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

[Grimmdom]

In my opinion, a special snowflake character is going to be very different in every RP, because it depends on the world it's built for. But general traits are oft (but not always) out of place abilities or skills that provide a massive advantage that can be abused, without appropriate drawback. Also, conflicting details. Being experienced yet young, for example. Physical features that are excessively flashy (the most common being changing eye colours, or hair colour, for some reason or another) are also common on these kinds of characters. Overall, a character where it feels like EVERY DETAIL has to feel unique to everyont else. Throw in a dash of dark and brooding and you've got yourself some hellish concoction.
One of my first (and cringiest) RP characters I ever made was for a superhero academy type deal, and naturally I went with a 15 year old who was for some reason at this school for high school leavers because of their immense intellect which was linked to psychic abilities to manipulate matter on a molecular level in massive scale. Whilst it could be redone decently, the ability was ridiculously OP against anyone, with surprise being the only weakness at all. Hell, looking back, I don't know how that abomination got approved.

For the most part, it stems from wanting to be the center of the drama to an obsessive point; to be the protagonist of every story and every scene. Of course, a piece of it comes from a person's inexperience of knowing what makes a character/personality, so they replace depth with flashy appearances and displays of power. Everyone's guilty of that, especially if they're young. But it become a problem when it overwhelms what the story is suppose to be about, and everything dissolves into melodrama and angst until someone quits. The solution though is simple, as in most cases, the person simply needs to be told directly about the issues they create and how they can improve themselves.


I can speak to this directly from my early days when I practically killed off a small RP community when, one day, I took it upon myself to suddenly become the villain in one RP in which most of the people on the site were in. I had an obsession with role-play fighting back then, and boy did I thrash that place up like a bouncing rubber bull in a china shop. Or when on another site, the girl whom was my fighting teacher mentioned in IC that the moon from her planet was her source of power...and I destroyed it and all the people that lived there. Thank Zod I grew out of that, even if I was only a teen at the time.


Snowflakes, man. Like freakin' Nitro-glycerin.

 

[SpookySableye]

[QUOTE="Darth Gangsta]ULTIMATE RP IDEAS??!!! :0

[/QUOTE]
You got a cool idea?

 

[Darth Gangsta]

Not really but we could combine our ideas to make the best RP ever.

 

[SpookySableye]

[QUOTE="Darth Gangsta]Not really but we could combine our ideas to make the best RP ever.

[/QUOTE]
Hm... Maybe... Maybe...

 

[Ballerina]

In my opinion, a special snowflake character is going to be very different in every RP, because it depends on the world it's built for. But general traits are oft (but not always) out of place abilities or skills that provide a massive advantage that can be abused, without appropriate drawback. Also, conflicting details. Being experienced yet young, for example. Physical features that are excessively flashy (the most common being changing eye colours, or hair colour, for some reason or another) are also common on these kinds of characters. Overall, a character where it feels like EVERY DETAIL has to feel unique to everyont else. Throw in a dash of dark and brooding and you've got yourself some hellish concoction.
One of my first (and cringiest) RP characters I ever made was for a superhero academy type deal, and naturally I went with a 15 year old who was for some reason at this school for high school leavers because of their immense intellect which was linked to psychic abilities to manipulate matter on a molecular level in massive scale. Whilst it could be redone decently, the ability was ridiculously OP against anyone, with surprise being the only weakness at all. Hell, looking back, I don't know how that abomination got approved.

Regarding that, what makes a Special Snowflake these days anyways?
And I can understand being judged. There's often a heavy bias in roleplaying based on the image and sometimes I just want to type the description. But maybe I should walk the walk and just start drawing my characters from here on out, even if they're not professional looking. xD

To me a special snowflake character varies depending on the roleplay. Honestly, OP characters don't bother me too much as long as they are fully fleshed out and lose fights occasionally, but the majority do because the roleplayer is inexperienced and craves to be a special snowflake. Usually their abilities are way too powerful, they always win, and their appearance is 'special' (changing or unique eye colors, long knee length hair, etc.). Their backstories are usually exessively tragic for no reason and everyone the character meets gets told about it, even though they never posted it on their bio.They make the plot revolve around their character, change the roleplay's plot and are so desparate for cringy romance. I often find that there's a my characters problems>the actual plot of the roleplay>your character's problems complex going on

 

[call me rae]

Sister to the Snowflakes that I find annoying :


The One Everyone Wants - who might be a snowflake in disguise but is basically some magical paragon of all things desirable and must be fawned over by every breathing entity in the roleplay. And if you dare to claim your humanoid sentient type creation does not in fact want to bump uglies and worship this paragon of desirability be prepared to be subjected to a childish rant about how you are ruining the character.


