Forums » RP Discussion » Brainstorm - How to ask for RP

I've noticed a lot of people asking for RP on the forum (including myself) and not everyone gets replies.

So to help with this. Why don't we figure out what makes a good RP ad/request thread.

What can people do to better get across what they want when asking for RP on here?

I am not that good at asking for RP clearly, but I know others are.

So ...

What do you want to see in a 'looking for RP' topic?

What do you not like seeing in them?

Generic Title vs. Descriptive Title?

Tips?

Advice?

I personally go off of how many replies there are. IF there are 10 replies, chances are it's been filled. I'm more likely to look at something that has zero replies, but sometimes I look at the other ones.

#1 Descriptive titles are a huge deal. When someone is looking at 50 posts, they are only going to click through to the ones that seem most relevant to their interests, and half the time I don't know that someone is 1) looking for RP and 2) what type of RP/theme they are interested in until I open the thread... If I open it at all.

One of the best titles I remember was "looking for evil wizards." It let me know instantly what the post was about and whether or not it applied to me, which was enormously helpful.

#2 I also believe that effort in the looking for post matters enormously. Since online RP is a writing craft, and my partner's skill and care with words will directly affect my enjoyment and immersion, if the post is barely a sentence long, contains a great deal of typos or intentional misspellings/spelling substitutes and generally looks like a dashed off text message I have no reason to believe that that person will take more care with their craft when we start a scene.

#3 Having a plot starter, direction or challenge in mind helps me to know that the poster is going to carry their weight in keeping things exciting! If someone just says "look through my characters and tell me what you want," I never bother. Ever. Character profiles can be very long and there can be tons of them... Seems like placing a double burden on me to get things started, because I have to do my homework on all their characters and then come up with an idea for a game too. Even if I get through their big list and think of an idea there's no guarantee I will be picking a character they're even in the mood to play, so all my work could be for nothing. Or I might get through their profiles and realize this person is not my style, but I couldn't have known that from their one sentence post.

So I love posts where people toss out a few possible starter ideas, so I know the types of things that will definitely interest them right now, and can make an educated guess about whether we're amused by the same types of things.


All the above things create a thoughtful post, which shows the poster's character as a human being and makes me more interested in playing with them. Otherwise it feels like they are putting no effort into starting the RP, which makes me concerned no effort will be put into the RP itself.

I concur with Kim. I like seeing concise titles with posts that are properly written, because it indicates the player likely puts some effort into their posts too. I also don't like being told "look at my characters and take a pick", because having to sift through half a dozen or more character profiles with (usually extensive) information makes it a chore.

The posts that I've responded most to are specific ideas for characters. A beautifully done seeking post by TheLily, "World of Darkness Horror" instantly drew me in; it had all the information I needed, was specific, allowed me to use an existing character or create a new one, and I didn't have to think up a whole world by myself! It got a lot of responses because it was appealing. The resulting RP is currently quite fantastic, too, even though we only just began.

I do like it when someone is bold enough to say: THIS is what I want, this setting, this plot, this goal for my character. Because then half the work of setting up a roleplay is already done. I find it super discouraging to have to trudge through days and days of brainstorming to find a common ground between two characters to start with, or even a location or goal.

It also helps when the characters that are presented for the RP have some depth to them. It doesn't work out for me if a character has 'nice, sweet, energetic' as a personality, or 'dark, deep and brooding'. There's more to a personality than just that, there should be a history to a character and a motivation behind being nice, sweet and energetic or dark, deep and brooding. A happy childhood where the character took in stray animals, and now she's studying to be a vet, or is a vet. Maybe she's socially a little inept and prefers the company of animals over humans. Maybe something happened in the character's childhood that gave him a grim outlook on life, or makes him completely stoic and brooding.

These details are key to make a character, because a personality is partially the way you were born, and partially the way you were influenced when you grew up. They define the choices a character makes, and if a character has a super generic backstory that is flat and overdone, you lose a lot of originality and drive to make the character advance in life. So when I see a character presented with bare, minimum details, I just don't feel motivated to reply or engage in roleplay with that character.

