Experiences Whats something you regret doing in a RP, or an embarrassing RP moment?

[Jet]

Maybe you went nuclear and raged at someone, or ghosted a great RP and later regretted it, or maybe you abandoned a project you were running as a GM, only to realize your mistake later? Perhaps you have an embarrassing moment like repeatedly mis-naming another character, like calling Steven "Stephen" over and over until your partner loses their shit.

It could be a massive fail or a funny little one, but either way, here's a thread for your most cringe moments as a roleplayer.

I'll go first as my obligation, can't ask for dirt without giving some first.

In my younger days I was more ornery and prone to rash emotional decisions. I was running a Fandom RP and there were two people who always made my life hell, because they constantly nit-picked lore in the most obscure ways possible. Now these days I would just say, "this is my interpretation of the lore, and as the GM that's how it's going to be."

But back then? I argued with them for hours until went red in the face, and after a few snide remarks from these big brains, I told them to run the RP better if they could. I quit on the spot and gave them server ownership, and watched as the RP burned to the ground. I was self satisfied in the petty moment of my revenge, but once time had passed...

Well I'd made a complete ass out of myself, burnt some bridges and destroyed a once promising RP. I could've spoken with them in DMs, de-escalated and explained in calmer terms, and failing that, I could've booted these two people. Instead I threw the baby out with the bathwater, and then smashed the bathtub with a sledgehammer.

Very mature, yes.

That was ten years ago and I still cringe at my dumb younger self

So what's your epic failure?

 

[Kaiju Cat]

Maybe you went nuclear and raged at someone, or ghosted a great RP and later regretted it, or maybe you abandoned a project you were running as a GM, only to realize your mistake later? Perhaps you have an embarrassing moment like repeatedly mis-naming another character, like calling Steven "Stephen" over and over until your partner loses their shit.

It could be a massive fail or a funny little one, but either way, here's a thread for your most cringe moments as a roleplayer.

I'll go first as my obligation, can't ask for dirt without giving some first.

In my younger days I was more ornery and prone to rash emotional decisions. I was running a Fandom RP and there were two people who constantly made my life hell, because they constantly nit-picked lore in the most obscure ways possible. Now these days I would just say, "this is my interpretation of the lore, and as the GM that's how it's going to be."

But back then? I argued with them for hours until went red in the face, and after a few snide remarks from these big brains, I told them to run the RP better if they could. I quit on the spot and gave them server ownership, and watched as the RP burned to the ground. I was self satisfied in the petty moment of my revenge, but once time had passed...

Well I'd made a complete ass out of myself, burnt some bridges and destroyed a once promising RP. I could've spoken with them in DMs, de-escalated and explained in calmer terms, and failing that, I could've booted these two people. Instead I threw the baby out with the bathwater, and then smashed the bathtub with a sledgehammer.

Very mature, yes.

That was ten years ago and I still cringe at my dumb younger self

So what's your epic failure?

My biggest regret in the rp is not giving more of a wholesome interaction between the two MCs who treat each other like brothers. The younger MC went to war to save his elder bro from execution.

 

[Jannah]

In one RP years ago I killed off an important NPC far too early in the story. Said NPC was always intended to die, but there's so much more I could have done with her before killing her

 

[Edric Blight]

Trying my hand at GMing a group RP, period.

What an embarrassment. I was much too inexperienced to take on such a monumental task. Didn’t know what I was getting into. Failed to run a steady game.

 

[That Weird girl]

The biggest regret I have is not really fleshing out the world in my fandom rp and letting another person do all the work. I mean I did like their ideas a lot and still do, but I feel like I should have been more involved as a gm. Like my original idea for the fandom was the first arc and it was kind of rushed and not as well developed as I would have liked. Luckily, there is a fanfiction about our rp that will correct this mistake and give my villain the love he deserves.

I also wished I would have made an effort to talk with my co gms more about the direction of the plot and where it’s headed. Now I’m locked into the plot but back then I was confused about what was happening. Maybe I should have been more assertive about the plot when I was gm and add my own ideas or I should have asked to have my ideas in there. I think I was too much of a pushover as a gm or maybe my ideas were too boring and deep down I knew it.

(For those who want to know, I ran and still am in a Persona 5 rp. An amazing user runs it now who I trust will make good decisions. I also am lucky to have good roleplayers in the rp who are good friends. You know who y’all are I’m not naming names for privacy sake).

Anyway, back to my answer to the question the thread asked. I was just planning on doing normal canon for the fandom with OCS and stuff, which might be seen as a cop out and I see it that way now. I also regret playing canon characters even though one of my canon characters is hilariously not that accurate. I do sometimes wish that I had made original characters in the rp because I could have had a metaverse mercenary who played a role similar to Akechi in P5. But, I ended up copping out and using Akechi, not that I think using canon is bad but I could have done better. But I like our version of Akechi because he’s a speedy glass cannon who is obsessed with one of the characters.

