Types of role plays and things role players do that annoy you

[Chloe Elaine]

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What types of role plays strike a chord with you? What are some things that role players themselves do that bother you? I would love to hear about things you've seen or experienced. For me, the type of role play that bothers me are the ones that revolve around mental or physical illness, but they totally take it out of context and romanticize it to the point of "wait, do you even know what that disease is?" Let me elaborate: I have seen a role play where two characters were in a mental hospital and have schizophrenia. That's fine and all, but... their 'schizophrenia' was just voices in their heads that turned out to be each other's, leading them to fall in love. Other than the voices, there was nothing wrong with them. I don't have any experience with it, but I am pretty sure that is not schizophrenia. The BIG thing that annoys me that some (not many) role players do- <em>take control of YOUR character</em>. Let's say my character's name is Chloe. Let's say theirs is George. My character and George have been arguing with each other the whole role play. The role player of George writes, <em>"George looks intently into Chloe's eyes. Chloe then realizes that she is deeply, madly in love with George. She blushes and says, "I don't want to fight anymore. I want to date you." </em>Um, excuse you, NOT your decision to make. Please don't. What about you guys? What are some things that bug you?


</p>

 

[Xenonia]

I really dislike two types of roleplayer, and two types of roleplay.


The two types of player are the type that autohit whenever they want, so that everything they do succeeds forever. The second is the "eternal loner" who even when given an 'in' to the action, their character always just stays in their own little corner, being angsty usually.


The two types of roleplays are ones that involve actual real people, because that is fucking creepy. The second is the kind that's really just for the GM, and all the other characters are just background.

 

[amdreams]

Metagaming has always been (and still is) one of my biggest pet peeves. It always annoys me when characters suddenly know secrets or others' thoughts and backgrounds for no reason. Even more so when they don't even try to come up with a reason for why they know so. It's especially frustrating because a lot of the stories and characters I like to do are the ones with misunderstandings, secrets and plot twists. But when you've got people metagaming, none of that matters because they're somehow all knowing and always know exactly what to do so that they're the perfect hero.


Examples:

• I have this character, M, who's supposed to seem like a bad guy but is actually sort of good. In the past, I've tried asking people to play along, but somehow everyone is being sympathetic, and rather persistent, with her. I had her set up to look like she killed someone's pet and the person was just like "It's okay. I know you're good deep down." Meanwhile, I'm just screaming, "M just killed the dog you've had for 5 years! Sort of." (Luckily, I know a way around that now.)
  
• I've seen another character, C, whose secretly a prince that has never been presented to the public. This one girl, F, then leaves for a trip, doesn't say what happened (even afterwards) and just pops up and says to C, "I know you're a prince."
  
• I've had a character say to my character "You're a villain, aren't you?" within 5 minutes (in the rp's time) of even looking at her. All she said was "here" in accordance with roll call.
  

