Roleplaying Pet Peeves

[wren.]

Do you have any pet peeves when it comes to roleplaying?

Something that bothers me, although it is super common in roleplays involving multi-paragraph responses, is what I like to call "the split timeline." This is where someone replies to something your character did or said earlier in your post in a way that interrupts the post's later action/conversation, but then they also respond to the latter action. Then, you are left with the choice of responding to both the former and the later points, effectively creating two timelines within the same moment, or finding some way of trying to merge the two back together to create a smooth narrative. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? lol

 

[88 Fingers Edward]

Me to my partner when I meticulously craft a beautiful and open ended starter paragraph with mystery and intrigue but all they reply with is a 3 sentence response akin to "wow that's crazy"

 

[Inugami]

I hate when people essentially restate my post back to me while adding very little onto it. Or when their character needs to address everything that's been said in the last post. I'm struggling to describe this one because I'm running on like three hours of actual sleep right now, but I hate when characters feel the need to individually address every action or sentence with a different sentence. Real people don't. . Talk like that. Find a way to combine it into one coherent response. It's so much easier that way.

I also hate it when people kind of ignore you in the plotting phase too. This is really only an issue in one-on-one Roleplaying and it's heavily the reason that I usually only write with people I'm already friends with. It's why I think finding a partner for one-on-one Roleplaying is so difficult for me too. I'll come to them with an idea and they'll be like "oh, that's really cool" and once again, individually respond to every point in my DM instead of writing a single coherent response. After a while, we'll end up with a huge block of text just for plotting and that's so exhausting for me. A lot of the times, too, they'll cut out a lot of the original idea or shove their own thoughts down my throat. It comes to the point where I'll literally say in my interest check "I'm not prioritizing romance and/or I don't want to write a canon character to ship with your OC" and they'll feel the need to slyly include that somewhere in the plotting phase like I don't notice. Or when that person tries to slowly take the reigns of my idea to their own liking until their character is the main character or they're in control. There's a certain point where I just feel like they don't have self-awareness and end up just ghosting them in the end. I feel bad for it, obviously, but I don't know how to just tell someone like you don't listen or stop including things I don't want because words hard.

Also I hate people who poke you for responses and/or passive aggressive with stuff like that.

Apologies if this is a mess of thoughts. I haven't slept in a while and this kind of just turned into a venting post.

 

[wren.]

View attachment 226552

Me to my partner when I meticulously craft a beautiful and open ended starter paragraph with mystery and intrigue but all they reply with is a 3 sentence response akin to "wow that's crazy"

Take my react as both laughing and crying because oof, that's painful.

I hate when people essentially restate my post back to me while adding very little onto it. Or when their character needs to address everything that's been said in the last post. I'm struggling to describe this one because I'm running on like three hours of actual sleep right now, but I hate when characters feel the need to individually address every action or sentence with a different sentence. Real people don't. . Talk like that. Find a way to combine it into one coherent response. It's so much easier that way.

I also hate it when people kind of ignore you in the plotting phase too. This is really only an issue in one-on-one Roleplaying and it's heavily the reason that I usually only write with people I'm already friends with. It's why I think finding a partner for one-on-one Roleplaying is so difficult for me too. I'll come to them with an idea and they'll be like "oh, that's really cool" and once again, individually respond to every point in my DM instead of writing a single coherent response. After a while, we'll end up with a huge block of text just for plotting and that's so exhausting for me. A lot of the times, too, they'll cut out a lot of the original idea or shove their own thoughts down my throat. It comes to the point where I'll literally say in my interest check "I'm not prioritizing romance and/or I don't want to write a canon character to ship with your OC" and they'll feel the need to slyly include that somewhere in the plotting phase like I don't notice. Or when that person tries to slowly take the reigns of my idea to their own liking until their character is the main character or they're in control. There's a certain point where I just feel like they don't have self-awareness and end up just ghosting them in the end. I feel bad for it, obviously, but I don't know how to just tell someone like you don't listen or stop including things I don't want because words hard.

Also I hate people who poke you for responses and/or passive aggressive with stuff like that.

Apologies if this is a mess of thoughts. I haven't slept in a while and this kind of just turned into a venting post.

I empathize with all of that, especially your first line about people basically just restating your post and then adding barely anything to it. That's another huge pet peeve of mine, too. It's so hard to stay invested when you're the only one pushing the story forward.

