Forums » RP Discussion » RP Cliches/Pet Peeves/Experiences with said peeves

Anybody ever see something that was so overdone that you are just really bothered every time you see it? Or how about something that RPers do, IC and OOC that can really just tick you off?

Vent here, please. (Nicely.) I'm just curious to see what everyone likes/dislikes!

I'll start out.

One of the things that I see that has been (somewhat) overdone is the "forms" character. Now, I have no problem with shapeshifters (in fact one of my favorite characters is a shapeshifter) but these ones annoy me to no end.

Character descriptions give no real ideas as to who the person is at all. You only get to see what they can do, which is disappointingly not much. Of course, they are a neko/whatever they're called and they can switch between "forms."

"So-and-so has a ____ form that she stays in most of the time, but occasionally she likes to use the ____ form. And only in certain situations will she ever resort to using her *dramatic music* _____ form."

The repetition of that word makes it a word I have forcibly removed from the vocabulary. Because someone needs to give it a break. It's called a thesaurus, people.

Now, some people can do this character right, with enough actual development and not being just another one dimensional human/neko hybrid shapeshifter thing. But it's very rare.

Another thing I've seen a few times is that stupid demon/non demon. Demons that suddenly look, act, and sound like humans? Oh, that's one I've never seen before.~ ".~" denotes sarcasm One of the worst RP experiences I've ever had was with a character like that. (His player also believed that RP = real life and generated a TON of drama, but that's something I'll get into later.) These characters typically are 1dimensional as well, and they generally have a "good" side, where they fight their own kind to protect humanity or whatever, and then they have a "berserk mode," where they Powerplay to no end just to show you how oh-so powerful their character really was.

Stupid, really.

I did mention a thesaurus recently. There is a point where the poor thing is abused.

The most common offenses are descriptions of the body. For eyes, there are hues, orbs, etc. etc. And they always find a way to pierce your soul. It's freaky. For hair there is, of course, the infamous long flowing tresses, locks, or whatever else isn't just hair.

Are normal words no longer valid? (I realize that I am contradicting my point made earlier about the overuse of the word form. There needs to be a balance between synonyms and regular words. Both can be tiring with excess.)

Another thing that bugs me is the person who types multi paragraph posts and then says "sorry, short." After it. Whoa whoa whoa. Let me get this straight. The norm for you is longer than that wall of fluff you just posted at me? And you expect me to top it? Do you realize just what you implied by saying those two little words? Oh, heck no. *ragequit*

While we're discussing gigantic walls of fluff, let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, I used a little RP chat site called the Nexxus. This was really a mother site for a bunch of other RP chat sites that all looked exactly the same except for their color schemes and population.

I was unfortunate enough to get invited into an RP full of people who posted nothing but fluff. These people were guilty of the "long, flowing tresses" cliche. That is to say: They abused their thesauruses. Being the young, arrogant person that I was, I decided to not leave (because that would be rude. No one else here would understand my leaving, because they obviously didn't have lives.) and instead I posted a very, very lengthy post that required me to split it into two or even three different posts. (you must understand it was on a chat site.) Yet they were splitting theirs into five different posts at a time. Five. On average.

So guess what I felt compelled to say?

"Srry, short. ><"

Although it wasn't conveyed, I could feel the glares of these anonymous role players through their screens straight at me. "Who is this kid?" They seemed to ask each other through whisper. "Does he think he can just walk in here and act like one of us with that pitiful excuse of a post? Apologies won't cut it."

I eventually devolved into lurking, and after a while, abandoning the RP altogether.

Moral of the story? Fluff and unnecessary filler can turn newbies off of RP, and can make people feel inadequate.

