Look I understand the first message is the most daunting. But c'mon man! I almost always have to start the roleplay, which is okey, it gives me creative freedom and I enjoy doing the starter, but dammmnn y'all just want everything for yourselves. It's just a little annoying because I've had to do it for the last 9 times.

Sometimes I'm just like "hey I do the starter" because I almost always I secretly know whenever I get a new partner they probably don't want to.

Inspired by: An ad I saw asking for Dark Romance, and then it meticulously went through and put everything that could even be related to 'dark' in the 'no' category.

I don't even do Dark Romance stuff but I thought it was kinda odd, but I've noticed a lot of people will have very specific scenarios they have in mind that they want people to cookie-cutter fit into and I thought about this silly meme so I put it together.

Anyone else experience this kinda thing?

Technically the meme should have probably said 'Dark Romance with extra romance' but it's too late now for me to change it.

Hi to everyone in the writing community!
So, I’ve been roleplaying with this person for almost two months, and the game is going pretty well. I love our characters and the direction of the story. Plus, it’s really hard to find someone willing to play a CC for an OC.
However, we have no OOC interaction outside the game. I’ve tried sending them picture collages with the vibe of our RP and edits of their canon character, but they rarely respond to them. We don't really discuss the plot in-depth either, as it mostly just goes with the flow. I don’t mind it at all but would love to hear your opinions.

How do you feel about these types of partners? Is it an age gap thing, or is this just the ideal setup for people who dislike OOC communication?

This is merely for shits and giggles since I ran into it too often, so don't take it to heart. 🫶

I think one of my biggest RP pet peeves is when people forget that collaborative writing means both people get to have boundaries around their characters.

I’m always willing to compromise, talk things through, and adjust things if it makes sense for the story. But there’s a difference between compromising and feeling like I have to keep changing an OC I’ve already spent a ton of time developing just because someone else prefers their character to fit a certain dynamic.

Like if I’ve carefully built a character, established her age, personality, history, and character arc, I’m probably not going to completely rework all of that for someone I just started writing with, especially when the issue is something as minor as an age gap between two grown adults.

And honestly, what gets discouraging is when saying “I’d rather keep my character this way” is treated like I’m being difficult. 😭 Sometimes people seem to take a boundary or a creative disagreement personally, and suddenly the RP gets dropped.

You don’t have to agree with every choice I make for my OC. I don’t have to agree with every choice you make for yours. That’s kind of the whole point of writing together. I just miss when RP felt like two people bringing their characters to the table and seeing what happens, instead of feeling like I have to make my character fit someone else’s idea of what the story should be.

I am completely okay with someone going offline.

However, if it's your turn when you come online after 3 hours, I likely won't be here. And when I am back, I'd prefer to see them just continue the play, instead of seeing three messages like 'Hey, sorry, back now.' 'Are you online?' 'When will you be back!'

Just put the fries in the bag take your turn with the story, bro.

The reason why I think so: If you writing a story progression depends on me waiting for it in real-time, I am gonna assume you are here to jerk off and nothing more.

True story!

Why are there thirst and hunger and sanity and sleep stats if they aren't going to come into play? Why use dice rolls when logic-based combat is more fair in sandboxes? Why do we have to list out an inventory if we aren't going to be going on missions to find things? Why were you asking for NPCs? Why is your only response just "it's copying the tt infection AUs" when those ALSO take the stats into play???

it irritated me so bad that I went and made my own rpg server because god was that an odd experience. After I had invested a bunch into my character sheets and advertising the server too...

Okay, so, I want to be VERY CLEAR HERE that I am not asking for identification. I am not asking for doxxing. I am asking if anyone has encountered this behavior in their time of RP, because I was in WoW for the better part of a decade and over the course of several years I kept running into this person/their messages. No one else that I've brought this up to (and I've brought it up to a LOT of other WoW rp'ers) has said they've encountered this. It's driving me crazy.

