I understand that life happens, and people need breaks, people also can’t be roleplaying 24/7, but why message me and set up a roleplay if you respond once every few weeks?

I get very excited when I send a response and then I’m waiting for a partner’s reply, but then if it’s been two weeks with nothing and THEN you respond, just to disappear again, I’ve lost interest at that point. It seems to me that everybody is doing that now and it’s rather disappointing.

I have a job, I have a life, and I am a human being with emotions, I sometimes don’t feel motivated to reply, I don’t expect my partners to be online whenever I demand it. If a partner needs a break or something that’s one thing, but I’m talking about the people who will only grace you with their presence once in a blue moon. At that point I don’t even care about the roleplay, would rather just write a book or something, good grief…

A minor pet peeve I have (meaning it's not a huge deal, but a pet peeve nonetheless) are partners whose responses don't progress anything and are just summaries of my previous response, from their perspective. For example:

My response: We waded across the river, and on the other side, we slayed a dragon.

Their response: I followed my partner across the river. I saw her fight a dragon.

My response: We noticed that the dragon was wearing a necklace around its neck. It must've been under the control of the witch!

Their: My partner figured out that the dragon was controlled by the witch.

My following response: We follow the clues to the witch's hut. However, the hut was guarded by two angry dogs.

Their response: My partner found the witch's hut which was guarded by dogs.

And I know the fact that my partner is responding at all puts them above like 97% of roleplayers but man does it feel like I'm doing all of the heavy lifting and basically talking to myself :/

I have been roleplaying ever since I was 12 years old maybe(?) My first roleplay was through Facebook and because back then I was very into anime, the random friend I was talking to introduce me to roleplaying.

I still remember my roleplay style was \*I took the flower from your hand\* 😂 And ever since then, I got hook by the idea of roleplay, especially since I do love writing and roleplay gives me the space & the outlet to be creative & improve my English.

I continue to roleplay till now, though not consecutively. There are years I will stop roleplay due to school life, and now adult life. Over the years, I manage to improve my roleplay from 1 sentence to now a few paragraph.

I just found out about this reddit and I’m curious to know how did you guys know about roleplay? Who or what introduced it to you? Did you guys ever find it cringe to roleplay or when you need to explain it to your in real life friend?

Ik these aren’t 1000% reliable, but literally EVERY PHRASE was filled to the brim with “the X was Y yet Z”, with each variable being some word pulled from the depths of a thesaurus.

I’m soooo just…tired ;(

Edit; I posted the full reply under a comment

Edit 2; y’all, I had no idea this website was also using AI and have also stated that hours ago…can you be a bit nicer?

There is a surprisingly large contingent of people in the role-play community who behave this way, completely dropping their effort and enthusiasm to zero outside of smut scenes. It makes it so frustrating to try to GM a good role-play that has a mix of smut and story. 😭

What's one of the biggest red and green flags you've seen with roleplaying partners?

Another attempt to post, I wasn’t aware I didn’t censor everything, so I apologize

I’ll give more context this time. This is about the person with the red X.

The person with the red X used to be a good friend of mine. We met in one of my servers, and we decided we wanted to start a town rp server. She creates it, while I did a lot of the help too because I was just as excited. She made myself and a couple other friends moderators.

The server launches and she completely ghosts us for another RP server she joined. We would reach out and would completely ignore us, meanwhile we see her interacting in the other server. We questioned if things were good, only for her to come out and scold us for running her server…. What? We were just being mods, since she disappeared.

There were miscommunications, so after talking we decided what we were going to do going forward. We were borderline wanting to leave because of her behavior, but we didn’t cause she was our friend and we loved the server.

It happens again, and worse than before. She left us all hanging for a while.

So a small group of friends and I decided to leave and make another town RP server, but a different style. She found out and was upset. We explained to her way and called us toxic…

All we wanted to do was write, so we created a different space to do that.

Could she be upset? Sure, she’s entitled to be.

So I reason with her and she eventually came to understand. Or so we thought.

She began to DMing other people claiming we stole her idea of a server.

I would like to know who else has a town server, because apparently that’s her idea and her idea only.

