Roleplaying Pet Peeves

[Jorick]

Roleplay banners that feature a gaggle of characters with miss-matched art styles/ haphazard layouts / fonts that blend in with the background / ask you a rhetorical question (e.g. WILL YOU SURVIVE OR WILL YOU FALL? CLICK HURR BEEYOTCH!).

I don't mind the rhetorical questions because they're a cheap and effective hook.

The other stuff is pretty awful though. As bad as choosing font colors that blend into the background can be, the ones that clash horribly are the worst.

 

[Adelaide]

Adding to that: horribly stretched out images.

This! Just because you CAN make it fit, doesn't mean it should. Crop, don't stretch!!! For banners or character images.

 

[Dervish]

I don't mind the rhetorical questions because they're a cheap and effective hook.

The other stuff is pretty awful though. As bad as choosing font colors that blend into the background can be, the ones that clash horribly are the worst.

I should point out I'm the kind of guy who will avoid a product or service if they put out an obnoxious advertisement or commercial. Cheap hooks are the water to my hydrophobic material.

 

[Izurich]

I should point out I'm the kind of guy who will avoid a product or service if they put out an obnoxious advertisement or commercial. Cheap hooks are the water to my hydrophobic material.

....BUT WAIT! There's more!

 

[Dervish]

....BUT WAIT! There's more!

Billy Mayes here for a beatdown!

... oh man, I wish I could have seen him smack talking people.

 

[Minerva]

As a Latin student, this irks me.

When someone uses Latin incorrectly in an RP "Because it sounds cool, and JK Rowling did it!"

Yeah, I know JK Rowling did it, but, she's a professional writer, and they were only used in two word statements. When you use it incorrectly in a sentence, I want to rip my eyes out. And don't use Google Translate. Dear God. If you want to use it, look up to see if what you want to say is an actual saying already, or ask someone who has taken classes.

 

[Roose Hurro]

When people are more concerned with moving the plot along (usually too fast) rather than providing good, solid detail in their posts to make them more intriguing.

Ohhhh, yes! This and this! I had an RP like this, the GM abandoned it because we (me and another player) were actually telling a story, puting in the effort to build character, so "readers" could empathize with our characters... and so we could have fun. From what few posts he posted, it looked like he just wanted something quick. And when we didn't move fast enough, he bailed, and a very good RP died.

 

[Minerva]

Oh, here's another one. On another website this happened. It didn't happen on here.

When you reject a CS, and begin getting Passive-Aggressive to Downright Aggressive Comments directed at you.

It's really hard for me to deny a CS, ok? I only do it if it didn't follow the rules, or it's God-awful. His character didn't really fit in with the setting. (2084 Neo-Tokyo and Hong Kong.) so I denied it. The RP began, and things went well. (It was a Cyberpunk RP based on Shadowrun. I may bring It back here.) All of a sudden, I'm just bombarded in my PM box by a whole bunch of messages from the guy I denied. Stuff like "I don't need your RP." And "I'm getting better!" And "I'm making my own RP that will be much better, and yours will fail." Shit like that. I reported him, and then he went and posted with his character anyway, so I reported him again. It got really annoying. And he was banned.

Tl;Dr: If you get rejected, suck it up, and try again next time. If you can't, don't be aggressive.

 

[Wolfsbane706]

Oh, here's another one. On another website this happened. It didn't happen on here.

When you reject a CS, and begin getting Passive-Aggressive to Downright Aggressive Comments directed at you.

It's really hard for me to deny a CS, ok? I only do it if it didn't follow the rules, or it's God-awful. His character didn't really fit in with the setting. (2084 Neo-Tokyo and Hong Kong.) so I denied it. The RP began, and things went well. (It was a Cyberpunk RP based on Shadowrun. I may bring It back here.) All of a sudden, I'm just bombarded in my PM box by a whole bunch of messages from the guy I denied. Stuff like "I don't need your RP." And "I'm getting better!" And "I'm making my own RP that will be much better, and yours will fail." Shit like that. I reported him, and then he went and posted with his character anyway, so I reported him again. It got really annoying. And he was banned.

Tl;Dr: If you get rejected, suck it up, and try again next time. If you can't, don't be aggressive.

Or, if you get rejected, politely ask what was wrong and what can be improved on. Politeness isn't difficult, folks. A GM has every right to boot you from an RP if you get snippy.

 

[Dervish]

Oh, here's another one. On another website this happened. It didn't happen on here.

When you reject a CS, and begin getting Passive-Aggressive to Downright Aggressive Comments directed at you.

It's really hard for me to deny a CS, ok? I only do it if it didn't follow the rules, or it's God-awful. His character didn't really fit in with the setting. (2084 Neo-Tokyo and Hong Kong.) so I denied it. The RP began, and things went well. (It was a Cyberpunk RP based on Shadowrun. I may bring It back here.) All of a sudden, I'm just bombarded in my PM box by a whole bunch of messages from the guy I denied. Stuff like "I don't need your RP." And "I'm getting better!" And "I'm making my own RP that will be much better, and yours will fail." Shit like that. I reported him, and then he went and posted with his character anyway, so I reported him again. It got really annoying. And he was banned.