 

[PavellumPendulum]

I really dislike it when people try to convince me. I'll clearly state my rules, like "I don't want to play against the 'pure, submissive, does no wrong' type" and people will come into my dms and be like "But I'm really good at it " while sending me tons of examples that I do not in any way want.

... Okay, but did I ask? It's like walking into a McDonalds and repeatedly asking the cashier if you can pay with Monopoly money then not taking no for an answer.

 

[Ardent]

As a GM, being asked the same damn questions over and over ]:< Or people not doing their own research, especially when it comes to fandom role-plays. Do I look like google to you?

This hasn't happened in a while, thankfully.

 

[Diana]

So I am a romance roleplayer and I like playing relationships. My primary interest is playing a girl that likes dudes. But I also really love playing multiple characters so we have a cast of friends, family, extras etc for an interesting plotline and story! Which will include me playing male characters, gay characters, the whole diverse shebang.

And a thing that sometimes happen is that partners will switcharoo on me, and they'll focus all attention on my male side characters with their female charries so they can finally get that hot romance they've been after... and then I am like, nono. That's not what I signed up for? I know it's really hard finding someone to play good male characters, but I don't like getting shoe-horned into it when I myself am out there trying to get a great story for my lady characters. I put up a partner request so I can fulfill my rp wishlist, not get bamboozled into doing yours instead.

It's really important when you're answering someone's partner request thread that you actually WANT to do the things on their wishlist that they're requesting. If you don't like playing dudes, then don't accept requests for them. The same way you wouldn't reply to a vampire rp request if you hate roleplaying vampires. We ALL wanna play our favorite things, it's okay to take a little longer to find the right partners. O:

 

[Kuno]

Oh man, I've got one...no, two. First one is people in a group rp who make "stoic, silent" characters who don't do anything but hold up the wall. They don't drive the plot forward, they don't pursue character interactions, they're just...standing there. Menacingly.

The second one is related but comes from a GMing perspective. As a GM, my preference is not to control every aspect of character interactions and plot. I move the story along when needed, have the NPCs interact with players as needed, but other than that I like to allow players to feel out the world and other characters themselves. My BIGGEST pet peeve is when players wait on me hand-and-foot to provide their characters with some sort of stimulus. They don't want to take the initiative to do anything; they want me to spoon feed them character development, and they expect all the other players to do so as well. Does that make sense?

No, I'm not angry about anything.

 

[wren.]

Oh man, I've got one...no, two. First one is people in a group rp who make "stoic, silent" characters who don't do anything but hold up the wall. They don't drive the plot forward, they don't pursue character interactions, they're just...standing there. Menacingly.

The second one is related but comes from a GMing perspective. As a GM, my preference is not to control every aspect of character interactions and plot. I move the story along when needed, have the NPCs interact with players as needed, but other than that I like to allow players to feel out the world and other characters themselves. My BIGGEST pet peeve is when players wait on me hand-and-foot to provide their characters with some sort of stimulus. They don't want to take the initiative to do anything; they want me to spoon feed them character development, and they expect all the other players to do so as well. Does that make sense?

No, I'm not angry about anything.

That makes sense. I haven't experienced the exact same, but I've had my fair share of people who never reach out about connections who then get upset about not having any because they expected everyone else to reach out to them instead. It's even more baffling when those same people later turn down connections once other players try to reach out to them.

 

[unanun]

Do you have any pet peeves when it comes to roleplaying?

Something that bothers me, although it is super common in roleplays involving multi-paragraph responses, is what I like to call "the split timeline." This is where someone replies to something your character did or said earlier in your post in a way that interrupts the post's later action/conversation, but then they also respond to the latter action. Then, you are left with the choice of responding to both the former and the later points, effectively creating two timelines within the same moment, or finding some way of trying to merge the two back together to create a smooth narrative. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? lol

That's the fundamental question of roleplay, innit? I actually wanted to write a (third is too many) article about it. Imagine that interactions are two combs meshed together so their teeth alternate - how much responsibility for each atomic interaction do you want writers to take?

Conversation: people alternate between speaking or absorbing dialogue
Action: both parties are simultaneously thinking and reacting, there is no orderly turn (think playing Street Fighter, not Risk)

Taken to the limit of real world interactions, RPs should degenerate into one sentence to one paragraph interactions. That's how I've seen DnD campaigns play out. But unless you're doing it live, that makes for stunted reading and participation by more than two writers, so there necessarily has to be some sort of back tracking built into the system, where players write for more than one tooth of the comb for each post, and the GM has to then sum all the teeth up together into the spine of the comb timeline.