Like I'm sorry my character has more important things on their mind than whether or not your spoiled one dimensional character is attractive or not. And even if they do find your character attractive the way they act would make most rational creations run for the hill.


And look this kind of person is fine in over the top romance roleplays where it's all about relationship drama.


But kindly do not shoehorn them into my : police procedural/epic fantasy adventure/superhero saga/magical girl tale of friendship/scifi dystopian survival/etc.

 

[An Unknown Person]

Bawk...oops....


I mean, 10 School/Highschool RP's bullsh-t every 2 pages on RoM and Fantasy section.


OP/Edgy/Special Snowflake chars ("Super strong, Immortal, eye changes color every 2 minutes, Edgy, *hair flip ")


Insta hit posts (Like "He walks up to him and kills him" kind of thing), but I really don't mind when they're impossible to react.


Fandom section being 101% Anime, I rarely find an actual RP based on a video-game (PDTH/PD2, Halo, or the first video game that comes in your mind), or even books (Ranger's apprentice, NOS4A2, etc...)

 

[Ballerina]

Another thing is when people reply with a post with not enough "meat", I used to do this myself but progressed to the point I no longer do it. I don't expect you to match my post length, but at least give me something my character can react to and steer the story a bit too.


Crappy ex:


My character: "What's your favorite color?" She looked down at the grass and placed her hand on his. "Mine would have to be purple since I love both blue and red, so that's kind of in between you know?" The girl sighed, the color purple (don't read that book I beg of you) reminded her of the days that she used to spend with her family in the purple beachhouse. "I really miss home..." She stuttered, trying to hold back tears, for all she wanted to do was leave this awful island.


Their character: "Blue." He smiled.


(Whats worse is when they take hours just to give that response)


*excuse me while I bang my head on my keyboard*


FFSFGFRRREVNNRDFSSFG.SG.TGT.SGTS.RFGSSSGF.;AEAE'.AE.REATWGADAG,D

 

[An Unknown Person]

Another thing is when people reply with a post with not enough "meat", I used to do this myself but progressed to the point I no longer do it. I don't expect you to match my post length, but at least give me something my character can react to and steer the story a bit too.
Crappy ex:


My character: "What's your favorite color?" She looked down at the grass and placed her hand on his. "Mine would have to be purple since I love both blue and red, so that's kind of in between you know?" The girl sighed, the color purple (don't read that book I beg of you) reminded her of the days that she used to spend with her family in the purple beachhouse. "I really miss home..." She stuttered, trying to hold back tears, for all she wanted to do was leave this awful island.


Their character: "Blue." He smiled.


(Whats worse is when they take hours just to give that response)


*excuse me while I bang my head on my keyboard*


FFSFGFRRREVNNRDFSSFG.SG.TGT.SGTS.RFGSSSGF.;AEAE'.AE.REATWGADAG,D

Welp, my RPs are usually following the 'above 2/3 lines' rule... and somebody wanted to join one of those (SCP one), but her posts were like.... smaller than your 'crappy ex' xD


Atleast she forgot about it and didn't join...


And damn, a lot of useless SPACE here.

 

[Cashdash25]

Personally, the thing I find most egregious in roleplaying and writing in general would be the inability to self-criticize, it's important to be able to tell yourself where and when your content needs improvement or to find others who will, otherwise you will constantly operate under the delusion that your writing is perfect and amazing when it might in fact be highly flawed, powergaming, nearly unreadable or just plain uninspired trite, and no one enjoys playing with those sorts of people.


On a more site specific complaint, the sheer oversaturation of weeby, anime school roleplays in the RoM and Fantasy sections is almost disturbing, but that's demographics for you I suppose.

 

[Krogenar]

Personally, the thing I find most egregious in roleplaying and writing in general would be the inability to self-criticize, it's important to be able to tell yourself where and when your content needs improvement or to find others who will, otherwise you will constantly operate under the delusion that your writing is perfect and amazing when it might in fact be highly flawed, powergaming, nearly unreadable or just plain uninspired trite, and no one enjoys playing with those sorts of people.

Yeah, my biggest gripe for most roleplaying is the lack of real flaws in characters -- flaws make the characters more interesting, more human. So, ok, you have a character that's got a very OP ability, that fine. Just balance with a severe flaw or handicap -- or avoid OP characters altogether. I rarely see fat, old, or ugly characters, which is a shame.

 

[call me rae]

Yeah, my biggest gripe for most roleplaying is the lack of real flaws in characters -- flaws make the characters more interesting, more human. So, ok, you have a character that's got a very OP ability, that fine. Just balance with a severe flaw or handicap -- or avoid OP characters altogether. I rarely see fat, old, or ugly characters, which is a shame.

I'll give you ugly and fat but the old might have a good reason. A lot of roleplays ( as people gripe about constantly ) are school or academy based. So having a really old character wouldn't have a place in those type of scenarios.


