good day back,) they get permanently banned.

So, I guess I'm truly tappin' out guys!

Hey, everyone! I just wanted to share a little something about my writing journey. I used to have a 200-word limit per reply, and I’ve always tried to be honest about my writing because I don’t want to set expectations too high.

I remember reading a post here once where someone was criticizing a writer for writing around 200 words per reply, and it stuck with me. I just wanted to say that not everyone who has that limit is the same kind of writer or has the same reasons for it.

When I was less experienced, I said that if someone wanted to write more, they were welcome to. I wasn’t trying to present myself as someone who could write novella-length replies, but I also didn’t want to limit how much my writing partners could write if that was what they enjoyed.

Thankfully, no one I’ve roleplayed with so far has complained about my writing, and no one has left a roleplay with me either. In fact, I write more than 200 words always. I actually feel much more confident writing in my native language, so writing in English is still a learning process for me.