Forums » RP Discussion » Pet Peves in characters and/or RP

Alright yall, I just feel like making a topic here SO:

Part 1: What are your pet peeves when it comes to characters? What little things just make you instantly dislike a certain character or make you just want to go bat-shit crazy and tear the character apart? This is mostly about the kind of info that you find on a profile, not things learned through RP, that's next.

Part 2: The second part is just about RP. Maybe you see a character that seems interesting and you want to get to know them, but then the player does something that absolutely drives you up the wall! Or maybe the player is fine, but something about how the character acts makes your head spin... This can also be about styles of play that make it hard to stick around.

For me it goes like this.

Characters-

Underweight characters. I dont mean a character that is supposed to be anorexic, I mean people who make their characters 5'7" and 82 pounds then draw or play them as if they've got a hourglass figure. No. No your character would NOT. I see this done extremely often where people give a tall or even little character an unhealthily low weight and then play as if lighter = hotter, instead of fit being hot and 'made of bones and hair' being...well a little gross. I'm guessing these people simply dont know how the human body works, but lord its not hard to Google 'height weight chart' and figure out what your character SHOULD weigh. I've rarely seen the inverse of this, though I once saw a character described as 'thin' and listed as 30 pounds over weight, somehow that didn't bother me as much.

Neko Werewolves. I'm pretty sure its anime's fault, but werewolves with ears and tails in their human forms. I never saw this outside of anime until recently but it seems like every single werewolf character I run across has got these animal features. Frankly I dont get it, I dont get the appeal, and it just seems dumb. Kind of defeating the purpose of 'normal human on the outside, but turns into a monster under the light of the moon' if you're never really human in the first place.

That leads me to...Cute monsters. Bleh. I have a lot of respect for people willing to play monstrous monsters! Its a painfully rare thing any more to see a real nasty ugly monster out there. Heck even if its still a 'tortured soul' monster its still got the whole 'ugly on the outside' thing going on. When I see people with their cute little bishie boys or jailbait looking girls and making them all angst over being a 'monster' I have to roll my eyes. Oh no, you're adorable AND un-aging AND super powered. How could your life be any more awful!?!?! If you want me to respect your character's angst, please actually give them something to angst about, or I will roll my eyes and moooove on. Or if I'm using one of my jackass characters I might just go ahead and make fun of yours (in-character of course).

Characters that are infinitely powerful or seem weak then just pull powers out of their asses when they're in a situation they cant win. Whether they're actually a god or just the last to know a certain art that is THE BEST EVER god-moders or power-players drive me nuts. I can often see them from a mile away just glancing at the profile; they're often the last of their kind (all the others were killed in some tragic event), some weird hybrid with all the powers of it's components (fairy-vampire-dragon what), the last practitioner of some lost art that just happens to be better than any other ever, have a demon(usually a fox) sealed inside them that gives them amazing powers when they're in trouble (god I wish this was less common then it is...), maybe even some creature raised by humans that doesn't know what they really are but can use all sorts of amazing powers when 'pushed too far', or SOME COMBINATION OF THESE. They're always awful without fail...also 12 year olds that effortlessly master mystical/martial/whatever arts.

Rebellious princesses, or nobility, or whatever. Theres a thousand reasons why this is stupid, but the biggest one may be how over-used it is. It seems like 85% of characters with noble blood are teenage runaways. How about actually doing your job and maybe fixing the problems with your country instead of ditching it to go play with ponies in the woods? Hate the laws? Hate the corruption? Then stay and fix things, make an effort, dont run away! Or rather if you do, dont expect me or most of my characters to feel sorry for yours.

Edit: Forgot one. Asian names on non-Asian characters. Seriously knock it off guys, it just makes you look like a weaboo.

Hm...damn. SO many of these have turned out to be basic 'Mary Sue' elements...Lets just say I hate hate hate Mary Sues.


