Experiences How do you treat your old roleplays?

[Onmyoji]

You probably had a lot of roleplays that started, went for a while and then died out for various reasons. (Or maybe you have a rare case of 'complete rp' in stock?!)

What do you do with your old roleplays? They probably ended or died and won't resume. So they're just there, frozen in time. Do you just let the threads (or PM or discord servers) stay untouched? Save the copies somewhere? Do you just abandon them and forget about them? Or maybe you delete them entirely to never remember?

Do you ever re-read them? If so, how did you feel about them after reading again? Or maybe you never check them out again?
How far back do you go? For example, would you re-read a rp thread that was 10 years ago? A couple months ago?
Have you ever considered rebooting them?

Just curious about experiences

 

[lipglossy.]

Seeing my old roleplays makes me sad that they died, but re-reading the fun times in the ooc always fills me up with joy and happiness! I have always thought of re-booting them but never always had the time to. In PM RP’s, i keep them even if it’s 5 years ago so i can make stories out of it.

 

[AnnJam]

I have remade my favorite roleplay of all time, ballpark estimate around 15 times since 2007 when I did the original (in either group or one on one form). The roleplay is basic as shit, some version have more background information than other, but I loved the experience and concept that I will probably continue to remake. So for some of my stuff I never let it die.

Most roleplays I simply leave and if I loved it enough keep a transcript. I have one roleplay I loved enough to print as a hard copy; which is one of the few I reread and its as terrible in places as you expect, and other parts are still really great to read. I love those parts as much as I did the day I wrote them! Most of my roleplays make me cringe, but when you reread shit you wrote in 2003 you can't help but cringe! Overall I don't reread the majority of my roleplays, they die and I move on, but I have a few I go back occasionally!

I have some I deleted without meaning to, I regret to this day the death of MAPS that version was amazing and I'll never get it back. I also deleted an RP concept and to this day I can not remember the plot; I did keep the graphics I made for the roleplay for years, YEARS in hopes I would remember the idea. Never did.

Oh and I keep most of my transcripts as google document files and a file on my computer / random hard drive! Mostly they're just threads scattered around the internet.

 

[nerdy tangents]

Oh I have maybe six to ten ideas that I recycle constantly. So I don’t really worry about roleplays that die. As I am usually in the process of remaking my ideas in cycles.

As for the actual roleplays yeah I save them. Usually to use as word samples for new partners.

 

[AnnJam]

nerdy tangents I feel that. I do it too, but I have ones that I simply remake the most. While others I've only done once maybe twice. Like I have a space opera plot I remake once a year sometimes twice! XD

 

[CorralDust]

While most of the mediocre ones fade off, eventually to be forgotten, I do go back and re-read my favorites! Sometimes years later.

I have tried to recapture the magic of a couple of those by recreating them, but I've found the re-make is never quite as good, probably because it lacks that element of 'oh! what's going to happen next?!' But that's okay. Every once in awhile a new one comes along that has me constantly on the edge of my seat and I know I will remember it for a loooooong time.

 

[TinyMochi]

I usually save them. It’s nice to go back and reread some old rps whether they are either completed or just died off out of nowhere. Sometimes rereading it makes me crave on wanting to the rp again. Another thing is how different my rp would be before until how I rp now.

It’s just a nice trip down memory lane and the ooc chats would always make me laugh or smile since good memories to those. It’s a nice reminder on how I bonded with my rp partner in the first place

 

[Lucyfer]

For the ones that finished, I usually go back to read them sometimes. I haven't saved them externally anywhere, and I suppose I should for the case of at least one, because I really love it. It's just so long that saving it and formatting it to a word doc is tedious.

For those that didn't finish, and were abandoned, sometimes I'll go back and re-read them, other times I'll try to salvage elements of it -- characters, plots, world building pieces. If they were terrible, though, I usually ignore them completely and try to forget them.

For some that were abandoned, I really do hope the other person will return one day, and we can resume, but I doubt that'll happen in most cases.

 

[Sir Swigglesworth]

Lately I've had a bad history of getting the inspiration to come back to this site only to lose interest within like a month due to either personal reasons or otherwise. Just leaving my past RP's there to fester in the inbox. Part of me wants to go back and try to start em up again but I'm also actually worried I'll be called an asshole for vanishing, which frankly, is understandable.

I just deleted all of my rp's except for one that kinda has a place in mah heart. Time to start fresh.

 

[Daisie]

You probably had a lot of roleplays that started, went for a while and then died out for various reasons. (Or maybe you have a rare case of 'complete rp' in stock?!)

What do you do with your old roleplays? They probably ended or died and won't resume. So they're just there, frozen in time. Do you just let the threads (or PM or discord servers) stay untouched? Save the copies somewhere? Do you just abandon them and forget about them? Or maybe you delete them entirely to never remember?

Do you ever re-read them? If so, how did you feel about them after reading again? Or maybe you never check them out again?
How far back do you go? For example, would you re-read a rp thread that was 10 years ago? A couple months ago?
Have you ever considered rebooting them?

Just curious about experiences

Heya, Oji!
Not gonna lie, I don't have many RPs as a whole. I never mass-joined like I see is common here, and I only ever had a scant few going at a time. Those lasted me for a long time, too, so really my over-all count isn't that high.

