Experiences Has Anyone Taken Part In An RP That Actually Reached The End Of The Story?

I have never participated in an RP that came to a conclusion. I've Gm'd about eight that reached a conclusion. There's a reason for this.

If you want to wrangle 5-10 people together online, and tell a story together that reaches a conclusion, you need to have several things in place before the first word is written.

  • You need to have a great story concept. Not a general plot idea, but a plot outline. To a good, serious writer, there is no bigger turn-on than developing the actual story.
  • You need to find the right people, and rely on them to make the right characters. This is the hardest variable of a Roleplay, and in 2020... it's just bad. It's not getting any better from what I've seen and been hearing. People just cannot make characters for roleplays. They make characters for themselves.
  • You need to keep the RP on course. This doesn't mean you have to dictate everything... It doesn't mean there s no spontaneity, no room for the "other players" to "influence the story" and all the BS you hear regurgitated every time it comes up in conversation. It just means that you have an outline. The evil group will fall, the castle will be destroyed. How you each get there, how you contribute to those series of events, is still on you. It's called being a dynamic story teller, instead of having all the comfort and wiggle room you could ever want or need.
Spontaneity is the biggest roleplay killer, at any time, in any community. A bit of it, at the right times, played just right is amazing. But too much, and it just becomes a melting pot for characters to impose their will on the narrative. Because here's a little secret you won't hear anywhere else; collectively, our creative choices and responsibilities are not good enough to be spontaneous all the time. It's the main reason people ghost out, and RPs fall apart... Cringey shit that just didn't need to happen...


Time also kills. Sometimes you'll be lucky enough to have a group that will show up every week for 3 and a half years straight. This is not the norm. When you keep things on pace, things move faster. You reach planned milestones (however specific or developed they may be ;) ), and that keeps people on deck for longer.
 
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Yes. All D&D campaigns, though.

My first campaign, that I’ve talked about before, is one such. I was playing Eilvyre, the dryder Paladin determined to rise above people’s first impressions of her. Our party was... kinda huge. Especially since a lot of us played a few characters over the course of the year and a half long adventure. But, at first, it was Eilvyre, mutinied pirate captain fighter Irazoh, his employee the goblin ranger, Kigz, a half drow intersex monk they’d picked up along the road named Tyrnan, Rika the elf bard, Louise the secret-princess arsonist elven warlock, and Nicholas, the 12 year old human sorcerer who grew up in a town of monster hunters and thought Eilvyre was his “captive.” We almost get sold into slavery, and Eilvyre duels a guard to learn the names of the people who orchestrated this. Lord and Lady Blackthorn. We go to their castle, learn that they’re Lolth worshippers. Eilvyre is too, at that point, but she and the goddess do not get along. So, Eilvyre decapitates a statue of Lolth and the party kills Lord Blackthorn. We then book it onto a ship and flee the continent. Which is why Lolth didn’t immediately kill me. It’s also worth noting that Eilvyre has been majorly pining after Louise.

So, we get to this new continent, Louise dips, we kill some vampires, gain a new party member— an air genasi named Feng, and we’re on our merry way. (At this point, the player who made Louise is DMing, and then co-DMing with the player who plays Irazoh.) We are solicited by a nobleman, Lord Andrew, to check out rumors of a castle “that grants your greatest wish.” Eilvyre prays to Torm, who she’s vaguely courting as a new godly patron, and he tells her this’ll be her entrance exam. We go there, getting warned by forest spirits along the way, and find the castle. As soon as we walk through the gate, a wish is granted. Eilvyre turns from a dryder into a full elf. Tyrnan turns cis. Etc.. Eventually, we discover and kill the Beldam, and return to Lord Andrew. We tell him it was all a fairy tale, no need to investigate further, and we part on... bad terms.