As for part two, RP-

Low-effort posters. This happens everywhere with every kind of character, I see a group of people either in a chatroom or forum each making 200+ word posts and then along comes..."Sue: Hello! *waves at Johnny*" Look, if you want to play this way, then go ahead, but play this way with other people that want to play this way! Try to put as much effort into your replies as everyone else is, if you cant keep up with the long-posts go find short ones. Oh and when people do this then are ignored by the serious players and keep posting over and over "Did you guys see my post?" "hello?" "*reposts same line*". Or better yet when they dont even bother to type out full letters and actually use "u" and "r" in their lines. Guuuuugh.

Gang-rapers. This happens to me sometimes in RPs, generally in chat-rooms though it has happened in forums as well. This is where I may come into an RP with 7 or 8 other people (at least) and start my posting, well immediately perhaps five or more people may all gang up on my one poor character and start trying to interact. Now normally this may not be so bad, I would pick one or two and try to get around to the others as I could, since its really a bit hard to reply to so many people in-character. The problem shows up when the people I dont or cant reply to, or try to politely decline keep pushing on my character where they could maybe...turn off and play with EACH OTHER while I'm busy, no they keep going after the poor one over and over until I finally have to ask them out of character to back off until I can get around to them. I would love to be able to respond to everyone, but when its simply not in-character to do so I cant, and I wont! If I cant give you my full attention give me some space until I can, please.

Bi-Polar characters. Again not ACTUALLY bi-polar characters, if those are played well they can be fun, but the sorts that act one way then completely turn around and act another with no real in-character explanation. An example is your usual hyper/random/childish character that all of a sudden is spewing wise advice, very often based off of information that character has no way of knowing. This has happened before and its quite irritating, please keep your character in-character, dont suddenly give them an extra 20 years experience and maturity just to try and make them look 'cool' or to have them get in the last word. I sometimes see this passed off with 'my character is mad!' but that really isn't satisfactory. Saying your character is mad or insane not only is a very childish way to get out of having a consistent character, but its another peeve of mine: Misrepresenting mental illness to excuse having a 'lolrandom' or 'psycho killer' character. I wont go much into that one, its pretty obvious I think.

Oh and people that want to RP but then the first thing they ask is 'male or female?'. If the player's gender matters more then the character's gender to you please leave me alone.

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ANYWAY

Now that I've RANTED MY ASS OFF go ahead and post some rants as well...RANT RANT RANT RANT

I am about to pass out so I cannot match your rant, but I will just toss out two things that bug the crap out of me:

1) Child characters that are nothing like children. There's a tendency to make them either into miniature (super powered) adults, or to make them into pokemon. By which I mean SO many people seem to think that to make someone sound young, all you have to do is act a bit dumb and replace all their pronouns with their own name. "Mary want cookie! Mary want up! Mary think this good juice!"

Kids actually figure out pronouns almost immediately upon acquiring language. They also have different styles and scopes of thinking than adults. They DO have logic, it's just not adult logic. I've almost never seen it done. I get the feeling babysitting isn't as common a first job as I originally thought.

2) People who insist on any kind of post length, whether it be high or low. To me, clarity is king, and the measure of good writing (or effort) is not a question of quantity but of knowing just what is needful to communicate. I do not want to see any more or less words than is required to get the point across clearly and without fluff. In a RP session, I would expect to see some big huge buffer-breaking posts, and a good number of short two-liners as well. Sometimes, all you need to do is quickly reply "Yes" to a question that was asked of you, after all. No need to mention blinking and breathing and looking pretty, too. It's probably already been established. People who think they need 200 lines every time have generally fallen into a bad bad habit of purple prose. I also personally hate being held to a certain line length. I can certainly churn out fluff and add irrelevant descriptions of shiny beautiful buoyant hair to pad out a simple reply in a conversation, but I don't think it adds anything to anyone's experience and it makes me tired.