Now, I mentioned earlier this guy who generated a ton of drama for me and the group of people I RPed with. (We were kind of a clique, and we followed our GM like he was some sort of deity.) This guy, when I first joined, was a total jerk to me. I was new to RP, and I really struggled to grasp some concepts of etiquette that I now know as obvious. Everyone else tolerated it, but this guy acted all high and mighty and "holier than thou" about my inadequacy. I was quickly kicked for no reason (he happened to be a moderator of the little group) and I left them for a while. A little while later, I created a new character and tried to rejoin the group. Nobody knew it was me, so why not? It gave me a fresh chance. This fresh new character helped me to reintegrate into their group, and all was well for a time. I eventually revealed myself as my previous character to the other two moderators, who had actually started to like me, and they laughed it off as fine and told me that the other guy was just a certain breed of donkey.

We played for a bit (and by a bit I mean a month or two, this group was seriously long term) and it became gradually apparent how immature this guy really was. He found out somehow that my old character was the same as my new one, and he bullied me to no end. Enough was enough, and we bid him adieu from our cozy little group.

Now before this, whenever my friends weren't on, I RPed with another character who was good friends with mine. We had agreed to allow my character to use her characters' background so that they could have something in common. Nothing big, really, just a few details that were shared.

In walks Mr. Immaturity. He somehow finds a way to make his character forcibly interact with ours, and he FREAKS OUT about our shared backgrounds. He told me I "stole" her ideas and that I should be kicked off and nyah nyah nyah go cry in a corner somewhere else. He threatened to "call the mods" and tell them to not let them into the RP. I told him to shove off, and he went straight to our GM from an entirely different RP. I explained things.

Long story short, this guy's life revolved around RP, and we all hit ignore. I'm pretty sure he had no friends. Almost ruined RP's impression on me, but it didn't thankfully.

I guess that this story really conveys the whole IC taken OOC and vice versa to the extreme.

TL;DR: "Forms/Modes" are annoying. Demons are hardly done right. Lots of fluff ruins RPs, and IC/OOC taken into OOC/IC is never a good idea. Ever.

So what are some of the things that you try to avoid in an RP?

I don't avoid much but I avoid specific mod types, I used to rp in a dream on Furcadia, I at first was okay with the people then later on towards the end of my time there I felt unwanted what pushed me over was abuse of power by a specific mod then being treated like I was wrong to call out aabout the abuse. He had unlocked a locked room and forced himself into an rp. (they later said that he'd done it to the dream owner before and yet was still a mod/council member.) I hate people who aabuse power to force ic problems. I probably should have went straight to the owner about it rather than to someone else. (I was told to go to that person with complaints about mods instead of the owner but that seems wrong now.)

Before I say anything, I'm a strong advocate of "to each their own". What totally grinds my gears is incredibly fun to others, and as long as I don't have to RP with them/RP that specific something, it doesn't affect me and I'll just avoid it. People also have different perceptions of what is the right way to play something. I respect this and just avoid them where possible if their views disagree with mine.

My number one pet peeve has to be an inaccurate height and weight though. When you're 5'9" and weigh 110 pounds, it's difficult to be plump and curvy.(I won't say impossible, but it's highly unlikely!) Even when you're small of frame, you'd still be approximately 25 pounds underweight for that height. A height and weight chart is very useful to get a general idea of what's a healthy weight. I notice in most of these charts, no women are labeled healthy at less than 100 pounds, and then they're as short as 4'10"!

I'm not saying thin women are unattractive, but they simply don't fit the description of 'lush curves' and 'a plump bottom' with 'full bosom' when they're 5'6" and 95 pounds! Yet that is what the majority of these super light characters are described as, and it bothers me a lot. If unsure what weight to pick, I prefer people use 'proportionate to height and frame' or something along those lines.

My second pet peeve is unbalanced characters, which tends to go hand in hand with god moding. Perfection through and through, not a single flaw, perfect skin, drop-dead gorgeous with silky smooth hair that effortlessly styles itself while the character fights off hordes of monsters without getting a scratch, having to reload his gun or prepping his magic. It's just too boring. There is no challenge in this character. He's already perfect, what else needs to be developed? Everything always happens exactly the way he wants it to, and when an element of drama is introduced it is so cliche and overdone, it's just... boring. Again, if this is what someone enjoys to write about, power to them! I used to do this myself a long time ago, but it stopped being fun quickly because all progress in a roleplay just stalled. For the reasons mentioned above.