But I mean I don't know about you but I've never seen why I couldn't be fat and ugly and join a school roleplay. Like I've had people tell me it "didn't fit the setting" when I tried to make a scrawny frizzy-haired girl with albino skin. In short she wasn't attactive, she wasn't supposed to be attractive. But she was in the age bracket but she was denied for not being "pretty enough".


To a SCHOOL ROLEPLAY.


Like I'm sorry since when does high school have a attractiveness code? Because I went to school with some ugly people let me tell you and I don't remember them being kicked off campus.

 

[Krogenar]

Like I'm sorry since when does high school have a attractiveness code? Because I went to school with some ugly people let me tell you and I don't remember them being kicked off campus.

I get what you're saying about a roleplay story that's set in a school being focused primarily on the students themselves -- but why not a teacher? But yeah, I agree -- 'unattractive' characters have a place.

 

[call me rae]

I get what you're saying about a roleplay story that's set in a school being focused primarily on the students themselves -- but why not a teacher? But yeah, I agree -- 'unattractive' characters have a place.

Well usually the focus of these stories isn't on the teachers as classes don't really come up. It's more focused on the students lives / drama / special snowflakeness /etc.


So being a teacher is just not going to come in because the adults aren't important

 

[Nyxione]

• Godmodding (without permission) and other role play 'sins'. Pretty straight forward. I mean who likes Godmodders, Mary Sues / Gary Stus, Powerplayers, etc. ? Certainly not me.
  
• GMs that leave their role play for dead. I'm not sure if that's prevalent here, but it was very prevalent in the site I role played at before and it was just horrible. They make the SU but never actually finish their own character sheet; they make the IC but never actually make a post. It's annoying and makes me even less motivated to make a post or finish my own character. I am so tempted to link an example.
  
• WIP IC Posts. Nope. Just no. >_> Either post or don't post please. Thanks.
  
• One liners. Again, just no. There's a reason why I only join Adept - Advanced role plays on Iwaku and only check out Detailed RPs here. u__u
  
• People who ask for a relationship with your character but don't give any ideas. There are role plays which require relationships to be made between characters, which is fine with me. I actually like it when a relationship section is required and is updated by people as the role play progresses. Anyway, it just annoys me when people approach me without an idea. Like, at least give me an idea to work with, even if it's cray cray! Also includes people who ask to role play with you but give no plot ideas and whatnot.
  
• People who don't colour code character dialogues in IC posts. Not a huge deal, but yea. I just find it easier to read posts imo.
  
• ROLE PLAYS THAT HAVE THEIR OOC CHAT AND SU IN ONE THREAD. I don't think it's a problem here, but in other sites it is and it is annoying af. Whenever I want to read someone's CS I have to scroll through the ooc chatter and it is just.. ugh. >:c
  
• ROLE PLAYS THAT REQUIRE THE RELATIONSHIPS PORTION FILLED OUT TO BE CONSIDERED FOR THE SLOT AND ALLOW COMPETITION FOR SLOTS. I don't get the logic behind people that do this. Like, how are we supposed to develop relationships with other characters when we don't even know who's in and who's not yet.
  
• 'TELEPORTING' CHARACTERS. Example: Juliette is at home. According to the rp's universe, the beach and the Juliette's home are one the opposite sides of town, yet despite that, Juliette manages to reach the beach within three seconds. Makes no sense right? >___>
  

There's probably more but these are all that pop into my mind atm.

 

[DikkeVetteVlinder]

OOC drama is my biggest pet peeve. Somehow it always seems to pop up sooner or later.

 

[Elephantom]

THINGS I HATE:





ANIME CHARACTERS


I abhor anime based characters or face claims. They completely ruin any gritty roleplays I see or I've made, and I can't even take them seriously cause I always end up imagining them as weird cartoon characters, because I think they're really meant for light-hearted or humorous stories, or just anime-only roleplays. A good example is this:


I created an extremely dark tech-noir thriller, full of grit and guns and my character is your usual washed up private detective working like your everyday detective does. And someone makes an anime character and I accept her, of course, I couldn't just reject her because she used an anime character? And everyone starts making anime character with me and another guy being the only ones who still have some sense of realism left in them. And that was how the RP completely shut down.


TEEN/YOUNG-ADULT ROLEPLAY


Okay, I always prefers mature characters (25-60 in age) cause I'm a very mature-oriented guy. But all those high school roleplays were people are below 21 when I myself am in my mid-20's. What the fuckity-fuck is playing as post-puberty kids supposed to even mean? It's like quite creepy and in a way I won't like to describe, especially if there's romance involved.