It really annoys me when this happens, but there is an upside, I guess. I've found that metagamers are also extremely easy to manipulate with selective IC postings and misleading OOC. Just a precaution and slight punishment system.


~~~~~


I'm also not fond of the overly aggressive love interest. It's something I mostly see in female characters but it happens in males too. Basically, these people make it their livelihood, their purpose, to snag a specific character as a love interest with no regard to the feelings of their target or others. It's rather rude in my eyes, the lengths they'd go for this to happen, and sort of creepy if you're the target. And sometimes, this can lead to other problems, like godmodding and metagaming.


Examples:

• My character L was in love with X and X loved her back. But another character, J, also liked X. X has rejected J's advances multiple times, saying he loves L. So J then godmods and kills off L. Unfortunately, her plan didn't work as X became repulsed by J for what she did and killed himself out of grief of losing L.
  
• My character M had become oddly popular in this one roleplay with a few people trying to get her as their love interest. But none of them were her type and kept doing things that made her hate them more. This particular guy, G, was especially persistent. He kept following M. Whenever M was talking to another guy, G magically teleported in and whisked her away. And he kept trying to force himself on her, despite her (and me) repeatedly screaming at him to stop along with some more violent methods. Eventually, it had gotten to the point where G's roleplayer began harassing me OOC to get M to like G or for tips as to what G should do.
  

This can get especially ugly in a harem-like setting (any setting where girls heavily outnumber guys) and you have multiple of these overly aggressive love interests. I swear it's like watching hungry dogs fight over a piece of meat. Interesting to read, but you never want to get involved, especially if you're the prize.

 

[2SEATER]

Worst type of Roleplay in my opinion would have to be school. You know the ones; 'Fantasy College', 'Superhero School', 'Space Academy'. Now I think these can work, but the majority I see revolve around special children, or outcasts. I just really can't stand special snowflakes.


The worst kind of RPer to me would be the person who, despite you creating a rich and detailed back stroy and lore, completely ignore the tone and plot you've set up. They keep trying to shoehorn in their own little ideas. For example, here is a personal experience.


I was doing a post apocalyptic mech Roleplay. One of the first characters that someone made was the leader of a cult who could use magic fire or something. Nowhere had I said this RP was to have magic in it. They also conviently had amnesia (they were using it as an excuse to not write a back story).


On topic of post apocalyptic RPs, I hate people who automatically think the words 'Post Apocalyptic' means there will be zombies.


Anyway that's the end of my rant.

 

[Ashurbanipal]

On the whole, I'm not one for roleplay devoted to romance or slice of life; I'm no fan of stories that consist of someone's daily life or getting into their PG-13 pants. I prefer more dynamism in the games I play, a sense of progression, of danger, of possibility, and I enjoy characters and worlds built to exercise power. Give me adventure and exploration and cut-throat politics over "uguu i hope sempai notices me today".

 

[Xenonia]

In regards to school-type roleplays, I think they're best when they can't possibly be taken seriously. As in, compare the events of "Superjail" to a real jail, or "Eagleheart" to the real US Marshal service. As in, they're so un-school-like that it becomes something entirely different.

 

[Ixacise]

I heavily dislike extended combat in Freeform because unless the gm puts any modicum of thought into handling it. It will always be a massive clusterfuck especially with current paradigm being to just eyeball a decent of amount of hits and misses to avoid being called a godmodder.


to be more on topic:


Mech games that are tying to be "realistic"/gritty and have their sheets with a semi in depth loadout part.


Which bugs me on general principle because mechs are inherently unrealistic and toyetic so it always has an element of silliness. As for the parts part it bugs me because its gets into like this pseudo stats territory where your putting things down that need to have some sort of like tangible quantification that would be done with some sort of PnP ruleset but isn't because dice and rules are scary. So you got all this detail rendered meaningless by the narrative only environment.


Sure you might get some heirarchy or explanation of the weapons in some games but at the same timeif you're gonna do like Battletech/Mech warrior or Armored core go do that with the actual structure it entails instead of putting it in this narrative only environment that misses the point of those type of games. The point being that the parts allow you to customize the performance of your bot and they have mechanics in place that show these effects in a tangible manner.

 

[Cavil]

1. Romanizing mental illnesses as something attractive or role playing them incorrectly or incompletely. Bipolar disorder is NOT cool. Schizophrenia is NOT cool. People with mental illnesses like that will fuck shit up, not 'learn to love' so quickly.


Another thing: making characters that have a tragic backstory but are 'open to having a relationship'. What the fuck? How?

 

[Xenonia]

Romanizing? Like, making things seem Roman?


Also, are you saying that having a tragic or disturbing past means you can't love? Like, that a person's difficult experiences have to "break" them? That's a fucked up world view.

 

[Ixacise]

E-Z P-Z


The power of the healing cock/vagina.


Not to say that the whole process of like bonding and being vulnerable in front of someone you trust and all that stuff can't be worked into the process of healing.


However the thing you're getting at is pretty dumb and bad as the first has a slow burn and build up. This one is like a crap fanfic of character has angsty backstory->Falls in love-> they fuck and then somehow that moment magically and cathartically relieves all that hurt. And it so happens to be an element of fanfic that some vague community that's into that stuff has made the term "healing cock" for those type of plot

 