This is why I have a strong preference for characters who are flawed in serious ways. If it's someone who I can bump into on the street, have a talk with and find out s/he struggles through day to day life with every day problems, I find that character much more interesting than mister Perfect. Of course these problems vary depending on setting, but I think you catch my drift.

I used to have a lot of pet peeves about specific types of people, but nowadays I don't bother putting energy into people who bug me. I have the choice not to interact with them on the internet, I don't have to read their roleplays if I don't want to, so what they do is none of my concern and nothing I should bother with.

I used to rp at the same dream Lor mentions here and boy do I got stories...And plans.

It's definitely frustrating when people act up and abuse their powers and nobody is willing to do anything. But places like that eventually die out by themselves due to poor management. It might be best to take what you learned from your time there to make sure you won't get involved with a place like that again and move on. Clearly they don't deserve your energy and time!

I left a little after that incident, I don't think they missed me, well some of their players left with me in truth but still I avoid abuses of power like the plague.

I've actually been on furc now and again and no sign of the dream. I think they may have fallen in upon themselves. It was funny too cause my first day back on furc I popped in there cause it was up and after that I never seen it again. Not sure why. But ironic it disappears after I return.

Re: character types: Given an infinite design space, it is almost impossible to make decisions that work well together. Before creating a character, or for that matter, creating anything at all, the first decisions should be what will be the boundaries.

Re: powers: Generally the result of not knowing how to make a character legitimately interesting. Afraid that no one will care about the character for its own merits, we therefore create characters who are meant to be impressive. Our folly is that no amount of power is going to make anyone relate to a character, and so we are met with rolled eyes. The key detail here is the lack of thought going into the powers - that is, no reason is given for their existence. I'm not talking about the tragic backstory or intense training, I'm talking about the design decision wherein one decides that a given character simply won't work without a certain power in the first place, thus necessitating whatever in-universe justification. Often, that decision is simply skipped. This is called bad writing.

Re: thesaurus: Often the result of simple peer pressure. If a writer has not yet found her voice, she may struggle knowing that she won't have a chance to roleplay unless she meets the approval of others. This is probably roleplay's single most important weakness as a hobby - the egos of the people involved. Thus, arbitrary rules take the place of meritocracy. The best course of action is to find a more mature community where everyone isn't obsessed with impressing everyone else, and at the same time, desperately pretending never to be impressed by anything (because then they wouldn't be super cool; just like their brooding anti-hero characters).

Re: post length: The most hilarious myth of all rp myths. As any professional artist will tell you, you're done creating when there is nothing left to take away. In other words, when there is nothing to get in the way of the message you want to communicate.

This really comes down to ego. No matter how much they might deny it, a post-length snob genuinely believes that posting more than someone else makes them a better roleplayer than that person. Yes, they will say "I need something to respond to!!!!!" and they are fools. It is density of meaning, not volume of text, that determines skill.

The true master can write an entire story with a single sentence.

Like Sanne said, it's important to do what makes you happy. However, there's no reason we can't read up on the most basic elements of storytelling before making another vampire demon lich. I mean, does anyone really believe that they're contributing something new and exciting when they make such a character? I refuse to believe that any research could have been done prior to the spawning of such a boring abomination.

Edit: almost forgot, regarding "sorry, short post": this is a very common rhetorical tactic known as "poisoning the well". It is used to short circuit disagreement and criticism. These people know exactly what they're doing.

i have a few pet peeves, but most of mine revolve around the fact it greatly annoys me when people seem to think that all my characters are going to act different just because someone else is 'most beautiful, gorgeous,perfect skinned' person in existence.

or people seem to think that my greatly mixed character is overpowered and overused due to being a Were/Vampire/demon/dragon/angel mix. but i've used him well enough to balance out his ablities...

i try my best to keep my characters reasonable, but my general pet peeve is just those who try to tell me that all my characters seem to be useless or are too 'damsel in distress'-like.

because apparently i guess my characters need to be perfect and flawless.

