Experiences Have you ever had a for real ending?

[BuggaBoo]

Hi!!

So like jump in and fill dots in the poll! Notice it's all in ref to a GROUP RP? I say Group cuz i found it sooooooo much harder to make it to the ending. Like tbh i only ever finished 2 group RPs.

Oh! and if you feel like it can you expand and comment about your Group ending experiences and stuff like: maybe how many posts you guys got, how many RPers you were with/seen drop and like what you think made it successful?

Follow up questions:

- how long has your longest running and current RPN Group Rp lasted so far?
- Top 3 things how any RPN group rp you been in was successful so far?
- Top 3 things that killed any former RPN rps you been in.

---

For me one was nearly 900 posts and lasted almost 2 years and the other was over 500 posts and had lasted like almost a year (and like this one had less OOC than IC posts lol).

In the 900 one we started with like 6? had like several drops and new joiners. RP ended with only 4 of us. The 500 we started with 4 had only a couple joins/drops and ended up with 5 including original 4.

Come in and talk with us!

 

[nerdy tangents]

Well I joined two groups that ran for multiple years and have a few “chapters” so I guess you could count them.

I don’t know as they ended because it wasn’t really a narrative that had a three act structure. It was more the story moved to different settings.

 

[Daisie]

Y'all are finishing group RPs? I've only finished one 1x1 since I got on RpN, and that was at the very end of last year

 

[BuggaBoo]

Well I joined two groups that ran for multiple years and have a few “chapters” so I guess you could count them.

I don’t know as they ended because it wasn’t really a narrative that had a three act structure. It was more the story moved to different settings.

Niiiiiice! Someone's jelly over here lol. Do you remember how big the group was at start and then now currently?

Y'all are finishing group RPs? I've only finished one 1x1 since I got on RpN, and that was at the very end of last year

Yeah but that was like several years ago now for me. And like it's been so long that im not thirsty for an ending anymore just horny lol

K yeah i finished a buncha 1x1s so like that's why I asked about groups. How long did the finished rp last for?

 

[nerdy tangents]

Oh this was years ago. I think both groups had the same players for the length of the roleplay. Probably 5-8 I think.

 

[Daisie]

Yeah but that was like several years ago now for me. And like it's been so long that im not thirsty for an ending anymore just horny lol

K yeah i finished a buncha 1x1s so like that's why I asked about groups. How long did the finished rp last for?

I think about 8 months, I want to say? It was a lot shorter than we have gone in the past, our previous ones were actually like 3 years each, and despite us never finishing them, we decided that that really burnt us out. This was our attempt at doing something more short term (we were getting burnt out again, even. I think we just have a lower tolerance now) and we had the ending pretty much planned as we began.

It was an incredible rush to reach it. I could not be happier with it, it was beautiful and grim. I reread it often.

 

[chaotic cat cutie]

endings don't exist

 

[Nu Epiq]

Years ago, I was a part of two group roleplays. The first one was around 6,000 posts and the second 500. Both lasted for a couple of years. The thing is, with those, it was just me and two other people so a relatively small group plus we had a posting order. If someone couldn't post, we paused until they were able to. My second group thread was very depressing, major character death, betrayal, etc. Still was fun though.

 

[hunnicutt]

I’ve only ever actually completed two total roleplays in my life (people get busy and move on, or the interest wanes and that’s okay), and I was happy with both endings, as were my partners. It’s such an accomplished feeling to write something all the way through to the end!

 

[BuggaBoo]

Spoiler: Hi!!

I’ve only ever actually completed two total roleplays in my life (people get busy and move on, or the interest wanes and that’s okay), and I was happy with both endings, as were my partners. It’s such an accomplished feeling to write something all the way through to the end!

Years ago, I was a part of two group roleplays. The first one was ar7ound 6,000 posts and the second 500. Both lasted for a couple of years. The thing is, with those, it was just me and two other people so a relatively small group plus we had a posting order. If someone couldn't post, we paused until they were able to. My second group thread was very depressing, major character death, betrayal, etc. Still was fun though.

endings don't exist

I think about 8 months, I want to say? It was a lot shorter than we have gone in the past, our previous ones were actually like 3 years each, and despite us never finishing them, we decided that that really burnt us out. This was our attempt at doing something more short term (we were getting burnt out again, even. I think we just have a lower tolerance now) and we had the ending pretty much planned as we began.

It was an incredible rush to reach it. I could not be happier with it, it was beautiful and grim. I reread it often.

Well I joined two groups that ran for multiple years and have a few “chapters” so I guess you could count them.

I don’t know as they ended because it wasn’t really a narrative that had a three act structure. It was more the story moved to different settings.

