Forums » RP Discussion » Bad Experiences in RP

Let's talk about Bad Experiences in RP, or something unfortunate that has happened around a roleplay setting. I think this would be a little cathartic to talk about, though please don't use this as an excuse to attack or be passive aggressive towards other people.

In my past years as an RPer, when I still RPed in ROBLOX, I remember when I joined a rather popular roleplay with a new character I was excited to try out. I posted for a bit, and replied to another person for a while, and it was a blast, right up until the leader of the RP, one who accepted me into it, decided to transport me to a prison in which my character couldn't escape from. Where I couldn't interact with anyone, and where I practically could do nothing within the RP, or the story itself. I remember feeling pretty shitty about it, because it meant that the leader both couldn't tell me I wasn't welcome, and that they didn't want me in the roleplay. I was clearly not welcome in the RP, and even despite me posting a few actions of my character being trapped within this prison, nobody would respond to me. I eventually left.

People flaking.

People godmoding.

People telling me what I should do with my own character.

People getting creepy with me OOC just because our characters have sex.

People who basically just want to treat my character like a sex doll.

People wanting to make modifications to my character so she will be more pleasing to them. People have also assumed my character is busty.

People not having the courtesy to READ THE FREAKING PROFILE before they initiate rp.

People who don't help with the plot, NPC's or anything else.

People typing out one liners after I bust ass to get out multiple paragraphs.

Oh, let's see...

Back in my Starcraft roleplaying days, I had a few cases of people ignoring what my character did and instead making their own character to do those things. It was...weird. To this day, I can't tell if they were just trolls or if they were really so uncreative as to need a fifth wheel for making any decisions.

You've also got...

• Folks who start writing what your character(s) do.
• The special kind of person who throws a temper tantrum and begins guilt-tripping you for something, despite letting it happen in the first place--in other words, a friend and I pulled off an excellent assassination of someone and despite the other player letting their character get assassinated, they spent the entire time moping and guilt tripping us until we resurrected her.
• Folks who cannot shut up when you make a typo--they absolutely have to correct you.
• Exceptionally special people who do the previous, but change your correct spelling into an incorrect one. I type "resource" and they insist it is "resorce," then fight tooth and nail with you about being correct.
• Elitists. God, those morons. There's such a thing as having pride, and such a thing as having standards; but when you start to believe anyone who doesn't adhere to your exact writing style is clueless--you need to jump in front of a train.
  "ALL text should be in italics unless it's dialogue, I can't believe you actually don't KNOW that." Well, pardon me princess; I didn't realize this was the French Academy of the Arts.

If you've been on Furcadia, you might recognize the presence of those who talk about how amazingly powerful their characters are--but they never do anything with those characters to suggest the bragging is warranted. "Oh, you don't want to be around X; good lord you do not. He'll crush you with his eyelids."

Additionally found on Furcadia quite often...those who whine about how there are no stories or chances for action, but they refuse to create opportunities for them--and instead focus on sexual relations or sitting at the bar all day. Shoot the breeze for hours about how the "continuity" is dull and unexciting, but if you dare suggest something that might threaten to make it exciting--you're probably going to be talked to by administration about being a dangerous nuisance.

And further found there...elitists who insist the 999-character typing limit, wherein paragraph breaks cannot be incorporated--is the pinnacle of typing platforms for roleplay.

Nevertheless, I can think we all agree on one thing as being the penultimate bad experience in roleplay.

OOC drama.

Ah yeah, ooc drama. The killer of all RPs, besides simple disinterest.

Once I met a person who insisted banana was spelled bannana.

During an RP, with my own character, someone inserted themselves into my backstory about them having raised her since she was young with her village being burned down. Pretty nice.

Ah, yes.... Inserting your character into another character's backstory without permission. I had that happen to me a lot as well. Ex-RP pal did that to me who knows how many times. Nowadays, unless I say it's okay, I highly request you don't do it, or my muses will correct it their way.

