What is your ideal roleplay length?

anciental

anciental

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When you join a roleplay, how long do you want the campaign to last? And how do you measure that length?

In irl campaigns, we can talk about session length (a few hours on a Sunday vs all day Saturday) and we can set an expected number of meetings ranging from Oneshot to Continues Until We Get Bored. I personally like campaigns that have an end goal in mind that occurs in about four sessions, especially since I like smaller scale conflicts.

How would one go about measuring campaign length online? Would you measure in plot points, encounters, or something else?

I'm also interested in hearing how many people enjoy oneshots, set-length campaigns, or indefinite campaigns.

For me, roleplay is about creating a story in a group, and the idea of never reaching that end seems undesirable. I'm curious to know how you guys feel about this topic.
 
I think PbP, due to its inherently slow nature is better suited to shorter more focussed role plays. Generally between 6 months to a year is ideal I think. For me, I tend to have a start and end point of the game in mind, but the end point needs to be something that I know how to trigger at any point in the story. If nothing else then it means I can give a game a conclusion that it deserves to have rather than simply abandon it.
 
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Most of my roleplays don’t last long, due to time zones, players leaving, loosing ideas.. not enough characters. My expectations are low due to this, I would like it to last at LEAST a month. Mine usually don’t last more than a week or so, the ones I partake in at least.
 
My main goal in a role-play is to accomplish the main plot, however long that takes. Usually this takes a few weeks if the partners stay. After this, I'm happy to write with the same person for several more months, as long as the new story is moving along and not static.
 
To me, I write to complete the end goal.
Something like....
Reach a certain point in a relationship
Defeat the snake king and save the kingdom
Reach the end of the school year
Or even die of old age

Any of these are going to be points that I want to reach where I would happily end the story, but to me it can take any amount of time, meetings, sessions, you name it, to reach that point.
Because, even while keeping an end in mind, it's not the destination, but the journey.
If it's the character you love playing and you'd hate to leave them with the story, then don't! Just because a story ends, doesn't mean you can't start another. You don't even have to make the next story connected to the first, your options are limitless and you have the power to create whatever you will.
Typically the story substance determines the length, that's the way I see it.
 
A month. That's probably waaay on the short side for a lot of people, especially considering that I'm not the type who's guaranteed to post every day. But om my experience, it's better not to draw things out unnecessarily. It just increases the chances of your writing partner or maybe even you getting bored with the idea, or deciding to scrap it, or giving up on the RP. Or your partner could just walk. This is especially true for group RPs, since in my experience, interest tends to deteriorate quickly with these.
 
I decide how the roleplay begins, but up until now, I've only really made it up from there, waiting for a convenient ending to rear its head, rather than planning out points along the plot. It's worked a few times, but more often than not, this means my roleplays die before it reaches conclusion. However, I feel like planning out points in the roleplay plot will lead to it being, to an extent, predictable, forcing the roleplay away from certain interesting directions in order to join the dots, rather than just going any way the wind blows. I dunno. Any advice on how to find a happy medium between the two is appreciated.
 
To be honest, I don't care how long a roleplay lasts as long as a complete story comes out of it in the end. I've had roleplays last years that never finished, and I've had ones that lasted a month but were complete and I always felt more of a sense of accomplishment with the complete ones.
 
For me, it depends both on the partner and the storyline. Most role plays with most partners tend to taper off before they're "complete," usually because life gets in the way, etc. I have one partner (with whom I'm now IRL friends) who I've done probably 50 different rps with, whether it be in a group or one x one. Eventually we moved toward doing solely one x one, and we went through multiple genres and characters before we found one that stuck. We've been continuing the same storyline for about 10 years now! O: We just keep adding new chapters to their story, and it's really lovely to see what they've been through and how they've grown. These characters are legitimately like our children. <3

I'd like to find another partner that I click super well with like that, but I'm just as happy to do short-term role plays.
 
Any kind of Role-Play is ideal for me, long or short so long as both me and the others are having fun interacting and building the story ^^ Of course issues happen like something urgent comes up or they have work or like some say, timezone difference gets in the way, but so long as they can come back to the role-play with the same enthusiasm, it's always a fun time :D
 
I'm very particular about my RPs and like to have SOME idea of how I'd like for them to go.

But if they end up going differently/veer way off course from what I had intended? Then that's all fine and good too.
 
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