Another thing I wished I would have done is have my characters be more involved with the plot. If you know Persona, you know social links are very important and are pretty much how you get more powerful. I wish my characters would bond with the others more than they had.

This is just me doing reflecting, not looking for sympathy.

 

[.quietus]

Sooo many failures early in my roleplay career, lol.

In the beginning, my biggest shortcoming was not being able to establish my own boundaries all that well, meaning that I would get into RP situations I didn't like and would wind up ghosting those people. Some of them were great writers, too : ( It's been years and I have grown out of this, but from time to time, I recall one of those situations randomly and cringe.

 

[NeonFlow]

I've posted to many checks to quickly and ruined my reputation, also tagging my checks with "neon's shit" was funny to me but may make others view my shit as shit regardless of the effort put into it.

 

[Idea]

This was really early in my RP 'career', back in the first RP site I joined. Unlike RPN, that site was all one big roleplay, and your account was associated with a character you built and was approved by staff. You were allowed to make multiple accounts there though. Each character was only supposed to be in one place at a time.

There were... several embarrassing moments for me there. One of the biggest was time I made a missionary preacher character, at a time when my hobbies and my religious beliefs were something I couldn't separate as well (well, even today I still have a big pet peeve against demons).

That being said, one which was quite significant for me was in a different character. This character operated under one of the systems in that fandom which, to briefly explain, essentially worked by capturing these I guess totems containing ancient powerful spirits whose form one could take once having acquired them. For most characters in that system, those totems essentially work like inanimate objects that give you a transformation, nothing more. However, for my character, I decided to make the remaining will of the spirits less dormant and more of a tempting force that could take over the character. It was a pretty edgy 'I'm being possessed by an evil spirit' type of character who ended up killing a cop in broad daylight in front of the one person who would talk to him.

There was a sort of promise for her to help him and the two to stick together and at the time, I was a lot more sensitive about what happens in-character than I am now. So when the other person went to do a thread with someone else (while the character can only be in one at place a time, threads didn't need to be concurrent with other threads chronologically), my character did find out about it and ended up getting upset and confronting that person.

I'm not remembering much of what happened after that. While it wasn't anything I think that really ended up being uncomfortable for most, it did leave some awkwardness that ended up being one of the reasons I eventually left that side to search for a new place to RP.

 

[Kaiju Cat]

Another regret is fudging up a plot point where the character awakens his power arguably his strongest and most broken ability. It debuted in the manga first then anime.

 

[Pokeking]

I've been roleplaying off and on since 2002. Over the years, I have developed a variety of characters. Back then, I just had two characters when I participated in my first storyline which was of the medieval fantasy genre. The first was a dream self literally because he was a Gary Stu and was based on how I was in dreams. I do intend to revisit and redevelop him to make him suitable for roleplay, Until then, he's a cameo character who is a sorcerer king which he was in his original iteration. The second character was thought of while in the middle of the storyline. I wanted to keep the first character and use the second character, but I was told that I had to pick one or the other since I did not start roleplaying as two characters. I dropped the first character to start using the second character. I have honed this second character over the years and is one of more developed characters. He's more developed than the first character. However, he came straight from an urban fantasy setting. I have developed a variant since then who would have been more suitable.

That being said, I currently have a character that I would have selected to roleplay as if he had been in my roster all those years ago. That is my biggest regret. Plus, I would have stuck with this more current character.

 

[Jet]

I've been roleplaying off and on since 2002. Over the years, I have developed a variety of characters. Back then, I just had two characters when I participated in my first storyline which was of the medieval fantasy genre. The first was a dream self literally because he was a Gary Stu and was based on how I was in dreams. I do intend to revisit and redevelop him to make him suitable for roleplay, Until then, he's a cameo character who is a sorcerer king which he was in his original iteration. The second character was thought of while in the middle of the storyline. I wanted to keep the first character and use the second character, but I was told that I had to pick one or the other since I did not start roleplaying as two characters. I dropped the first character to start using the second character. I have honed this second character over the years and is one of more developed characters. He's more developed than the first character. However, he came straight from an urban fantasy setting. I have developed a variant since then who would have been more suitable.

That being said, I currently have a character that I would have selected to roleplay as if he had been in my roster all those years ago. That is my biggest regret. Plus, I would have stuck with this more current character.

Oh man I feel this one. My first character was a Walmart John Wick who was "tough as nails" and always made the right move, wore black suits and drove a fucking Challenger lmao. He was a walking cliche, sigma grindset Gary Stu.