Oooooh, I completely forgot about child characters! That burns my buttons, I generally avoid all child characters just because of that reason. Its so so rare to find someone who can play a child...weird. Is it that hard to remember what you were like at 8 or 10 or 12?

This too, I know I said I dont like short posts following long ones but I mean low-effort posts. Sometimes all you need is a few words! Or sometimes you really need to give a good description. Padding posts with useless crap and huge words to make it look longer is pretty annoying, effort is all thats required.

Actually, it absolutely is, because children have different thought patterns at different ages. Certain types of thinking and concepts can't be grasped by the young brain, and decision making is handled differently at different times. Kids will pass through mental growth spurts wherein their whole paradigm will suddenly shift and they won't be able to remember the way they thought about a certain thing just the week before, because the way they handle concepts is literally no longer the same. 12, maybe not so much, but 8 and under is a time full of drastic changes.

I guess, but I can remember at least that I didn't speak like a pokemon, though I occasionally acted like a dinosaur when bored... I can remember fine all sorts of weird stupid things I thought or believed, and I know how I acted both through memory and people around me recalling those things and telling stories. Not only that but I remember how other kids in class acted as well as how I see people of that age act now. I suppose it just comes down to people who dont learn everything about kids from cartoons?

I agree that most of those points are indeed rather annoying to come across, especially when it's more than one of them at once.

Though I have to say I've at one point made one of my characters pull something I had never even included in the character's capacities to try to counteract a godmode.

Speaking of godmode, there's something about a certain type of godmode that peeves me to no end; The person has been told they've been godmodeing, they've been told so by several people on several occasions, and all they find to respond is that their character isn't a godmode because of some secret weakness... a weakness which isn't mentioned in their character sheet so that people "don't abuse it".
People wouldn't see any need to abuse it if the character was actually balanced...

I also have difficulty with half-and-half characters whose two species are complete opposites, noticeably Angel/Demon and Werewolf/Vampire. I mean, if their rivalry is SO big, then why not push it to the limit and even make them genetically incompatible? It's unlikely that one from each side would meet and have a kid,let alone that that kid would have epic powers unless both parents are extravagantly powerful.

That's it for character peeves, and the RP peeves I have have all been mentioned except...

Powerplaying for other reasons than plot-advancement reasons. Some people will powerplay to let their characters seem particularly overwhelmingly powerful, and that just kills my mood when it happens. They would need to ask permission for that, but then again overpowering another's character is usually not a way to make the plot advance...

I'm guilty of the undeweight issue; but it's actually explained.. he's not just anorexic.

I have a pet peeve for SPARKLING VAMPIRES! Let us collectively hate THEM!

I agree that this is overplayed, but romance isn't the only circumstance that can produce offspring. Where demons are involved I'd especially suspect some of the more, uhm, unpleasant and violent alternatives. That the offspring would then have the powers of both parents with none of the weaknesses is highly suspect, however.
I have not actually seen any sparkling vampires yet! I hear tell of them but have yet to see one of these legendary creatures.

Ahaha, two of your pet peeves are some of my major favorites, the kemonomimi (what you're referring to as "neko werewolves"; in this case you could say inumimi specifically) and the cute monsters. It's not something I can really explain; either you like it or you don't. Rebellious royalty doesn't bother me either, though it's not something I do too much myself. It all depends on how the character is played.

As for half-and-half characters, it completely depends on the setting and tone for me. The above do as well, actually. I definitely don't care for the unions producing extraordinary powers, though. I'm also not big on the standard race wars. Angels and demons have some basis for opposition depending on the way you're playing, but vampires vs. werewolves is so old and so dead to me. I basically won't have anything to do with it.

Regarding character heights/weights, I can't blame people too much because there is an awful lot of variation within the human body (I prefer not to state a numeric weight or a height but to instead describe those things), but it is kind of silly when people get it really glaringly off.

Godmoders suck, 'nuff said there.