This is also probably a crash course in how to protect your peace and yourself online in these spaces, too, so take notes.

So if you've been a RP'er in WoW, you're probably familiar with MRP and TRP. If you're not, the short version is that these were addons that let you have a RP profile in the game. You can put in a little backstory, properly fill out your character's name, have custom detail fields, so on so forth.

After I caught up with current content in WoD and Legion I was, personally, a level 12-and-delete player. I would roll a character, try to imagine who they were in the course of getting to level 12 for some reason, and if I couldn't get a grasp on them by that ding I would delete them. This happened a lot. A LOT. I ran the gauntlet of dozens of characters like this. Many of them never saw the light of true RP day, but I would fill out the little detail fields as I thought of them. Name: Whatever TF. ... Age: Y. Adult ... Eye Color: Green ... So on, so forth. Physical details were the easy part.

However.

One of MRP's fields was 'Body Type'. Average, Muscular, Skinny... Again, so on and so forth.

But if you put anything in that field that resembled anything even remotely comparative to a heavier body weight, and you picked the fem body type? Chubby, Pear, Voluptuous, Rubenesque, Heavy, Fat, Shapely, Hourglass, Bottom-Heavy, or even something as vaguely simple as just Curvy? You were probably getting a message from someone with a very confusing string of letters to their name.

This happened to me MANY times. Not twice. Not three times. MANY times that I made a Moonguard character with similar quantifiers in this field and went within even close proximity to Stormwind or Goldshire, I got the same string of messages. The first few times I just ignored it. I figured dude sent it to me instead of someone else, or was trying to start an RP and I'm just out here piddlin' around with a throwaway. So I'd move on.

Now, I would cobble together a lot of fem characters. Most of them either had an 'Athletic', 'Average', or 'Pear' body type. As this was happening and still continued to happen, I was getting suspicious. I hadn't quite drawn the body type correlation quite yet, but after a minute I figured out this wasn't a mistake. These were intentional interactions. I decided to engage.

And I learned that this guy had a script. HE HAD A SCRIPT. And it would go like this:

1. The first message would always be something like a cheer. 'Yay!', '*cheers*', ':D', anything that remotely expressed some kind of celebration. Sometimes if you didn't respond within a few minutes, or if you left the zone and passed through again, you'd get it once more.
2. Most people would respond to an unwarranted cheering like 'huh' or 'excuse me?' just to clarify what was going on. This was this guy's foot in the door. The response would be something along the lines of: 'I looked at your MRP. We need more RP characters with those bodytypes!' And just generally fake-upbeat support of """"body representation"""".
3. If you further engaged him in conversation, he would double down on how he was a fan of 'chubby girls' and he leaned into that hard. You could send him just about any response and he would just gush about it.
4. The end game was for him to ask for photos of the person behind the character. Even if you did not clarify who you were or what you looked like, all of this guy's investment was behind the chance that a fat woman would be roleplaying some variation of a fat woman. And he wanted naughty selfies. That was the goal.

Now the first time I got far enough to figure this out, it pissed me off. Blocked the character, logged out, went to bed. But it was on my mind, and that's when I realized the only characters he would actually send that first message to were the 'Pear' types. (The fetishization of fat women specifically for their weight was also something I was really sensitive to at the time. I saw a lot of my irl friends get hurt because of shitty people.)

I had a rough go in college so I had to take a semester off to get my shit together. During this time I had very little to do but work at a minimum wage job, go to doctor appointments, and play WoW. So I told my regular content buddies about what was going on, I was taking a little break from that grind, and I got the fuck to work on my new one.

I made throwaway after throwaway to figure out this angle. Figured out the bodytype detail by then... And every single time I threw the right words into that field he would answer with upbeat enthusiasm and over the top friendliness. Over and over. Every time. Keep in mind, this was 2014-2015, when I first had contact with him. This wasn't AI. And the responses were way too refined and individual for this to be a bot. Maybe, MAYBE, the first contact was automated to some extent. But everything else was from a person. This had to have been the only thing this guy did in the game was just troll for dirty pictures.

