Roleplay Pet Peeves

[FearItself]

Also a pet peeve of mine is the Insane or child character that contributes only hardship to the crew. Like when your trying to talk the bad guy down and they lunge in with their knife to try and land a lethal blow. Or the child character that only cries or gets themselves into damger.

 

[PhoenixMire]

Also a pet peeve of mine is the Insane or child character that contributes only hardship to the crew. Like when your trying to talk the bad guy down and they lunge in with their knife to try and land a lethal blow. Or the child character that only cries or gets themselves into damger.

man I absolutely loathe this character trope. Thankfully I haven't had this in RPs (not that I can recall anyway), but it always makes me so mad when I see this kind of character in movies or TV shows or things.

 

[BackSet]

I don't think I've ever been in an rp with a character under 13.

 

[rae2nerdy]

I don't think I've ever been in an rp with a character under 13.

I think that has to do with a lot of people being fairly young when they start roleplay and thus making their characters "cool older teens" OR people focusing on primarily romance which tends to keep the age somewhere in the teen range.

I know the roleplays I've done with younger characters were all family based and those tend to be most popular with people in their twenties or older.

That said it can be kind of fun to do a family based roleplay where you get to work with different dynamics between adults, kids, and teens.

 

[BarakaisBae]

Ngl kinda wanna say group roleplays period BUT that's not fair so I will not

However, I will say I hate group roleplays where the post length is only five or less sentences, don't have any established reply order, and there's 100+ replies every hour, making it impossible to take any time away from the rp without having to ask "What happened while I was gone?". Super annoying when you're trying to have a life

Another thing that bugs me is how people will form cliques or stick with rping with one or two people only while ignoring everyone else, especially newcomers. Like if you're just gonna rp with one person, start a 1x1!

 

[dazzling]

Ngl kinda wanna say group roleplays period BUT that's not fair so I will not

However, I will say I hate group roleplays where the post length is only five or less sentences, don't have any established reply order, and there's 100+ replies every hour, making it impossible to take any time away from the rp without having to ask "What happened while I was gone?". Super annoying when you're trying to have a life

Another thing that bugs me is how people will form cliques or stick with rping with one or two people only while ignoring everyone else, especially newcomers. Like if you're just gonna rp with one person, start a 1x1!

UGH those are the WORST
I used to on this old forum site and I was gone from an RP for maybe.. a day and a half? This is going to sound so exaggerated, but I swear it's not lol
It had 200 NEW REPLIES. i quit that site after that oof
Anyways, it did move a lot faster there, but still.

 

[BackSet]

Ngl kinda wanna say group roleplays period BUT that's not fair so I will not

However, I will say I hate group roleplays where the post length is only five or less sentences, don't have any established reply order, and there's 100+ replies every hour, making it impossible to take any time away from the rp without having to ask "What happened while I was gone?". Super annoying when you're trying to have a life

Another thing that bugs me is how people will form cliques or stick with rping with one or two people only while ignoring everyone else, especially newcomers. Like if you're just gonna rp with one person, start a 1x1!

This never happens to me.

I'll come back and there'll be, like, 1 or 2 replies and I can't even respond to them because my character's off with another character on a field mission while these other two characters who replied are both on the ship or whatever.

Out if everyone I've ever roleplayed with, I'm the one who's on most often.

I do get you with the clique thing though. Herding roleplayers is like herding cats. Except you can take executive order as a GM with roleplayers but nit with cats.

This is gonna be super hypocritical sounding on my part given my history, but roleplayers who do the bare minimum all the time. I know I set the length limit to a paragraph but it looks really sloppy compared to all of us writing medium length posts. I don't mind if you do it icassionally when you can't think of anything but need to reply but not all the time.

Thank you for coming to my hypocritical TED Talk.

 

[Aerynth]

I agree with that. I usually feel... Weirded out when I see characters consistently referred to by their physical appearance when the reader should already know their name. Like, I can take epithets when they are more special to the person. Like Andrej Sawpowski (I hope I am spelling that right) would call Geralt "The Witcher" when referring to him in the books every now and again. Or Stephen King would refer to Roland Deschain as "The Gunslinger" every now and again in the Dark Tower series.

It really depends on the epithet, but something like physical appearance, whether it be skin color, hair color, or eye color always rubs me the wrong way.

You know, this is interesting. In my native language, repetition is considered a mark of poor style, even when it comes to names/pronouns. As a result, people use epithets a lot. I've been thinking about English and how it seems to handle repetition better, but it hasn't occurred to me that English may actually prefer such repetition. I think I may have been guilty of using epithets too much, so I will work on that now. Thanks for helping me refine my skills!

 

[Melpomene]

You know, this is interesting. In my native language, repetition is considered a mark of poor style, even when it comes to names/pronouns. As a result, people use epithets a lot. I've been thinking about English and how it seems to handle repetition better, but it hasn't occurred to me that English may actually prefer such repetition. I think I may have been guilty of using epithets too much, so I will work on that now. Thanks for helping me refine my skills!

You know, I always wondered about other languages. What is your native language, if you don't mind me asking?

And, truthfully, epithets aren't the worse thing in the world and are fine to use most of the time. I think it is just the fact "Sexy blonde teen" sounds like a porno title, haha. So that might be the reason a lot of people don't like to fixate on physical appearances for epithets. I think most people just get weirded out when someone hyperfixates on a particular physical attribute of a character.

Overall, I bet you're doing just fine

 

[BackSet]

"Sexy blonde teen"

I laughed so hard in my head at this.

 

[Aerynth]

You know, I always wondered about other languages. What is your native language, if you don't mind me asking?