Tl;Dr: If you get rejected, suck it up, and try again next time. If you can't, don't be aggressive.

I had someone call me Hitler in a rant after telling her I had to turn down her submission, and it was largely due to a shitty attitude on her part. That was a good time.

 

[Minerva]

I had someone call me Hitler in a rant after telling her I had to turn down her submission, and it was largely due to a shitty attitude on her part. That was a good time.

Yes, because Genocide = Denying an RP Sheet.

Always remember that, kids!*

*Disclaimer: Please don't remember it. It's the complete opposite of what I want you to remember.

 

[Shadon Xarian]

Oh, here's another one. On another website this happened. It didn't happen on here.

When you reject a CS, and begin getting Passive-Aggressive to Downright Aggressive Comments directed at you.

It's really hard for me to deny a CS, ok? I only do it if it didn't follow the rules, or it's God-awful. His character didn't really fit in with the setting. (2084 Neo-Tokyo and Hong Kong.) so I denied it. The RP began, and things went well. (It was a Cyberpunk RP based on Shadowrun. I may bring It back here.) All of a sudden, I'm just bombarded in my PM box by a whole bunch of messages from the guy I denied. Stuff like "I don't need your RP." And "I'm getting better!" And "I'm making my own RP that will be much better, and yours will fail." Shit like that. I reported him, and then he went and posted with his character anyway, so I reported him again. It got really annoying. And he was banned.

Tl;Dr: If you get rejected, suck it up, and try again next time. If you can't, don't be aggressive.

Or on the flip side, when they DON'T reject your character when it doesn't truly fit DX

I brought in a few characters that I think woulda fit in the RP and make it super fun... And it WOULD have, if the RP followed the anime's themes that it was based on. But his RP barely had anything to do with it and didn't have the same themes. Really it just took place at the same school. Everything else was something else entirely so they really shoulda just made their own universe.

So my characters were basically outcasted. And since they were too passive aggressive to put their foot down, they just slowly let the RP fall and then tried to blame me for it.

The best part is they made a reboot for it to start over because they thought that I was the problem, and it QUICKLY went down hill and died. Why? Because I wasn't the problem, the problem is they were too boring and too passive/hypocritical about everything, and they didn't want to follow the anime's themes. (Well I guess it's not DEAD, but it's pace right now is basically "Oh yeah, that exist, I guess I'll reply to keep it going a bit... 1 month after the last post. And it's not like it's paragraphs of text, it's literally a 1 sentence reply to something from before.)



2. And another one, when you're considered too OP for using logic.

So someones character jumps up in the air and goes to do a air slash downwards. So what do you do? Apparently just stand there and take the hit because what my character did was step to the side to avoid the slash, and then stab upwards to stab them while they were already falling and didn't have the time to move their sword again. Well apparently that's too OP

(Fun fact, real life me is too OP ^^ I've done that to someone else before while boken fighting, they were screwing around and decided to jump in the air and slash down and they expected me to block it but I just avoided to the right and stabbed them as they were still falling to the ground XD)

So he went to the GM to complain so the GM read what happened and was like "Are you fucking kidding me??? Side stepping and stabbing isn't being OP!!!! That's just you being too stupid to function DX" So the GM took my side which made the other guy super salty XD

 

[Luminas]

People who send you a simple. "Hey, let's roleplay" and don't let you know what they want to do or what type of roleplays they like or anything. I'm not even up to roleplay on this site most days, because people just don't really interest me.

 

[SamIO]

I used to hang out in a certain shoutbox on a certain roleplay site before I found Iwaku, and the running gag there was that corners didn't exist. People would sit and engage in passive-aggressive attention-seeking via anti-social behavior and woe is me chokes. So, the mods essentially banned the concept of corners entirely. And — I mean, sure, this was all in good fun — but this was actually a problem, even after it became a meme.

Way back, when I roleplayed primarily via IM with a group of long-time buddies of mine, there was one player in particular who was just never satisfied with his characters. He was always insecure about how we felt about them and so was very eager to involve them in our things to keep from tooting his own horn. But there was just the glaring issue that he had the habit of planting his characters somewhere — often a literal corner — and then do nothing. He'd participate in any de facto post rotations we had going, but his messages would consist of internal dialogue and little else.

Don't get me wrong, he was a lot of fun to roleplay with when he was engaged, but frankly his insecurities were pretty well-founded. It was general consensus that he was an exclusively reactive writer and that in order to encourage him we had to hand his characters motive. He'd create these rich, entertaining personalities with endearing backgrounds, which after we'd beaten through his flaws as a writer were really engaging and enticing, but it was always a chore when he wrote a new character because finding a natural way to involve them in the plot proved frustratingly — often prohibitively — difficult.

