Viewpoint Is there an audience for Art Roleplay groups (ARPs) on RPNation?

[waterskine]

For clarity, by 'art roleplay', I'm talking about a roleplay group that's primarily text-based and runs exactly as one would expect, except that it also involves secondary art elements: most notably, applicants to an ARP must submit an art application containing a drawing of their character (sourced from the members themselves, and not simply art they found elsewhere), alongside a regular written character sheet. In the roleplay, there may also be various art-related events, such as being encouraged to respond to art prompts on a semi-regular basis.

I see this style of group a lot on Twitter, DeviantArt and Instagram, but I haven't seen them on RPNation yet (then again, I'm a little new to the platform). Obviously, I know the genre won't necessarily appeal to non-artists, but to people who are: is this a roleplay type you've seen before on RPN? Would you be personally interested if such a group came up on the forum? Would it put you off?

If there's anything you'd like me to explain further, please feel free -- I hope this post makes sense. ^^

 

[Idea]

I don’t know about this type of roleplay, it kind of feels like it’s just trying to force people into making art for the roleplay rather than this particularly contributing to it, but I’m not an artist so I’m not gonna pretend to speak for them.


I do know, however, that an art-based RP existed in the past here, and had more success than I thought it would. It was art-based in a different sense though, the posts themselves were art-based rather than there just being art stuff on the side of text-based posts.

 

[Shawdios]

I honestly am interested in the concept!

It sounds like a lot of fun, but I can see how some people may get burnt out from drawing. Especially if there’s a requirement of a drawing each post and just a sketch isn’t accepted.

I draw all my own faceclaims for my characters already and I’ve never even heard of ARP.

(You running one? )

 

[AlphaBlueWolf]

I have seen these types of things before while scrolling through DeviantArt. Honestly, they do seem interesting, but the requirements thing is really what gets me in this scenario. I'm the type of artist who takes a long time getting one piece done based on my motivation for it, plus the fact that I have trouble sitting down for long increments of time to do art. I know some artists power through one piece by sitting down for three hours straight, but I'm the type who can only sit for one hour on my program before getting antsy, and usually only get a little done at a time in those periods. Plus, my motivation just wanes in general for art.

They do seem fun, but for someone like me requirements for art just aren't my style with the way I actually do art.

 

[Jannah]

No clue, but it's not something I would personally participate in since I have zero artistic talent.

 

[Cresion Breezes]

I would say probably not on RPN, art is honestly pretty different from writing as a story telling medium. Like yeah I've seen people draw each other's characters for fun and whatever but it never really becomes an...""RP"". But I know of something fairly popular in Eastern circles (Japan, China, Korea etc), they're roughly called "theme projects" ("企画") in which people make art and characters based on a certain setting and create an art project with events, plots, reoccurring characters etc, sort of hard to explain.

For example, the most famous "theme project" is probably Pixiv Fantasia, it started in 2008, and happens every year. Every year after there's new countries and settings that are put out for the project, the latest one is held in 2022, Pixiv Fantasia Scepter of Zeraldia. The host (acting like GMs) will post "official events" such as battles and plot related progression that people can make related artwork for. It's more like an art challenge/collaborative worldbuilding/social media hashtag? thing than an RP as we know it here. Many have thousands of participants and there's almost zero quality control you can do, but I think it's the closest thing I know of. I was a part of some smaller scale ones too, but smaller scale is relative because it usually contains 70+ participants since consistently generating art content like that isn't very sustainable for smaller groups.

Also people who are interested in making art and writing simultaneously isn't a huge group, most if not all "art RPs" I've been in has art people mostly/exclusively doing art and writing people mostly/exclusively doing writing, people who consistently do both is few and far between. And how RPN works just would naturally select the writers to stay, yeah sure there's people who are interested in art here but it's definitely not nearly as plentiful as an actual art site.

I'm an artist, I might try it out if there was one on RPN, but usually I get my fix of art stuff from other places.

 

[Dreamtique]

I came across something similar to "art rp" on sites like deviant art.
It is basically rp, but in comic form. But I think they call it competitive storytelling or something, I really don't remember. There is a voting element to it.
I saw people doing battle royal-esque 'art RP' in which they make OCs, and make them compete (fight/ gamble/ participate in games). The participants make comics for the scenario in which their character win, and the comic which gets the most vote becomes canon, and the tournament carries on.

But I am honestly not sure how things work on there as well. All I can say is you can probably check it out.

An art rp group that introduces itself as competitive storytelling that I can think of is a group called Rival Gates (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon RP) on Deviantart, not sure if it is okay to share link so ya.

 

[waterskine]

I honestly am interested in the concept!

It sounds like a lot of fun, but I can see how some people may get burnt out from drawing. Especially if there’s a requirement of a drawing each post and just a sketch isn’t accepted.

I draw all my own faceclaims for my characters already and I’ve never even heard of ARP.