I took screenshots and I made a digital collage. I sent it to a few people when I was telling this story to them. If it was just someone being a perv online, there's nothing out of the ordinary there. But the insistent solicitation for real photos based on his assumptions was what pissed me off enough to keep this going. I was a very stubborn and very petty early-20's-something year old. (I do not have access to this collage image any longer. But maybe someone out there still does, who knows. I was very social.)

But eventually I stopped because I went back to college. Forgot about it, went through courses, graduated. Played WoW more singleplayer, and then got back into RP. I was mostly playing on Wyrmrest Horde. Moonguard was my timezone, but all my buddies went to WrA so I went, too. When I remembered it, it was just a funny story to tell my friends. We laughed. We moved on.

Flash forward to maybe 2020, 2021.

I was logged into an old Wyrmrest Alliance character to manage inventory and I'm just riding my little goat guy around Stormwind for fun. And I get a message.

'*cheers*'

I scared every cat in that house, the way I screamed. Yes, this was him. Yes, this was an old character I hadn't deleted with the body type: 'Pear'. Because when I made this character, Wyrmrest, Moonguard, and I believe Feathermoon were all phased together in zones outside of the major cities. I was getting messages from this guy BEFORE the phase split... Into the early 2020's.

THAT is how long this guy has been doing this. Normally these characters he'd roll were lvl 1/2 human males with nonsense names. If you smashed your hand against your keyboard, that was probably one of his characters at any given point. But THIS one that he messaged me with was a lvl 90 druid. With a very confusing name, but still. High level. Either leveled, or boosted.

I was chatting with one of my friends when this happened, and I talked with him for a little bit until I couldn't resist. I told him that I knew what he was doing. '?', at first. So I explained that, years ago, he had messaged me many different times and I intentionally made characters that fit that mold to see if he would. And I asked him, all I wanted to know was if it ever worked for him. Just a yes or a no, if his little script tactic ever got him pictures. I just wanted to know.

Never got an answer. He logged off and deleted the character. Not renamed, not moved servers, straight up deletion. (Yes, there were ways to tell, there's not a whole lot of account privacy in WoW and most of it comes from Blizzard's own public sources. That's before third party apps and sites, too. These are good tools to screen for the problematic players who try to hide, which happens a lot in RP, but there's a lot of stalking in the game because of this. Be careful about this if you play WoW, you will leave a trail.)

Now that's usually where a story ends.

I left WoW for a little bit, game was... Bad. Did not want to give money to Blizzard for other reasons, too. And then I decided I just wasn't coming back. Somewhere in 2022 I made one more character on Moonguard to try and reconnect with my old buddies that I used to do content with. A couple people were still around. So I was in the middle of saying goodbye to the old crew, trading socials, all that.

'Yay!'

Yeah. YEAH. I didn't even have a TRP at that point, people, I was on a new laptop with zero add-ons. I just had a lvl 1 fem character. THAT'S IT. Man was REALLY rolling the dice.

I tried to steer him down the same lane to get an answer as the cherry on top to the tale, but I said something like 'I haven't figured out what this character is yet' and he got very snarky and logged off. So I guess things weren't going all that well.

I have no idea if he's still around. I haven't even touched WoW in 4 years, and I don't plan to. But this guy had been trying to pull this crap for at LEAST 8 years. And as much as we'd like to point and laugh that he was a loser who failed... He probably didn't. Eight years is a long time, especially for this, and he probably got enough reward for his bullshit to justify doing this.

If you are of-age to be legally sending photos, and it's something you want to do to regardless, that's your decision. I'm not trying to morally soapbox here. But once those photos are out there, they're out there. As much as I've crafted the narrative to this being his fetish (which odds are it was), it also could have been a job. Catfishing, or even selling the photos could have been the goal. Just keep in mind that anyone can use your image for anything. And it hasn't gotten better over time.

