Forums » RP Discussion » Practice Avoiding Ghosting Others

Oh, I hadn't even noticed! I'd actually forgotten which board it was even in, so I'd been looking at Smalltalk when I went and did that..

What a terrific idea! I’m really glad I read this thread as I was feeling concerned about my own habits being viewed as ghosting. It takes me a really long time to reply to OOC chatter because my time is limited and I focus primarily on rp and I know I’ve bothered people with that trait. I’ll try this in the beginning next time! Thank you!

I actually like this thread because that is what angers me about rp..i get ghosted I mean if they don't want to rp with me all they can say is "I don't want to rp anymore" that is it I won't even ask questions

I hope this doesn't count as necro posting but... I wanted to thank!

Thank a fellow player who for a reason or another stopped answering me all along. Of course I got sad initially, we all do, as I was really into the game and eager to see what would happen.

As I tried to overcome my own rp-heartbreak I created characters to fill the slots left behind, created complicated plots and beautiful relations. This started a chain reaction of many more characters, I started drawing them, I drew a lot since that, over 50 fully colored pictures this year alone and a freakaton of concept arts and writings. I am in love with what I have done and I feel fulfilled!

I wanted to thank you, beautiful unknown person of the internet, for taking your time to RP with me, you pushed me to better study the lore and attune my writing skills to a new level and you caused a major change in my life even in your absence. I hope life is treating you kindly and that you find the best of luck in all your future endeavors!

I'd like to see fewer people agreeing and more people practicing being on either side and how to better go about it.

Practice line for people:

"Hey. It's been months, it's okay if you're no longer interested in continuing, I would just like to know for certain so I can put the RP to bed and move on."

What's your response?

I know this is an older thread (though pinned). I just stumbled upon it by happenstance while wandering the forums after being.... Kind of ghosted? I'm quite new. I've only been here a few days, and it was much more jarring than I had thought it would be to find out my RP partner at the time wasn't interested anymore. In my experience, it's always the RPs you're especially excited about too!

I asked how they were doing and if they wanted to continue, because I had seen them advertise in the "find RP" for the same RP genre we had just been RPing ourselves saying that their partners either weren't responding enough or at all I believe. Since they hadn't replied to our RP recently I put two-and-two together, sparking my message to them.

They replied quickly saying they just weren't into it at the moment. They liked the plot and definitely wanted to continue, but weren't interested in it at the moment. They added that they might reply again.

I just said, ok and if they wanted to switch things up within the plot OOC to feel free if they chose to reply again.



I haven't had as much luck here as I had hoped.

Ghosting refers more to when the person just vanishes, and even when you reach out to them, they don't respond, or maybe even block you.

That isn't to say you have no right to speak up or anything, or that your feelings aren't valid. I'm sorry you feel you've gotten off to a bad start. We all go through periods like that, I think, where things just don't seem to be working out. I hope your experience improves soon, if it hasn't already.

Edit - Have you ever suspected that someone may have just baited you by feigning to want to RP and be all into the OOC planning and such for over a week and say they're ready to write as soon as they get a starter, then you write and send a starter and you are met with silence in both the IC thread and OOC thread? I get the feeling I was baited all along and they never planned on RP'ng, or my writing is really 'that' bad.

From my experience, this sort of ghosting seems to be a phenomenon that happens a lot here on RPR. (likely due to the quantity of my activity here vs other places) Ghosting in one form or another seems to happen so much here that I've accepted it as a 'norm' of the site. I just shrug it off and move on to the next RP possibility.

I mean, someone just blocked me rather than telling me they wanted to stop the RP. I assume that's what the line through the name means at least. It seems like the turnaround here is pretty intense from what little I've seen already, but from what I'm reading it sounds fairly normal to experience this?

That actually means they deleted their entire account. Not sure if that makes ya feel better, but chances are good it had nothing to do with your RP.

Yeah, lines through character names means the character was deleted. If the character was not anonymous and the line is through the account name as well, then that is the nuclear option and the whole account was deleted. I had a case last yeare where I awoke to find the character name of a long-running RP was deleted. The account name was still active so I asked them if there was a problem. They never answered me. The account is still active to this day. That is ghosting.