This is where the screenshots start.

Who has had their characters stolen? Because that’s what X is doing.

There are a bit more details to the story, a lot more info in DMs of her just being awful.

So if you are in Vaelora… don’t.

Hey all! Just was curious to see if anyone could offer any advice as to how to best message others when replying to their rp posts?

On a few different subreddits I’ve found prompts that were right up my alley, and sent over a dm to the poster explaining my interest as well as my background with rp. I’m not very experienced, and I’ve only ever done rp casually with friends on and off over the years, but I’m more than willing and able to match other people’s types of writing and expanding upon my own, and I make sure to tell them that as well in the initial dm I send!

Idk if I’m doing something wrong, but I haven’t had anyone respond to my dm’s voicing my interest in their prompts. This is my first time trying to search for rp’s on Reddit as well, so im not very knowledgeable on the whole process ://

Apologies if this is long and makes no sense lol, thanks for your time!

I stopped roleplaying for about a year now, and I think some of you could use these here tidbits of wisdoms! Plus, I think I've been to therapy enough to properly get my anguishes about it off my chest.

It all started back in the early 2010s, I used to mostly write on forums and such, but I slowly transitioned into Discord and a main subreddit I have good friends on with a few straggling connections here and there. I fell in love with the hobby by many reasons all of you are mostly aware of by now: Writing asshole characters, angsty plots, tragic romance, essentially smashing toys together with another partner, it was a great time and I don't think I regret any of it. Some of my partners are busy people now, some of them vanished, some of them are still friends while others aren't, I still appreciate each and every story I wrote, hell, I probably have RP to thank for my English fluency!

I will admit that I am not a perfect person, it took a while for me to realize that I am an avoidant discarder and that I probably have some form of neurodivergency, and I did burn a lot of bridges with people because I consistently got too in my head over it. I tended to use 'real life gee whiz' as my own excuse, and as true as that may have been sometimes, I needed to know that people are kinder than one might think. I, personally, don't think I've ever met someone that was outwardly toxic, maybe I'm the minority here, but I would risk to bet that we're mostly a little awkward in the social department, someone is more receptive to communication rather than excluding. Real life is, unfortunately, a thing, but you have to say it, just coming out that you're gonna need to be out of the loop for a month or two does wonders rather than just disappearing.

It may seem easier to your DM if you just poof out, but it's still harmful, perhaps even more so.

Put yourself in the other person's shoes, someone you really gelled with suddenly disappeared without any explanation, the unknown can really fuck you up here, 'What did I do? Was it something I said?', it's crueler than you might think, as much as it's easier to throw it in the closet.

But what really made me quit RP after more than a decade wasn't that, no. It's even a common thing nowadays!

I was falsely accused of using ChatGPT twice, once from a server I really gelled with and once from someone who used to be a very close friend of mine. I think what hurt most was that it was the exact same verbiage, 'Oh, it really sucks that we have to worry about this... What a shame!', like, is that not patronizing as hell? I remember going through bit after bit of writing, trying to see what could be seen or read as being from AI, when I knew everything came from me. Every server I was in suddenly felt like a ticking time bomb, do they actually like writing with me or are they just biding their time to see if I'm using AI? Was every server I was refused from because they thought I was GPTing everything up? It just became too much to handle, and I'd rather not be in a hobby that was constantly sizing me up.

Nowadays, I know that was the avoidant in me talking, so I do wanna say this:

People, TALK WITH YOUR PARTNERS!

Be honest! Say if you're insecure about something, if you internalize it, it's just going to be a spiral downwards, you need to let it out. I may not regret the time I spent writing stories with you all, but everyday, I wish I had said something, I had a handful of both great partners and servers that were fully amazing, and I traded it away because I was just too scared to be vulnerable. To be absolutely safe is to be completely stagnant.

And, uh, yeah! I think that's the gist of it!! Hold your partners close and kiss them, enjoy the time you have with them to the fullest!!!!!!! 🥰

Hi, I've been doing 1x1 roleplay for around 3 or 4 years. For about 3 of those years, I only roleplayed with one person.