K soooo tysm for replying! Now a bit of a derail:

- how long has your longest running and current RPN Group Rp lasted so far?
- top 3 things how a RPN group rp been successful so far?
- top 3 things that killed former RPN rps

No need to drop names and put anyone on blast k? Lol

---

For me:

- Currently the rp started beginning June this year and actually ic start was end of June. Lost only 2 rpers thus far out of 8 total.

- top 3 success:
3. Friendly, Creative, Pro active gm on top of it all.
2. Active player base chatting in ooc and talking not just rp talk
1. All rpers enjoying their charries and posting frequency is good.

- top 3 fails:
3. Lack of post quality
Ex: no interaction, all scene regurgitation no added content, obv hastily tossed up posts, ignoring events/interaction, etc
2. Dead ooc thus easily forgettable rp to check in on. Esp gm silence.
1. Ghosting.

 

[Wildcard888]

I have never gotten to the end of a role play. (Yet).

 

[natsukashii]

I was so close, but due to ooc drama, the rp only made it 70% of the way of the first "book"

Three years of wasted effort just for petty shit to stop us from getting where we wanted

 

[Pokeking]

Whether 1x1 or Group storylines, I have never seen a definitive end to any I participated in. Posts just slow and slow until nothing. To keep myself occupied with writing, I move onto my personal writings until I wait for the next post in the storyline I'm participating in or a casting call that I'm interested in participating in.

The longest group storyline I participated in here was about two to three months. In my entire RP "career", since 2022, the longest storyline I participated lasted a couple of years. The message board that hosted the storyline got hacked about 75% into the storyline's lifetime. When the board came back, the first post of the continuation was a summary of the storyline, but people were soured on what had happened and things weren't quite the same so within a few months, the storyline died and I was the last one to post. Across my history of roleplaying, I would say it was the most successful since there were many participants and lasted the longest.

Despite my fondness for Red Ground Tavern and Inn, which was the name of the storyline, because it was my first experience in collaborative roleplay, I do have regrets. I regret the way I participated. They say that hindsight is 20/20 and it is true. I only had one character at the time who was a self insert/Gary Sue type character. Jojin wasn't very well written. If I had to do things all over again, and had access to the OC roster I have today, I would have selected Xenophon, my minotaur character.

 

[Rusty Angel]

Not on RPN, but a site very similar, I was once part of an RP that lasted several years, and had multiple "arcs" to it (each new arc was posted in its own thread).

I joined around the second arc. It had six players initially, with some people joining in after I did, but eventually it was only three of us.

It was one of the best rp experiences I ever had. Gm was an amazing story builder, and knew how to keep the plot moving so it didn't drag anywhere. We were also very communicative if anything came up that would interrupt our regular posting schedule (there wasn't a set schedule, but we got into a certain rhythm after a while).

Honestly, apart from communication, posting consistency, and effort from the players and gm, a lot of what makes an rp last (in my experience) comes down to luck. We just so happened to mesh well together, and the characters we made all fit in really well too. There were other RPs i was in where the collaboration was on point, but there were definitely a lot more that didn't go anywhere after a while. Or we did make it to the end, but I wasn't that enthralled with it.

You really just need to be patient until you find the right rp/group for you.

 

[RedArmyShogun]

I've had a couple RP's on another website finish, and a total of 4-5 where the GM cared enough to make an epilogue on a project that crashed. This is out of what has to been 100's of rp's I've been in, to one capacity or another. Some of these are rather memorable, but one of the auto-resolves was the best one as the GM tallied up our post counts and gave us "fate rolls".

I had the most fun with by far, and tl;dr this was like an anime style rp on a prison island to reintroduce teenage capital criminals to society/to kill them off, and one of the players was a dick bag and I knew full well he would attack mine. So, I made my first two rolls to pass the program as intended, failed, made the next roll to kill whoever came to me if they attacked that night (he did), progressively made additional rolls where I ultimately killed half of the player cast, became the prison Warden and one girl who did pass the program would return yearly to lay flowers on the graves of those from our class that died and my PC would always meet her, which is hilarious as my PC was responsible for half of the dead ones with my rolls lucking up. Best ending ever. Other than this I've finished two BNHA themed rp's with actual endings.

Tbh though I see a lot of people talking about multiyear rp's, I honestly rather things are done with sooner than later. So long as the story sets out to do what it does, I kinda dislike the idea of being part of some huge 3+ year RP, as by then unless you got good chemistry with the group or a couple players, if you have any sort of notable personality and so do they, well you'll more likely than not come to hate being around them, or at least disliking it.

I want games that finish more than I want games that hang around like One Piece.

 

[Paradox9]

No.

Which is one reason I leave the rp community for extended periods out of exhaustion from the cycling stories/settings I find myself in.

I've heard of the mythical completed rp, but have never been in one myself. I do trend towards niche, oversized and bloated concepts on open forum rps. So maybe that is enough evidence as to why. As an addition: What's worse than a rp that doesn't have an ending? A rp that constantly tries to stand back up only to fall down again. I'm not sure how many have experienced that it's a real wonder that's for sure.