If you are blocked you will get a message saying you can't message the person because they blocked you, but not until after you write the message and try sending it.

As mentioned, a line through the name means the character/account has been deleted. This typically has nothing to do with any specific RP attempt and can have any number of roots; person decided RPR wasn't what they expected, person had already been on the fence about leaving and something pushed them over, someone else (overbearing parents, partner, etc) forced them to delete the account, they felt it was necessary to help them focus on something else (homework, job/job hunt, etc), or other things. And yeah, blocking without a word and leaving without a word (even if there was a perfectly valid and important reason for it) does count as ghosting. Basically, the key thing is that you don't get any reason or responce: they don't message you, they don't leave a note on their account, they don't respond to attempts to contact them, it's just silence, regardless of whether or not they continue to hang around the site.

The goal of this thread is to help those who might be nervous or something to speak up so they aren't ghosting others. To encourage them to let folks know if something isn't working, if they need to take a break, if they misjudged something and need to drop the game, etc. The thread is for them to practice how to phrase things, practice turning things down, and hopefully see that it is both safe and desirable for them to do so rather than just going silent. This thread is for those who are worried about ghosting someone and trying to get better.

For those who want to avoid being ghosted, the main takeaway is to express yourself to partners in ways that let them know that communication is desired and safe. Folks don't always actually have a choice about ghosting, but for those who do, very often it happens because:

1. They are shy/nervous about dropping or asking to change a game
2. They have actually been attacked in the past for needing a break, or for wanting to leave a game, etc
3. Something real or inaccurately perceived is telling them that others don't like them, making them feel the need to drop out/hide

And the best way to correct these things is warm communication, reassurance, being open yourself, etc. It won't fix everything, but it can help. And if you can be honest with these things and really understanding, not just tiptoeing around, then it might hurt a little less when you get ghosted, too.

I'm not sure ghosting happens here more than anywhere else, really. I think we just talk about it a little more openly than in some places. I've also seen, sometimes, folks jumping to the conclusion they've been ghosted after, like, two days of silence, when a lot of our players only post a few times a week or a few times a month, and some even less frequently than that.

I realize this thread is old, but thank you for posting it.

I used to be a serial ghoster (including the past times I've used this site to RP). It's a problem that I completely recognize I have, and one that I have been - thankfully - getting better at (particularly in the last year). I highly doubt any of my old partners on here remember me, but on the off chance they do and happen to see this post, I sincerely apologize for my rudeness.

I think the suggestions listed here will help me in the future, both on-site and off-site. I get so paranoid when I tell someone I wish to drop a RP (or when I'm too busy to continue), so I end up just abandoning them. That's not fair for them, or for the RP itself. Hopefully using some of these lines when/if the need arrives will help me finally kick this bad habit for good.

Hey, ghosty, I've seen you're active elsewhere.
I'm officially killing this RP since you won't do it yourself.
Don't prompt me for another one, and in the future, just tell people you're uninspired at the moment.

Harsh? Sure, but if you don't call out the ghosts they'll start thinking they can get away with it.

I'd encourage being gentler and not so accusatory first. There can be plenty legitimate reasons may appear to or actually ghost, including things which they may have little to no control over and may already be causing them plenty of distress.

That does seem pretty harsh.

How long til you make that judgement call? For myself... there's roughly a zero percent chance of me replying to everything I owe responses to in a single sit down at the computer.

So it's entirely feasible I might reply to a good number of public threads while some of my PMs sit... waiting, but not forgotten... for at least several days. Sometimes stretching into weeks.

Though, I guess if the delay is stressing my partner out that much, I'd rather they pull the plug. Cause chances are good I'll do it again next time I get busy.

I agree with Zelphyr about being gentler.

Another thing to keep in mind is that being “active elsewhere” is not the same as having the muse to RP or write a reply. Chatting and bantering OOC or playing the IC forum games are way easier for me to mess around with when my muse is low. And sometimes playing all those games kickstarts my muse.

realistically, if I wanna ghost I'll ghost.

Same.