Over-exaggerated and poorly represented mental disorders (or disorders of any sort) get on my nerves terribly, and I've just been facepalming at some of that lately. Your character can be moody without having to be ooooh, bipolar. I don't necessarily mind the use of mad/insane because of the way those words are generally used; they are not medical terms (insane is a legal one, but it's spread so far throughout daily usage that it's applicable outside of it, just not medically). Using it as an excuse for everything pointed out as unreasonable is not cool, though.

I also don't like it when players are preoccupied with player gender.

I could go on and on about how much I absolutely abhor required post lengths of any sort, but Kim's already said it nicely.

Let's see, what really bugs me...

People who don't familiarize themselves with the setting. I'm not talking tiny, forgivable errors, I'm talking driving a completely modern limo with tinted glass and the like in a setting which was clearly stated as basically having Victorian era technology. Yes, it happened in one of my games. I even gave a year cutoff for people who like to be really specific!

And then the players in the limo situation ignored me (the GM) and several other players pointing out that it didn't fit with the setting. That'd be another peeve: ignoring the GM. I mean, seriously. I'm not an overbearing GM. I try to accommodate as much as I can. But sometimes you have to put your foot down, you know? At that point, it's nice when people actually listen.

When planning RPs, especially one-on-ones, I don't like it when people will look at my interests and then say, "Hey, would you like to play [insert vague theme]?" and expect me to say yes right away and jump into a longterm game with them immediately, before there's been any planning or any discussion.

I swear I had some more, but they seem to have flown out of my head, and I'm about to fall asleep.

I've had a half-Demon character who had been produced by one of the less pleasant alternatives... but since then I've abandoned it entirely because it was my first character and modifying it to be balanced would have pretty much destroyed its essence.

Also, sometimes the powers of the hybrid coming from one of the parents would be greater than the parent's; I don't get how that works...

For example, I had recently hooked up a roleplay with someone who used an Angel character whereas I was using a Demon, and my conception of Demons doesn't give them all that much advantage over non-Demons except a far greater lifespan. I thought it had been made clear in the first few posts. My partner's character was then revealed to be half Demon, and to have a sort of "Demon mode" noticeable with a different eye colour, which granted it strength far greater than any Demon in the established setting...

Yeah, it can be very difficult when you have something like demons or vampires where there are a million and one interpretations. With demons, I can sometimes shrug it off by saying there must be different varieties of demons. When you have an established world and people are breaking the rules, then you just have, well, rule breakers, and probably some GM or other world authority needs to lay some smack down. Of course everyone comes to have fun, but if your conception of fun requires ruining everyone else's fun, then there's a bit of a problem, y'know?

Helix, I am so glad someone else has noticed the mis-weighted characters. I'm sorry but if you character is 6-foot-something and weighs 120-something pounds, they are more than likely going to be a bag of bones, not some fit and muscled model. Unless there is a legitimate reason (such as an avian would have hollow bones and weigh less) people really should put a little more effort into having stats that at least make sense.

Another character peeve of mine is "evil" characters who have a wardrobe consisting of only red and black. Because... really? Speaking of wardrobes, it also bothers me when character wear the same clothes constantly, everyday. That's icky. At least one alternate outfit would be nice to see every so often. If a character is a slave or hermit or whatever, I can see one outfit but when the gold-decked lady of the house wears the same dress day in and day out, it irks me.

I don't have much in terms of RP peeves except for one:
When you're playing as a group of 3, and one person is all but ignored the whole time the RP is going on. I always try and include everyone the best I can. It's hard sometimes, but everyone likes a little acknowledgment.

Believe it or not, I've actually been in one RP in which the third member didn't even try to interact. It would be following the other's and my character, but would never actually "do" anything. Had it started interacting with the other characters, we would have reacted without a doubt, but it just... didn't seem to want to do so. I'm not sure whether the player just preferred letting us interact or if the character really was that antisocial, but yeah...