Ross, that actually sounds incredibly logical and accurate. I don't fully agree with the take on post length, though.

Often times people are unable to move the story forward with a single line, or even two-three sentences. They will post a reaction but leave out an action to reciprocate the effort, so you are 'stuck' in the progress of the story because they write passively. I usually don't really enjoy this, so sometimes I may ask a person to come up with a few sentences at least in 9 out of 10 posts to prevent this from happening.

Does this make them a better and more pro-active writer? Hardly. But they will look for ways to write more to accomplish 4 sentences, and it's just a matter of feverish prayer and hoping that they will write more action into it to get there.

It's not a fool proof method, and admittedly it's probably better to directly discuss it with your RP partner when it happens, but requiring x lines doesn't necessarily make them a post-length snob. They might just be a desperate roleplayer who's tired of being a lonely author and wants others to help write the story too.*

* Not applicable to everyone, but I'm sure you catch my drift.

I think one of my biggest pet peeves is the 'purple prose' style of writing, also known as 'thesaurus humping' and in the feral community, 'wolf speak'.
Granted, I used to do it myself, create huge flowery posts of pretty words because that was the norm when I started feral rp. But in time, I discovered it was annoying as hell to read and even more so to type and as my partners started to hate on using 'wolf speak', I stopped.

Purple prose also ties into post length; people feel the need to post HUGE LONG SUPER PARAGRAPHS full of flowery language to appear awesome and like they're the best rper ever. One of my old pals used to post 10+ paragraphs to describe ONE ACTION such as breathing. (I am so glad she doesnt anymore.)

Onto 'powerplayers' and 'god modders'; I have seen oh so many of these types in my day (who hasnt really) and I believe it stems from a creator's need to play a character so IMMUNE to death because they fear the possibility of someone being stronger and being able to kill their 'baby'. I remember seeing a character take a sword to the skull and live, like, pull out the sword and then attack the person who had done it.
I hate those kinds of people.
Of course, unless the character was meant to die at some point, no one wants their creations to be killed off without consent or without proper plot. And while I have no problem with godlike characters (I play one after all), at least give them suitable weaknesses so that they can be beaten!

On OOC/IC and vice versa mixing. No.
Do that to me and I will kill you. With fire.

Cliche'd characters! To be honest, pretty much everything is cliche on Furcadia, because pretty much every idea has been done/made at least once. And while there is quite a large population of 'demon, angel,' and 'were' characters, you do find some very good ones and some very bad ones!

But that is my two-cents so far~

Take Blacksmith for example. He has magic powers. Is that because I'm afraid no one will like him? No, i made him the way I wanted him to be because I'm a boy who grew up with Goku, Superman and magical powered people. I like that, and I want my character to be that way. As for all the silly furc trends such as thesaurus abusing and long ass posts, yeah I agree those are silly.

I could stand to see a few less werewolves though.

Sanne is absolutely right. Most people can't create any significant plot movement in one or two sentences. I certainly can't. Most of us aren't master writers. In fact, I doubt any of us are.

The point is that we should write exactly enough to communicate our ideas to the people we're engaged with. Now nobody can read minds, so sometimes we write too much, or too little! And that's fine, it's nothing that can't be worked out between friends.

However, enforcing an arbitrary post length serves no purpose and actively works against the people enforcing it by limiting the number of people who will want to participate with them. It's self-defeating.

@Althalos: There's nothing wrong with magical powers. I play several magical characters (although I didn't create them). My suggestion is not to strip everything extraordinary from our characters for fear of a witchhunt, but rather, to examine the processes that inform our decisions.

In your case, the process is clear: supernatural powers are appealing, and as such, are to be included.

We don't need a lot of extravagant justifications, the point is to have fun. Just as long as there's some kind of reasoning involved that prevents our characters from being nonsensical amalgamations of random attributes.

Also, I'm not an authority here. But just like you know if a meal is prepared terribly by tasting it, even if you could not have prepared it yourself, we can learn what works and what doesn't by experience, even if we haven't had formal training.