And of course, spotlight stealers who gripe when the RP isn't focusing on them and is actually focused on something else, like the plot. Especially when they mope ICly and OOCly while not giving a reason why. It's annoying. If you want to be included, just say something and I'll see what I can do or include you in my thing if it's a group. Or even start your own side quest if it's allowed.

Hahaha, where do I start??

I used to be involved with the Elder Scrolls RP community on Tumblr (aka. 'The Shipyard'), and over the course of the years I spent there, I dealt with:

• OOC drama
• Godmodding
• People assuming that because my character was discriminatory, I was discriminatory!
• People from a completely different forum RP site stalking me to Tumblr and telling me I was going against the forum rules and regulations...on Tumblr...because my character's backstory implicitly involved sexual abuse (newsflash--I'm not on your site anymore, GTFO!)
• Endless arguments about lore.
• Elitist jerks.
• Endless requests for smut threads on the basis of my character being a gay, male elf.
• People who obviously failed English.
• People arguing with me that my character "wasn't supposed to do that, we need to re-write this entire thread now".
• The dreaded walls of purple prose~
• People making completely unfounded assumptions about my characters...and me.
• Repeated communication fails.
• People stealing my character's art, editing it, and using it as their characters' portraits.
• Unwarranted expectations about post lengths (a novel chapter is apparently a suitable post length for some folks, and gods help you if you don't match it!)
• People writing rip-off versions of my characters into their narrative to make up for the fact that I left because it was such a god-awful experience.
• Poisonous people in general.
• People who wanted to use RP as an escape from IRL to the point where their baggage was leaking into threads.
• People who get butt-hurt when you tell them 'no'.

I probably have more...but this is the worst of it! LOL

As a word nerd, I'm often balancing the line between purple prose and dramatics. I love good words. I love when you seize a certain mood by choosing when to be wordy. And when to use brevity. There's almost an element of...music inherent to writing.

For another addition...

When they presume they are magically exempt from your rules, somehow, despite reading and acknowledging them.

Whatever reason, they decided it's only important to get you to agree to play with them--and that somehow justifies them choosing to do whatever. It doesn't matter how good of a pre-RP conversation you had with them, or how well you thought you connected--it's like someone else did the negotiations and then walked away for the real player to sit down and begin.

How about people who accuse you of godmoding, use your username with your character's name interchangeably and then accuse you of literally being your character? Yeah am still not sure wth happened with that one.

How...

Wha...what...

Yeah...I wish that I had made that one up, but I didn't. To make it worse, the character wasn't even human. I wonder if that person was high or drunk or something?

People are insane, lol

Oh boy,, Ive been apart of Furcadia for 13 years and RPR for 7. I've run into plenty of bad experiences and they usually are the same.

• Most recently: metagaming blatantly; taking information off my website and applying it into the RP when it shouldnt have been known period. When I called out this metagaming, I was accused of being a godmodder and subsequently forced out of the group.
• Being lied to about where the RP was going and then finding out it went the complete opposite.
• Creepy approaches on my main for smut rp. Sorry, Unicorn doesnt sleep with strangers.. Or anyone..
• Someone telling me that I'm an attention whore for getting NSFW artwork of my main, Unicorn. Apparently Im not allowed to enjoy her aesthetic without it being sexual..
• Elitists; people who think they're golden shit-piles because they; never fade-to-black, only rp humans, etc
• OOC Drama
• Retconning familial ties without communicating properly about intentions.
• People fussing over similarities between characters who are related by blood. I had to put a disclaimer up about this even. :x

I could go on but ya, Furc's a mess.

Uh...have these people never noticed that, ah...family members tend to be similar to each other?

The things people do on Furcadia could fill a thread of its own and keep going for days. I'll add one of the most common poisons of the community.

• Being shamelessly cliquey.

Hostile, cold, or just outright rude of anyone or anything not related to their particular clique/area of interest. If you dare suggest something unique or inappropriate to the clique, you're suddenly scum of the earth. And don't even think about trying to suggest their clique/the ways they do things aren't worth so much praise that Heaven has set aside a private universe for the mere grace of the crap out their backside. Nevermind they might be posting on an open forum or something, in search of play, and "up for just about anything."

