Forums » Smalltalk » Knowing your limit for number of RPs

Hey all. I've recently taken on a number of new RPs and joined some new groups, which is really fun and exciting! However, college is in session, and while I'm on top of my schoolwork now, the semester has only just begun. I've never been in this many simultaneous RPs at once before and am loving every bit of it, and while I'm tempted to start even more, I want to avoid having too many and then needing to cut back and disappoint people (myself included). I tend to get excited when I'm RPing and can never have enough of it, but I know that I have limits. I just don't know where they are yet and don't want to overextend myself.

This gets to my question: What's a good way to gauge how many simultaneous RPs is enough for you? It sounds like a silly or immature thing as I'm typing it out, but as I sit here trying to quell my desire to reply to two more LFRP threads, it's something I'd rather like some advice on. Obviously, staying off the LFRP forums would be the first step to avoid straining my RP muscles, so don't bother mentioning that. I may have gotten distracted by a couple of non-romantic meet-cute prompts from the event going on, that's all...

Edit: Just realized this may be better suited to RP Discussion. Oh well.

Trial and error?

I try to follow a rule of thumb that I have to be caught up on replies to ALL of my RPs for at least 3 days in a row before I will start another one.

I didn't follow that recently and currently owe at least 4 responses. I haven't been completely caught up since about Christmas (which was the culprit as I had extra time that week cause work was super slow since everyone was on vacation! Plus some of my existing RPs slowed way down or completely paused that week...)

Of course, that doesn't stop me from browsing the LFRP forum once in awhile..... Stay strong!! LOL

Definitely takes time to figure out. When I first joined I had like 30 rps and was always on RPR, not getting my work done, found myself over whelmed. Even though I enjoyed them, it was almost too much enjoyment! I was never doing anything else and I started getting burnt out.

Yet when I had only 5 rps, it wasn't enough to keep me busy when I had finished my work for the day.

I currently have about 16 rps, and it's a little much for me admittedly. I am finding myself avoiding my work and replying to the rps - so I might cut down one or two and see if 14 is a good number.

Something that helps is dividing rps into a reply time schedule.

I have three sections in my inbox labeled.

'Everyday replies' people in this section get at least one reply everyday.

'Twice a week' people in this section get at least one reply two days a week.

'Once a week' people in this section get at least one reply once a week.

Sometimes I get more, but I never go under the minimum unless I am having a particularly busy week.

I think that everyone is different. Everyone works differently, I know that I have a much higher capacity than many of my peers, what with having full time school plus two part time jobs while sustaining 30+ RPs over Rpr and discord without much of an issue, replying to everyone in at most two weeks pretty comfortably.

Because everyone is different, the best thing, which has already been stated, is trial and error.

Pick an arbitrary number for yourself, for example, 15, and stay on that number for about two weeks or so. You can gauge if you are too overwhelmed or not and tweak the number from there.

I know my personal limit comes at around 45, but I know that’s a lot higher than a lot of people I know.

However, that doesn’t mean I keep RPs that are starting to feel stale. I keep track of RPs that consistently lose my interest and usually try talking to my partners about it to plot a bit more or fix the issue. However, if this is the fifth time or so that I do this, then I would probably consider dropping an RP.

Your method might be a bit different but a bar of measure for dropping an RP is important in your personal regulation

I just accept as many as possible, and reply as I get them, no matter how many I accept its never really an issue cause if I can't get to responding to that one at the moment I can get back to them later

I would definitely err on the side of fewer rather than more. Because I got myself into that problem and now people who I thought I would be able to reply every few days to, are waiting a week or more and it bugs me because it's not a reflection on the quality of the RP, just on my physical and emotional energy at the moment. So yeah. I managed to get into like 30 somehow and so I am always owing someone a post, but I just can't be the character that day, so it's a drag. Good luck!

I prefer fewer longer rps over a bunch of crappy short ones that don't get anywhere.

I am just really bad about telling people when their character or rp style bores me.

However, If I and another person enjoy rping together, I do not mind doing multiple rps with that person. So far I am rping with a few people whom fit that description.

It depends. Since I am a working adult, I usually accept all roleplays but tell them that I may not be able to reply every single day right away. If I need a break, I will tell my roleplay partner and then go offline. That way if I am getting tired and I need to create a presentation for work it won't be awkward because they already consented. Hope this helps!

I have a lot of free time but I tend to try to limit myself to 1 per character when i'm super busy, 2 at most per character or I get REALLY confused.

Right now I think I have about 8 active her plus a huge long term one elsewhere and 2 going on on discord.

But the discord ones are like one line casual things I don't have to put much thought into and are still fun little distractions.

I admit though, I kinda took on a bunch of new ones in the new year after like 6 weeks of no replies from several partners and assuming they'd abandoned me but then 2 of them came back lol! And i'm like "oh no!" but also happy because I was enjoying those rps but now it's like "nghhh overwhelmed a bit"

I can juggle quite a few characters simultaniously but others can't, you know your own limits.

For me waking up to 6 replies to get to makes me panic a little, but I can get them done throughout a day if I just set aside half an hour to do so. Replies don't take me that long to write (i'm very much a "it'll do" kind of reply person. So long as it drives stuff forward it doesn't have to be perfect)

But the thing is, for me at least, a lot of my rps fizzle out and I hate then having to go find new ones to replace so having a brief period of a lot of rps knowing about 1/3 of them will drop out after a month or two works better for me than having 1 or 2 at a time.
It also means that when those 1/3 fizzle out it's not quite such a huge loss and doesn't depress me as much because man, I don't take ghosting WELL at all. It really does trigger my anxiety something chronic so having more rps is like a buffer, a protection to give me something to lean back on. Kinda like having a big pile of pillows to land on rather than just a couple. If one is removed from a big pile there's still something to break your fall.

thing is also that as others have mentioned, just because you can reply every day doesn't mean all your partners will. I'm online most days so if i'm feeling up to it and not distracted by something else I can get replies out fairly quick and quite often will end up with an hour or so of back and forth from one or two of my partners because our timezones line up.
but I have others who'll give me one reply every few days, or once a week.

the less frequent repliers mean I can have more rps going at once because I have time to think and reply and all that.
I think if I had like 8 every few hours repliers i'd very quickly get overwhelmed and stressed.

So instead I have like 4 who might give me a reply every few hours when they're not busy. 1 who's weekly at best and who I have to summon a lot more energy to reply to because they're a very very long post kinda rper and I have to psyche myself into that style of writing, and a few who are every few days. There's one or two who are sporadic too, as in, I have no idea when i'll get a reply. I might get one daily for 2 days then a week without and so on.

Thankfully I suppose i've been rping as multiple characters simultaniously for years on various forums so i'm quite good at switching character/personality really quickly but I know there are people who need to "get into character" or need time to switch. Not everyone can apparently just play 12 characters in a single rp without problems lol. (I might be nuts)

I'm bad at saying no to people though, so yeah.. that's also a problem lol.
and when there's a lull I get bored and take on more rps to fill the void even if the lull is only temporary hahaha, whoops?

Yes, this! I had time over the holidays and made commitments for 2019 when I probably shouldn't have. I'm slowly working at getting back to being caught up, but it is an uphill battle right now. I've had to stay out of both LFRP forums because I see something and the idea light goes on and... well you know the rest.

I agree. I think trial and error is pretty much the only way for someone to judge how many RPs they can take on. However, don't trust my word for it because I've got no limits (currently running 22 active RPs... Oof). But I still agree.