High five to everyone that feels this = ALSO I've noticed people putting "N/A" on weight. Do people seriously not know what N/A means? Unless your character is a ghost or hologram or something their weight should NEVER be "N/A" even shape shifters probably settle in to a comfortable or average weight somewhere...
I dont like this either, I know sometimes its annoying to have to describe a new outfit every time but I always try to have my characters change pretty often so they dont end up like cartoon characters. With black for me its really about how they see themselves and what they think looks good. Some characters just look better in some colors (or black) and if they are fashion conscious they may choose to wear mostly that color or shade. I know one of my characters wears almost always entirely black just because he believes it is the most flattering on him, but yeah when a character's only reason for wearing black/red is 'they're evil' its like eeegh.
I dont really even remember where this came from, but I do remember that I got tired of it some time in 2003 and every time I've seen it come up again has made me want to stab myself in the face. Its deader than lolcats. I cant stand it when there's some race-war thing going on and then the person's character is the ONLY HYBRID BORN OF THESE ROMEO AND JULIET LIKE BLAH BLAH ugh shit that's old.

Also that definitely reminded me...I am VERY VERY tired of characters being the children of races that cant have children. The first time I actually got pissed at this was back when Angel was on the air and Darla got pregnant, even then I thought "THAT'S STUPID VAMPIRES ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO MAKE BABIES" and ever since I have continued to think this. It doesn't make your character special, it makes them sue and it is an instant -50 respect-points.

I'm talking about when the third person is actually trying to join in but the other two are just like "yeah, sure, whatever... ANYWAY!" With good reason, I can understand just about anything but when you straight up ignore someone's posts it's pretty bad. If you don't want to RP with someone, just say so.

To be fair, though it normally is "not applicable" it can also be "not available." It's still really silly--if you don't want to give a numerical weight, just put heavy, or thin, or average, or something.

I've only recently started noticing the weight thing, myself! I'm 5'4" and 200 pounds, but I'm only a little bit fat. People REALLY underestimate sometimes how much muscle weighs. I mean, do you know how much 5 pounds of fat is? http://mtdh.ruralinstitute.umt.edu/images/Bernice.jpg OH DIO!!!!

Other pet peeves...

- History: I always dislike it when every detail of a character's backstory is presented on a profile. It's supposed to be found out in RP! That's part of what makes it fun: the discovery of each others' characters. I know that if you read it on a profile, it's OOC and not IC knowledge... but it's then boring to RP for me. I'm of the camp that having OOC knowledge of plots and characters, while it doesn't always make RP not fun, it makes it less "real" feeling. Your adrenaline won't get as high in the final battle, since you know the outcome, etc.

- Teen or child characters that are good at everything: Ugh.

- Expository: 99% of the time I hate it, unless there's a good reason for it or it really adds to the enjoyability of the post somehow. But this is the reason people can post over 9000 lines and their RP still sucks. "Mary Sue sits down and looks at the wine. She remembers how she and her family used to drink wine. A tear forms but she hides it from everyone else in the room. Her father had liked red wine before he was murdered, and her mother liked white. The day it all happened was clear in her mind; the demon had taken over her, and then darkness in her mind, and then her parents' blood everywhere..."

ARGH! She posts that at you and you're supposed to respond?!

- Planning RPs: I refuse every attempt to do this. If you know what's going to happen, why bother going through the motions? Why force your character to take actions that might not be realistic for them, that you can only find out by RPing freely?

There's a billion and a half other peeves, too, that have mainly been listed here! I won't repeat you all. P:

Most of the characters on furc piss me off xD; They're described in a way that screams "MARY SUE".
Get this, too.

Most people on Furc don't even KNOW what a Mary Sue is.

HNNNNNNNNG

I'm guilty of this, sort of. For me though, it's more of just talking about the probabilities rather than saying 'this is what we are going to do.' I can't plan exact motions, or the RP will bore me and I'll lose motivation. But sometimes I like asking other players about how their character is handling things or how something is affecting a character and that kind of leads to a bunch of 'what if this happened?' conversation. Though in my group, the what-ifs are usually silly and not what happens anyway.