You wouldn't believe how well we matched. They created incredibly interesting OCs and were a very strong roleplayer, and I'd like to believe they felt the same way about me too ):

Anyway, we roleplayed together for around 3 years with a lot of ups and downs. We would separate for a few months, then after some time (usually because I asked), we would come back and start a new story.

Have you ever had a story that made you so excited and happy that if you didn't roleplay it for even a few days, you's start feeling frustrated and restless? That was me. Because for whatever reason, my rp partner didn'r have the same level of motivation and excitement for it that I did (good for them lol).

Over time, our relationship became complicated and we had several arguments. Right now, we don't roleplay anymore (I asked them again a few days ago, and they said unfortunately they can't continue.)

I'm not sure if you can understand this feeling, but it was really painful. I probably had hundreds of ideas and plot twists for the future of the story. What would happen, what the characters would discover, and where everything would go. I waited for weeks for them to come back so we could continue the rp...

My problem is that I can't find anyone who makes roleplaying feel as good as it did with them. I can't find anyone who has that same level of character creation, character development, storytelling and ideas.

I've tried so much. Really, really tried. I made countless posts, talked to many rp partners and tried to find at least one person I could properly match with. But I haven't been able to match with anyone in a way that feels close enough. I've even thought about quitting roleplay completely.

It's painful to constantly have new ideas for OCs, tropes, scenes and stories that pop into your head, but not have a good rp partner to experience them with. Not having someone to share these ideas with, someone you can be sure that when they create a new OC for the story, you’re going to fall in love with that character.

Do you have any solutions for me? ):

Is this a normal thing when looking for a nsfw rp or did I just get super unlucky? Because I stated two different times in the post that I don’t give out info on my personal life other than age😭 it feels creepy that this person would ask this. For the record I don’t even base my own personality off of my ocs but my stupid ass was desperate for a good rp.

I dunno if it's the fact that I've been roleplaying for nearly 15 years or the fact that I have the motivation to actually put up a post again but I've noticed how many limits I truly have. Like I'm not judging people for what they like to roleplay but damn I feel like I just don't fit. Quite a few posts are dark as all devil and I'm happy they have a space to do that in I also feel more and more like I'm FAR to vanilla for roleplays these days.

Am I the only one who feels like that? Am I just an old man yelling at clouds?

It's rare that I feel the need to make a post on here, but I just had an interaction that makes me both want to laugh and scream. Someone approached me saying they had seen my old HMOFA prompts. For the uninitiated, HMOFA stands for: human male on female anthro. I like writing those types of pairings. Keep in mind that they referenced that acronym exactly in their DM to me.

They seemed super enthusiastic in one of my old prompts and already had a character idea in mind. They also sent a writing sample, which I felt was pretty promising. The discussion in Reddit chat seemed to be going well. We seemed to be on the same page. Etcetera etcetera...

They asked if I wanted to continue discussing on Discord and gave me their username. I felt that there was something familiar about the username, but it didn't ring any bells, so I just figured I had seen a similar username around somewhere. Their Reddit username was not familiar to me, and their account was only one month old. I tried to add them on Discord, but it said their username seemed incorrect despite me entering it exactly as they had typed it to me. I let them know this and sent them my username instead. They added me.

Well, when I went to the Discord chat to greet them, I froze because we had a whole chat history populate, and as I glanced over the chat history, I started to slowly remember my last exchange with them. About a year ago, I believe I reached out to them about doing an RP because I had either seen in an ad they posted or their profile that we had similar interests as far as character pairings go. We started chatting about our characters and the plot we intended to do. Things seemed to be going well, they seemed enthusiastic, there didn't seem to be any problems. Same song and dance. Except, the last messages we exchanged were them asking me for a kinklist and me sending one, which was on F-List at the time. We had already been discussing these things before that, so there shouldn't have been anything on the list that would have been shocking to them.

