Forums » RP Discussion » Trying to get acquainted

Oooookay... So as the title suggests, I'm new here. I'm not however, new to online roleplaying.
I've gotten started on making some characters, but haven't published them publicly yet.

But I must confess that I'm having a hard time sorting through the sites posted RP ideas by the other members. Specifically, I find that the filters do not help, but rather hinder my ability to find what I'm looking for.

I'm looking specifically for spacey, sci-fi groups: Interplanetary travel, alien species, starships, blaster fights, etc.

But every time I try and use the advanced search, I get the "No Results" screen. I've messed with the other sliders back and forth to a degree of variation, but I still don't really get much. Two things are a definite in this regard:
1) I want a max Technology rating on the slider
2) I want zero magic

I also only participate in multi-paragraph, freeform RP. This is non-negotiable.

I do NOT want to post up my own group idea, as that would insinuate that I'm going to run or otherwise be in charge of said group. Which is absolutely not something I have the time or energy for. I would like to join in on something someone else has already established.

I am VERY open to adult themes. But they don't have to be a requirement. I am mostly in the market for group RP, as I really only do 1x1s when ERP is concerned. And within the margins of ERP, my interests can be very niche.

Anyhow, any help with navigating the site in regard to getting the search results I want would be greatly appreciated.

It's probably got nothing to do with the search filters themselves, but rather that no-one has posted anything that suits your interests (or if they have, they set the sliders differently than you may have expected.)
You could post on the LFRP forum to say that you are looking for a group to join and that you don't want to be in charge of it. You might find something that way, you never know.
Other than that, there's not much to do aside from waiting for something that interests you to be posted, I think.

I set the sliders in all kinds of ways. I left the options of combat and romance to the full spectrum. And just left Tech at full and magic at zero. Because those are absolutes in my search criteria. I don't do dice, so that has to stay at a constant NO. And I post in multi-paragraph style because well, that's just what I do. And I don't want to be reciprocated with just a couple of sentences because that's a total buzzkill.

I mean, I'm not being overly specific, am I? I'm just looking for a genre. That being: generalized intergalactic science fiction (that means NO magic). And I think it goes without saying that everyone seeks out others that pos in the same style. Out of the entire site, NO ONE has posted as much?

I've made posts in quite a few other forum-based sites about searching for a group to join. That action pretty much unfalteringly gets me nowhere. If I don't go out and look for it, no one is going to bring it to me.

But... I'll consider that option if in a few days I still cant find anything. I'll make sure I have at least one character ready to go, so that people can get a gist of what OC I'm trying to get into such a setting.

After a bit of playing, I think there may actually be a bug that is happening when a slider is set 0 to 0. If you report it through the bug report form, you might be able to get an accolade when it's fixed for being the one to bring it to my attention.

ok, sure. i went and reported it. I should also add that when I search for RP even with the fields set from 0 to 10 across the board, I still get no search results

I'd recommend not limiting tech to 10. It's quite subjective really what counts as 10. Take Star Trek for instance. It has terraforming, but for the most part, transporters are limited in range and thus it's up to the OP to decide whether they consider Star Trek a 9 or a 10. Similarly, Star Wars might also be more commonly placed as a 9 due to lacking teleportation in general.

On the point of Star Wars, settings that follow a similar vein would probably have a non-0 place on the magic slider. Star Wars is a more clear-cut case, but depending on what counts as magic in the OP's eyes, a lot of softer sci-fi might have magic set to 1 or 2 (or even higher). Personally, I'd probably even give a Babylon 5 RP a point in magic. Maybe a few points, depending on whether one is willing to count telepathy as magic or not.

And I say this as a frequent space sci-fi RPer, it being my favoured genre (I even have a character profile dedicated to spaceships).

Factoring in the seasonal dip of activity that often comes in summer and the typically low popularity of far-future sci-fi on this site, and I'd strongly recommend not limiting your search to absolute 10s/0s in those two categories.

I would actually not be surprised if there were no sci-fi ads set at tech 10 at all every now and then because of all the above factors. (There are actually a few right now, but not all relevant and some with high magic values.)

I just fixed the issue where it wasn't properly selecting RPs when you had one of the sliders set to 0-0. That said, there's only one available right now that's magic 0 and technology 10, and if you've already marked yourself as not interested in that one specifically you wouldn't get any results at all.

Okay, thanks for the advice, guys. I'll draw back the availability from a hard 10 to like a 9 or 10? Or maybe even an 8 to 10? I'll hafta see what the numbers suggest they mean.

As far as magic stuff like telepathy can be written off as sci-fi if it's explained by some biological capacity. Kinda like how zombies can fall into fantasy if they are reanimated by a necromancer. OR they can be sci-fi if they are created with a chemical or viral process, etc.

