A lot of them will indicate if they are still Open or Closed. It never hurts to ask in the OOC Thread or Interest Thread or even send the GM a Direct Message. Even if the answer is "No, we're closed now," they might be able to direct you to another RP they know is open or they may be willing to put you on their short list for folks they will message when they start another RP.
I know I've made notes to message certain people when I get such and such an RP started and I've gotten messages from previous writing partners when they start a new RP or join an RP they think I might like.
You can but it will likely limit the number of RPs you can join. Try asking, you might be pleasantly surprised. I'm doing or at least trying to do an Arena RP which generally seems to require the use of the RPGO Discord but I'm not going back there. It hasn't been a problem so far.
I've been in a decent number of RPs here over the years and only a few of them have had dedicated Discords.
I will add more here later to explain better why I picked what I did and what I did and didn't like about the other entries later, but I wanted to get a vote up now and at least a little about the others before I forget.
It's "Violence" for me too, that's my favorite of them. Several of the stories were quite good. As stand alone entries I thought each of them told a good self contained story without leaving anything vital left unmentioned. I'd like to see continuations of Violence, The Light That Leaves No Darkness, and The Ghost in the House as I felt that while each told a self contained story each also left a hook for another story either with the same characters or at least in the same setting. Like parallel or perpendicular.
Violence gave me a little bit of a True Detective feel which is basically crack to me. The mix of the supernatural with the mundane. Just hit the spot. I also liked the sort of unfortunate stupidity of the cult leader dude and the Wiccan. Seemed very believable that people like that, particularly young and high people like that, would think they can probably pull something like that off if they try really hard.
The Light That Leaves No Darkness had a Warhammer/Dark Souls/Dark Fantasy In General vibe to me which is also like crack to me but a slightly lesser form of crack. Like it had been diluted with baking soda or something. Not quite that good good but still good.
The Ghost in The House I liked as well. The characters were all distinct enough that even though it was fairly short it wasn't too hard to keep in mind who was who despite them all being male characters. I like the idea of a guy who talks to ghosts and a vampire hunter/beastie killer and a guy named Mike adventuring around together doing weird spooky shit. I liked the dialogue with the ghost lady too. Killer shit.
Any time you are putting an event like that into a story, particularly a collaborative story, you should consider if this is something you're going to come back to or something you are just doing to try to drum up interest. Drumming up interest is all well and good, but it can be pretty clear when you are having Dirk Daring doing something horrible just for shock. Cruelty, violence, rape or implied rape, anything like that really can add to a story but it can also take away quite a bit from a story. I may not want to participate in a collaborative story if halfway through it I find out that the character I'm partnering up with has a backstory with elements like that in it. It is also easy to attempt to go for an anti-hero or dark/gritty/edgy etc etc character and end up just making someone unlikable.
I tried to do a Deadlands RP years ago now and had some issues with the taboo. It's a setting that proposes the Civil War Never Ended and changes some pretty major details of history. In this setting the South ended slavery before the North, though largely just to get military assistance from the French. Also the dead walk the earth and there are poker playing demons.
It could be a fun setting, a supernatural western, but it touches on a lot of contentious things. The Civil War, Slavery, Colonialism and Cowboys & Indians among others. There is a lot of interesting history there, but also real people and some real pretty ugly incidents. I've contacted a few people here to see if they would be cool with me running stuff by them if I ever actually do the RP, mostly people with Native American ancestors or people with more knowledge of colonialism. Then there's another way to do something like this...
Actually I'm not going to link to it as the author is still around, signed in a month ago, but there was a Western RP someone else started up where they just replaced the different races of the real world with Warhammer races, which presented obvious problems and so never really got started. I think a few of you were around for it, it pretty quickly fell apart with the question of who would the orks stand in for. Yeah.
Name: Danger, Danger Fontaine Epithet: Masked and Mustachioed Macho...Guy Age: 32 Height: 6'4" pounds of towering manliness Weight: 246 pounds of raw hard muscle slathered in baby oil Race: Human Dominant Hand: Right
Weapons- All of Danger's weapons are fashioned from cheap steel and are designed to break easily. They are carted down to the ring in a shopping car.
-A Wooden Folding Table designed for little more than being broken in dramatic fashion.
-A Chinese folding metal chair initially designed for sitting but quite useful for bashing about the head.
