What do you want to avoid during a RP?

One of the fastest ways to make me lose interest in a roleplay is people focusing on shipping/pairings, especially if the characters haven't even had a chance to interact yet! I'm not big on writing romance in general, I find it awkward most of the time, but even in romance based roleplays where the plot is supposed to be about people falling in love... They need to at least meet and talk first!

Other than that what really gets me is repetitive, unnecessary details. You can tell when someone is padding their word count purely for the sake of it vs when what they're including matters to the character or the scene. Making something longer just for the sake of it slows things down and makes my eyes glaze over--but I'm dyslexic and tend to favor short, effective paragraphs with enough spacing to improve readability.
 
For me the worst is always badly written characters. Good characters can save a bad story but bad characters will definetly ruin a good one.
And especially in group-rpgs it only takes 1-2 bad characters with stubborn and overly proud players to ruin the whole experience for everyone.

The main issues with characters i see in most RPs is flawlessness, pride and a tendency for stupid recklessness that might work in hollywood movies but certainly would lead to an immidiate demise in an RP that tries to be grounded in reality.

Another issue i see a lot is that some people take personal offense on behalf of their character.
 
Personally I dislike cringe characters. I also despise ambiguous responses. I like it when they actually set out what they intended not, say one thing but actually mean another.
Short posts in forums I usually want to avoid like the plague. In discord it’s somewhat not a big deal because you can fire these sorts of things in quick succession with whoever is your RP buddy....

I also want to avoid chaos. If there’stons of people I prefer to set out an order so there’s nodouble posts or someone’s stepping on someone else’s posts and actually mixing everything up. It gets so messy.
 
I've seen most of if not all my pet peeves already listed, but I'm going to rewrite them anyway.

1. One-liners: I can accept one here or there, but please at least try to give me even a short paragraph. If there's something to reply to, that's great! But if it's one line, it's going to be hard for you to expect much out of me either...sometimes.

2. Shipping/Pairing: I like pairing and shipping in my head, but it doesn't bode well with me when I write. I believe that romance should be a subplot at best, as making it the forefront is just forcing characters together and forcing them to feel things they wouldn't naturally feel in the situations they're in. When I list pairings in my thread, it's not romantic pairings (though they can be)- it's just two character types I think would make a cool story.

3. Text talk and generally not rereading their own work: Look, I'm an editor. I get that people don't have perfect grammar- even I need editing sometimes- but at least give it your all and proofread just once. And at least make your words word and not mush.
 
  1. One liners
  2. God-modding (I admit I sometimes do this without realizing)
  3. Gms that make an rp and then quit without a word, whether in beginning or later. Has happened too many times to me that I almost see it as a waste of time to rp. Likewise with players that walk out.
  4. Clique. I am not in high school and it feels this way to me. Maybe it is because I usually end up joining something and then end up doing by myself while others interact with others but it makes me not want to rp. An rp should be inclusive unless it is a 1x1 or private.
 
I despise doing a slice of life roleplay and they try to turn it into a forced romance RP, without alerting their partner(s). Not to mention it makes things annoying, dry, and very much awkward as well as throws us all off. Also, people who want the roleplay to go specifically their way, even to the point of stopping your previous RP just to have their way, also forcing your OC to do thing they don't want or would never do. Yes, I'm referring to a specific RP I had and truly hate returning to.
 
I definitely agree with forced romance. I prefer Romance rps, it's just what I'm most comfortable with it but A) if the characters aren't compatible, they aren't compatible. B) the "love at first sight" crap. it's just unrealistic and "middle school crush" like.

i also agree with the bad character thing, but I find it almost harder to rp with a controlling player then a poorly made OC. I hate it when people try to control my character. RP is not one sided.
 
i don't care much for waiting forever for a reply, or denying forced romance, but my biggest pet-peeve is definitely writing. this isn't a jab at anyone who writes like this, but i find it tasking to read a post with every sentence starting with he/she. there should be variety in words and sentence structure. i get that not everyone is a fluent english speaker, hell my grammar is all sorts of messed up, but i do expect my roleplay partner to have at least learned how to keep their partners hooked on a response so they are excited to read the next one hence reply sooner. if you do write like this please don't take any offense!​
 
Oh, a big pet-peeve of mine is others trying to control my character. I once roleplayed with someone who would write large chunks of roleplay controlling my character, at one point even making a romance between their character and mine without me ever being able to get a word in. For the most part, I would have been fine with it, the pair was compatible and with the right scenes it could work, but those scenes were written entirely by them. It made the roleplay dull as it was like they were writing a book and I was only controlling a few minor scenes.

I don't mind another player controlling my character that much, but it gets on my nerves when it's constant or they warp my character's personality, or they do it without my consent.

Another pet peeve of mine is: roleplays without a plot or with very little plot. At times this works, but most of the time it feels disorganized and I feel like the roleplay will end up nowhere.

As for forced romances, I'll admit, I'm guilty of doing this before but I (Hopefully) don't do it anymore. I've realized how unrealistic "Love at first sight" is or how tiring it is to pair two characters with incompatible personalities, it's like trying to piece together two puzzle pieces that don't fit. I'm more comfortable developing things naturally throughout a roleplay than trying to force it.
 
My biggest pet peeve is when I pour my heart into a reply and someone one lines me. It just drives me crazy, I get not having much to say but at least get a few sentences in. I’m not much of a fan of the forced romances either. Don’t get me wrong I love romance roleplays they are one of my favorite things to do but I don’t like things to be rushed. I enjoy character development and time for things to build. I lose interest real quick when people rush it, it just doesn’t seem realistic.
 