(You running one? )

Maybe it's worth checking out the genre then! I haven't seen anything as intense as people being required to submit a drawing every post -- like you said, that sounds like a recipe for very rapid burnout. In the groups I've been in, most of the fun comes from drawing other people's characters in silly meme sketches, or responding to seasonal art events, the results of which usually get displayed on the group's (Twitter/DA/etc) page like a little exhibit. ^^

And I'm considering running an ARP, yes! I admit though, it's an idea that could function well enough without the art aspect, so depending on people's general response, I might just make it a regular RP. Still though, I'd love to see a cast full of unique looking character designs, especially as my setting has a strong art deco/pseudo-1920s aesthetic.

 

[waterskine]

I have seen these types of things before while scrolling through DeviantArt. Honestly, they do seem interesting, but the requirements thing is really what gets me in this scenario. I'm the type of artist who takes a long time getting one piece done based on my motivation for it, plus the fact that I have trouble sitting down for long increments of time to do art. I know some artists power through one piece by sitting down for three hours straight, but I'm the type who can only sit for one hour on my program before getting antsy, and usually only get a little done at a time in those periods. Plus, my motivation just wanes in general for art.

They do seem fun, but for someone like me requirements for art just aren't my style with the way I actually do art.

Oh, I don't blame you at all! Another reason why I'm on the fence about making an ARP as opposed to a regular one is that even I'm very (very) slow when it comes to producing art, due to issues with executive dysfunction/summoning the courage in the first place.

A lot of the time, group event deadlines will consider the fact that people don't always have the time nor the will to pump out a piece in a single week, or just not have a deadline at all. Nevertheless, the motivation/scheduling issue is definitely something worth bearing in mind -- thank you for your perspective.

 

[waterskine]

I came across something similar to "art rp" on sites like deviant art.
It is basically rp, but in comic form. But I think they call it competitive storytelling or something, I really don't remember. There is a voting element to it.
I saw people doing battle royal-esque 'art RP' in which they make OCs, and make them compete (fight/ gamble/ participate in games). The participants make comics for the scenario in which their character win, and the comic which gets the most vote becomes canon, and the tournament carries on.

But I am honestly not sure how things work on there as well. All I can say is you can probably check it out.

An art rp group that introduces itself as competitive storytelling that I can think of is a group called Rival Gates (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon RP) on Deviantart, not sure if it is okay to share link so ya.

I would say probably not on RPN, art is honestly pretty different from writing as a story telling medium. Like yeah I've seen people draw each other's characters for fun and whatever but it never really becomes an...""RP"". But I know of something fairly popular in Eastern circles (Japan, China, Korea etc), they're roughly called "theme projects" ("企画") in which people make art and characters based on a certain setting and create an art project with events, plots, reoccurring characters etc, sort of hard to explain.

For example, the most famous "theme project" is probably Pixiv Fantasia, it started in 2008, and happens every year. Every year after there's new countries and settings that are put out for the project, the latest one is held in 2022, Pixiv Fantasia Scepter of Zeraldia. The host (acting like GMs) will post "official events" such as battles and plot related progression that people can make related artwork for. It's more like an art challenge/collaborative worldbuilding/social media hashtag? thing than an RP as we know it here. Many have thousands of participants and there's almost zero quality control you can do, but I think it's the closest thing I know of. I was a part of some smaller scale ones too, but smaller scale is relative because it usually contains 70+ participants since consistently generating art content like that isn't very sustainable for smaller groups.

Also people who are interested in making art and writing simultaneously isn't a huge group, most if not all "art RPs" I've been in has art people mostly/exclusively doing art and writing people mostly/exclusively doing writing, people who consistently do both is few and far between. And how RPN works just would naturally select the writers to stay, yeah sure there's people who are interested in art here but it's definitely not nearly as plentiful as an actual art site.

I'm an artist, I might try it out if there was one on RPN, but usually I get my fix of art stuff from other places.

Ooh? I've never heard of either of these types of group (though I'm not sure if I could call the 'theme projects' a group considering their scale). I took a quick look myself, and they're really interesting concepts.

I think there's a valid point made with the fact that the cross-over between artists and writers, especially on a text-heavy platform like RPN, is pretty small though. I suppose this doesn't matter too much if you cross-post ads on other platforms/if your group has a set amount of places anyway, but I'll have to bear it in mind.

 

[nerdy tangents]

I think for RPN your best bet would be making the art component optional. As from what I can tell what your wanting to do is basically add some fun OOC elements to keep people excited about the roleplay.

So instead of making say having a shipping event running in the OOC where people have to submit artwork of individual pairings have it be something accessible to different skill sets.

So you can submit art, a little drabble of the two characters going on a date, etc.

As the idea of having fun in the OOC by creating events and icebreakers is absolutely an excellent way to keep everyone invested in the story.

But you don’t want to do something that only a small portion of your players can participate in. Especially on RPN where the number of artists is much smaller then the number of non-artists.

 

[Lorsh]

Espionage Wars comes to mind

 

[Sugarnaut]

I'd be interested in this! I would just need to be held through the process a little bit but it sound so fun!