pugbutter

In regards to dropping roleplays and user attractiveness

>"I would write a reply to all of that but..."
>494 words
:P

IDK where to even begin with that tbh. Besides all your points being disjointed and irrelevant to each other, some are outright fallacious, like linking a direct correlation/causality between post count and thread loyalty. As a matter of fact, one of the four players who I included in that screenshot (the one who hasn't been seen in three months) was my most loyal by far, and I'm pretty sure from her status feeds that she only left because her kid is in the hospital and she has more important shit to worry about.

I guess the biggest flaw with your reasoning is that you think people act like dipshits from the get-go, and we're choosing to enter RP with them anyway. Whereas out here in the real world, with the exception of a few narcissist spergs (who I definitely avoided, so again I don't see your point), all my partners have presented themselves with more professionalism than they really possess. It's basically a hobbyist's version of lying on a résumé, so I ask again: why are you keeping all your mind-reading powers to yourself instead of sharing with the rest of us?

In regards to dropping roleplays and user attractiveness

Perhaps the problem is with you - in that you tend to accept requests from fickle roleplayers?

@Odin

This is a ridiculous sophism because if you stop and think about what you just said for about 20 seconds, you're basically telling me to read minds to solve my own problems.

1. You realize a lot of 1x1 roleplayers don't actually use the public forums, and pretty much exclusively stick to PMs on this site, right? 11 posts in 3 years isn't a lot to go by while judging their loyalty to their past projects, especially when those 11 posts are in an OOC forum like OT Discussion.

2. Even when they have an extensive posting history, you know as well as I do that public RPs fail and die as often as 1x1s, if not more so. And very often the evidence, if not outright irrelevant to them, is at least too ambiguous, too inconclusive to use as a measuring stick against this particular individual. You really have to scrutinize whether they can singlehandedly kill all the RPs they're in, or at least whether their involvement played a role in these RPs' deaths.

3. And whereas I thought it's more or less impossible to psychoanalyze text posts, where there's no body posture, facial expressions, or other forms of visual context to glean during a conversation...I guess you've figured it all out: picking up on tone and sincerity of their gestures through their text, learning how to detect sarcasm or even outright lying over the internet. Why haven't you shared this knowledge with the rest of us? I'd love to be able to take one look at a player and know from a single post whether they'll truly stick with it, or whether they're overestimating their own enthusiasm.

[+]

a few recent ones whose usernames i managed to remember

In regards to dropping roleplays and user attractiveness

There are multiple reasons people could be leaving RPs with you, though; do you move the plot too slowly and bore them? Move it too quickly and disorient them, giving them no room to invest in characters, events, and places? Do you chatter too much in OOC, or too little, making them think you're cold and detached? Do you have a foul attitude, or give off an arrogant air?

I've met with other, more selfish reasons, too: someone didn't like my character, but couldn't just man up and tell me that, so they joined the RP with me for about a week and then "subtly" ghosted me hoping it wouldn't make me mad. Two more liked the concept of the characters I'd designed, but not the portraits I'd selected. Another didn't realize that 1x1 is an equal partnership, not a voluntary master-slave relationship, and therefore decided I'm a selfish asshole for wanting to play a character who doesn't immediately, unequivocally fall in love with hers in our first meeting.

But let's assume it's my fault. What am I supposed to do about it? If it was as easy as "introspecting" then I'd have figured it out already, and worked to rectify the problem (because while I'm arrogant, I'm not arrogant enough to assume innocence by default). But these players, while abandoning your project, give you no inkling as to why, leaving you to merely guess, if the answer isn't so obvious. It could be something as subtle and irreconcilable as a misunderstanding of intentions; I wanted the post-apocalypse RP to look like Metro, but she expected Fallout while writing her CS, and she quit the RP when she realized she wouldn't get what she wants out of it.

Blaming the people who whine in the B!tch thread for failed RP projects, while certainly convenient, is not really helpful unless we're willing to communicate our specific grievances with our fellow writers. Simply saying "maybe it's you" helps no one. So until one of my past partners steps the fuck up and finds the balls to tell me otherwise, I'm gonna keep assuming my old 1x1 threads failed because the majority of RPers are fickle, easily distracted, and unable to commit. 'Cuz there's no use in me worrying over problems which could have been fixed in five minutes if they were just willing to communicate their displeasure.

Vampire the Masquerade: Paris

Probably not gonna join this after all, but best of luck to you.

Mobile F.R.A.M.E. - Seeking partners for development. (Real-robot mecha with an 80's/90's anime/RPG flair, space opera and cyberpunk elements)

@ArenaSnow He let me use a Mad Cat last time, making allowances in the lore for it to be an old, cheap, outdated model of mech that occupies landfills across the solar system. My character, being one of the better engineers in the crew, enjoyed cleaning it up and getting it back into working condition over the years.

Aristo also allowed mechs that transform into jets. That's not my style personally, but he's rather fair about the players bringing their own styles and ideas into the fold, being my point.

Mobile F.R.A.M.E. - Seeking partners for development. (Real-robot mecha with an 80's/90's anime/RPG flair, space opera and cyberpunk elements)

i'm still mad

Vampire the Masquerade

@Karos I mostly wanna be a True Brujah for the personality, really...the Clan interests me more on the philosopher-king side than the young punk brawler side. But since I'll be applying as an Elder, knowing the restrictions in advance will be helpful. Thanks.

Vampire the Masquerade

@Karos Are you down for a True Brujah, or would Temporis make him too OP?

Why did this RP never get of the ground?

@SilverRain Mind you that scroll image wasn't there in the original thread. In fact it appears he's editing the old one instead of composing a new one entirely.

Still, good steps forward so far. 👍

Why did this RP never get of the ground?

I, personally, didn't know the thread existed. You didn't advertise it very well (no interest-check, only three bumps), so I only would have found it if I dug back a few pages in the Casual RP section.

But even if I had found the thread, it doesn't offer the player much of a call-to-action. What do I mean by this?

• A significant bulk of your thread is devoted to describing the setting. Very little describes plot, or what roles the players are meant to fill in this world.
• When you finally explain what characters you want the players to play, I've already read well over halfway through the entire thread. I read this, of course, as a courtesy to you, so I could help you to answer the question you pose in this thread; if I was reading with the intention of joining it, I probably would have gotten bored and given up before ever reaching that point. This is because...
• You give the players no emotional onus. You never give them a reason to care about all these events; are they defending their homes from an invading threat? Pursuing a shot at wealth, fame, and glory? There's no tone to the RP; reading it is a sterile experience.
• Your worldbuilding offers nothing which other Fantasy RPs/worlds/stories don't. The "Emerald Coast" could belong to any medieval setting at all. Villages raided by bandits, too, are old hat.
• On the other hand, you severely limit the creativity of the players by setting guidelines like this:
  
  

  They will join the group as conscripts. This means they may have little to no formal combative training, even if mercenaries or thugs their prowess is most likely experience only.

  @ELGainsborough

  
  
  What if the players wanted to be battle-scarred veterans, or more mercenary, roguish characters? Your thread seems to forbid both of these. We're not interested in stories where we're not free to do what we want, and where our actions won't change the fate of the story.

If I think of more during a second skim, I'll edit them in.