Though every so often, if we run out of time or can't make a date, we do just talk about what happens without playing it out. You can get much more accomplished in a much shorter time. It's still fun just to talk about situations to me! I prefer to play them out though.

I think I'm discovering I'm really not as picky about some things as I thought.

Characters
Regarding weight, it's probably mostly just grabbing random numbers. "This sounds like a good weight! *types*" Most people I know don't even know their own weight, and when forced to guess, will usually be off by as much as 30-50 pounds. I myself am 5'8" and weigh 118-125. And most of it's in my hips and chest. And I'm only aware of this because I'm trying like hell to put some meat on my bones. >.<

I'll add my voice to the mental disorder complaint, though. A lot of my family are mentally unbalanced, and seeing their - and my - disorders being used so blatantly wrongly pisses me off. I will try and be nice and direct them to a good online resource on the disorder in question, then I will kindly invite them to get lost if they ignore me.

Royals who don't do anything. I will not play with princess characters. They are useless. Useless, useless, useless. I can understand she won't be a master swordswoman or an excellent shot with a bow, but if she's just going to stand their wringing her hands and not even friggin' run away when trouble pops up, I've got no use for her. Send her away and make up a bodyguard for me to play with instead.

Which leads into characters in positions of authority with no sense of responsibility. If we're doing an arranged marriage and your princess insists she can only marry for true love, I'm out. She would've known she wasn't getting true love all her life.

Basically, if you want to play a blue-blooded character, I'm gonna ask a lot of you, and I'd still rather have a scrappy tavern wench.

Backstories

• Amnesia
  If the entirety of your character's backstory is 's/he has amnesia', you're doing it wrong. The character might not remember, but you as the player should know it. Amnesia is not there as a cop-out so you can make shit up as you go along. It takes ten minutes to whip up where the were born and how they got amnesia in the first place.
• Rape is the New Dead Parents
  I want to kill anyone who does this dead. This sort of use of rape is an insult to rape survivors everywhere, and it makes me want to hurt things.
• Runaways who still go to school and party
  You fail at life. Go live in a tent for a week, then show up at school and see how fast you get sent home.
• Sweet, gentle, kind, Purity Sues with a dark alternate form
  You. Corner of Shame. Now. >.<
  Okay, this can be done right, without the Purity Sue part, but it almost never is, and I'm tired of it.

Roleplaying
God-mode criers piss me off. I'm not talking people who point out legit godmoding, I'm talking about people who cry godmode every time any little thing is done without their express written permission. "OMG u cant touch her hair, shed stop u, u godmoder!" "I never said she was looking at your character, godmoder- gtfo!"

Especially when they turn around and have their character injure/daze/beat up/whatever my character.

I dislike roleplays that are very vague on the setting and plot, and then the GM jumps all over you for getting something wrong. I was once, in my foolish younger years, involved in a roleplay that was basically demons taking over a high school. That was all we got. My demon character was prowling the halls, went into a classroom, and I was informed very loudly in the thread itself, that the character he encountered wasn't in that room, she was in a room in another hallway. She then proceeded to call me a n00b and threaten to kick me out if I didn't pay attention. I saved her the trouble and quit.

And I really, really, really cannot stand overbearing GMs. The ones that want everything to be okayed through them, who change things at random and make up new rules to make sure they have the most powerful character/their friends get what they want/whatever goal an immature 15-year-old might possibly have.

Go away, make a roleplay after you've learned some manners.

Okay, done now. *dies*

Haha, my main was raped to get one of her children, but the rape detail wasn't included cause it's not all that important. Just the hoodlum.

Really, though? I rarely see rape in characters' backstories.
I know my character has some peeves of mine that I'd hate if she were rped as a teenager (the baby and all), but I don't. And not to sound egotistic or anything, but I think my character's plenty well done.