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One of the things I've noticed over my years roleplaying is a focus on character relationships of a romantic nature. I've encountered players whose sole interest is to write about lovers as they traverse whatever world they are in. In this thread an anonymous user mentions their struggles with enticing players to their sites when they create more female characters than male. Though my reply was short, it reminded me that maybe I am missing a part of roleplay that I once enjoyed. Normally I focus on story. Before I switched to forum roleplay, I was an avid roleplayer on a php MUD. My replies typically took about three minutes to post and most of the time, I sat online and did... nothing. The players around me, aside from a couple other old-timers on the site (it was launched in '98 and I'd played since 2003), were more focused on the romantic aspects of their stories than anything else, even friendship. I can't pretend that I made it easy for the character I wrote to be loved. I'll likely discuss that character more in depth as I work on my blogs, but let's just put it this way: she became a major villain before I stepped away from the site. She was considered one of the most powerful necromancers, and had a rather dark influence over those around her. Because of this cold, unlovable character, I often spent time scrolling through the list of online players hoping that I might get roleplay. Newer players are hard to come by in that type of game, especially as of late with most moving to Discord or forum roleplay instead. (They also suffer from a major lack of advertisement, as the actual owner of the site no longer plays himself. Instead, he hosts it and updates are few and far between to the code.) Getting newer players involved in arcs proved nearly impossible on my end, and though there was some interest, it didn't last. I couldn't get players to write with me and advance the arc. This wasn't the first time I experienced this with my characters on sites over the years. Another php MUD allowed us to have multiple characters, and there my characters were often shunned. I admit that I haven't tried to play many males over the years, but that's something I've been working on (including a sexy man over in post-apocalyptic Metro). At one point, I played more than thirty characters actively, and none of them were in a ship. I've found that I often encounter roleplayers that seem entirely uninterested, despite leading me and my characters on. (I actually got into an argument with someone about this once, and how it wasn't cool of them to promise an OTP and then tell me they were killing the character.) There's a lot more to that story, but what I'm trying to get at is this: I've come to a point in my life where I'm not entirely sure what I want when it comes to roleplay. My question here is whether you prefer to base your roleplay around romance or story. I'd also like to know why you prefer your roleplay that way.