We have a new job, though, and this one’s from the crown. We steal a powerful magic crown from some agents of an enemy country and pretty much stop a war. We’re national heroes, now, and we get a letter from Lord Andrew inviting us to a banquet to apologize for his rude behavior. Like dumbasses, we fall for it. We go to his castle and he has a PET BELDAM, which he instructs to eat us. Instead, it flings us into the primordial realm. We make our way through, and then to the feywild, where we meet the archfey in charge of portals and transportation. We chill there for a bit, doing tasks and stuff to pay our way. While there, Irazoh FINALLY rolls high enough on insight to realize that Kigz’s bullshit resume is, in fact, 100% bullshit. He and new party member, Feng, her drunk, and Feng asks him for dating advice because she has a big gay crush on Eilvyre. It was cute.

We get home, realize it’s three years later, and immediately get arrested for high treason. We’re put on trial, with the queen as our judge, Louise (if you hadn’t guessed, the queen’s sister) as our defense, and LORD ANDREW as our prosecution. We were all furious, and only Eilvyre was any good at public speaking, so we kinda talked ourselves in circles and made ourselves look worse until Eilvyre was able to take the stand and due to zone of truth, was able to clear everyone’s names. Once cleared, the queen instructs us to investigate who might have been feeding classified information to the enemy kingdom, and we go after Lord Andrew first because of course we do.

Well. He was dead all along and the Beldam was using a puppet in his shape and voice to try and kill us from afar. But we fight the Beldam, kill it, and discover a group of drow in the bowels of LA’s castle performing a ritual to bring a physical manifestation of Lolth to the mortal plane. We know that with this ritual, there’d have to be many other drow in other places, working in unison, so we do what we can t be disruptive and hurry on back to the Royal palace. The palace is attacked, the queen and one of her daughters are killed, another daughter, the baby, is kidnapped aaaaaaand Louise is Queen. Nicholas dies-not-really, but regardless, is Louise gives us a super powerful potion thing that basically insta-levels is to level 20 and tells us to go murder Lolth and get the baby back.

Now, a bit of backstory on Eilvyre and Lolth. Lolth first appeared to Eilvyre when she was veeeeery young, and in a terrible situation. Eilvyre was raised by an eleven academic who studies monsters, so she was essentially a lab rat, and he only ever called her “Specimen E.” Lolth was the one who named her. Lolth was the one who gave her the courage to escape. Lolth considers herself to be Eilvyre’s mother, and was NOT happy when Eilvyre abandoned her in favor of her moral compass. So, the whole battle is just.... creepy..... Lolth’s arsenal of spells has a lot of mind control stuff, and we’re all targets, but she especially has it out for me. Being a level 20 devotion Paladin, I should be outright immune to being charmed or controlled, but because of our connection, all I have is advantage against. And I keep rolling terribly. It took like three and a half hours of this fight for me to finally land a hit on her. (And her response was “to your own mother, Eilvyre?” “You’d do worse to me.” “True.”) Eventually, with two really strategic uses of the wish spell, we manage to come out triumphant, Eilvyre even landing the killing blow. We learn, through a dream, that uhhhhh, and elder god we accidentally released in the fey wild swooped right in to find Lolth’s essence weakened, and ate her, sending a huge magical shock wave resonating across the planes that may or may not completely allay the groundwork for the campaign we’re playing now.

We’re met by Nicholas’ furious mother who puts a knife to Eilvyre’s throat and screams at me that I had sworn to keep him safe. We tell her that there’s a hope of getting her son back, and thaaaaaaaaaat’s the end of the campaign. We haven’t played our quest for Nicholas one shot. Not sure we ever will.

But that was our first ever campaign together... almost in full. I left out quite a few unimportant details.
 
End of the whole story not yet, although I have one that is technically in the later part of the pre-planned story.

But quite a few times managed to reach the end of a sub-plot within a rp that is still ongoing. Like episodes within a long series that have their own stories with beginning, climax and ending. But then the rp itself continued with more episodes.
 