SCHOOL/COLLEGE ROLEPLAYS


Yeah, right... I'm a geeky noob who wants to play as a cool kid in a more cooler school than his actual life where he's an anti-social nerd who has no friends and life terribly sucked for him. Boo hoo. The only reason I'd play an academy type (notice that I said academy, not school) roleplay is if it allows age over 18. Like most of my characters are like over 30 and some are even in their 40's. Like most schoolers (that's what I'll call them, people obsessed with school roleplays) behave that playing as a normal average 46 year old guy with average looks are completely abnormal, which brings us to another point...


PERFECT CHARACTERS WITH NO FLAW (VISUAL/PHYSICAL)


This irks me so very much. While there's no harm in playing as a cool looking character every once in a while, it's quite weird for every one of your characters to be white and muscular. While I too am guilty of the visual problem sometimes, I do manage to put flaws in my character. Like my character is a collector and has a old bolt-action rifle, right? Well, another character has a Kalashnikov 47, which doesn't run out of ammo or neither does he change clips. My character is old and has bad back and is suffering from dementia. While his is more older and seems to be way too well-built and strong for a person in their mid-50's. It just doesn't make any sense.


AUTO-HIT/GODMODDING


Y'all know what this means, right? If you don't then I'll give you brief summary.


Player A confronts Player B who kidnapped Player C.


Player A throws a punch at Player B.


Player B receives the punch before tackling player A and knocking him out with a well-placed punch.


Get what I mean? Player B committed Auto-hitting by knocking out my character without my consent.


Another example:


Me: "Well, I won't give up without a fight, you coward." Jack exclaimed with quite the angry tone. Before raising his fists up in an offensive fashion. Eyes locked with Wong, he raised his right hand before throwing a very vigorous hook at him.


Him: "Argghhhh!!!" Wong screamed as he ducked in the precise moment before tackling John, using shoulder contact to bring him down into the ground. Furiously punching his head as John grunted with his dying breath. Finally succumbing to the darkness and probably heading towards the light at the end of the tunnel.


Auto-Hit and godmodding is usually done by noobs or people who just haven't roleplayed that much.


ONE-LINERS


Which is the practically the bane of the elephantom and enough for him to hurriedly scatter away to another safe 'detailed' haven.


COLOUR CODING SPEECH


While I generally don't have any problem with it. Most people use super bright colours which heavily distract my eyes and prevents me from taking stuff seriously. Just use dark colours or grey or something.


RELATIONSHIP SLOTS IN CS


Relationships are made through RPs, and not through character sheets. So fuck off. Seriously, man. I don't get what they try to express by inserting this into a CS expecting people to apply something in here.

 

[Ixacise]

Too many damn rules and regulations in TC's post.


It's like shorthand for declaring yourself to being a high strung pedantic pain in the ass.

 

[Elephantom]

That's the most darkest line I've ever heard...

 

[UhhBryson]

What bothers me..


I'd have to say the people that make common, (and by common, I mean repeated) mechanical or spelling errors.





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Not only does that bother me, but also the role players that say stuff like - *smiles*, *nods*, *laughs*.





It's not that hard to add much detail. Just a few adjectives could change a whole lot. Let me show you.





^ *smiles at your words, the smile growing by the second* - *nods faintly in agreement* - *laughs uncontrollably, my face getting red because of how I can't stop*


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


That's all folks!

 

[CHIMNY]

What upsets me the most is when other peoples characters control my character.


Example:


'General Zod then hits superman with his fist, knocking him into the river'


The correct way of posting the same thing is:


'General Zod then attempted to punch superman so that he can fall into the river'


I expect you to see the difference.


Edit: Like I would ever do superman in a fandom, you could tell i like Bats ;P

 

[UhhBryson]

Agreed. I don't use futuristic or characters like such. But if there's a fist fight or something with my character; I won't say " he grabs you and pushes you against a wall, punching you in the temple which knocks you out* " It honestly makes me mad and irritated.


@CHIMNY

 

[CHIMNY]

@UhhBryson There was this one moment in an RP where another players character and mine were in a fight. The guy was clearly infront of my character and I got a sleep dart stuck in my characters head. ( ")

 

[call me rae]

People who try to bring real world societal issues into fantasy roleplays. Look you want to delve into gay rights or feminism that's awesome. But I'm pretty sure when I'm playing a warrior mage on a quest to save humanity : I'm not really going to be thinking about what her outfit says about the feminist movement. Or how her made up race feels about gay rights.

 

[Krogenar]

People who try to bring real world societal issues into fantasy roleplays. Look you want to delve into gay rights or feminism that's awesome. But I'm pretty sure when I'm playing a warrior mage on a quest to save humanity : I'm not really going to be thinking about what her outfit says about the feminist movement. Or how her made up race feels about gay rights.

People really do that? *shivers*