But I just really really dont wanna do the "magic" thing. So that's gonna stay a hard zero.

i shall be the bearer of unfortunate news: public forum sci-fi groups have not been a thing here for a looong time, unless we're counting the ones hosted offsite on third party apps like furcadia or discord. that's why nothing is showing up in the lfrp tool lmao

The last real one was like...literally five or six years ago and I'm not entirely sure homeboy who was behind that beast has interest in doing it again. There's been a few pop up ones in LFRP or the public tavern-esque things, but they don't really go anywhere because sci-fi just doesn't really cater to the audience here. Compare the public boards for sci-fi to fantasy and modern, and you'll see what I'm talking about. Finding 1x1s for it is hard enough, let alone managing to scrape up enough people to put together a group - and the folks I do vaguely know of lean more towards soft sci-fi than they do space operas.

As a whole RPR's group RP tends to be secluded to private groups that, as I mentioned, operate offsite on third party apps. Generally they're using the site as an in-between to get traffic/raise interest - all the ones I'm familiar with require you to have discord and be active on their servers, as their RPR group page is dead. I've not been active for a few years so maybe I've overlooked them, but I believe the sci-fi groups that are still running who advertise on RPR do their actual RP part on furcadia.

...that's basically everywhere, though. Running a sci-fi group, especially in the higher tiers of it like space opera, is extremely taxing and far more work than anybody's willing to do. It's honestly a wild goose hunt. I had a hard enough time arranging medieval groups where they're just beating the shit out of each other with swords. I can't imagine trying to orchestrate "galactic warfare where everyone wants to be master chief 2.0". I think many other sci-fi writers have a similar mindset...probably because we all know how insufferable our community can be looool

Well, I've been on Discord, and the space-oriented sci-fi servers are not easy to come by. About the only thing I can easily find are Star Wars and Warhammer 40k. And even within those servers, that participation is more in general chat and meme sharing. Which is not what I'm there for. That's the one's that are active, btw. Because it seems like just when you find one in a setting you really like, you go through the motions of joining up and doing all that self-role assignment junk, and then come to find out the last post in the channels was from three months ago, and the one before that was another month gap.

Either way, I'm not particularly looking for fandom RP. I'm trying to find something more "open-generic". Warhammer 40k is too hooked on the Imperium and Space Marine guys, and I like Star Wars for all kinds of things except the Jedi and Sith (and tbh, I really am more about the Old Republic setting than anything else). My point being, I've done the dance in searching through Discord, and found it to be lacking. And Furcadia *shudders* just reeks of furries. It's not a site I would ever join because it is most definitely not something I'd mesh well with. I'm sorry, but I'm just really not down with anthros and furries and all that.

For me, a lizardman should look like this:


NOT this


I realize medieval fantasy is the bread and butter of RP. It's always been that way on account of D&D starting it off back in the 70's. I mean there have been lots of other sci-fi RPGs since. Shadowrun comes readily to mind, and more recently Starfinder. But they simply don't have the same roots to draw from. I get it, I'm on the outs. But just because I'm not in the mass majority of what RPers are going for, doesn't mean I should just give up and stop looking. I've even been on sites that cater specifically to sci-fi RP. Places like Space Battles and Sufficient Velocity. But, they are more for system games (I am only interested in freeform RP), and the recruitment is super slow even for that kind of dynamic.

I get it, RPR is functionally more for recruitment. That's fine. I can totally deal with that. I've had a Discord for a while already. But in my experience, Discord severs dont mesh well for my writing style and reply rate. and that's if and when I even find something that is interesting and actively roleplaying. I can safely say that he last 10 Discord group I've joined (and subsequently left) have been all chat and no RP.

I used to run groups all the time. But this was like a decade ago and back. I occasionally attempt it again, but am quickly reminded as to why I stopped. There's no commitment from the community anymore. People get two posts in (if even that) and then disappear. Or they conveniently have some emergency that is going to interfere with their ability to keep participating, etc. Once or twice would be bad luck. But it happens so habitually that I've come to understand that it's just people making excuses to dip out. So yes, it is most definitely too much work for me to be willing to put forth considering how flaky participation has become. And I understand if others feel that way as well. So again, I get that I'm on the outs. But that can't mean that what I'm looking for simply doesn't exist.

Not saying that what you're looking for doesn't exist anywhere; I'm just laying out your options for this site specifically and what to expect, as well as why sci-fi groups are so rare.

Well, considering that I still haven't found what I'm looking for, I'm very inclined to believe you

alright, well it's been 15 days since I first joined. and after checking in pretty much every day and exhausting my search options every day, I've come to the conclusion that this site does not have what I'm looking for. So... yeah. I'm ut. characters have beendeleted, and this account will soon follow (as soon as I can figure out where to do that)