Oh, if we're including TTRPGs, like DnD and VtM, then yes, I've been in many that have finished. Way more that have finished than that have not finished.
 
M.J. Saulnier said:
I have never participated in an RP that came to a conclusion. I've Gm'd about eight that reached a conclusion. There's a reason for this.

If you want to wrangle 5-10 people together online, and tell a story together that reaches a conclusion, you need to have several things in place before the first word is written.

  • You need to have a great story concept. Not a general plot idea, but a plot outline. To a good, serious writer, there is no bigger turn-on than developing the actual story.
  • You need to find the right people, and rely on them to make the right characters. This is the hardest variable of a Roleplay, and in 2020... it's just bad. It's not getting any better from what I've seen and been hearing. People just cannot make characters for roleplays. They make characters for themselves.
  • You need to keep the RP on course. This doesn't mean you have to dictate everything... It doesn't mean there s no spontaneity, no room for the "other players" to "influence the story" and all the BS you hear regurgitated every time it comes up in conversation. It just means that you have an outline. The evil group will fall, the castle will be destroyed. How you each get there, how you contribute to those series of events, is still on you. It's called being a dynamic story teller, instead of having all the comfort and wiggle room you could ever want or need.
Spontaneity is the biggest roleplay killer, at any time, in any community. A bit of it, at the right times, played just right is amazing. But too much, and it just becomes a melting pot for characters to impose their will on the narrative. Because here's a little secret you won't hear anywhere else; collectively, our creative choices and responsibilities are not good enough to be spontaneous all the time. It's the main reason people ghost out, and RPs fall apart... Cringey shit that just didn't need to happen...


Time also kills. Sometimes you'll be lucky enough to have a group that will show up every week for 3 and a half years straight. This is not the norm. When you keep things on pace, things move faster. You reach planned milestones (however specific or developed they may be ;) ), and that keeps people on deck for longer.
Click to expand...

Dude I've seen RP's started by some critically acclaimed authors, people that have the concept of superior plot outlining down to a fucking art form with simply amazing premises that didn't last but for a few pages in a forum post by post medium. It all comes down to commitment of the GM and every player involved. You don't have proper commitment with a healthy dose of sustainable interest, you don't have a healthy RP.
 
Eh on the website I used to belong to me and this girl got pretty heavily into our RP. It started off as a good girl / bad guy plot and eventually developed into where our characters got married, had children, then their children grew up and got their own love interests, the whole nine yards. Once it eventually got to the point of continuous one liners and never knowing what to do we wrote deaths for both of the initial two characters. So we did reach the end technically haha. It was also the longest running / most posts in the RP forum on the website we did this on which was pretty cool. To see it stem from two characters to their children with their own dynamics and relationships was really cool.
 
BeautifulLoser said:
Eh on the website I used to belong to me and this girl got pretty heavily into our RP. It started off as a good girl / bad guy plot and eventually developed into where our characters got married, had children, then their children grew up and got their own love interests, the whole nine yards. Once it eventually got to the point of continuous one liners and never knowing what to do we wrote deaths for both of the initial two characters. So we did reach the end technically haha. It was also the longest running / most posts in the RP forum on the website we did this on which was pretty cool. To see it stem from two characters to their children with their own dynamics and relationships was really cool.
Click to expand...

...and this was 1x1?
 
I've had a couple reach their conclusion before. I'm still very attached to those rps and the characters in them. I think the best way to help it get finished is to chat/be friends with your writing partner and keep actively planning while it's going to keep everyone interested. Life happens of course and sometimes they have to drop anyway, but I've found it gets it a lot further along if you're both actively talking about it/wanting to see it through to the end. Patience also helps. When you're expecting posts once a week and then they get busy, people can feel to anxious to continue. The few I've finished I've waited a month for a post to- the time in my life that I was asking for weekly or daily posts? Normally dropped off really fast the second something came up. Anxiety about posting speed is a major reason for people dropping out, I think. I know it's made me almost quit a few before after not meeting their posting deadlines when they have them set. Unless I already know they're really patient, it can make me really anxious to continue if I'm say, two whole weeks late of their once a week timeline. Though it's normally not enough for me to quit unless they're actively getting annoyed at me for it.

