When you roleplay, is your focus on story or relationships?

[Hysteria 56]

Both, really.

 

The best stories come from how characters work off of and grow with each other.

If setting is the metaphorical pan in baking, relationships would be the ingredients of a cake.

You can't have a proper cake without the pan...but you also can't eat the pan as a substitute.

[break_the_spell 1]

Story.

 

One of the reasons I am drawn to roleplaying is the beauty of collaborative story telling. I love throwing characters into a situation and watch as the story naturally unfolds and tells itself by how they respond and interact. I strive to create strong female characters that are interesting enough to standalone in their own story arcs. There is far more to life than just romance and I want my characters to live rich, vibrant lives that don't revolve around a singular love interest. What would happen if the other writer disappeared (which happens often because people do have real lives to tend to)? 

 

Don't get me wrong, I am an absolute sucker for romance plots but I hate forcing relationships on my characters when the chemistry isn't quite there. When it comes to roleplaying, I'm more of a flies by the seat of their pants type plotter and prefer my characters' relationships to develop organically through the art of storytelling. 

Edited May 23, 2021 by break_the_spell

[Faux 3]

At the end of the day, probably story. I like seeing my characters gradually grow and develop, whether it's for better or worse. It's my characters' ambitions, accomplishments, and growth that really give me the muse to write. I like seeing where their actions will take them.

 

That being said, I'm still a sucker for character dynamics, and romance plots are no exception. For me, that type of thing is part of the story rather than an end goal or necessity. I just go with the flow and sometimes romance/relationship plots will result from that.

[caporushes 8]

I like reading over everyone's responses to this topic; I've been thinking about it a bit off and on lately because I have a very good friend who just does not like to write romantic relationships at all and he recently mentioned that he struggles to find a "place" with a lot of sites because of that. 

 

I will say before I go to ramble on when I think about "relationships", I think about more than just romantic? I mean I love love love writing romance, but I love writing all kinds of relationships in general. So in that sense I think I'm very relationship-focused when it comes to RP, but one of my favorite RP relationships I've ever written is one between a surly teenager and the ghost secretly inhabiting the body of her father.  No romance there at all, but a lot of strong, weird feelings. So that's kind of what I angle for in my plots, too--just the general opportunity for any kind of strong feeling, especially if it can be complicated in some way. 

 

That said, I do love writing romance. I can't even say I've never planned a plot around a relationship/sought out one for a character. But I do think of them as firmly intertwined, and think there's something interesting in all things. I just really focus on that human element overall--I'm much more into that than cool world events or something for the sake of those things. 

[Stcrmwcrning 2]

Definitely story first. Don't get me wrong. I love a good ship but for me the storyline is just as important if not more important then the ship so to me the storyline is more important then the ship itself. 

[outskrt 0]

I focus on story first, everything after

[Image 2]

I personally am more for the story than for finding a ship for my character, If it happens it happens, and it should happen naturally without feeling forced into. 

[Matsumota 5]

On 10/8/2020 at 9:30 PM, Grimscythe said:

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. 

 

Story and relationship must work as one. Be it romantic or platonic. There is no way around it. Any piece of fiction has many components coming to support it. Character (Relationships), plot and lore/world. 

[multiplicity! 11]

A bit of both. Honestly, it's just a matter of if I'm feeling the current storyline, or want to focus on more interpersonal relationships. Nothing bothers me to write, honestly, but I like a healthy mix of both. I will participate in board plots, move plots forward for my characters, both in the overall board plot and their own personal ones. Besides, as long as I respond to others (whether their relationship is romantic, platonic, antagonistic, etc.), then what does it really matter?

[FallnAngelic 1]

Depending on what it is. I typically go for story first and if relationship happens while during the story then I'm all for it! I'm not one to prefer one over the other. I've had organic things happen through writing a story so I'm always open to either or, but it's mainly story at first

[Lost Boy 18]

Story first. Although, I'm not against pre-planning a relationship plot or even having something we have going turn into a relationship; its not a focus for me. No every character or story needs a love story in there to make it good and exciting.

[Prophecyte 0]

Personally, I don't feel the need to go gung-ho into relationships. Mainly because I don't have my characters base off that. Sometimes I will make NPCs that are a little more needy in that manner to make a connection with someone, and maybe an occasional character who desires it, but I don't make that their "personality" so to speak. I base that character on the life they previously lived.

 

If someone wants to ship with my characters, that's fine. I usually go with a mindset that it won't last long and often treat it like flings or maybe not a serious relationship. And if it does get to that point where it goes a step further, then I'll accept it. 

 

But definitely not the main cycle of my characters. That's how they would end up dying off so quickly.

[Nacho 2]

Definitely a story guy! I like a good ship, but if I don't have a solid direction for a character I just can't really be bothered to find the time to write for them. Even if it's something really basic or dumb like playing Boba Fett and going "His story is bounty hunting, he's hunting this guy and next he'll hunt another guy". Weaving a romance in to a story is plenty fun but I can't do it if it's relationship exclusively.

[Xerca 1]

I always go for story and if a (romantic) relationship fits into that story, then I will go with it. But I never just "ship" my characters with another for the sake of it. It has to make sense. The characters will have to fit together and they will have to figure that out through the story. Then it doesn't matter if it takes over a year for two characters to get together, or if they click with each other fast. As long as it feels natural and fitting to their personalities, it all becomes part of the story itself. So the two tend to go a bit hand-in-hand for me.

 

But if we're talking about any kind of relationship, then they are unavoidable when it comes to story. Characters will make friends, enemies etc as part of the whole story.

[FaR0E 2]

When I RP I usually end up writing the story more than focusing on romantic relationships. Which is why a lot of my characters end up single forever (whoops). But I just enjoy writing them, getting up to shenanigans and explanding on their story more than any kind of romantic relationship with another character.