 

[Foxxymoron]

No. My longest is 8 years and still running. Tho I'd rather not have an ending as i consider my characters as 'alive' and if it ended then that means theyre 'dead' or ig rather at an end of their journey, but i think there's always more adventures to be had and more for them to learn and experience.

 

[davy]

I haven't RP'd on RPN, I am new here, but hopefully I can still answer?

I've never had a *story* end, but the longest running RP I've been in was "structured" with missions and interludes between them for slice of life, drama, etc. Looking at the mission briefing archive, we had 12 missions and finished 11 of them. Character arcs weren't really tied to the missions at all, so completing a mission was "time for a new setting/goal!" but didn't feel like any kind of ending. The RP was still extremly satisfying.

How long has your longest running and current RPN Group Rp lasted so far?

The first RP I was in with my group lasted a little over 4 and 1/2 years. Four of the RPers, including my spouse, had RP'd together in the same setting 10ish years previously, and they came back when my spouse started posting in a story that could've been solo or 1x1, but with more people it expanded into something awesome.

We also picked up 4 new people, including myself. Two of the new people eventually quit, and one joined in the last year or two and didn't overlap much with the others. So most of the time, we had a group of 6 or 7 people. I switched main characters fairly often, and some people played several side characters in addition to our main.

We spun up a new RP shortly before the old RP went on indefinite hiatus (several of us were itching to write a new setting, but also wanted to help wrap up the old one), so there were a couple weeks of overlap between the two. And technically anyone who wants to can still add to the old RP, it just hasn't happened in a couple months.

The new Cyberpunk RP has been going for 3 1/2 months with a group of 5 people - one of the longtime members of the Battletech RP dropped off because life has gotten very busy for him. I also know that the mech battles and technical details of the worldbuilding were his favorite part, and the new story is more character driven with less fighting. He has stayed in touch with us though, and might jump in if something in the new setting grabs his interest and life calms down. I and a couple others found the mech battles really difficult to write and keep interesting, so it's always been a tradeoff to strike the right balance between character and tech/action.

Top 3 things how any RPN group rp you been in was successful so far?
Top 3 things that killed any former RPN rps you been in.

This is the only group I've done group RP with in ages (I'm over 30 now and did play with some other groups as a teen), so I don't think I can answer these comparatively.

1) After reading others' experiences here, I think it helps a lot that several of our group have known each other and written together for a long ass time. There's trust that others will keep writing, and a feeling of obligation to each other to keep making an effort, and speak up if life forces us to take a break or something about the story isn't working.

2) We've always RP'd in settings where tabletop sourcebooks of some kind exist, even though we don't use dice. (We tried playing part of a mission as a tabletop game over voice chat once, and it was cool but didn't work well enough for us to want to keep doing it.) So there's established worldbuilding we can draw on when we want to, but it's not the personal project of any of us, so we also don't feel like we're stepping on anyone's toes when we add our own worldbuilding. A few of us have built out lore for planets that only had a name and a couple sentences' description in Battletech sourcebooks, and some have invented tech for our characters to use that could very plausibly exist, but wasn't mentioned in canon because it can't be bolted onto a mech. In Cyberpunk, we've all added to the lore or straight up created the places our characters come from and/or work for.

For an original setting, I think this sort of situation would be easier to pull off if it's based on the real world. A setting creator welcoming others to create the setting together after laying down a map and some basic facts on tech/magic and factions might even be enough.

3) Our RPs include multiple themes, and I think that helps keep things fresh. There's usually a pattern of doing missions/jobs and then writing slice of life or silly escapades in between. And there's often interpersonal stuff and humor within action scenes, character development that happens while doing something humorous, etc.

4) Bonus - my group has a writing style that's not really the norm here. A lot of what we do is technically "godmodding". If your character is interacting with another person's character, you write dialog for both of them and do your best to make it fit what the other person's character would say and do. If someone writes your character in a way that doesn't fit, you politely tell them, and they edit the post and let the group know. It's also pretty common for one player to message another with "hey, my character says '...' to your character, can you give me a reply?", if we're not confident immitating each others' dialog styles. Sometimes my characters drift a bit from how I first imagined them because of others' headcanons, but it also keeps the story moving, and it's extremely satisfying when others write your character well.

We also sometimes use the concept of unreliable narrator to handle discrepancies. We write in first person, so it's totally plausible that a character misunderstood something they saw or heard. We also have one character who's been known to hallucinate and have very vivid concussion dreams, so we're cool with him writing about getting abducted by aliens and he's cool with us finding him passed out at the bottom of the stairs with a bump on his head. For more minor things, like someone writing a slightly over the top version of how another person's character acts, we chalk it up to that being the impression their character got from what really was said.

