This is a hot take (maybe) on my part, but if a person is going so far as to invite other people into a world/universe/lore they've crafted by way of making and RP, they've already handed away a noticeable degree of control to others anyways. From the point that a GM accepts another player's character(s) into the fold, absolute control is forefeited. And if a GM is too bogged down to give their own work any attention, but has half a dozen players that are able to willing to keep things going, seems a bit selfish to just pull the plug. What's the harm in having a Co-GM or two that can hold the fort while the GM Prime is busy with other life things?

If someone wants a story to move entirely at their discretion, they're best off just writing a solo piece, IMO.

Incidentally, I've personally seen more GMs with [mostly] original RPs willingly and smoothly hand the GM role to others than I have GMs running Fandom RPs. Both instances I cited of GMs denying or being less-than-amicable about transfer of responsibility were Fandom RPs, for example.

Maybe make your own RP at that point, then.

If not wanting to hand the reins of my RP over makes me selfish, then damn, I'm selfish. The only way you're going to get that co-GM spot is if you're someone I trust, like @mickilennial. Otherwise, that RP will die with me and me only.

<Snipped quote by IAmTheIsland>
Maybe make your own RP at that point, then.

Let's agree to disagree. 🤷‍♂️

Let's agree to disagree. 🤷‍♂️

Nah.

Is terribly wrong to think it a weird vibe for someone to ghost on (or openly drop from) their own RP and get upset if the people that joined decided to press on in some way, shape, or form?

If one is either too busy or too unmotivated/disinterested (especially the latter), why even care? Why fret over "losing control" over something that you've decided not to see through to the end? What's the thought process? And frankly, what's to stop anyone to pick up where tbings left off, or to reboot the idea? Last I checked, there's no rule explicitly banning that practice. How far do you go to keep your idea dead once you decide to kill it?

I can see both sides here. For instance, I can understand why someone wouldn't want to see their idea portrayed in a way they might not like by someone else because they would be emotionally attached. This is especially so if they’ve explicitly said upfront that they don’t want anyone to continue, then ethically, yes, they have some say. But that say is moral, not enforceable. Once something’s shared in a public, collaborative space, control becomes pretty blurry. Hence, why they should do what I've seen an old GM do, which is restrict, if not completely block, access to what they see as their intellectual property (e.g. taking their information off the guild). So, all in all, the best I think we can all do in this kind of situation is aim for a middle ground. If people want to respect both sides, they could:

Reimagine the setting (change names, tweak lore).

Credit the original inspiration (“based on the concept by X”).

Avoid direct reuse of their writing or world details.

That way, it’s not continuing their work. It’s inspired by their work. At the end of the day, once you involve and collaborate with others, you can’t blame them for at least wanting closure for the connections that THEY created (i.e. exact name and lore is off limits).

I did once - not long ago, in fact - see someone after getting their character app rejected from an RP, go and create a blatant and far inferior knock-off of the same RP. And in the Advanced section at that, when it was barely 'free' in terms of its' coherence and clarity.
Obviously, it didn't get very far at all. And AFAIK, the person behind it pretty much turned out to be a troll anyway, based on my own experiences with them.
But it seemed somewhat relevant to the conversation, given we're talking about people creating knock-off or clones of ideas of other people's work, and it was a relevant example of something that seems a bit... I don't know, sad and kind of lame.
Create something similar by all means; lord knows there's a lot of RPs that have very similar elements at any given time, much like how there are always 'mockbusters' when a big movie or TV Show comes out and is popular. But at least try and make an effort to make it something distinct and creative if you're actually serious about running something.

@Qia same vein as my thoughts on blurry control. At some point in the life of an RP, it can reach a state in which the players have contributed creatively, logistically, etc. as much as the GM. The world and mechanics may be of the GM's making, but the stoties and relations between characters come from the players that join and participate. There's a lot of nuance to the matter, imo; maybe worthy of it's own discussion topic.

I'd be inclined designate spinoffs as an acceptable avenue as well though, if the RP ran for a while and got deep into the plot. Maybe more easily done via 1x1, or closed RPs between the people the were involved. Hell, I'd go off site/PM style so as to keep it off the record. Deleting an RP to keep others from referencing it is, I think, a bit petty? Excessive might be a better term. Someone on a prior forum rage quit and pulled exactly that and left our group like wtf?

Here's one

Extending creative disagreements/collaborative scisms, or however you want to word it, into personal beefs/grudges.

We weren't on the same page creatively? Didn't gel in collaboration?

Why make it personal? Unless there were personal insults/attacks made, of course.

But maybe I'm off my rocker. I know I haven't always been the best in this regard.

I'm sorta infamous for both asking people for permission to 'borrow' their IP and making 'expies' of games they have that wind up very creatively different yet still show their roots.

