Roleplay Problems

[Novatierrie]

So, how do you handle roleplay problems? More specifically--people who seem determined to skip out on you, and/or leave you hanging? Or other problems, for that matter--OOC, godmoding, being unable to keep IC and OOC separate.

Here's a thread for venting and suggesting solutions. And we all love to rant. I love it more than is healthy, and so I am going to take the opportunity to do so.

You see, while I do not often roleplay on Gaia, I have been known to play quite a few characters on LiveJournal--specifically the various Nexus comms, more specifically Sages of Chaos, The Nexus RPG, and various subcommunities. If roleplaying on LJ is your thing, you should check 'em out. Very informal, very much a giant melting pot of fandom and non-fandom gaming. I love it. Most of the time.

There are, however, some times when it really gets on my nerves. Take, for instance, one of my characters. His name is Rai. He is from the Diabolo manga, wonderful series, highly recommended, etc. He has a slight demon problem. As in, he is currently possessed by a demon who would very much like to kill his lover and end the world. Not precisely in that order. Being in the Nexus, there have been a few characters called in that one would not normally encounter in such a situation...Vergil from Devil May Cry is one, Pirotess from The Record of Lodoss War is another, Ed and Al Elric, obviously from Fullmetal Alchemist are others.

I realize that sometimes schedules don't line up. And I'll be damned if I haven't tried to make mine line up. I have permission from the player of Ren, another character from Diabolo, to manipulate her character for tonight, if we get around to playing it.

Problem is, the player of two of the characters involved has just gone offline. A player of another has just COME online. I am just about to the crashing point, seeing as how it's 3 AM. I cannot wait the hour or so for the other person to come back online, if she does within that time frame. This thread is holding up everything I can do with my character. One thread. I'm highly considering, since this is, as mentioned, a *very* informal situation, going on happily with my character as if the thread is over and playing it out later when we can all actually be online at once. Which seems to never happen.

The problem is, all the players involved are my very good friends and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Ren's player is with me. (I should hope so, she's my roommate, it'd be very awkward if she wanted to hurt me.) I'd rather just finish off the thread if at all possible. -_- It's very annoying, not being able to move on with other plots. This one's been going for a while because of the same problem. I wouldn't mind so much, ordinarily, but other threads involving the same players have been getting finished. Ours has been getting put off time and again. It's holding up anything else I can do with this character and keep it in a linear timeline. -_-

I just finished running interference for another pair of players who were having the same problem--their third player kept on putting them off, and it was a pretty necessary storyline. Eventually, I ended up bringing another character from the fandom in just to finish that storyline so they could move on. *sighs* I'm frustrated and annoyed, if you couldn't tell from me repeating it all the time.

But now I'm going to quit bitching. It's your turn. Air your roleplaying grievances.  

[Phaeton]

I can't complain anymore. Since any RP I've joined usually died within a week I didn't bother anymore. The ones my friends are involved in, I don't play a very active role since those tend to crumble after a short time too.

Those guys aren't serious RPers, I get it. They can't lie about it the truth is right there in front of them.

So that's why most of the guild's "RP"s are just hangout settings where people come and go as they please. Those are the only active ones too.  

[Neesah The Hedgehog]

so ur not going to try rp anymore?  

[Synphoniam]

I myself do not have many roleplay problems at all. However, almost all the roleplaying threads that I see peeve me. A lot.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love roleplay. It's just that the way it's done in a huge fraction of Gaia guilds and forums really, really annoy me.

Whenever I look around for a decent RP thread, it takes ages. I can never seem to find any decent posts where people seem to actually be serious about the roleplaying. All I see are some one lined posts with improper grammar, asterisks in front and at the end of lines when they should simply be sentences, and horrible spelling mistakes. What happened to the description, the proper writing mechanics, the seriousness of posts?

I mean no offense to anyone, but I actually think quite poorly of most RPG topics because of how badly written all the posts are. It's like people just though, "Aw, to heck with it, I'll just join in for gold!" No one seems to be writing seriously at all, and the people who are actually serious either don't seem to RP anymore, barely RP, etc. I can probably count how many good RPers there are in an entire guild on two fingers. Maybe even one!

This, is what honestly makes me want to tear my hair out.

There, I'm done ranting biggrin Hope no one took offense at any of that.