[Quilboarian]

• People who think having a Russian character makes them cool. [they don't even RP any aspects of it. they just throw it in there; "IS RUSSIAN."]
  

• People who think having an ex-special forces character makes them cool. [or are otherwise incapable of RPing a character that doesn't have some kind of military/police training.]
  

• People who can't roleplay antagonists without being edgy. [you never see a bandit that just needs supplies to stay alive. he is always going to rape people, torture people, eat babies and make a necklace out of his victims' ears or some shit.]
  

• People who can't roleplay protagonists without being pussies. [they'd let the bandit from above go free if they captured them.]
  

• People who don't show realistic levels of emotion. [character's friends are killed, but they stop hating the perpetrator just because they gave a good reason for killing their friends.]
  

 

[Sibylline Oracle]

Players who demand relationships between two characters instead of letting it occur naturally (if it occurs at all).


Players who demand or brusquely 'request' exceptions in the rules for them and/or their characters.


Players who don't want their characters to experience the in-character consequences of said characters' in-character actions.


But at the top of my list has to be the so-called 'munchkin', who plays a non-competitive roleplay to "win", often by trying to either kill all the other player characters and/or make his/her character nigh untouchable through numerous strengths and inconsequential weaknesses.

 

[Cavil]

Romanizing? Like, making things seem Roman?
Also, are you saying that having a tragic or disturbing past means you can't love? Like, that a person's difficult experiences have to "break" them? That's a fucked up world view.

thanks for pointing out my typo, like it was needed that you do that


And no, that's not what I meant. My second point kinda went along with my first one, as in, right out of the gate they're made to be in a relationship without any part of their illness coming through during the existence of the play and relationship. And we are talking about characters in a role play. Remember that. I have bipolar 2, and my past did fuck me over. I don't expect everyone to be the same in reality.


I hope my clarification was suitable for your reading and understanding needs. When I posted that, I just came home from an 11 hour shift at work and I was very tired.

 

[QuixoticKitten]

• Roleplayers who give their characters terribly depressing backstories ALL THE TIME. Sorry, but we can't all be a product of the foster system, abused, and raped when we were ten. That's not how life works.
  
• Unbalanced characters: I tend to hang in the realistic section, and I see characters whose creators a) list personality and b) make it somewhat like this: + hot, flexible, funny, lovable, popular - bitchy, sarcastic, addicted to drugs, cheater. Like how is it possible to be bitchy and lovable? And if it even is, can I get this secret o great master of the universe haha?
  
• Misrepresentation of mental disorders. Seriously, I have two. They're not cute. Enough said.
  
• Roleplays where all people do is party. 'Aint nobody got time fo dat.
  
• Any kind of school roleplay that has no plot other than just school. I'm in a college RP right now, but it's about time travel and character building and focuses little on the actual classes.
  

 

[Cavil]

• Unbalanced characters: I tend to hang in the realistic section, and I see characters whose creators a) list personality and b) make it somewhat like this: + hot, flexible, funny, lovable, popular - bitchy, sarcastic, addicted to drugs, cheater. Like how is it possible to be bitchy and lovable? And if it even is, can I get this secret o great master of the universe haha?
  

• Misrepresentation of mental disorders. Seriously, I have two. They're not cute. Enough said.
  

This.

 

[Gabe]

Okay, let me see:

• Casual writers on detailed RPs: There are times when we have Writer's Block, yes, but when I write at least a paragraph and a half on each post and another player writes a sentence on every post, it makes me angry. Not for the work I had in writing that, it's that the player doesn't give me what to work on.
  
• "I fight my battle on two fronts, the monsters out there and the monsters inside of me": This happens especially on Fantasy/Zombies RPs. They make the characters crazy/disturbed by something they saw or done, with several mental diseases that sometimes aren't even interpreted, they just put there to "look cool", or actually has some kind of entity that wants to take over and "do unspeakable evil". They act angsty and unstable because of that, and somehow has the (over)power to fight and win.
  
• " Oh, poor me, please feel pity!": They had the most horrible childhood ever. They were sold into slavery, then the other slaves hated them because they were talented/pretty/the slaver's favorite. They were countlessly raped, suffered psychological and physical torture for months on end, yet still kept their impeccable beauty/talent/whatever. They somehow found the other PCs, and act in a way that makes everyone feel sorry about them, or in more extreme cases, forces the PCs to be sorry, either through Godmodding or OOC demands.
  
• School for the gifted angsty children: Seriously, this school bends the time-space continuum. There's no way a classroom can have so many corners. All of them occupied by kids. Sad kids. Everywhere. God.
  
• Bad Grammar: Small errors are normal, no one can be perfect. But when you write almost a paragraph and the only word you got it right is "the", there's something wrong.
  

Well, I guess that's it.

 

[Maelstrom]

Non-flawed characters. I'm not talking about Mary Sues here. I'm talking about characters that they make a bit flawed, but only slightly. Sure they can get injured, and angry at times, but they're all nice and good and get along with your character just fine.


To keep things interesting you need characters with a good flaw that feeds off of some life changing event in their past, AND will conflict with the other characters and or goal. This is what makes characters and RPs more interesting.

 

[Grey]

Players that won't read the damn lore and need to have it explained to them over multiple posts.