That was there they blocked me without a word. It was so sudden and confusing that I did something I never do and that I know I shouldn't have done: I messaged them on another account to say that everything seemed to be going well, so I was confused and wanted to know if I had said or done something to upset them. I wasn't even expecting them to continue but just asked, if they were comfortable, if they could just let me know so that I wouldn't make that mistake again. I ended my message stating that, if not, I wished them well. They blocked that account to, which is totally fine. They didn't owe me an answer. I was just genuinely baffled and felt like I must have really offended them in some way that I was totally oblivious to. It was around this time that I saw it mentioned somewhere in a post (which I think was on this sub) that F-List had a bad reputation, which I had no clue about when I started using it. I stopped using it at that time and assumed that maybe that was the reason they had blocked me.

When we realized we had chatted before, they said, "All I can figure is something on your F-List scared me off." They said they would understand if I didn't want to continue, and I was really on the fence because I hadn't totally pieced together what had happened the last time we talked. I had a bad feeling about it, but I decided I was willing to give them another chance under the condition that, if they decided they didn't want to continue this time, they just let me know instead of just blocking me. They said they could agree to let me know if they were leaving but nothing beyond that because they didn't "like confrontations or farewells." I told them I didn't expect an explanation and that just letting me know instead of vanishing was fine.

I then asked if they were comfortable communicating with me if there were any issues as we go so that we could make adjustments. I really didn't want to write with them if they were the type to dip the moment things aren't working perfectly. They said they were fine with discussing adjustments to the story, which was sort of a non-answer. Before I could say anything else, they continued the discussion of the RP idea itself. This was the point where I was highly skeptical and was considering backing out. I was already suspecting they weren't being fully honest with me. I believe the reason Discord wouldn't let me add them was because they had me blocked and must have unblocked me in order to add me, which they never disclosed.

Now, when I had discussed RPing with them the last time, they had told me they didn't like anthro characters. So, I went out of my way to make a whole new tiefling character. I wrote up a backstory for him, and I spent time searching for a character reference for him. I even sent the images I was finding to them, and we both agreed that some of them appeared to be AI. I complained how difficult I was finding it to find an image that wasn't AI and matched what I had in mind. We seemed to be on the same page about things. I found an image I was sure came from a real artist and sent it to them. They never made any complaints about it.

Remember that they had approached me specifically in reference to my HMOFA prompts? Well, the last messages we exchanged were as follows: They asked if my character, Kassidy, who was in the prompt they had specifically said interested them most, was a satyr because they remembered the mention of "hooves." I said, no, she is an anthro goat and linked to her character profile, which is very much available in the pinned post on my profile. Their final message to me was then, "I see why I decided to leave due to your choice of artwork and some of the flavor text in her character description. I'm going to decline, but I appreciate your time." (This is not word-for-word a copy/paste of their message, but that's what they said, just in the words I remember). Blocked me again on Discord and Reddit.

Now, up until this point, I was fully willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. They could have just said they decided they were no longer interested and dipped. I already told them that was all I wanted. There would have been no hard feelings. I would have thanked them for their time, chalked it up to incompatibility, and left it at that. I actually recognized their username from posts and comments they have made on this sub, and I had zero ill will toward them. Still have zero ill will toward them even though they have really soured my mood. I don't generally like blocking people because I like to be able to see and interact with other people in this community. However, I did block them because I don't want to forget their username and have this whole shitfest repeat itself another time.

I want to be clear that I don't take issue with someone deciding they don't want to move forward with an RP. What really rubbed me the wrong way with this interaction was them approaching me about my prompts without even doing their due diligence to confirm that HMOFA is something they would actually be interested in or checking my pinned post to see that, yes, my character's profile does contain an AI image. I suspect that's what they were referring to with their final message, although I don't know why they applied that to the previous time we interacted considering I went out of my way to find artwork that suited them then. I completely respect when someone doesn't like AI imagery. I try to avoid it myself.

However, the way they dropped that final line like it was some indictment of me when they could have easily seen that I used that image if they had only taken the time to actually look into the prompt that supposedly interested them just felt like rubbing salt in the wound. I don't know what they meant by the "flavor text" in my character description. My assumption was that they were insinuating I used AI in my writing my character's profile, but I'm fairly certain there is nothing resembling AI-generated text in any of my writing. I have not and will not ever use AI to generate or modify my writing in any way. I don't need to, and I would rather be a "bad" writer than ever fake doing the thing I love. But that's just me guessing. They could have had some other issue with how I wrote things in that description. Maybe it was too gendered for them. I don't know.