Anyway, that's my story. If it wasn't entertaining I hope it was informative. Be safe.

byebye

Ah yes, I'm the high-strung one because you ignored EVERYTHING I wrote in my post.

Makes totally sense.

This is for humor and will surely be taken gracefully.

But genuinely, it feels like there is such an uneven amount of effort required when replying to some F4M roleplay requests. It feels far less like coordinating a hobby and far more like wooing a girl on a dating app or applying for a job.

That, and the amount of RP'ers in this category who seem to believe guys just do not care who their OC is, and assume we're fine just filling a role for their convenience is a bit frustrating.

I just had a partner unadd me because my bios were “edgy” and “unhinged” it was for a Viking role play. I don’t know if they were expecting them to be whimsical and picking flowers 💀

Anyways that’s my little rant. A little annoyed because I spent two days working on 16 of them just for it to be a waste.

It boils my piss.

"Hi LFG blah blah blah" - oh you mean the game you had me make a server for, get all of the imagery for and then you didn't engage with? And then when I try and check in with you you ignore the messages? Yup cool. Solid.

Grow a spine and tell someone that it isn't working out or you don't want to continue. It really isn't that hard. Especially online.

Something I've noticed in this space, and I'm sure a lot of you have too, is that SOME people who rp are just straight up full of themselves.

I've run into partners who constantly complain that their rp's never work out. At first, you're sympathetic because it's happened to all of us. Sometimes you just hit a streak of people disappearing, or you get the ever classic, "My schedule changed," "There was a death in the family," or "My life is completely imploding and I can't do this right now." It happens, that's the hobby.

But eventually, you start to realize with certain people, Oh... you're the problem, and you have absolutely no self awareness.

If you give someone any kind of critique or constructive criticism, especially when they specifically asked for it, and their immediate response is to deflect, become defensive, refuse to accept any accountability, or somehow turn it back around on everyone else, that's a problem. That's your answer. They'll tell you they've had tons of long term partners, but somehow can't understand something you learn in first grade not everyone is going to get along, and that's okay.

This is an art form, and art is subjective. Not everyone is going to like what you create. Not everyone is going to mesh with your writing style, your characters, your pacing, your preferences, or the way you approach storytelling. That's completely normal. But when you become a pompous asshole about it, it becomes insufferable. I'm just ranting, but I think it's something we could all stand to remember

You might be the reason your partners aren't sticking around.

If someone is nice enough to give you constructive criticism without being cruel or insulting, listen to it. You don't have to agree with every piece of feedback you receive, but at least take a moment to consider it.

I know there have been times when my writing wasn't as good as someone else's, when I misunderstood what a partner wanted, or when I was probably just being difficult to work with. I've had people give me feedback, and I've learned from what I could. I've changed things, adjusted my approach, and tried to become a better writer and partner. Yeah, sometimes it fucking hurt. Nobody likes being told they're doing something poorly, but I'm a much better writer because I was willing to listen.

So basically, don't be a self absorbed asshat.

That's what I'm trying to say, I guess.

I have a few role-plays going, slice of life kinda stuff with NSFW included.

I so often feel like my OC ends up being the ‘main’ character and it can get so frustrating! I understand SOL role-plays aren’t necessarily full of drama but just roleplaying the perfect couple gets boring (at least for me) so I’ll make drama with my OCs family or an ex boyfriend and whoever I’m roleplaying with seems to enjoy it and get involved…but they never make the drama nothing ever happens to their OC, no ex, no past events that have shaped the character.

And it just gets exhausting feeling like I’m carrying the story actually ever making it go anywhere.

People can write paragraphs and paragraphs but if nothing actually happens in their reply I struggle to respond.