Oooh, a character and role-playing discussion!

The weight and bosom size of some characters always makes me giggle, as I am and have been a furcadian roleplayer for some time. I have seen several average height femmes wondering around and making pleasant talk with all the single males (and some not so single males) and I always wondered: Doesn't that hurt their backs, or weigh them down, or get in the way of daily activities? Oh, but when I slip in Tannis's true weight of 200 lbs, and her being 6 foot even, I have received many, "Is Tannis fat?". They've never seen an above average height and weight female before! Their either really small, fit into your lap, and huggable, or their average, or their huge and/or part snake. Those are my favorite~

On to Mister/Misses Uber Power. I love to use logic. In a DnD game, logic can be your greatest weapon. But, tis' story time! One day, while guarding the castle and patrolling, my character ran into a male. Who decided to copy her movements and her voice. So my character's identity felt threatened by the male's actions, and proceeded to fight the male for her right to be her. Eventually, after several close calls, a little too many close calls, the male pins my character. So my character made a final, seemingly harmless attempt to break free. The male's player allowed it, and I pull a dirty trick out of my sleeve. "Oh, by the way, that serrated arrow that my character cut your hand with? Yeah, it's poisoned." in a much more roleplaying style post, of course. The male was shocked. How could he have let that happen?!

Later...The male comes back, in the middle of the keep after assaulting a guard. My guard. He then fights 3 other guards, killing all of them within a few posts with his deflecting bracers of uber death that deflect arrows (my character shot at him) and create spikes that puncture grappled foes. So my character ran away, calling for more guards. Then the male is surprised that so many guards show up with pikes, and as he was being cornered, his character sprouted wings, casted an arrow deflecting shield around him, and an illusionary double, all within the same post. I asked him why he did that, and he told me that there were just too many guards, and he had to do something equally effective/powerful. He then told me that his character absorbs magic and what-not. It was very silly indeed, because of course there would be so many guards, tis' the middle of a castle, right next to the barracks of all places. Guards sleep in there!

Oh, then there are those that assist my sweet Tannis with such flawless powers, slaying all of the creatures before her and saving the intended target. All the while, their bodies remain smelling of niceness, and their clothes are spotless. Then they want a kiss, and often times, more than that. But she refuses, because they stole her adventure, and Tannis doesn't like to be stolen from~

And I am guilty at the word-changing thesaurus-like posts. Hair becomes locks, locks becomes hair, but I never stray from using one or the other. I do enjoy changing my verbs subtly, glances to gazes, lifts to rises, but the words that describe my character hardly change between what I've already described them as.

But what about money spawning? Being able to purchase the finest of wines, while the rich character enjoys countless wild parties, and the "good-will" meals that are given to all the dainty femmes. Look at my power, and wealth, surely, you MUST be attracted to me! I'd rather steal your clothes and create a victory flag, but it's alright, you likely fore-saw Tannis's at-whim thought process and have half your wardrobe stashed in the nearby bushes. Or purchase from the local tailor an exact replica of the clothing you lost, with all the specialized designs and insignias of your wealthy family. And the tailor made all that within a few minutes, because you threatened to hit them over the head with a huge bag of gold coins.