And, truthfully, epithets aren't the worse thing in the world and are fine to use most of the time. I think it is just the fact "Sexy blonde teen" sounds like a porno title, haha. So that might be the reason a lot of people don't like to fixate on physical appearances for epithets. I think most people just get weirded out when someone hyperfixates on a particular physical attribute of a character.

Overall, I bet you're doing just fine

Sure, it is Czech. I think - and this is just my theory, based on pure speculation - that languages which can omit the subject of a sentence favor epithets more than those that cannot do so. In English, constant I, I, I doesn't sound bad because you have to say it in order to be grammatical (sure, it doesn't necessarily need to happen when you're being informal and it's obvious what you mean, but that's beside the point), but if I were to constantly repeat the subjects of all sentences in my native language, I would sound ridiculous. But that's just a theory of mine

Oh yeah, things like "sexy blonde teen" would sound cringy in any language, I believe. And I do think that using epithets is not too terrible - nobody has complained so far - but I really enjoy learning this because... it's not something you think about. They teach you grammar at school, but they don't teach you things like this and it's subtle enough for you to not notice until somebody points it out.

And thank you!

 

[LazyDaze]

Another thing that bugs me is how people will form cliques or stick with rping with one or two people only while ignoring everyone else, especially newcomers. Like if you're just gonna rp with one person, start a 1x1!

I was actually going to say this. I understand, you click with a player, or you may even know that guy; however, some people are so blatently isolating themselves to the point it seems like they are running another RP. LOL

 

[FoolsErin]

Ngl kinda wanna say group roleplays period BUT that's not fair so I will not

However, I will say I hate group roleplays where the post length is only five or less sentences, don't have any established reply order, and there's 100+ replies every hour, making it impossible to take any time away from the rp without having to ask "What happened while I was gone?". Super annoying when you're trying to have a life

Another thing that bugs me is how people will form cliques or stick with rping with one or two people only while ignoring everyone else, especially newcomers. Like if you're just gonna rp with one person, start a 1x1!

This was partially why I left this one roleplay a while back. There were some other reasons of course, but this certainly was a good part in it.

Though I will say the opposite of this is sometimes not better. For people like me with waaaaaaay too much free time on their hands, sometimes waiting days for a two-paragraph post is extremely boring. But, I understand that unlike me, people have a life.

 

[Abendrot]

Having to carry the plot. I’ll write something to move the story along, but my partner will do nothing but react to what I’ve written and not add anything new to the scene.

The amount of time I have had to deal with people who just write their characters nodding, or thinking about something with no visible outside action... drives me nuts sometimes

 

[Melpomene]

Having to carry the plot. I’ll write something to move the story along, but my partner will do nothing but react to what I’ve written and not add anything new to the scene.

The amount of time I have had to deal with people who just write their characters nodding, or thinking about something with no visible outside action... drives me nuts sometimes

Uuuuughhhh I feel you on a spiritual level bro.

Even when I find someone who is a detailed writer like I am, there are so many times when their post is not their character doing anything, just reacting to something mine did and sitting around for the rest of the time. Or internal monologuing. That... that seems to be popular.

 

[Breech Loader]

When I'm on Discord, somebody who starts off really good and then, without any notice, just... vanishes. They don't say they're busy, or bored, they just vanish off the face of the Discord. The better they were when we started, the more it stings when they vanish. Especially if it's at a point when we're just getting into something, or worse, there's been planning done and then they're gone.

 

[Tove]

I never understood why, and it continues to baffle me to this day, people will either comment on your request thread or send you a pm about your RT with something along the lines of I'm semi interested in one of your plots or there is nothing on your RT that interests me. So why even bother wasting not only your time but mine as well to tell me you are somewhat, partially, halfway interested in a plot of mine or nothing interests you at all?
If a RT is interesting to me I'm going to let the person know by trying to write with them.

 

[Breech Loader]

I never understood why, and it continues to baffle me to this day, people will either comment on your request thread or send you a pm about your RT with something along the lines of I'm semi interested in one of your plots or there is nothing on your RT that interests me. So why even bother wasting not only your time but mine as well to tell me you are somewhat, partially, halfway interested in a plot of mine or nothing interests you at all?
If a RT is interesting to me I'm going to let the person know by trying to write with them.

Oh, yes. Then there's people who call in and say "Hmm, sounds interesting." And you say "Okay, here's a more detailed explanation." And then they never even say "Nah, this isn't what I wanted." RUDE

 

[AuroraRogersSkywalker]

Okay I have a lot lol! Let me name just a few though.

1. Ghosting. I absolutely hate it when I put a lot of work into an RP and people leave without telling me. I understand if people get bored or busy, but come on, just tell me!

2. Poor grammar. Incorrect use of its vs it's, run on sentences, incorrect capitalization on purpose, spelling names/words wrong...

3. As a few people here have already mentioned, people who don't move the plot along in their posts and simply react. I love collaborating with others and I don't want to be the only one contributing stuff to the plot.

4. Shallow character development, or in fandom RPs, people who don't really understand the characters they're writing. Not giving your characters well-rounded personality traits. Mary Sues, etc.

 

[BackSet]

Incorrect use of its vs it's,

Oh come on that's haaaaard!

 

[AuroraRogersSkywalker]

Oh come on that's haaaaard!

Lol!

It's = it is
Its = possessive pronoun (the dog wagged its tail)

 

[BackSet]

I think I'll just let Autocorrect tell me what to do.

 

[Melpomene]

4. Shallow character development, or in fandom RPs, people who don't really understand the characters they're writing. Not giving your characters well-rounded personality traits. Mary Sues, etc.

Yeah, that's probably the thing I hate most. It is frustrating because it is hard to know just how well someone makes/plays a character until you RP with them.