One comes to mind though. It was a really good RP that unexpectedly showed me how to dip my toes into the world of romantic storytelling. I owe a lot to it and look back on it with fond memories.

Despite that, I don't really go back to read it, as the RP ended up crashing and burning pretty violently and it can sometimes bring up bad feelings. That's not to say I actively avoid it, but I'm aware it can be kind of souring. Bittersweet, rather.

More than anything else though, I haven't read it because I don't think about it often anymore XD It was a lovely RP for my inexperienced self, but I've moved on to bigger and better things. I'll always be grateful for those earlier experiences that set me on my RP path today, but I try not to "disturb the dead", especially if it has baggage attached.

I'll go back and read old RPs all the time. Heck, I like reading through older posts of ongoing RPs, but I figured I'd tell you about the one special case for me.

 

[ObitoPancake]

I find myself keeping a lot of my old RPs around if I can help it. They all hold a place in my heart and I don't think I could ever really handle disposing of them unless if was out of my control. I.e. someone else deleting the forum/server/etc. or the site hosting just going down. Yes, this includes the ones that are almost 8 years old a this point. They're not well written, but they have great memories attached.

 

[Crayons]

I try to keep them, either saved or just letting them sit on forums. I used to be really meticulous about copy pasting them into a local doc but things got too complicated and I stopped.

There are some RPs that I go back and read, but only the most entertaining ones. A lot of RPs are fun while you're doing them but not that great to actually read, even for nostalgia. I don't revisit the really old ones very much. I have a great partner who writes the most hilarious stuff and I love reading the things we did together.

I have never rebooted/remade an RP. I've quite often taken characters from an RP that didn't go anywhere and used them again, but I'd rather move on than do the same thing twice. There's usually a reason why an RP failed and rebooting RPs rarely makes them work if they didn't work the first time imo. I do have one I'm thinking of remaking in the future because I feel like the reasons it didn't work out in the end were fixable, but we'll see if I ever get around to doing that. XD

 

[Idea]

The main thing I do with them is keep them in a list of my roleplay links that I have in my private workshop. I also occasionally read my roleplays, in particular my favorite ones that I miss the most. There have also been times when I’ve gone back to read a really old RP but... oh no the dark past XD

It is part of my philosophy to write always in a way I won’t regret, and for thatI seek that every character, every world, every post has value in of itself, so that I can read them with pride and never feel like I was just wasting my time when I made them. This to me really comes through when I’m reading old RPs. Furthermore, reading my partner’s responses has always been one of my favorite parts of RPing.

There have been times when I felt like rebooting an old RP. Some I have in fact, the BNHA Peace Sign Academy which was one of my most successful ones. There’s even been one which I’ve wanted to reboot just cause of the name “Mahou Shoujo: Apparition’s Treasure Hunt” but I’ve never actually rebooted that one. Setting aside how much harder it has been for me to GM lately (time constraints and how much more easily tired I’ve felt lately) a lot of the time my interests have shifted considerably and my standards have risen, so I wouldn’t necessarily want to attempt certain concepts I’ve tried before when I was still in a more experimental phase.

 

[PopcornPie]

I find it a bit difficult to look back on those old snapshots. Especially if you're the one responsible for the group having a major breakup.

 

[Laix_Lake]

Most of the rp's that I have been on have not been preserved as well. Given that most of them took place in both public and private forums that no longer exist. ( Punchwood.com was one such site. ). So my only way of going back to those rp's is with the good old Wayback machine by the Internet Archive. But that would depend if someone took the time to even back up those many pages (only a few got that kind of treatment). Do any of you guys have to use similar means to view old rp's?

 

[Pokeking]

I saved several to a USB drive, but the folders they were in got corrupted so I lost lots of the storylines I had participated in including my first. I had to create a new folder which I still have access to so I able to read my more recent storylines. Every now and then, I will go back and read them especially if I reuse characters from older storylines.

 

[CrystalDisc]

Some nights I always end up going back to read my earliest games. They're awful, they're cringe-y, and well-worth every word I put into them. I wouldn't have had it any other way, because they helped shape so much of me.

 

[Icepurp]

My beginner roleplays are gone forever since they're so hard to look at. They were very, very bad; poorly written and based on ideas from an actual nine year old. Nowadays, my more recent RPs that die out are saved. I occasionally go back to look at them and get a hint of nostalgia.

 

[Empress]

With a mixture of cringe and nostalgia. It's always wonderful to see how I've grown, but it never stops me from thinking to myself, "Eugh, I used to write like that?!" It's just a necessary sign of growth, I suppose. There will be days and nights where I'll dedicate all of my time to rereading through old Roleplays anyway. It's positively fascinating to see what I've forgotten (I have severe long term memory issues), how my characters were developed, and so on.

 

[Murdergurl]

If I have some particularly good posts within old, dead RPs, I might copy/paste that small part of the story into one of my various folders for archival reasons. Maybe I just really liked the imagery of something I wrote, etc. So I'll keep that as a reminder of how to generally improve my writing. But 9 times out of 10, I just let that stuff fade away into obscurity. What I DO tend to save is the character profiles I make. Some I try to recycle and build up. Others just stay there and I never use them again.

 

[diracdelta]

Once I stop writing a roleplay, I also stop thinking about it, and as far as I'm concerned, anything I'm not perceiving has ceased to exist. Pretty sure this is what scientists call "quantum mechanics."