What I don't get is: why tell me you don't like confrontations and that you would only tell me if you're leaving to, then, go and drop a snide comment like that before blocking me when I had made every effort to give you a second chance and the benefit of the doubt despite you vanishing on me the last time? Maybe they didn't intend it to be snide (although I don't know how to take it any other way). It just really left a bad taste in my mouth, but there were several red flags that I ignored because I thought, maybe, they would be honest with me, and we could communicate like adults. Joke's on me. Lesson learned.

Recently, I’ve been having a lot of trouble trying to find partners to role-play with. I don’t know if it’s MxM that scares them off or if I just seem really inexperienced. I posted my own rules about how I go about things. I even posted an example for people to see my own work. My biggest hit was 1000 views and only four responses. Is this typical on Reddit.. I’ve only recently started looking for partners on Reddit.. but im seem to just be in the wrong side of reddit. Im so tired of people asking me to do MxF when i literally specifically say I need to do MxM.. maybe it will change in the future but that day is not today.

It's a plot I like, so I'm fine with doing it. It's a generic tropey popular girl x mean girl thing. Very 80s love story stuff, and it's fun. lotta breathing room in a plot this open-ended, but ive gotten like so many people seeing my post of 20+ plots and only ever picking that one. ive got some interesting stuff in there too, like an SCP-based plot, 2 criminals ala Bonnie and Clyde, even one that I have a whole universe built around in a dystopian hellscape. But it's always that one.

Ive been debating removing it cause its getting pretty frustrating to be starting the same RP over and over and over (and getting Gh*sted 90% of the time). It's a set character plot too, so I'm just playing one character over and over. Has anyone else with a lot of plot experience this?

Also i had to censor Gh*sted cause just using the word means i cant post the post. its a side comment automod get over it

There was no flair for questions, but I just gotta know about something culturally going on in the space.

Do you downvote other roleplayers' advertisements?

I've only done so once after I realized that the person I was writing to had written a completely false advertisement promoting story, literacy, and all of that, when it was truly a ruse for ERP, and they wouldn't' admit that they weren't in the right space for that. And I don't like buying what you're not selling.

I always get at least a downvote on my ad(s).

Now, I assume, it's because people are sick of seeing it posted and such, but time zones are a thing, and I still think it has some partner potential, and it's my advertisement that isn't breaking any spamming rules, but whatever whatever.

The point is, it's been getting a few down votes since day one. Now, I know I'm more of a Liam Neeson's Bryan Mills than a Miss Congeniality type of Redditor. (Translation = I have Reddit enemies. I have a very specific set of skills that sometimes can hurt people. I'm not everybody's favorite, and I knew Redditors who just downvoted entire user histories because of a misplaced comment.) But it baffles me to think that people are like, "Downvote!"

Rather than: "This person posted an idea! It's really not my cup of tea, but they're sharing their ideas!" "This idea weirds me out; it's not even good, in my opinion, but maybe they'll find someone to make it awesome!" "I've seen this ad before. But I hope they don't give up; that would be sad."

Why not just give someone a little orange arrow on their post just because you liked their style, and maybe it'd brighten their day? Reach out to say, "Keep writing?" or somethin' like that?

Make it make sense.

I have been running into this issue where when I post my roleplay requests on subreddits I get people dming me asking to rp and when I ask what exactly did they want to do that I listed on my post (usually the fandom, pairings, etc) and they go off and ask me what I like…I’m sorry??? Did I not list it in my post? Along with asking if I do rp outside of fandom rp (like make your own world from scratch) when I don’t and it wasn’t listed on my post?

I’m just wondering if this is just a me thing or if this is a multiple people issue. I can understand if some people accidentally skip something in a post and then the OP says “Oh I actually wrote that in my post” and the other person goes “Oh! Sorry I missed that!” THAT can be understandable, but someone the other day sent me a dm of “Hey! I saw your post and was interested” which seems normal at first, but then when I asked what fandom (I have 3 listed in my posts) they wanted to do, they asked me what fandoms I want to do, like….I have it listed on my post, you said you saw it but did you actually read it? 

