LESSON Roleplay Faux Pas: Chaos Creator!

Diana

LOOK HOW CALM SHE IS
Original poster
ADMINISTRATOR
MYTHICAL MEMBER
Invitation Status
  1. Not accepting invites at this time
Posting Speed
  1. 1-3 posts per week
  2. Slow As Molasses
Online Availability
10AM - 10PM Daily
Writing Levels
  1. Adaptable
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Female
Genres
Romance, Supernatural, Fantasy, Thriller, Space Exploration, Slice of Life
Tonight's Roleplay Faux Pas, is the Chaos Creator!

You have joined a roleplay as Jun the Barbarian. You and your party have just left the town to enter the forest. Kel the Wizard has bandits attack and you all fight them off. Three posts later, Kel has a big bear try to maul one of the party members. Four posts later he has meteor hit. Two posts later he's driving a time traveling car. Every few posts it's something different!

Perhaps you are Julia going on a date with Hubert. It starts off friendly. Five posts in Hubert has a weird emo mood swing. A couple posts later he's punching a waiter. Then he's back two posts later cracking jokes. Suddenly, the Yakuza show up and you're being chased by Hubert's ex-wife's BF.

Or maybe you are playing Kerv a space alien. You and the crew are flying to a planet to pickup cargo. Mika then has you chased by space pirates, near careening in to the sun, stomping ship gerbils, and getting shot at by robots in the span of 10 posts.

You have absolutely NO idea what is going on anymore!

The Chaos Creator keeps on throwing in scene changes and random actions or events before their time. It begins to look like chaos.

How do you know if you're being a Chaos Creator? Keep the "timeline" of events in mind. For you it could be days, weeks, and months between posts. But for your characters it has only been a few minutes. If characters were just in a sword fight, they need recovery time before they are suddenly being attacked by bears.

Non stop chaos can be entertaining, but too much can feel like characters aren't accomplishing anything. Without that break time between action moments, you're not getting a chance to develop character personalities and relationships as well.

Are there exceptions? Of course! When your roleplay is at risk of dying, sometimes you need a sudden action scene to get people interested in posting again. But, make sure you note the last action sequence before you do it. If it was recent, you can start a brand new day. That'll give you a fresh start for your new scene.

So when you're roleplaying, make sure you set a good pace for all the action! Give those characters some recovery time and it'll make your epic action scenes all the more awesome!
 
Thanks, Diana.

While I don't mind good fight scenes in RPs, there should be some space between the 'crazy' or 'action' parts. A lot of my favorite moments are when the characters are interacting with each other, discussing themselves or the situation or whatever. But for those moments to happen, there needs to be plenty of breathing room in between the wilder, more chaotic moments.
 
Oof. I used to do this a LOT when I was a kid, and nobody really told me what I was doing wrong. Nice stuff, Diana!
 
There is a careful line between setting up an interesting scenario that drive the plot forward in an interesting and (hopefully) meaningful way, and posting a random scene because not enough things are on fire at the moment.
 
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