Every time I think about this guy, I take 1d8 psychic damage.

I quickly matured out of that kind of writing, but my first 6 months were a protracted meme.

 

[GrumpySwallow]

I learned a few years ago that I cannot play TTRPGs in loud, busy places such as a game store. Back then, I didn't know I had an auditory processing disorder. I was constantly asking everyone to repeat themselves, and I got so frustrated that I got very snappy and rude. The DM later told me privately that the other players had complained to him about me, and I immediately agreed to leave the group. No matter what, losing my patience and making the whole experience unpleasant for everyone is unacceptable. Now I only play TTRPGs if it is in a quiet area with a smaller number of players.

 

[Cresion Breezes]

Making characters with names like "Fissin Chips" or "Rata Tollie". They were mostly... relatively normal characters not really super cringy in the stereotypical way or anything, just sort of surreal.

I still make a lot of what some people see as "joke characters" but it's gotten a lot less... surface level, at least. Don't underestimate the effort needed for a good surrealist piece.

 

[GojiBean]

Back in my early years of roleplaying I was guilty of both god-modding and metagaming almost constantly.

Because I've been a martial artist since I was very young I used to use my real world knowledge of various styles and techniques from around the world to always have the perfect counter in combat situations so my characters never got hurt. The more I did that (and the more I got away with it) the more it crept into other aspects of my roleplaying. For example, when having conversations OOC about what was going to happen soon IC I would take that knowledge and give my characters little pieces of it so they were never really surprised, or at least were able to react incredibly quickly and adapt to whatever the situation was. They couldn't really be caught off guard or in a truly vulnerable situation.

Looking back on this I want to literally slap my younger self for how selfish and foolish I was. Others around me were being hurt by this behavior, and they weren't enjoying roleplaying with me. And I honestly didn't know why at the time. Sure, they weren't telling me up front what the problem was. But that's really no excuse. I had the tools to see what I was doing wrong. But I ignored them. And that was a huge mistake.

I've burned more bridges than I've built because of this behavior early on.

Thankfully, people can change. And I did too. Today I'm much happier and more proud of my approach to roleplaying. I actively advise and advocate in my interest checks when I create a roleplay to allow one's characters to have weaknesses and gaps in knowledge and experience so that they can learn and grow and be pushed to their limits instead of just powering through everything. At the heart of all storytelling across every medium imaginable, struggle and conflict are their lifeblood. You literally cannot have a story without some form of struggle and conflict. And that's a lesson I wish I'd learned much, much earlier in life. But hey. Better late than never, right?

So, yeah. I'm glad to have grown and changed from back then. Cause all that god-modding and metagaming, and all the burnt bridges caused by them, is my biggest roleplaying regret.

Cheers!

 

[FrostyDragon]

Before I joined RPN, I joined another forum which was quite a bit different to how this place works. Basically, members would post a sort of "advert" for the RP they were running, and then other members would create profiles for the character they made for the RP. The GM had to approve whether the profiles were okay. There was no private message system or really any means of discussing the RP with the players who joined, so it was really hard to manage.

I was new and very, very inexperienced, and was more worried about getting as many people to join the RP than I was about ensuring they were right for it. So I let anyone in who wanted to apply. I didn't have any experience with running a group RP, and I didn't really even have much of a plan for where I wanted the RP I was running to go. I just had a starting post and figured I'd work the rest out later.

It died, very, very quickly and very spectacularly. Members started complaining that nothing was happening. I wanted the pacing to be slower, and felt that the scenario I'd set up was perfect for a lot of character internal thought and reflection. The other members disagreed. No one wanted to follow the tone of the RP, so whilst I intended it to be a serious and dark world with the characters dealing with an unknown and potentially horrifying destination, the other players took it all lightly and had their characters laughing and joking around like they were off on a summer vacation.

I had no idea how to handle it, so I just let it slide, hoping that maybe the tone would rub off on them and it'd work out. It didn't. The whole RP went nowhere, and I left in disgust when a member randomly decided to have the Star Ship Enterprise and Captain Picacrd and his crew from Star Trek show up and cause trouble. Uh, this was a fantasy RP and the whole thing made no sense! I was so out of my depth that I quit posting at that place, went off to lick my wounds and joined here about a month later.

I still cringe when I think of Captain Picard showing up in that RP.

 

[Kaiju Cat]

I wished I didn’t go through writing for the revenge arc that was canon although a short flashback in the anime.

 

[Rebellions]

So it was early on in my RP career and another role player and I had characters that were in a relationship and they ended up playing a game of kiss tag. It's exactly how it sounds, you had to catch the other person and tag them by kissing them. I thought it was cute at first until I realized it went on for 3 pages and I didn't even notice.