Things that do not work:

I think the main one I've experienced, is when the type of writing, themes and situations that the writers enjoy are too different. Mech battles tended to drag and cause posting frequency to decrease, because some of us enjoyed them and others found them hard to write or less interesting than the rest. I think it can work okay if people like to write different things, but everyone at least really likes reading all of it - some of us are more comfortable than others at humor vs. serious scenes, but it's never really caused the story to drag. Overall though I think it helps a lot if everyone enjoys all the kinds of writing that the RP includes.

I wonder if allowing new characters to join at any point (+/- having to wait til the other characters are in a location where meeting someone new makes sense) might help, vs. having a cutoff when the RP starts. Losing a person isn't such a big problem if someone new joined not too long ago, or might join soon. We usually onboard people by inviting them to OOC chat and talking with them about what sort of character they'd enjoy playing, if they have a character in mind or want to create them, and what ways it'd be easiest to have them start working with the rest of the group quickly. Maybe we're lucky, and we might be benefitting from being self-hosted so that people won't make an account if they don't intend to follow through on posting, but every new person has stuck around for at least a few months, often over a year.

 

[Bill123456789]

I moved from roleplaying to writing....

 

[That Weird girl]

Hi! I would love to answer these questions!

- how long has your longest running and current RPN Group Rp lasted so far?

The longest one i’ve had is the current one. Persona 5: Meta War. It’s been going on for about 3 years now? Its funny that it lasted so long because it wasn’t a very good rp at the start (in my opinion). I was highly inexperienced with rping and gming, I just wanted to make a Persona 5 rp. But, we kept on going (even starting again) and eventually we caught the eyes of the main crew. Thanks to creativity overload, the rp has been good and fresh. It’s been really difficult to handle this rp at points, because of disagreements but we were able to get past it.


- Top 3 things how any RPN group rp you been in was successful so far?

1. Gotta have a good cast.
You know how Shonen anime always has good characters? Well it’s like that in real life and in the rp. For example, Imato, Masami, Shiro, Ann, Sougo, Isao, Dascal, Futaba, and Sadako work because they are all good characters and click well with each other. Behind the page, our players work well with each other too. We are all friends (hope so).

2. Clear communication about the rp and an openness to hearing out ideas.

We have beautiful players who are very good about this. We always make sure the players know what to expect from the rp and have put player ideas into the rp. For example, a very amazing player has been talking in the OOC about the acts of his palace. We all know what to expect, and how to approach the situation. An example of a character idea we implemented in the rp was the arc following Imato joining the meta mercs. This wasn’t going to happen, but two of the players hatched an idea where he would join because of a certain crazy girl. Also another example is having one of the Phantom Thieves come in to help them in battle as a mystery ally.


- Top 3 things that killed any former RPN rps you been in

1. Lack of direction
If your story doesn’t have anything enticing to it, it will likely flop. Also you probably will not to write anything if the story is boring and isn’t going anywhere. I have been in some of those situations and gmed it. An example is on DC Amino, where the rp was good, but the story was headed nowhere. It was about a band of vigilantes in Gotham…that was it. We just were beating up criminals every night, which was fun but got old. Nothing really happened in the rp that made any character have to change. Joker didn’t drastically change Gotham with his schemes, even though he should have. There wasn’t a big climax in that rp either.

2. Bad Communication
This is a really big no no. You cannot have this or else the rp will suffer.

3. Bad Luck
What killed a lot of my rps. Unfortunately, sometimes you can do everything right and still have your rp flop.

 

[Jannah]

Yes! A few times. Years ago on another site I did a Hunger Games 1x1. We played it through to the end and then even did multiple sequels. They only ended up dying eventually because real life happened. I still miss them.

On this site specifically I've had one RP properly end. The ending was not exactly what I had envisioned, but I actually liked it better than the ending my partner and I had planned originally.

 

[BuggaBoo]

K... Well I just joined a RP that might finally get me to an ending on RPN.

Isekai where each rper has 10 posts total until it ends. Its structured so that posts are kinda like budgeted and allotted to scenes. Ex. 1st post is intro. Next 3 are exploring world, next 3 are getting powers, etc. Post 1x per week so we done in just over 2 months.

Yeah it's kinda railroady but most rps I been in on RPN barely anyone posts 10 times before it does. So like yeah soooo here for it cuz dammit ya girl wants an ending!!

 

[Murdergurl]

I've been RPing online for 26 years, nearly exclusively for group RP. And I will have to admit, I've never seen the end of a single one. But, to be fair, even the few 1x1s that I've been in rarely ever reached their intended end. Like, it's definitely a one-handed count for 1x1s. So, all-in-all, roleplaying online in general has never really been about finishing a story. If that was the case, I'd have given up a long time ago.