• Metagaming allllll the way.
• Wolfspeak (auds, tiers, tresses, oculars.)
• People constantly changing their character with no real development. And by this I mean after a character has been designed and already established for sometime. Deciding, out of no where, the can fight, they are an expert, or deciding they need to be half afoot to a foot taller.
• Incredibly rich and expert in multiple areas characters who are under the age of 30. Not terribly realistic to me.
• Retconing. If it is a small oopsy (saying your character is holding a when a fight starts out when a sword isn't listed in the post, description, or site) that's fine. But when there is a falling out, almost always OOCly, and someone gets hurt and retcons everything. Or perhaps they didn't like how a RP turned out.
• Trends. This is good and bad. Trends catching on are fine (can be annoying if you helped start a trend up again), but when people try to claim their are doing something original when not it can be bothersome.
• Unrealistic armour on female fighters. Sorry, can't give you a point in armour for a leather bikini/loin cloth combo. I am all for sexy armour if it is just for show, I have a character who wears really unrealistic outfits as a fashion statement, but it shouldn't be used in the arena.
• Very curvy, or thin female fighters that don't seem to be muscular at all or don't have their large breasts strapped down for fighting. If a woman is hauling around a big sword she'd have the arms and shoulders for it.
• Assumptions. People deciding or making an assumption that something happened ICly when it wasn't played out. This is fine as long as permission from all parties is given. It gets confusing when you find out something happened that you didn't RP!
• People playing canon characters. It feels like stealing to me. (If it is set in a specific continuity, I suppose that is different but still strange. For example, there is a Harry Potter dream in Furc that is set farther into the future after the books so none of the OCs are alive. I think that works well!)
• Playing all powerful deities. Doesn't make sense to me! It seems way overpowered to me and rather unfair if someone is claiming to be a well-known, actual mythical god. I'd be more comfortable if they character was a made up god or a distant descendent of a god. (If the continuity actually calls for it, thats different.)
• This is specific to slave establishment societys, but unbreakable slaves.
• Did I mention auds, oculars, audits, tiers, pistons, tresses, hues?

It appears that everyone's got the same pet peeves as me.

I will admit that since my character Nathaniel was my first RPing character ever, he himself was something of an overpowered guy at first, with a lot of cliches and stuff, but over the years I've refined him, shaved off abilities and modified him a fair bit to become who he is today. Aye, he's three and half centuries old and with all the experience that implies, of noble line and a master swordsman, but I've found some pretty good ways of balancing him; he's noble, sure, but his nation's destroyed and half-forgotten, so no bonuses there, he's three and a half centuries old, yes, but he's suffered a hell of a lot over the years and all that means is that he's going to be living with it for many long years yet. He's scarred, flawed, something of a drinker and hydrophobic with horrible nightmares. Not to mention dirt poor most of the time.

My pet peeves are generally around the same thing as most people. GMs, overpowers characters, etc.

But my personal ones are people who assume that every single werewolf character (or at least their players) are the same. This applies mainly to Furcadia. It's usually 'wow another werewolf' or 'I hate werewolves wah wah because of the werewolf boom', but seriously, they don't pick out any of the other fads going around? I know there were a few ones similar to the werewolf boom a few years back, but what really irritates me is that people can't seem to tell the difference between a character that's jumping on the bandwagon, and a character that is actually developed and played out-with the fad.

On a similar line, I also hate it when people have disclaimers on their werewolf characters stating how long they've been playing them. It shouldn't matter how long you've been playing them, so long as you play them well and you enjoy playing them. Don't try to appease the masses.

Another thing I hate, hate, HATE is when people take IC drama way too far. And I mean taking it OOCly. I've been a victim of it, and I have people close to me that have had really bad cases of power getting to people's heads. It's ranged from 'wow your character is mean I never want to talk to you again' to 'omg you're ripping off my character stop it', and probably some other examples that I can't call to mind yet. It seems to be focused onto one of my characters specifically, but I think that's more to do with his controversial nature than anything. People play nasty characters, get over it! It's not going to be murry purry sunshine and rainbows all the time.

OC species annoy me as well. Especially when they're created specifically to be 'better' than other, established races. I mean, I don't mind them being created when it's done well and they're balanced out, etc etc, have a credible origin point (that is, not created from the swirling mass of hatred and darkness and crawled out the depths of the underworld), but when it's THEY HAVE THE BEAUTY OF A VAMPIRE AND THE STRENGTH OF A WEREWOLF AND THE MAGICAL ABILITIES OF GODS AND HAVE NO WEAK POINTS WHAT SO EVER, then I don't even bother reading on. It's just a waste of my time reading about something that's used to overcompensate for something.

Pet Peeves? Sure.

- My number one is probably the run-around of "You copied so and so/stole from my character!" and the bad feelings that follow. Unless you created an entirely new species that actually belongs to you or it's blatantly obvious, I wish people would chill out. There are going to be similarities between characters, it's a given. Sometimes there are a lot of them, sometimes only a few, just like in real life. And just like in real life this can present a really nice opportunity to get things going plot wise - friends? Enemies? Who knows.