And I see that a lot, even with experienced writers and roleplayers. It's like, do I really need to invoke deus ex machina just to get your character out of the hole you've dug them into? Roleplay's about fun, and as such a lot of us do what's natural. For some of us, what's natural is relatively introverted; it's a strange and difficult to repair issue, but one I think people can empathise with.

 

[Shadon Xarian]

When salty people make themselves for an RP.

There was this one thing where someone based a character off of him, so when that character got in big trouble and put in a corner, after his character was killed (He pissed off everyone elses character XD So it was him VS everyone) He was like "I don't know if I wanna, he was based off of me and you guys humiliated me" And I was like "What did you honestly think would happen if you go around pissing off everyone? XD"



The struggle of not writing down your character is spying. Most RP people I grew up with, if you go "My guy went to a corner to spy" the other party will either alter their chat because the writer knows someone is there, or they'll be like "HAH! MY SENSORY ABILITIES ARE NO MATCH! OF COURSE I DIDN'T MAKE THIS KNOWN IN MY CHARACTER DESCRIPTION BUT I CAN HEAR FROM FAR AWAY WHILE YOU NEED A MACHINE TO HEAR MY VOICE FROM THIS DISTANCE! MUAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!" So it really is better off to not mention a snooping character XP

 

[Fel of the Eternal Forest]

The struggle of not writing down your character is spying. Most RP people I grew up with, if you go "My guy went to a corner to spy" the other party will either alter their chat because the writer knows someone is there, or they'll be like "HAH! MY SENSORY ABILITIES ARE NO MATCH! OF COURSE I DIDN'T MAKE THIS KNOWN IN MY CHARACTER DESCRIPTION BUT I CAN HEAR FROM FAR AWAY WHILE YOU NEED A MACHINE TO HEAR MY VOICE FROM THIS DISTANCE! MUAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!" So it really is better off to not mention a snooping character XP

That seems to me to be very much a problem of the second writer, and not the writer of the spy. Slipping in unannounced is often necessary for the overall narrative - of that character, and ultimately for the story in mind - and shouldn't be omitted because some other writer is like 'lolgodmodactivate.' And that's exactly what that is, Godmodding. It shouldn't be up to the writer of the spy character to compensate for someone being an ass, the ass either needs to change his tone or gtfo of the roleplay.*

*There are specific character archetypes that can see through the guise of a spy, but we are specifically talking about characters that don't have that ability on their sheet and/or players who use the narrative as though everything was spoken aloud to their character.

 

[Shadon Xarian]

That seems to me to be very much a problem of the second writer, and not the writer of the spy. Slipping in unannounced is often necessary for the overall narrative - of that character, and ultimately for the story in mind - and shouldn't be omitted because some other writer is like 'lolgodmodactivate.' And that's exactly what that is, Godmodding. It shouldn't be up to the writer of the spy character to compensate for someone being an ass, the ass either needs to change his tone or gtfo of the roleplay.*

*There are specific character archetypes that can see through the guise of a spy, but we are specifically talking about characters that don't have that ability on their sheet and/or players who use the narrative as though everything was spoken aloud to their character.

Very true, but it can get pretty subtle. Like a route woulda been normal, but when your character shows up then suddenly their guys will gravitate towards conveniently finding out about them. Not exactly god modding, them just happening to end up at the right place to find thy spy.

Granted that hasn't been a problem for me in years since all my resents have been very privatized, however it was a problem since I began in group RP's,

 

[Fel of the Eternal Forest]

Very true, but it can get pretty subtle. Like a route woulda been normal, but when your character shows up then suddenly their guys will gravitate towards conveniently finding out about them. Not exactly god modding, them just happening to end up at the right place to find thy spy.

Granted that hasn't been a problem for me in years since all my resents have been very privatized, however it was a problem since I began in group RP's,

Yeah, in a group RP that is where the GM has to tow the line. A lot of people take for granted really lax GMs, and then get really pissed off when they have a GM like @Asmodeus who doesn't take any guff from anyone when they are in the wrong.

 

[Shadon Xarian]

Yeah, in a group RP that is where the GM has to tow the line. A lot of people take for granted really lax GMs, and then get really pissed off when they have a GM like @Asmodeus who doesn't take any guff from anyone when they are in the wrong.

Yeah XD Now try a GM who's a child/hypocrite/passive.

I've only been in 1 RP where the GM was smart/normal (that I remember) was when @UnboundDestiny was GMing XD Some guy came at me for being OP because my guy side stepped their attack and countered that way (Something I did in real life) If the GM was ANY one else there, I would be in the wrong and would have been too OP.

All the other good RPs been in, I've been the GM. And unbound can probably vouch that I'm the best GM evar :D :D :D :D :D Sure i'm super lax, but not enough to let things go in scrambles. Just do what your character will do and not what you want to happen in the end, and RP's generally end up pretty fun and normal.

 

[Roose Hurro]

Just do what your character will do and not what you want to happen in the end, and RP's generally end up pretty fun and normal.

This!

Personally, what I want to happen in any RP I play or GM is for "natural" story progression. No set goal, but a goal left open to succeed or fail on the merits of the characters involved.