Do you find it hard to maintain a good roleplay?

[Sigma 768]

Because so far, I'm finding it hard.

 

I've been playing the role of dungeonmaster in my first roleplay, Descendants of Equinox, and I'm finding it hard to make the roleplay something people would want to read. Here's a good example of what I mean:

 

When you're making something awesome, it's better to get not-so-awesome things that go well together instead of standalone awesome things that don't go well together. Which is tastier, a steak with various spices, or ice cream mixed with meat loaf inside a bowl of cereal and soda? Obviously the steak, right? Well, when you compare these polar-opposite dishes to a roleplay, what I'm typing about becomes obvious. I understand that I can't mould people's original characters and personalities like I could in a fan fiction, and I try my best to give the people I'm roleplaying with as much freedom as they can without derailing the whole thing; but I can't allow for there to be a human with a machine gun, a lunar-republic spaceship up in the sky, and for Doctor Whooves to appear in his tardis all in the same roleplay. Don't get me wrong, all of these concepts are awesome, but in their own way. They simply do not go well together.

 

Another complaint I got was that I wasn't giving someone's original character nearly as much

action as the others. Well, just because you have a pound of steak on your plate doesn't mean you should have a pound of pepper on top of it. Spices are delicate. There are nearly tasteless ones that you need to add a lot of to get a good flavour in, there are really strong spices that you can only use in small quantities or else it masks the flavours of the other spices, etc. You simply cannot have an equal amount of everything.

 

If you still don't understand what I'm talking about, then this episode of My Little Pony will explain everything.

 

I hope I'm not being a control freak.

Edited May 25, 2014 by Asterisk Propernoun

[C.C. 66]

Yes. Yes I do.

 

also I have to put really tiny font for being able to post this and if you can read this then lol.

[QuickTime 20]

roleplaying is like acting. to do so you have to make yourself believe thats who or what you are. i used to actively roleplay and i still do for fun with friends. creating a persona, i mask is difficult, my only advice would be to create a base for your persona and build off of it as time goes on. just like you did with your real self.

[Umbral Noir 1,556]

I do indeed. Most role plays I've been in deteriorate very quickly, with little exceptions. Only one of my RPs ever really stayed strong right to the end; "A Tropical Odyssey". The group is still very close and we all keep in touch too! We'll be aiming to start a new one soon, and I'm happy to see we all survive a full story together without anyone dropping out. From my experience though, it is ever ally very hard to maintain a good roleplay, as while organisation is down to the leader/dungeon master, the survival of the role play depends solely on the players. I guess me and my friends in our RO group were just lucky we all found each other and kept our adventure going!

[Hypn0ticD 1,213]

Take it from me-- maintaining a roleplay for the long haul is no easy task! I tried to start to start my RP on another forum twice, and it failed both times. Finally, I came here, and found success!

 

Despite this, things don't go the exactly way you think they will in the RP, people come and go, there's gonna be drama from at least one player that you'll have no way of seeing coming. Finding a good RPer who both knows what they're doing as well is willing to stick to it is truly a rare find. I got lucky in that department and came across two such players!

 

So what I'm trying to say is this: keep trying until you find an interested party, and don't let any unexpected surpises kill off your RP. If you're the DM, then it's up to you to keep the RP going in the general direction you want it to go, but be flexible and open to others' ideas.

 

Best of luck to you, sbd here's to hoping you find the audience you want for your future RPs!

Edited May 27, 2014 by Hypn0ticD

[Inactive01 5,299]

That's the main reason why I stick with 1 on 1 RPs. We can control the pace of the story ourselves without having to worry about one character dropping off from the RP. When one person posts, they can just wait patiently for the other to post before continuing. With a whole group, one person leaving leads to a domino effect that would ruin the entire roleplay. 

[Skye 463]

Yes! I'll usually end up getting bored and asking the other person to scrap the idea. It's very hard to keep things interesting...

[Agent505 661]

 

 

Finding a good RPer who both knows what they're doing as well is willing to stick to it is truly a rare find.

 

 

*waves hand violently through the air* 

 

To answer the original question though I have only just returned to roleplaying on the forums, and I think down to a big part of impatience on my end, it's hard to be confident that your role play is going to take off, let alone stay strong to the end of the adventure. 

Without a proper plan and solid pacing, you're going to have a hard time in keeping it interesting as well as fresh enough that the new posts bring something worth reading without skipping over the interesting bits.

[baltoist 303]

no not really then again i only just started rping

[Ribbonfree 2,383]

Yeah. RP is a really touchy thing for me to enjoy, because I have very high standards for both my own and other's writing and storytelling ability. Thus I tend to burn out very easily.

Edited May 29, 2014 by Little Black Dress

[CT-1138 3,182]

It's incredibly difficult. I used to help maintain a Jurassic Park RPG called "Live the Legend" on another forum I used to frequent. Maintaining the game as close to Jurassic Park canon as possible while trying to keep things fresh and keep most everyone happy and wanting to come back was difficult enough. Insert a couple of fellow moderators who are only interested in furthering their own control over the game and managing the RPG became almost impossible. Eventually I just gave up on the whole experience after a moderator I considered my friend stabbed me in the back when he ran to the game Admin whining how my adamant insistence on the game staying close to canon was ruining the fun. I didn't want to see Barney colored T. rexes in the game! Was that too much to ask?!

[M'aiq the Liar 5,804]

The things I see people have the most difficulty with is maintaining group interest. A lot of people tend to blow out early, pulling all the stops and trying to do as much as possible in the early parts of the rp, rather than maintain a healthy growth and steady progression. I have seen many an RP die because someone had a end game boss show up in the first 15 turns, rather than have a steady progression.

 

 

And not having turns and dice rolls really put me out of an RP. It means that for the most part, every move works, every attack hits, and it really takes a lot of the chance and luck out of an rp for me.