The desire or rule to write a minimum number of words combined with avoiding too many actions per post (leading to the dread god-mode) leads to the pile up of fluff. You want to respond with a few words? Too bad - you need to run your internal dialog like the Flash or shonen and describe everything in your mental state in the six seconds it takes for you to agree that the weather is nice today.

It's the fundamental problem of RP with no perfect solution. I've seen sentence-by-sentence, collaborations (where the play-by-turns is usually obvious), and hijacking to create long form writing, or even solitaire play - which I've been guilty of many times.

I try to avoid it by being adaptable. I'll put out a sentence, paragraph, or an entire scene when the situation calls for it.

 

[Dusk]

So, I could talk about a lot of them with varying degrees of annoyance, because I'm fun like that, but I'm not going to do that. Instead I'm going to focus on one main thing with a second more specific aspect: communication and assumption.

The more specific thing, is mostly in regards to replies to my partner searched. There are very few things I absolutely won't do regarding themes or genres or what-have-you. That doesn't mean I don't have preferences, but most of them are just that – and might depend on a variety of factors. Furthermore, I am not above being swayed by tantalizing plot bunnies. Unfortunately, I've had numerous people assume I'll do X when I specifically mention it is situational or an occasional thing. It makes me irrationally petty, even in scenarios where I would've been otherwise interested. And it major sucks when I'm already plotting and the assumption does influence my interest. Unequivocally, this is most common with romance-adjacent things.

Just ask, please. I might say no, which I get is not fun, but I might also say yes – especially if everything else is lining up. And please, don't say you don't care or want to see how things go if you're going to be annoyed that they didn't go a certain way. >:c

 

[Sorrelfur]

My pet peeve is when someone makes it really hard to come up with a reply that's long enough and not just me repeating shit back to them. I had one person absolutely hate when I moved the story along at all. Even if I said something like so character a and b moved into the kitchen to make dinner. They'd get angry at me for controlling their character. Even if it was established in the last post that they were going to do the thing I said they did anyway. I end up just restating what happened in their post with my own stuff added in but it annoys me because it feels like we're on the same scene for literally ages.

It really messed me up for future rps to I really struggle with making my posts long enough without semi restating the previous post and moving it alone. I feel the need to double check anything I do with moving it forward because I'm afraid my partner will be mad at me for controlling their character or moving along the rp. I feel bad I end up slightly relying on others to move things forward until I'm comfortable with them to know I can move it forward and they won't be upset.

 

[The Mood is Write]

I've got a few of these! I haven't been seeing them nearly as often as I used to, which is a blessing.

My biggest one is when my partner isn't willing to communicate. I'm slow sometimes to communicate, but I always try my best to make the effort. I believe in 'better late than never' but some partners just never tell me they're uncomfortable, and it breaks my heart, because I want them to feel like they can approach me about anything, even non-RP things. School, life, health, or something else killing their ability to do the thing for weeks at a time? That's totally fine, and mental health counts towards that as well! All I really want is a heads up, and I will be happy to wait.

Similar to that is getting ghosted, especially on Discord, where I have many of my RPs in a private server. Sometimes I'll go to check on an RP and reread it and wonder why it hasn't been posted for, and the person's name will be white because they left without a word or I'll contact them and get zero answer. It's heartbreaking, especially when the story was just SO GOOD!

Minor peeves are when people won't even try to use third person and past tense. I require it, and I'm very upfront about it because any other POV or tense confuses my ability to understand what's happening. Making mistakes is fine—no person is perfect, after all. All I ask is that people try. Another is use of 'would' tense, which just confuses the fuck out of me because I'm left wondering 'do they mean that they're going to, that they might do the thing, or that they did do the thing? It's really confusing!

Finally, I really can't stand when people answer my advert threads or posts with completely unrelated stuff while acting like they read my advert, or even DMing me when I haven't posted an ad at all, acting like they saw an ad I posted. Liars like that are garbage and it feels nice to take a screenshot and report them for cold-calling/spamming.

 

[Nemopedia]

People who feel the need to respond to every piece of dialogue. I get it, your character has SUCH a witty remark, but that conversation was also so three scenes ago, can we please stop drudging out the old cows? It is one of the main reasons why these time loopholes happen that make no sense at all and then freezes a scene, because there is this oh, wait my character has to be witty before we can move on in there, because it is somehow essential to the plot.

Totally no salt there.