Roleplays including phrases such as 'D&D-like' where it's obvious no one has any idea what they're talking about, but also won't educate themselves if you literally hand them links.


Any player or GM who thinks quantity = quality.

 

[Xenonia]

GMs that write a shitload of unimportant fluff lore and then get mad when the players don't spot the single plot-important doodad in the twenty pages of economy info and global climate politics errata.


People who create "shifty psychopath pretending to be a normal guy" characters that proceed to not act at all like a normal guy.


In fact, anyone who plays a "shifty psychopath" at all. Insane characters can work fine I guess, but it usually doesn't make sense for them to be in a group of other mostly sane people.


Players who include a secret hidden item in their CS that they can use to pull anything they want out of their ass, or break the game.

 

[gambino]

"my character is super edgy and badass and rude but is rlly nice inside and is making up for being bullied/short/angryparents/reptilian and even if shes mean and rude thats just what makes her so SPECIAL justrollwithit" is a personal favourite. stop making every girl character with an attitude and a nickname like 'shank' and making everyone else put up with your redeeming hard shell soft inside jerk and I ESP dislike it when they make these characters just for some hot guy to break down her walls and love her and stuff and see past her really shitty sarcasm and comebacks


tbh tho i hate sob stories like parents died, grew up on streets, bullied, etc. it is not statistically possible to have this many emotionally ruined orphans

 

[Dusky]

This actually goes for more than just roleplaying: Players who clearly did not read.


Examples:


Not bothering to skim through an Interest Check or Character Sign-Up to see for themself what other sorts of characters are being made.


Creating characters who are superficially adapted to suit an RP's premise, or worse, no effort made at all. ("Your character should be a fairly normal per-" "YOU MEAN THE DAUGHTER OF POSEIDON RIGHT?")


Taking liberties with lore and surrounding environment, particularly to bring an advantage to or call attention to their character.


Just... All of these things seem so very inconsiderate to me, and an insult to my intelligence and that of the people I'm roleplaying with. Do they really think that we'll just... go with it?


And, like everyone, poor character building and poor GM-ing always get me - but at least those are learned skills, not always behavioral issues.

 

[snakeyem12]

I hate roleplays that require a full in detail character history and personality. My character that I generally play has a secret, and his backstory makes little sense without it, but I always worry that with it in the history, roleplayers will have their characters do certain actions that don't make much sense and mean they find it out. I much prefer roleplays that allow you to show your character in roleplay, and just use a writing sample to test your abilities.


Roleplays with likes and dislikes columns just frustrate me. Why are they there? You seriously don't need to know this. If something my character dislikes happens, you will know he disliked it. I don't want you deliberately annoying my character or deliberately being the perfect person for them. I want characters to just be themselves and not need likes and dislikes to sort relationships.


It would be much better if most roleplays based their character sheet on something like this https://www.rpnation.com/threads/character-sheet-ideas.37292/ I honestly believe this is one of the best character systems I've seen for proving you've put thought into the character whilst giving very little away about who they are.

 

[Chloe Elaine]

I hate it when people try to be the center of attention ALL THE TIME.


Example: *other people's characters are having a conversation and another person feels like they aren't getting enough attention.*


"John sat in the corner alone and started crying."


*other people's characters are in the middle of something important and don't react*


"John continues crying in the corner."


*other people are really in the middle of something*


"JOHN CRIES, ALONE, IT THE CORNER HE IS BAWLING HIS EYES OUT"


...


"JOHN ADMITS THAT HE IS AN ORPHAN AND NOBODY HAS EVER LOVED HIM."


And that happens every conversation.


Please just wait until they finish their conversation. Not everything needs to involve you.

 

[Gabe]

[QUOTE="Chloe Elaine]I hate it when people try to be the center of attention ALL THE TIME.

[/QUOTE]
Ah, the classic Protagonist Syndrome. It's common in beginners, but if not treated on the earlier phases, can install on the roleplayer's core, making it incurable.


Jokes aside, one thing that I dislike as well is players that make more than one character, and make them a couple. They have to show affection on every single post, making the roleplay a love story bordering smut, derailing the main plot.


Other thing are roleplay moderators that is basically a yes-man to certain players(and hindering others). They make the player powerful, loved by everybody and basically a god, and any player that goes against him is A: Pummeled by sheer GM fiat; B: Pummeled by player overpower(acquired by GM fiat) C: Kicked out of the roleplay. This is harmful to everything, and takes the fun of everybody but the power player.

 

[Flintlock Timber]

Whilst I don't necessarily hate fandom RPs, I dislike them nonetheless. Sure, they allow roleplayers to sport a Kirby T-Shirt, emblazoned on the left breast a 'cute and adorable' face, and kick arse, but I don't find them to be all that original. I definitely don't see myself participating in fandom roleplays any time soon.


As for the content inside roleplays, I think that's an easy choice to make. One-liners. These babies are prevalent in most casual roleplays and are the bane of my existence. I mean, you can always find some casual roleplay to knock yourself out with when bored, but one-liners are disgusting. Not every scenario warrants a huge chunk of text, and not every roleplay encourages roleplayers to let their hearts out, but I just really don't like seeing them.


I guess I can also go with god-moding, but that's kind of against everyone's rules anyway, so it's not like they're going to be seen everywhere, around and about.