I personally find it annoying when someone completely ignores your response/new information you've revealed in your response and carries on as if that message was never sent.

I'd even deal with one-liners if they seemed to flow with what's going on smoothly, in fact, it's preferable to be concise than to see a page of unrelated and disjointed waffle in my personal opinion.
 
I personally do not like when people become immediately romantically inclined.

I've had situations where I was playing a character, knowing someone liked my character, and they were trying to make me like them back immediately.

1) our characters met two seconds ago
2) I was willing to slowly introduce them, but they weren't having it
3) romance isn't the only thing to a story.

I love a good romance, but half the time it destroy's a perfectly good story.
 
Ohhh boy. Definitely a lot of them lol. Me of my biggest ones are characters with some sort of overly tragic past. Now, nothing against characters that do have misfortune in their history, however, when there’s an abundance of them is when it gets annoying. Especially since the end result is a character that’s very cringe and edgy.
 
Bad writing and nonsense. I like things that make sense, even if it's a question of there being a minute detail out of place. If things don't make sense, especially the characters and their actions, I'm taken completely out of the experience...and so is my interest in the roleplay.
 
One liners and roleplays going in circles! Unfortunately this one is very common if you don't plan an ending or don't plan to have an ending anyway.
I have seen so many good points that honestly I'm not really adding much! It made me realize how many little pet peeves there are on roleplaying. But luckily it can be so worth it.
 
I tend to avoid fandom or fanfic role plays, whatever you want to call them. I want to explore new territories, not tread old ground. I'm not bashing people who want to role play in the Harry Potter world or in the DC Universe. You do you. It's just not for me. I would rather role play in an original setting even if it is obviously inspired by something already out there. I don't want to role play in Hogwarts or Gotham City but I'll role play in a magical school setting or a world full of superheroes.

I have more role playing pet peeves but most of them have already been said so I'll end with this. I can't stand it when someone is too picky or has an elitist attitude. Personally, I'm willing to role play in a setting or a plot that might otherwise bore me if it were in a novel but I can respect that some people want to maintain certain standards. I would certainly like to role play with the highest quality writers possible but I'm not going to snub somebody just because I don't think their writing is "up to par".

Besides, I probably have an overestimation concerning my own skills and there very well may be a better writer out there role playing with me who otherwise wouldn't if they held to certain standards. I think the best way to become a better roleplayer/writer is to, put it bluntly, do so with people who are better than you but you can't do that if they all snub you.

On the other side of that coin, I also don't like it when people are shamed for wanting to role play with a writer of a certain skill level. If you have a particular story in mind that you've been working really hard on and you want to invite certain people whom you know are excellent role players, you shouldn't be made to feel guilty for not wanting Joe Schmo to join because his writing just isn't quite up there. Any long-term member of a role play site is going to have more than one game under their belt (often times more than one at a time) and I think that as long as they are not excluding Joe in everything that they do, then they should be allowed to indulge in some "higher caliber writing" in that special story they've been working on.

That last one is hard to talk about because I don't want to come across as sounding like a snob. Trust me, I don't think that I'm the best writer in the world or anything. I've read a few posts from different role plays here on STC and let me tell you, I'm not even the best writer on this site. If I ask to join a role play and I get turned down, even if it is because they don't think my quality is quite up there, then as long as they don't tell me, "You suck, go away" then I can take my rejection with dignity and resolve myself to keep writing, getting better, and having fun.
 
Things I hate are:
  • Way too many things getting shortened.
  • Bad spelling, unless English isn't their first language.
  • When people demand two or three paragraphs per action. Like, that's ten to fifteen sentences or four hundred to six hundred words! PER ACTION.
  • When people completely go off the grid for a month, or worse, go online, but won't explain why they won't contribute. I get that people have other things, but please tell me if you need to, then I'm fine with it!
  • Godmodding. Like, all blocks or dodges and all hitting my character. I've gotten out of the habit, so why can't you?
 
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When people try and force a romance with characters that have literally just met. Like I want to just write my characters, see who they're compatible with, become friends or enemies and all that. If my character and yours click they can possibly have a romance....but just...later.

Characters whose whole existence is being emo and depressed in the background.

Any thread where 90% of the characters have the exact same personality.

Characters who stalk other characters. It's not romantic in real life and it's not romantic in roleplay life.
 
Godmodding is definately one of my biggest pet peeves. I had a bad experience where I was roleplaying with someone and they kept actively denying that my character could do a certain action. It was just my character going in to heal the other character and that person kept saying "no your character can't do that." Then saying they are going to kill my character off without my consent. Yeah that really pissed me off.

I also don't like oneliners. I need to be able to have something to work with so that the rp can continue. It also bugs me when they do that after I write like a three paragraph response.
 
Characters change over time as you progress in any RP. That said, it's always odd to me when writers are so inconsistent with their character's personality that it's a different character entirely. Likewise, self-inserts are completely fine by me.... save for when a writer is self-inserting so much that they react to anything done to the character as if it's personal and it's being done to them. So that if your character happened to insult or attack them, they react out-of-character. That's so problematic. Roleplay is never personal, and anyone that takes it that seriously should really do some self-reflection. Then, of course, there's the usual top three (god-mod, metagame, powerplay).
 
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