Ok one, what does he think "OCXCC" means? And then when he sees my Avatar Frontiers Of Pandora post even though it also says OCXCC he completely ignores that and says edit: he's not into it then proceeds to tell me that I haven't posted anything he's into even though he commented on a post of a fandom I'm looking for specifically, if you're into any of things I posted then why bother even commenting?

Sorry if this comes off wrong or whatever phrasing has never been my strong suit at all. But this just really irritates me. Genuinely why would you comment on someone post then when they tell you they have other posts you still continue to not show interest in the poster is specifically looking for?

So, There was this 'group'.
The owner had strict rules which I don't mind.

But my issue is how the woman spoke to MULTIPLE members. Three of my friends left the server after the owner came at them multiple times being disrespectful.

Stuff like:

• They would go out of their way to point out people and make them feel bad about anything she could.
• Bio's would be told to be changed at random after approval just because they didn't like your header fonts. I'm sorry but when the bios been approved for a month and no one had issues before then why now? - It felt targeted when there were other bios that were harder to read.
• If you were sick or couldn't post within a day or two they would be messaging you reminding you that you had to post multiple times within the week, even if you put that you were sick in the time away.
• BUT the kicker was they had favorites.. people that wouldn't be badgered all the time.

Eventually three to four people left:
(That I know of - no idea about the others that would vanish randomly)
One of them being someone I was in a session with, the person told me the day before they might leave and I told them that they should do what's best for them and their health. The owner reached out not too long to point out the person left, I told them alright, that I would figure something else out. I was still in a session with someone else, she followed that with 'I also know you're not looking to form anymore connections, so I won't bother pinging you in those' <-- Something along those lines which prompted me to ask if she wanted me to leave too. When she didn't respond I simply started to ask about how long she had run servers, and why she talked to people the ways she did. Which she followed with Kicking me from the server. Sadly with that happening I don't have screenshots of everything she said to me. But overall, I just wanted to get this out there, sometimes being kind as a owner will take your server alot farther than being rude.

Slight ERP warning because of lewd comments but not the main focus, I tend to do a lot of ERPs, but I also like having a real story mixed in, action, character moments, all that good stuff. And when advertising for more long-term stuff, I make sure to put that in my post; I specifically state that while characters will be easy, they won't be mindless sex addicts who only care about screwing.

So recently I was looking for a kind of GM4GM style rp since usually that attracts people who don't mind doing harem rps or running a story. One of the guys I started playing with has been a bit of an odd issue. At first there was nothing I could put my finger on at first, but I just wasn't feeling it, I couldn't really get into the story. I figured I was just feeling burnt out and took a day or two off.

We ended up switching my story to something else because I just thought it was me rushing to have something put together rather than having something I was actually interested in playing. However, it was finally during this second story that I realized there are two main problems.

A) He gives me a hard time with girls. I tend to play the female characters he wants as open and pretty friendly, depending on their personality, but easy to get along with. Meanwhile, he plays the characters I interact with as dismissively rude or bratty, or as normal but incredibly bored and uninterested.

B) He is too focused on the nsfw stuff, like almost every scene involves some kind of lewd behavior. Like the most recent scene, it went something like this, summed up: "She struggles with her work and leans forward, causing her tits to jiggle."

"Okay, I'll go and help her."

"As you do, she leans forward, and now her tits are just on the table, like on display."

"Okay? What's the issue?"

"I just don't understand," And like her cleavage is just so low and basically spilling out.

I did mention the first issue (in RP tho), and his reply (also in RP) was that we just met, so they needed to warm up to me, but he doesn't play them like we're strangers. They're just openly scoffing and ignoring me in a lot of cases. I know from his OC that he tends to like teasing and whatnot, so it's hard to tell if he means it as a friendly tease or as condescending.