- Unrealistic female fighters. It's one thing if they're just starting out fighting and haven't developed the musculature, but supposedly seasoned and experienced fighters who are still insanely busty/curvy bother me. Fighting creates muscle and gets rid of fat; it slims or bulks up the body depending on just how you train. Large breasts are not realistically compatible with this.

- IC being taken OOC. Enough said.

- Characters that never develop. Static characters with no depth to them.

All of this pertains to Furc

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people don't apologize after running off. I don't care if you have to go or if you're bored but c'mon, let's have some common courtesy. If you got DC'ed or whatever, I'll understand too. Don't ignore me when I say hey to you the next day and act suddenly like we've never talked. There's no need to be rude.

When it comes to booms/fads, I have no issue. My baby came around during the Egyptian boom and stuck it out when the rest seemed to taper off. I hope to cling to her as long as possible.

People who are not "Whisper Friendly" or vehemently state that you better not whisper them because they don't want to talk to you or aren't interested. Then why are you even around? I mean you don't have to be my best friend but how else do I say I'd like to roleplay?

Shifters that have more than a handful of forms. Why do you need to become eight different things, let alone fifteen? Granted, my main has three, and I can understand the use of them if needed. But there's only so many reasons to become a moose, a cheetah, and a minotaur within a day of one another.

Healers. I get that they're necessary. I understand, I do. But there's a difference between healing someone/yourself when you have the energy and means to do it, and turning around every time someone lays a hand on you to instantly heal over it. A cut across the ribs sealing shut in the next post mid-fight rubs me the wrong way.

Characters that have weaknesses that come from impossible things (i.e. A dagger made from the marrow of a species of beast that lives in the center of the planet two moons over). This is done to ensure their alt will never be weakened but they can still go, "But he's not immortal!"

Characters that don't develop. The kind that do the same dumb things over and over, to gain the same results over and over, and run away from any chance to change or teach their character something new. Yet the players complain over not being liked.

That's my two cents, so to speak.

I have to agree with Beinnj on the trends thing, only with vikings. Mostly because people think they were all blond warriors :C Which, warriors fine but there were also other occupations!
And.. unless your character went out raiding and pillaging by boat, they are not a viking. Then they're just.. danish or whatever.

Kind of going on off the above, I also dislike it when people try and play characters from a certain culture and do little to no research on said culture. I mean, I don't claim to know everything about every culture, or even everything about the ones I do play, but I try and find out as much as I can before I go off and.. have my character tell women to get back in the kitchen in a matriarchal culture or something like that.

Overpowered magic. Just like everything else, magical abilities should have drawbacks and weaknesses of some kind

And characters who have too many fingers in too many pies. They're Vampire Warrior Slaver Angel Demon architect drug-dealer blacksmith jeweler translator writer artist slaver cobbler hatter animal-trainer tiger-cobra-donkeys. Characters should choose one or two things/professions and strive towards being the best in that, perhaps.

And, "purple prose" as many have said. I don't need a paragraph describing your character sitting there.

OOC/posts that are mostly thoughts. They leave little to respond to unless your character is a mind reader. But a paragraph or two of a character again, sitting there doing nothing and just thinking or making commentary on things going on around them is bbboooorrrinnnggg

Taking OOC knowledge into IC, and also IC to OOC drama and the like. The first rule is mostly like.. the other day a character started talking about an extremely private event that only happened between four people as if they had been there. Just.. no.

And this last one mainly applies to Furcadia or large, fast-paced group RPs. When people make an introduction post along the lines of... "/sits there and looks at character x". This follows two rules above the only catch is they usually get upset if you don't respond. Or when people post directly at a character... but do nothing noteworthy. like "Kitty thought Dog's collar looked really nice and looked at it but made no commentary or action to say so." And then getting upset that Dog didn't notice kitty's glance at his collar from afar.