I've actually been wanting to do that for a while. It just makes sense that you'd want to enjoy the aesthetic of your favorite character. It's your pride and joy, so why not? People have something against tasteful nudity.

I will list stuff when I get off work. But yeah...I could list a lot.

This might be unpopular opinion, but my worst experiences come from people who don't try to make the story their own. That isn't to say it should revolve around their character, but I get turned off or a roleplay real fast when I have to lead everything on my own. RP shouldn't feel like pulling teeth, it should be fun, our experience. If I'm constantly having to guide things I lose interest.

Same goes for plots in which you feel like everything is set in stone. Some people don't like to leave wiggle room, but that's the whole point of RP. If you want things to be exact, you write your own story. If you want things to be flexible but have this cool core idea, then that's when you get a partner.

Back when I did feral, before my RPR days, I shut down an entire wolf pack because I went on vacation and told them beforehand, "If you guys don't rp without me here, we're done." Because it felt like pulling teeth to get this group to interact if I wasn't there. Being the guide constantly was so draining on my muse and I didn't want to lose the character because of it, so I shut down the pack and found a reason for her to leave.

I have seen way too many from my days of yore.

Being forced to do things I am not good at or against my will. - I am NOT good at making OCs, but I will RP with people's OCs. Just don't ask me to pull one out of my rear, please. Same with certain RPs. I won't do certain ones.

Rude Rpers. Mainly the impatient types who pester you to reply in an x amount of time and get angry when you don't.

OC vs Canon RP Drama. Once upon a time, everyone got along. Now it seems to be a battle of who RPs as what.

Canon RPers who give their character way too many HCs that derail the character into something not them.

OC Rpers who go special snowflake territory and try to sit in the spot light in an RP session.

People who claim they have Rped for an X amount of years. The ones who pretty much claim they are great, but give mundane posts or sloppy replies.

Tell and not showers. - Braggarts.

Muse collectors.

Friend Collectors - This is one reason why I find AniRP extremely toxic. There are people who will collect friends and hardly do any RPing, just to pester then do things for them or for their personal gain.

Creepy RPers - Allot of my Gunvolt muses are under 18. I feel uneasy around certain things.

People who post really creepy sex or fetish RPs in the public. I see this way too much on dA.

OOC Drama, Gossipers and whiners. I have see way too much gossip on other RP sites on pubic threads or chats. Sometimes centred around a person or people who never been around for ages.

Bad, lazy modding. I have seen mods and admins let the guilty go free and the innocent get punished. Sometimes the innocents can't defend themselves with bad mods and everyone dog piles on the innocent person.

Grubby art thieves who steal artwork and edit over them. This is an epidemic on AniRP.

This is more of an issue, but people who report or block if you RP the same thing as them. This is a big issue on Facebook.

The first one that comes to mind is an RP I did quite a few years ago on Furcadia, back when all those Marvel/superhuman dreams were still super popular (they still are, in a way, but not to the extent that they were). I joined this one dream and had been part of it pretty much since it started and there was a dream-wide plot event that went on. I played one of the bad guys for this plot and obviously he was a little stronger than what most people would be okay with, but the owner of the dream had specifically asked me for this and approved it... That being said, I was RPing with the owner of the dream and the scene was a combat scene -- my guy controlled gravity and was using that to his advantage. Long story short, the owner of the dream got super pissed that I was outsmarting him (I guess he thought that since he was the owner, I'd let him win, despite using rolls and such for damage and whatnot) and threw the fight. I was understandably upset because I thought that it had been going well, but he made one weak final post that was basically half a paragraph saying my villain won and his character (a robot/cyborg thing) got crushed by gravity powers and shut down.

Long story short for that one -- People getting pissed when a scene doesn't go exactly how they want it to then abruptly ending it.