Another thing I dislike is too much ooc-plotting. Plotting some keypoints with your partner is good, don't get me wrong. However, if it is a group we gotta be mindful about it and make sure it involves everyone. Otherwise it is just a key sub-plot. The amount of times overexcited ooc-plottings have caused group roleplays to stall, because people wanted to make sure all of their ideas were played out.

Another RP nuisance I find is more of a writer's issue, I feel. I don't need the constant reminder of how pretty, or how blue, or how fair, or how intelligent they are. Goes back to the first point; yes, I know, the character is witty, but can we focus on the actual thing there?

(I'm guessing this is also why I don't enjoy reading romance as a genre in general. And in a way, I feel the main reason why this annoys me is because it doesn't convince me of their loveliness/attractiveness/handsomeness/beauty, because I don't get that.)

My last pet peeve is romance. The amount of times people tell me: "I don't need romance." :) and then proceed to pursue my character hardcore, or write them as this very available and very single and very attracted (note: not attractive, attracted) potential partner right from the first post. Maybe I missed something there, but I thought we were on a different page there?

 

[kroyote]

Someone kind of already mentioned this, but it annoys me to bits. When I write an amazing, lush 1,000 word reply and get like 7 words in return.

It not only kills my muse for the entire roleplay, but chances are I'll never do another thread with that person again. I'm a big "mirror off your partner's amount" so like,,,,give me 2 sentences and I'll do the same. shrug

OR FUCKIN' when people respond to your partner search with a really vague "yeah, i'd like to rp with u"
okay??? do you have any input or like wanna give me any plot ideas or suggestions??? sometimes it feels very one sided because it feels like people aren't putting in the effort, yanno?`

 

[wren.]

OR FUCKIN' when people respond to your partner search with a really vague "yeah, i'd like to rp with u"
okay??? do you have any input or like wanna give me any plot ideas or suggestions??? sometimes it feels very one sided because it feels like people aren't putting in the effort, yanno?`

That part. I've learned to start including "don't reach out to me if you don't have any idea what you'd like to write" in request threads and people still do that on occasion. Like, c'mon, I provided like a 20+ plot list for you, lol.

 

[The Mood is Write]

Oh man, I feel ya on the sudden length cliff. I write a multi-paragraph post, and I get one dinky sentence that doesn't move anything forward, and I'm just like... "What. The fuck do you expect me to do with that?" So I gotta go to my partner and ask them if they hit send/post/enter too soon cuz that's a thing that happens (I do it a lot).

At the same time, I also occasionally have partners that can give me two paragraphs with not a single bit of forward motion. I don't mind if they echo my post with their characters emotions and reactions and little asides (as long as those don't derail the timeline) or if they give shonen-anime levels of internal monologue, since some people do think rapidly, but I still need some meat with my delicious potatoes. :O

Then, there's the people who don't do research on what they're RPing, and it shows. I don't usually mind if it's something harmless, but if the whole RP ends up flooded with misinformation or that sort of thing, I just kinda... can't help but laugh. I might send memes about it to the person to maybe prompt them to look stuff up sometimes, but I also think doing that can seem petty, and I don't wanna be petty so much as to try to hint them to look it up or talk it over with me. If they tell me they're doing it in a certain way for a reason (enjoyment being a good enough reason) and it's not racist or prejudiced, then it's completely fine and I'm on for the ride.

Probably my biggest peeve though (that I haven't encountered in a wonderfully long time) is the hymen/virgin bullshit. How do so many people still believe there's a magical seal over the pooss that doesn't let anything past? Periods are common knowledge, so how do they happen without a way out? Just imagine if you had to break the seal so a girl could have her period. What happens if you can't find someone soon enough? Imagine years worth of nasty just coming out all at once! Good thing that doesn't happen, right? Good thing the hymen is just a stretchy loose band around the entrance. But yeah, because the hymen is stretchy, especially during arousal, there's no way to know if someone is a virgin unless they tell you, and even then, it doesn't matter, because it's a useless patriarchal thing that weirdos use and have used for centuries to determine a woman's worth and has led to countless instances of women being hurt or killed over.

Uhhhh... oops, long rant.

 

[Slaynoir]

I'm pretty tolerant of most little petty things...however! I do not like it when surprises of violence or sexual force is thrown at me. I do not appreciate another person forcing me to make a scene they make up without consent, and I REALLY can't stand it when people ask my age and then clam up yet say nothing else or change their vibe afterwards. I don't care about age tbh, but I will respect you more if you're honest and open with me avout your feelings. I give respect, I expect to to at least be honored that favor in return.