[quote] Free Roleplay (17 Viewing)
16,381 Topics, 477,983 Posts [/quote]

Free roleplay is where I typically mentally place people who;
	[list][*]just started roleplaying
	[*]don't have a lot of time (1-liners are easier to write in a hunch than a 6k+ character post
	[*]don't feel motivated to write a lot[/list]
buy coincidentally also where I mentally place people who;

[list][*]are not very literate
[*]don't care much for prose, care more about characters performing actions
[*]judgemental as it may be, people who are lazy[/list]

People who are in free roleplay typically don't improve their writing a lot, and tend to get stuck in free roleplay. It has it's fair share of [i]characters[/i] and I don't mean IC characters, but rather, OOC characters. I know that, in reality, free RP gets its fair share of average writers, but that says nothing when every RP has at least one OOC character playing in it.

[i]On the other hand[/i] I'm not really aware of free roleplay starting any drama -- it's generally a quiet place where people rapid fire posts back and forth and that's pretty fine with me. Let the kids have their playground, I'd say, and that's pretty true for free roleplay -- it also helps curb the overflow of people who don't write a whole lot into roleplays that, well, require you to write a whole lot. I'm glad free roleplay exists, both out of my own self preservation (I don't like to RP with people who do free roleplay, sorry) and for their self preservation (they have their own area where they can have fun, and that's important too). 

[quote] Casual Roleplay (77 Viewing)
9,818 Topics, 1,750,610 Posts [/quote]

SADLY, this is the mainstay of RPG. I remember back in the day when it was a pretty nice place to hangout in, but I guess over the years either the dynamic of casual RP has changed, or I've become more pessimistic and nostalgic. Either way, where my grips with free roleplay are more qualitative and focused on writing/the actual roleplays, the issues I have with casual RP are almost entirely community based. Most issues that we hear of in the 'mainstream' issues of RP come from here and when you think about it that's not so strange, given that it has 50% of the topics free RP has at this moment, but almost 4x the posts. This is clearly where most people RP, so it's only natural that we hear about issues from this place more than others.

I feel like back in the day, there was a lot more variety in the RP's (not counting the time when literally every fucking RP was a MLP AU of some fandom) where as nowadays it's all centered around the same errr, genre's. Maybe that's just my warped vision, I must admit it's been some time since I actually joined an RP there since none of them seem to interest me anymore (maybe I'm just getting older (and probably not wiser) where as my younger self loved writing about random shit). 

Now, these issues are all.. self-inflicted and probably stem from some twisted nostalgia back to the days where I was careless in my writing and didn't really care about improving my writing. I just wanted to play Naruto and kill bad guys and be the le epic xD sensei I was meant to be. However, a real issue for me is that we've seen a condensation from free and advanced towards casual RP, where we have overflow and casual RP is not casual anymore -- with new genre's such as low casual and high casual, I often ponder why we even need an advanced and free section. 

Now, I understand that we like to categorize each other, but at that point we're needlessly making shit more complex, and it feels like a slippery slope. What are the [i]actual[/i] criteria for any category? The descriptors are already vague as can be and all defer to the [b]ALLMIGHTY POWER OF THE GM[/b] to see what the actual standards are for an RP. So if the standards for casual are already vague, what is below that, what [i]is[/i] low-casual? Is it just casual roleplay for disinterested people who can't conjure the power to write a 2 paragraph response? What [i]is[/i] high-casual? Advanced RP for people who can't conjure the power to consistently write well thought out responses? Why do we need them?

I'm afraid I don't have the answer, it'd be arrogant to pretend I do, and something tells me that there is no catch all answer regardless because some might genuinely feel that the category high-casual describes them, or perhaps there is something else. My personal hunch is that people flock to casual RP not for the standards it prescribes, but because as I mentioned before, this is where the people are.

And to run an RP you need people, it's simple economics. 

In turn, this diminishes what casual RP is (in my eyes) and makes it 'general roleplay' where you can basically post whatever the fuck you want. Perhaps this is why I don't like roleplaying here anymore -- you can have advanced, casual, and free roleplayers in one RP, and I'm not particularly fond of that.

[quote] Advanced Roleplay (12 Viewing)
1,708 Topics, 261,670 Posts [/quote]

It used to be elitist writers who feel they are better than the rest, now it's just casual roleplayers that have progressed and become better writers. The standards prescribed don't really hold up any more in my humble opinion and I think any casual roleplayer could write in advanced RP if they put their mind to it. Not everybody wants to do that. That's fine -- roleplaying is a hobby, not a job. You don't always have to improve yourself, least of all if the purpose is 'having fun.'

I actually have very little to say about this place nowadays. It seems very quiet. I don't often see new roleplays because new ideas rarely pass the interest check it feels like.

It'd probably be my go-to forum if I actually found an RP there I was interested in.

[quote]Arena Roleplay
694 Topics, 41,570 Posts[/quote]

The community annoys me greatly. I don't get the purpose of arena roleplay and despite the claims that it requires ''more skill than actual roleplay'' I've never found that to be true. It seems having a big personality and a big mouth is what matters here. It might've been a good fit for me then.

It doesn't really matter either way -- I've seen more activity here from bots than actual roleplayers. 

[quote]
1x1 Roleplay (12 Viewing)
4,079 Topics, 247,931 Posts
[/quote]

Mixed bag, can't really say anything cohesive about it other than I've had some great experiences writing 1x1 RP's and I've had some really, really bad experiences writing 1x1 RP's. The bad outnumber the good, but the few that were good were typically incredibly good.

[quote] Nation Roleplay (3 Viewing)
574 Topics, 92,592 Posts[/quote]

Actually really interested in this -- never had a RP last long enough for me to try it out, since most died once the GM realized how much work using statistics is on his end. I'd still like to try it, but it'd need to be a new game -- there's one incredibly succesful long term nation RP that I was interested in but I think I prefer reading it over anything else.

[quote] Nation Roleplay (3 Viewing)
574 Topics, 92,592 Posts [/quote]

Would also still like to try this but it's hard to find a game I'm interested in -- being new to DND dynamics and so forth I've always felt like I'm too dumb to play (probably true) but after a failed attempt at a DND campaign in my discord group, I've gotten a bit more interested in it and might throw my hat in now that I've seen how 'easy' it is to make a character.