The second one that comes to mind is people just up and retconning anything that's happened. Especially when what's happened has literally been going on for *years* both IC and OOC. Like, we literally had been playing our characters together since my girl was BRAND NEW, and then suddenly, 8 years later, "Oh, I erased his history so he no longer ever knew your character" and he had the gall to think that I was okay with that. Like, yeah, I get that it's your character, but don't assume that just because your character has been altered that I'm going to do the same to mine to match up with that. No, screw that. I'm keeping it all in my characters history even if you don't. 8 years of development doesn't just *go away* just because you want to start over. Needless to say, I never RPed with him again and he made no attempt to engage me either.

The third thing that comes to mind is people just up and abandoning a character. Having all these little scenes played out and their character being such an important figure and irreplaceable influence in my characters life, then just suddenly... *POOF!* Gone! No word at all to me, just suddenly dropped the character. Now my girl effectively has this huge gap in her life that nothing else will be able to fill all because he (I assume) just got bored and decided he wasn't interested anymore.

Related to that last one.... Romance between characters. Especially when it's not a forced thing and actually happens IC without either of us planning it. I absolutely *adored* this pairing once it started happening and then suddenly a third party comes along OOC and starts to harass us about it because, and I quote, she "gave him the alt" and neither of us had any right to RP with each other like we were because by her logic giving him the alt meant that the character in question belonged to her character alone. As a result, he ended up just getting rid of the character completely. ICly, he's gone and my poor vampire has been struggling to mend a horribly broken heart. All because of the actions of one crazy, possessive girl who decided to harass us both to the point where neither of us wanted to RP in the dream anymore. I know we're not supposed to mix IC and OOC but damn, this one really messed with our muse SO BADLY.

Those are the ones that come to mind immediately. So yeah. Sorry for the long read.

Let's see if I can do this without dropping the F-bomb:

There's this one roleplay that comes to mind that I, in a contradictive way, also enjoyed while it lasted. But in the end it turned into a huge disappointment. It's one of the most memorable ones I've ever had- we wrote lengthy replies without ever getting tired of it, and had a great plot brewing that we both had worked on together. A plot that almost deserved a movie of its own, or a comic book- it was splendid!

But then the roleplayer said they had to take a break because of real life business. Alright, I said, I'll await your return. I was glad they gave me a heads up. It's just that, they kept me waiting in silence, only to never log on again.

Later I found their DA account, and I approached them. They admitted that it was a dick move, but not much else was said on that matter. I mean, I saw no signs of them not enjoying themselves so their disappearance made no sense to me...

I felt so betrayed. It's been roughly a year now since I heard from them here on RPR, and I'm still angry about it. I'll probably always be salty. I'm not even mad about the fact that the roleplay never got a continuation- it's the fact that they walked out on a loyal roleplay partner for no reason at all that really gets me. In hindsight, I wish the roleplay never happened. The emotional investment leading to nothing- it was heartbreaking.

Tl;dr: The best roleplay I've had died because the roleplayer flaked for no reason at all.

Yikes. That sounds bad.

One I forgot was some person I knew on FB would create accounts of random characters from franchises that he liked. One person did it out of pity to keep him quiet. The person would pester the poor guy for lame RPs or just talk to him OOC while the person was IC.

One day. the person shared his selfie and the guy who made the account screeched. Saying that it wouldn't feel like he was talking to the character. Person blocked the guy. Guy throws a hissy fit and claimed he was "crying" in real life. Guy hijacks the account and ruins it, being angry over the smallest of thing.

I'll throw in my bad rp experiences.

People who sit on problems and just let them stew until it becomes a huge issue.

I absolutely hate these people, and I try hard not to hate anyone. If you have a problem about something in the rp... Please! Talk to me about it! I'm not so strung up that I'll snap and go on a tirade just because you think something should be different!

I've literally had people ignore me for DAYS because they had a problem with something and just didn't have the presence of mind to talk to me about it... As such I get sort of anxious if I assume someone is ignoring or avoiding me... This has lead to some ending of roleplays or even friendships!

I'm obviously enjoying the rp, but if you have an issue you need to talk about with the rp, please say something! I am not a mind reader! I can not know if something isn't right if you don't tell me!