 

[Fauxtectual]

Here's a very lighthearted and silly one:
Two characters sitting on a couch, third enters the room, and wants to sit down next to them. Tried to write my character shifting in his spot to make room.
Needless to say, missing the f made for the most hilarious situation ever, since when spellcheck yelled at me, i right clicked and just hit the top option without even bothering to proofread.

It's been 9 years.
I'll never forget this.

 

[Daisie]

Here's a very lighthearted and silly one:
Two characters sitting on a couch, third enters the room, and wants to sit down next to them. Tried to write my character shifting in his spot to make room.
Needless to say, missing the f made for the most hilarious situation ever, since when spellcheck yelled at me, i right clicked and just hit the top option without even bothering to proofread.

It's been 9 years.
I'll never forget this.

What a POWER MOVE

 

[BuggaBoo]

Hi!!

Sooooo like here's a good reason to make sure you read carefully what your partners write before you.

One of the charries had been taken out one shot and so my charrie went to console and heal them. So she placed her hands on the afflicted area. Failed to read that the other charrie had been kicked in the balls.

Ummmm. Yeah. I ghosted the site for like nearly a year lol

 

[kawaiiyote]

i started when i was ten, so there are a lot of regrettable choices i've made over the decades years. the ones that still bother me vs making me laugh, though, have to do with communication or lack thereof.

• i wish i'd put my foot down when an rp took an uncomfortable turn back when i was a kid. for some reason, i felt obliged to continue the rp even though i hated where the other person was taking it. i literally could have just logged off, or said, "nah, we're not doing this." i have no idea why it didn't cross my mind, but this seems to be a pretty common theme with younger rpers. if anyone needs to hear this today: if something makes you uncomfortable, you can and should pump the brakes!
  
  
• i lost a writing buddy in a group setting in my early/mid-twenties, and this one still haunts me for some reason. the writer was a tiny bit flaky, but writing with her was so fun i didn't mind. when she vanished on us for several weeks in a fast-paced storyline, we decided to come up with an ic explanation for her character's disappearance. in hindsight, i see that we should have left it more open ended. it had potential to be; our characters believed she'd abandoned them. when she came back, she was livid that we hadn't written as though she was tagging along. to this day, i don't understand why i didn't sit down with her and hash out how she wanted to explain her character's disappearance, or why i was unwilling to retcon my character wondering where she was and feeling sad about it. i was inflexible and she was reactive. i also allowed a (good, kind) friend who disliked her to influence how much i dug my heels in. i should have made my own choices.
  
  
• i started up a pretty successful and decently long-running scifi roleplay server on discord in my late twenties. it was pretty damn ambitious and i'm still proud of how it went, but i wish i hadn't tried so hard to please everyone. in particular, i wish i hadn't tried so hard to make one particular member (who became a friend later) happy. she was an excellent collaborator and drove so many plots and interactions in this server and a western one i'd later run, but she caused a massive amount of stress to me behind the scenes. i wish i had just told her i was going to run my servers as i saw fit & that her demands were too many.
  
  
• i know better than to try and engage with people who lovebomb or come on too strong too fast. it always ends with them moving on to the next shiny thing and me taking it personally. i was warned by a good friend about this person, but her writing was so engaging and the ooc banter was so good, i let my guard down and got friendly anyway. true to the warning i received, she freaked out as soon as my attention was divided between her and other writing partners in the group and she nuked all our plots in two servers and bailed. she did return to extend an olive branch later, but i'm happy to say i know better this time and will be no more than civil when we bump into each other in groups. i'm not mad; i just think it's a crap dynamic for both of us if we try to be friends. the tl;dr: i should have listened to my reasonable friend who tried to warn me.

 

[DragonSlayer57]

Getting angry, and quitting a pretty good rp because of one toxic guy. Also bais ally starting a war in that same discord server due to pretty selfish thoughts and immature mess. I was surprisingly childish and petty back in the old days

 

[Beckoncall]

Wrapping up ANYTHING too quickly. If it's in your RP, you should take the time to give it some love. I can understand sometimes the desire (or need) to wrap things up quickly... but it generally gets in the way of player agency and sweeps the rug from under some people. So I'm careful not to do that again.

 

[Kaiju Cat]

Letting an otherwise bad ass character get injured for stupid reasons.

 

[Beckoncall]

Letting an otherwise bad ass character get injured for stupid reasons.

Yeah, I guess the key word here is "Stupid" -- I think every goliath should have a david able to take them out with the right luck or knowledge, or every Achillies have an Achillies Heel... but yeah, seeing badasses take cheap falls is never fun. It detracts from everyones sense of power and relative worth.