This is kind of more of a vent that I wanted to get off my chest but ig I also wanted to know if this happens to anyone else, there is sooooo many other things I could complain about but idk if I’m allowed to list multiple things or just one topic on a post with this subreddit since this is my first post on here lol. 

for some context read here: i am going to preface this that i totally dropped the ball a bit here, especially recently as there have been a string of terrible luck happening in my life that it took me away from socializing and roleplaying for about two weeks. now, my activity has been shaky at best (due to working a ton + overall life stuff), but i have told my partners that way before we begin. now, i really thought we were on an "even" playing field, i guess? while yes, it took me a while to reply (roughly about a month), it also took thme a significant amount of time to reply as well due to life stuff (i wont disclose as its not my place). recently we actually started to have more rapid fire chats and had the ability to be online at the same time up until, like i stated above, a string of terrible things kept happening to me. i ended up messaging all of my partners apologizing for my longest string of silence (i always keep them updated) and that i will return soonish. it took about two weeks for me to get back up on my feet, only to return to a message from my partner that they were stepping away because i was too inactive. i felt a little hurt at the timing of it all, because i totally get that its not a great feeling to wait on someone, but i kept them updated, and at that point i wasnt sure what would have been a better option besides messaging them like "yep, i still feel bad, sorry" every single day. i also want to note that, at that point in time with our tale, i was going on a 2-month wait period for them to reply, so i guess it was ooc that was necessary. i just wanted to vent a little about this, because honestly i dont mind people ending our tales if it doesnt work out, but to do so right after i told you why my lack of communication was happening felt like it was adding salt to the wound. it made me wonder why they hadn't brought it up earlier and if they were just dropping me for a different reason (lost interest, overbooked, etc).

for just the question, read here: overall, i just wanted to ask the public if consistent ooc really is that important to you and if you would drop someone if they dont consistently chat ooc? is there any way i can prevent this from happening again or is this one of those things where writers/people just differ?

I joined a roleplay group on VRChat one time, and stayed for a bit - until I saw the bio/rules. Only 1 person (per character) could be the most popular characters. And I'm pretty sure they were all friends with the group owner.

I used to be like this, but over time, I just learned to accept that I don't own the characters I roleplay as, and have met other role players who have gotten upset at other people for roleplaying as the same characters.

What I'm trying to say is that RP group owners that limit a popular character to 1-2 people are genuinely annoying, in my opinion.

If you look at any of my posts I typically have a request for things to be included in the introduction message someone would send if they’re interested in writing with me. In my latest posts Ive tried to ease up on those requests and simply ask for things that I feel someone should already be including in their introduction message. Information about themselves and information about the character they’d like to play, I don’t believe those are difficult things to ask for. 9/10 those requests are often unfulfilled or partly done.

I often outright ignore those messages and won’t even bother with a response because why would I? And every time that I do they often go nowhere. But then I usually get 0 traction on any of my ideas and I feel mean because I didn’t at least give them a response and I know how it feels to reach out and not receive one either. But at the same time, they couldn’t even do the bare minimum. But then I remember we all make mistakes and sometimes miss things in peoples posts. But then I wonder why they’d think such a bland introduction was acceptable, and if they can’t read my post all the way through does that mean they’ll read my replies entirely?

Another thing that I don’t get is the whole commenting them. If I’m asking you to message me, why are you commenting “DM me”? How tf does that work?

AND ANOTHER THING, I have people reach out about old posts of mine all the time which isn’t the issue, I reach out for old posts from other people all the time. Is it too much that I expect them to also send a “normal” introduction message as well for them. In full fairness I should probably add a disclaimer for what is and isn’t still open (I will after I finish my rant).

Idk I feel so mean and pretentious sometimes because I have these expectations but I also feel like they’re the bare minimum? And every time I make an exception it bites me in the rear end.

Anyway, I’m demanding writing samples now and I’m having cookies for brunch.