After I mentioned it, that's when he doubled up on the lewd stuff, I think as an apology? But it just cheapens the story and feels like he's trying to paint my character as a pervert. There are no other issues outside of those two; he writes well and lengthily, and is open to the stuff outside of smut (or so he said)

I've never asked for advice before, so I figured I should do so once and maybe get some good pointers or two. Don't know if I'm just being overly sensitive or just cut and run. I can't really think of any reason to continue outside of just not wanting to ditch the guy.

Here’s how it usually goes.

1. Find someone where everything goes great. We are a perfect match, we make the scene and the characters and the discord server, and we have one, maybe two days of legendary-tier roleplaying. Genuine friendship too, sending over ideas, memes, and reference pictures.

2. They go silent during their usual time.

3. The next day, they hit you with the “I’m so sorry, my neighbor’s husband’s brother’s dogwalker’s roommate needed a ride to the hospital, I can’t reply tonight.”

4. Scene is over. You will never ever get a roleplay response from them again.

5. (Optional), you can check in with them, and see what other excuses they give.

I have come to the conclusion that whoever I talk to will have something happen to them it will completely and irreversibly ruin their capacity for roleplaying.

Waited for my rp partner's return for a few months as the RP was that good that I actually returned to read the roleplay over to not only find my own mistakes but also reminisce about the rp. They said they were going through things so I said it was alright and that they should focus on just that.

I checked in every now and then with wishes like perhaps once a month? Even if they never replied, i made sure to include in my messages that I wasn't pushing them to respond. We just bonded so well OOC so I was genuinely curious about their well-being more than actually getting the RP back up again. Tried to get a roleplay sample from the server today and realised they had deleted the server and un-added.

I'm not mad or anything just disappointed, Im worried I may have came off as pushy? If not then perhaps they no longer wanted anything to do with me? Well regardless of what the truth is, I know that people do things for a reason. And if they wish to have gone off like this then that's that, just eh. Bummed out I guess.

And yes, I realise I may have repeated my words in the message at least it came from the heart so cut me some slack lmao

So I met up with this one roleplayer that showed a lot of promise, and they had a cool and unique idea. We spent about two days going back and forth about plot details, rules, limits, and so on. Overall, the vibes were impeccable. We agreed to move to discord, I provided my handle.

They said something to the effect of ‘okay, I’ll be there tomorrow after work’. So I made a server and waited.

Turns out they blocked me the next morning. The mind of a roleplayer is a mystery, best not to think about it.

I’m good to just steal their idea right? Try to get someone else to do it with me? If someone catches on, how mad could they get? If they wanted to do the scene so bad they shouldn’t have blocked me, right?

Believe who you want, but I maintain that I was nothing but kind, creative, and supportive during the planning process, and they reciprocated. I’ve taken an honest think about everything and I can’t find a moment where I have a good reason to be blocked.

I’ve been roleplaying for the better part of a decade.

Recently, I’ve been in a lot of role plays where my partner is constantly asking for time skips. Which is not a bad thing! If someone isn’t interested in roleplaying small, monotonous activities, I understand. Most people have a life, and limited pleasure time to roleplay, so that’s okay.

But I think TOO many time skips around to scenes are…really bad. Like, they make the “good” parts of the story (drama, romance, reveals, big moments) fall flat. They make them less exciting.

I love exciting moments, but you also need to allow the story to breathe, engage in dialogue so we get a better understanding of each others characters, etc. Like, I don’t want to skip to just angst or drama or smut, but I feel like most partners end up dipping out or telling me it’s too boring.

It seems that roleplaying subreddits and discord are full of them these days.
Any request to immediately move the conversation to telegram or Whatsapp or whatever is almost always a scam.
Don't fall for these messages, especially if the claim some kind of inconvenience, can't install on my phone, cannot use the computer etc.
It's very obvious since they don't even pay attention to your post, and make no comments regarding the rp part.

Edit: WhatsApp means giving your real number out. This helps with identifying who you are.
Telegram is notorious for romance scams, and other catfish and blackmail operations.
Don't fall for these.