And to be honest, I see both sides' points as well: People have the right to their RPs and IPs or their interpretations of a given IP. Permission is important.

One of my biggest pet peeves in text-based RP is actually quite common.

When it comes to original settings/worlds naturally players will be required to ask the GM(s) questions about the world they are writing/playing in to have the full grasp of everything. Unfortunately, there are people that just feel the need to ask the most trivial of questions, or worse extensively grill the GM for information that is pointless to the overall plot. Just because they are curious. I have both witnessed it as a player and dealt with it as a GM in the past and it is so annoying.

A quick example; when an NPC is from some far flung country or kingdom that has no relevance beyond the reference and yet a player wants paragraphs of detail about said country/kingdom just to satisfy their passing curiosity.

(As I said this is a common pet peeve and others have most likely mentioned it here.)

When someone pops on and asks about joining an RP that hasn't been posted in in literal months. Like, it doesn't take much skill/experience to deduce that an RP or Intetest Check that's been inactive for 6 months probably isn't gonna be looking for new players.

One small pet peeve I have is for very long (casual or advanced-level) posts: dialogue scenes can feel too dislocated. If there's a really long reply with several lines of dialogue addressing different points, it's hard to imagine a scenario in which you can reply to every line.


It really makes dialogue scenes challenging to pace, because you're not sure if your reply is in between each of your partner's lines, or a long series of lines that every reply of yours comes afterwards. It's not a huge problem, but it crops up often enough.

Here's one

Extending creative disagreements/collaborative scisms, or however you want to word it, into personal beefs/grudges.

We weren't on the same page creatively? Didn't gel in collaboration?

Why make it personal? Unless there were personal insults/attacks made, of course.

It is personal when you steal my character concepts, world building, and so forth. It's not legal plagiarism, but it is ethical plagiarism.

Interpretations of character outlines or plot premises are not so much, but I have had people lift my sheet right after I exited a game and ceded all permission to their use.

<Snipped quote by IAmTheIsland>
It is personal when you steal my character concepts, world building, and so forth. It's not legal plagiarism, but it is ethical plagiarism.

Interpretations of character outlines or plot premises are not so much, but I have had people lift my sheet right after I exited a game and ceded all permission to their use.

This is valid.

I feel like if you join an RP for any length of time, write some stories, have those stories interact with other people's stories, establish lore, and then quit for one reason or the other, it's a big ask to request that nobody use anything you created.

I mean I'll accommodate a player as best I can if they ask, but if we've been RPing together for months or years how much of your ideas are really your own? If you RP bob and would like him removed from the RP after you leave then sure, we can write bob out. But if you've made bob the center of the story, have us 2/3rds the way through an arc, have an unresolved romance subplot with May's player, and additionally want me to make the acolyte subplot you started (and everyone else added to) go away, that's gunna play out a little differently.

make a fantasy rp with an enormous, detailed world map

fill the map with (say) six factions

five of those factions are slightly different flavors of gorgeous white people

the sixth faction is the token Aladdinland where very-slightly-tanned gorgeous white people wear thawbs and turbans and scimitars

That trope can definitely be frustrating, especially when it’s done without research or care. Though sometimes in collaborative RPs, to play devil’s advocate a little, is that the distribution of cultures ends up uneven simply because people are going to gravitate toward what they personally enjoy writing, not because the GM wants a token desert culture or anything like that.

Plus, most people here are writing as a side hobby. Not everyone feels confident portraying cultures outside their own in detail, and forcing it can lead to worse outcomes, like shallow caricatures or stereotypes. Personally, I’d rather players write what they understand and enjoy than feel pressured into hitting some kind of diversity quota for a small RP group.

And honestly, in a lot of cases, I think it’s more important for the focus to be on how characters are written, not what race they are. A ton of work can go into personality, politics, relationships, lore, flaws, motivations, i.e. the things that make characters feel real. The faceclaim or cultural aesthetic is just one piece of that, not the substance, I would argue.

At the end of the day, this is supposed to be fun. A few writers choosing similar aesthetics doesn’t automatically mean the worldbuilding lacks depth. All it usually just means is that a handful of people happened to share tastes at the same time.

Woof. Thank goodness you're just playing devil's advocate, else the insinuation that race is merely an "aesthetic" and not "how characters are written" would have been insidious as fuck 🙏

Woof. Thank goodness you're just playing devil's advocate, else the insinuation that race is merely an "aesthetic" and not "how characters are written" would have been insidious as fuck 🙏

Except that would have been a complete misunderstanding of what I stated and, better yet,a little condescending tbh. No where do I say that race is just an aesthetic . I also find it a little ironic tbh considering in your original post you're the one that seems to treat race as an aesthetic with the whole "Aladdinland" bs, which literally reduces being Middle Eastern to an aesthetic fyi. So the moral grandstanding is a bit too rich here.