I like to see titles that give a hint to some specific want. Just asking for RP is far to general and a bit obvious on a website like this, which is dedicated to RP. EVERYONE here wants it - the question is what TYPE.

Example:
Quirky mathematician seeking Teacher/Student RP
Hunted Vampire seeks Asylum
Tragic Teenage Trope seeks Post Apocalyptic Romance

And I know it's more work to do if you're trying to use the shotgun approach and throw a lot of characters out at once, but it's probably best to take the time to at least separate them into groups that have shared interests.

Example:
Three Werewolves, looking for Dinner and Dancing
Four Pokemon, hiding from Tamers
Two businessfolk, seeking Trades

Inside the body of the request, remember that you're trying to sell us your character. Other people are paying you their time, so you need to show off what you'll be giving them in return. Netspeak, iambic pentameter poetry, an effortless "so if you wanna, PM me or something" - anything that isn't a sales pitch is something a lot of people will skip.

Example: Quirky mathematics professor Barnaby Q. Flats is seeking to teach a class! Student characters welcoming, as well as student teachers, other professors or observing parents! Be prepared for thrown chalk, drawings of triangles that sing and dance, or fire drills!

Equally, if you DON'T want something or if you have specific tastes, please put that in there too.

Example: No non-humanoids, no romance plots with teacher, RPR forums only, only sentences that start with F are allowed.

TL:DR - Put a Who seeks SPECIFIC What in the title, and put a "Who, what, where, and any Dear-God-Nos" in the body.

Kaji, that is GREAT advice about specific titles. I think people really struggle to think of good titles, or else don't even think it's important, but on a forum what you title your post make an enormous difference!

How about the situations when you are looking for multiple roleplays for different games and places? The title simply does not give enough space to write something quirky like "A dragon, an alien and most mismatched group of friends looking for allies, friends and enemies". "Band of misfits looking for allies and enemies" somehow makes it sound like one united thing... And on top, that is too long of a title as well.

What would be the main rules, attractions for a one huge looking thread that involves a lot of different characters from various settings?

It'd probably be best to separate widely different characters into separate posts, in the same way a company that sells glue and phones will have one commercial for soap, and another commercial for phones.

But that will boost the reply count, people will think I have found partners and so on. And doesn't solve catch title problem.

I didn't explain myself clearly; I don't mean that you should nest your other requests as a reply to your initial forum post. I mean to make completely separate forum posts for each of your needs.

This was a really helpful post.

Honestly, if you're looking to offer 4-7 characters, would that not feel like spamming (and annoy possible reader to see, like 3rd thread from same creator in forum, if not saying more than that)?

Sadrain, I think that if you are worried about having too many seeking threads up to fit every character that you could easily condense it all in one thread! Your title could be something catchy that tells everyone that you are looking for several roleplay ideas with a variety of characters at hand! Ex: "Seeking various roleplays with LOTS of characters!" Which might be too long. <<; You could even include an [OPEN] or [CLOSED] tag in the title to show whether or not you are still seeking other roleplayers!

In your body post you could include everything! You could easily go down the list of characters you want to rp, link their rpr, and write up a nice description for the type of roleplay you are seeking on them, the dos and donts of that particular character/roleplay and any ideas on how to begin the roleplay and rope in other characters. It also makes managing things easier since when you have found what you are looking for you could edit your first post to remove and/or add new characters and ideas!

It -might- be a really long post, in the end, but we're roleplayers and we're used to reading. It would also save you the stress of managing several threads and keep some people from frowning!

That was my original plan indeed (and has been executed once, but not without much success at drawing people in ): ), but as some people here stressed need for very catchy titles and RP style posts, and some suggested for multiple threads, I felt a bit stumped. Thank you for your input, Orange, I feel more assured now.