That all said I have no idea how to keep a group rp alive, I've given up on doing those all together. Life is too unpredictable and balancing that many people to try and keep them interested would be too much work for me. It'd have to be the only rp I had going, and at that point I feel like it'd be taking up space for other rps I might enjoy more. So can't say much about those.
 
I actually have reached the ending of multiple stories I've started with others. Not nearly as many as are still ongoing or simply stopped but I have reached the end for a few. It was quite heart wrenching as they were stories that went on for a couple years and I felt a little lost when they ended but it was nice to see the ending get to where we wanted it.
 
I think the closest I ever got was right smack dab in the middle of a story. It was a Friday the 13th Fandom RP, we got the initial set up and introduction done fairly well and even had a few NPC's and a secondary character get killed off by ole' Mr. Vorhees. We had him cut off all lines of communication and disable all the transportation and we were all holed up in a single cabin, ready to make our stand off, when everyone just stopped responding. It really sucked as things were getting so good! But yea, that was the furthest I remember ever getting in an RP, in fact it was one of my first roleplay experiences some fifteen years ago.
 
Unfortunately, the only one that ever finished is the second rp I've ever attended. It had 4 arcs I believe, and I was there for the last two. The host was amazing, and there were up to 200+ pages (the pages on the site the rp was hosted on weren't as long as the ones here tho) per arc. It was high fantasy I believe.

Either way, I regret taking it for granted lmao never had that experience again, and since I was a newb then, I was a terrible rper. Idk why the group tolerated me tbh, cuz I sucked so much ifwijd I think my edgelord oc made someones oc blind in one eye in like, my fifth post and they still let me stay. Everytime we talk I still want to apologise.
 
I'm part of a couple that have been going on for a long time. I might actually reach that coveted ending and then I'll let you know if you're still here. xD
 
I've finished four 1x1 RPs to completion, three with the same partner. I attribute it to good communication and understanding between us as partners, but also plot structure. Our plots were either easy to "measure" the progress of and had a clear end goal ("we meet 4 teachers in our journey before we're ready to storm the Big Bad's HQ"), or they made it easy to work towards a climax and epilogue once we wanted to move onto a different idea. Each of the plots lasted 1-3 months.

Being up front about how long you like a plot to last goes a long way. So does being on the same page about what you want from an RP, and what plot points would constitute the RP being "completed." Or if you care about it being "completed." Sometimes you and your partner face a choice between rushing to an end, carrying on a plot one or both of you have lost interest in, or dropping the plot. And some people frequently lean towards one option over the others. (I, for one, prefer to wrap up a plot if one or both of us can't rekindle interest in it, or drop it if it's not close to an end.)

Also, my entire post only pertains to 1x1s. I've never been part of a group RP that completed, whether as a player or a GM.
 
Quincunx said:
Whoops, I must have misunderstood your OP.
Click to expand...

No, I should've clarified myself. I've only been involved in a handful of 1x1( even though those never came full circle either). But I would imagine that it would be quite the bit easier to complete a 1x1 as oppose to a much larger group of people. I guess I've always just been drawn to stories with multiple characters played by multiple different people. Not that I'm downing 1x1's, it was just never my cup of tea. Just me I guess.
 
Where I started roleplaying the rps never had an ending. We just kept adding plots. I never knew they ended until I joined this site. I've been roleplaying around 10 years. >.>
 
ChrisReaper said:
All stories have to have an ending at some point, lol.
Click to expand...

You don't read ASOIAF do you? XD

On a more serious note, I disagree. Sometimes they don't need an ending. Sometimes the journey is the destination, and you're just going to keep on trucking.
 
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