-A wooden kendo stick
-A Stop Sign seemingly picked up off the street
-A single live and very confused Lobster
-A Black Duct-Taped Up Baseball Bat
Equipment-
The Man Known As Danger, Danger Fontaine, wears upon his person:
Urban Colored Camo Shorts
Black and White Gold's Gym Muscle Shirt
Black and White Wrestling Mask (trimmed back to allow his mustache freedom from the confines of his mask)
Wrestling Gloves
Wrestling Boots
Red Entrance Cape
Appearance-
Danger, Danger Fontaine is a thickly muscled well tanned man and is never seen without an indulgent quantity of baby oil ensuring each and ever muscle fiber glistens under the stadium lights as does his perfectly manicured mustache. His build is best described as mercilessly powerful and massively sexual.
Physical Abilities/Powers-
Physical Ability- Danger, Danger Fontaine has inarguably perfected his craft. He is truly the picture of perfection. He is the image of intensity. The epitome of excellence. The physical manifestation of manliness. And also a generous lover, if you know what I mean. His grip is unbreakable, his strikes impeccable, his aerial game im...un...it's also pretty good.
Powers- Imagined Invulnerability - Danger, Danger Fontaine can ignore injuries that would incapacitate neigh any other man. Due to a combination of repeated traumatic concussions, pain killer use and abuse, and his massively inflated ego he can suffer great harm and continue on despite it. He is either numb to the pain due to a combination of nerve damage and pain killer use or simply able to power through it due to his own overpowering sense of self confidence. In short, while he is not actually in any way shape or form invulnerable to injury or damage he is fully capable of ignoring such damage until it becomes fundamentally physically incapacitating.
Supreme Arrogance - Danger, Danger Fontaine's massively inflated ego and additive brain damage due to regular traumatic head injury allows him to face adversaries that are clearly exponentially more powerful than he and believe he still has a very real chance of victory.
Delusion - Arguably all of Danger, Danger Fontaine's power is a result of this aspect of his mind. Despite what absurd circumstance he may find himself in and what inconceivable threat he may face, he will stalwartly believe that he is the Fan Favorite and that this is his shot at the big time. He can hear the roaring crowd. He can hear the commentators expounding over his miraculous musculature and marvelous mustache.
Unreasoning Rage - Danger, Danger Fontaine's patina of professional wrestling professionalism fades into oblivion if his mask is removed or his mustache is mussed up. Though he generally plays up for the adoring arena carefully watching his each and every match, when an opponent dares to remove his mask he loses his restraint entirely. As a great man once said, he loses his smile. Much of the posing and smiling fades away and he is left a raving animal, throwing out as many big moves as he can as quickly as he can, often to his eventual detriment.
Personality- Danger...Danger Fontaine. A self obsessed obnoxiously narcissistic professional wrestler, his greatest strength is also his greatest weakness. He is loud, because it is important that the millions and millions of fans, all slavering at the bit for just a little more Danger, hear each and every syllable of each and every word. He is self aggrandizing because who knows Danger better than Danger himself? He is light hearted and often cracks terrible terrible jokes, because he is THE MAN. He is the top, the pinnacle, the apex, the peak, the asymptote, the azimuth, the hyperbole, he is the the man and the only way to be THE MAN is to beat THE MAN and the only man who can beat THE MAN is THE MAN, which is him, thus he is unbeatable. Ask anyone, they'll tell you. In the unlikely event he is one day beaten he is magnanimous in defeat because he knows, HE KNOWS, that belt is meant for one man and one man alone. THE MAN, which is him, Danger, Danger Fontaine, aka THE MAN. The Macho...Guy.
Background- Danger, Danger Fontaine dreamed through all of his childhood of becoming a professional wrestler and eventually managed to make his dream come true. Growing up in South Dakota he knew from a young age that he was destined for greatness and the greatest greatness he could envision was becoming a massive slab of tanned and oiled muscle body slamming other, lesser, tanned and oiled massive muscle slabs for the entertainment and adoration of the million and millions watching at home. Happily fueled on by the antics of his wrestling idols, action movies, and neigh every book and training program advertised in the back of comic books, he grew muscleyier and muscleyier as his dream became an inevitable future.
He worked his way up through the indies gaining a reputation as an enormous ass, but an ass who put asses in seats. Which is the best kind of ass. Taking inspiration from his idols from America and the world abroad he fashioned for himself a number of easily recognized moves and a very recognizable physique. Muscles, Muscles, Mask and Mustache. In time he made his way to the premier federation of the United States and found great success. As well as he did he faced many injuries and eventually ended up as too big of a liability to the company to remain. This was likely a wise move as his massive ego led to him suffering many injuries that would have sidelined him if he weren't just such an egomaniac. Finally one day his undeniable superiority, ceaseless impossibly hyperbolic bragging, and need to pay some bills brought him to Undisputed Pro Wrestling.