Jump to content

Losing interest in Roleplaying?


Guest Anonymous
 Share

Recommended Posts

Guest Anonymous

I find that I still have a passion to write with others but slowly yet surely I have been losing interest for RP as a whole. Its hard to explain because I love the community here on the Initiative but RP in general is just filled with petty drama queens and vindictive people that go on crusades to ruin other peoples enjoyment in this hobby.

 

Whether its to spread rumors (whether true or not) just to black list a person from other sites because someone doesn't like them or they found they did something wrong or whatever. I find that forgiveness is not in most RPers natures which is very sad for me. Once a sinner, always a sinner. Though I can't fault them too much. I'm a rather unforgiving person myself.

I also mourn friends loved and lost through the sands of shut down sites.

Getting the motivation to post has been a trial.

Finding a site has been a trial.

 

I find playing with new people sometimes a daunting and perilous task even though I seriously WANT to find new RP partners and play on new sites with new things to do.

Creating a site seems exciting still but all of the things that come along with creating it are daunting. Putting my site on directories. Advertising to people etc.

 

I don't necessarily want to leave RPing but I'm struggling to find what I first loved about it. The good and fun people. The excitement of creating a new story or someone doing something unexpected because you've never RPed before.

 

All I want is the be inspired again and all I find are cynical reasons not to be.

 

Anyone else feel this way or know how to deal with it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Operations Mod

 

On 8/12/2021 at 12:10 PM, Guest Anonymous said:

Its hard to explain because I love the community here on the Initiative but RP in general is just filled with petty drama queens and vindictive people that go on crusades to ruin other peoples enjoyment in this hobby.

 

I was in this exact headspace when I joined the Initiative back in 2017. 

 

I started out my roleplay career on this obscure site called Vampires! The Dark Alleyway. It was (maybe still is?) an ultra simple grid-based mid-90's created game where you made your vampire and navigated squares based on blood power or some shit. You could feast on mortals or try to attack other vampire players. The grid game itself never held much interest for me, but there was a chatroom attached to it - that was where I was first introduced to RP

 

My next step into the RP world was through Neopets, back when Adam and Donna still owned and ran the site - long before they sold it off to Nickelodeon. Back then there were two primary RP means. There were the actual RP forums where players would set up short term rapid fire RPs that would eventually burn out either through time or max number of postings. The second method was through Guilds. 

 

The forums were really where my love of RP blossomed. We would form friend groups and jump into the threads created. Between one another we'd post between 20-30 posts each, in groups up to 10, per night. For  years.  There was a 350 character count on every post so you could only reply with so much, and it made players focus on actionable content. 

 

In short, it was rapid fire style RP. No one was focused on word counts or unnecessary descriptions - we all had imaginations and would fill in the blanks. It was great. Things happened. Plots moved forward rapidly. 

 

Well, Nickelodeon bought them out (No blame, they're probably still retired comfortably off that money in their early 40's now) and started going PC/PG. That was when I moved into forum RP

 

Forum RP was a different animal. All the word count elitists. People convinced you can't have a good RP without word vomiting. The curtains can't just be blue - you have to write a whole paragraph about how blue they are and/or why they're blue. It was all a low key competition. Who could write better. Who thinks they can write well but really suck, how were we going to black list them. 

 

I've always loved to write and I've always received accolades for my skill. I let myself get sucked up into the elitist asshole side of it all for a long, long time - one of my biggest regrets in my RP career.  Eventually the burnout became real. Dozens of sites joined. Hundreds of threads written. Yeah, they had nice long posts but...they all died without a finish. Nothing was ever resolved. I would find myself looking at threads that hadn't been replied to (or that I hadn't replied to) in 3-6 months to over a year. It was disheartening and depressing. 

 

Anyway, I say all this to encourage you to let yourself free of all those stressors that you mentioned in your original post. 

 

I think you may be best off not even trying to join a forum based site. Look for Discord based rapid fire roleplays - or forum based, though those are harder to find than Discord bsaed. You'll be able to create and present your characters, then actually use them consistently. 

 

Joining the Initiative re-sparked my love of RP because I found a partner who didn't give a fuck about word counts or flowery descriptions. She was - and to this very day still is - only concerned with the actionable content of posts. She rekindled the joy I felt back in the early days when it was simple. Prior to joining and meeting this person, I'd flat given up on RP for nearly 3 years because the social politics were such energy draining BS. 

 

Anyway, by simple I mean focus on writing only what is actionable. What good is a 500 word post if only 25-70 words within that post provide content to actually reply to? That's how you wear yourself out as a writer. Find a space that will let you post and actually progress. Forums aren't the end all be all of RP - give other mediums a shot. 

 

 

 



 

  • Fuck Yeah! 2
  • Love 2

 

bannerlong.png

0_mainsignature (1).jpg

rpgida.png

Icon & Profile set by The Inquisitor of Dragon Age: Absolution

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been in and out of the rp world (in variable mediums) for many years. I've walked away to take some time off but would always find myself back. It wasn't that my love of it was gone, but I found that it was the people around me. I had my own vision and ideas of how I wanted to write. I don't give a Hoover Dam about word counts. I don't give a Beaver Dam about how flowery a post is or "has" to be. I write to enjoy myself. I write for me. Many times over I questioned my ability because it just didn't seem like anyone else enjoyed my writing or enjoyed writing with me. After a long time of blaming myself for not living up to others' expectations, I took the "if you build it, they will come" attitude. I refused to believe that I was the only one that saw rp from my perspective and I was right. I opened my first site and it wasn't much. I closed that and then began to build again. Didn't quite catch that one. The one I did build, they came. We enjoyed. We grew. Now we have 2 sites respectfully and we love our little corner of the world. We may not be everyone's plate of spaghetti but it works for us. If others join, we get happy and draw them in. When some leave, we wish them well and hope they come back. My best advice is to find like minded folks. Those that see the world like you do. Network with them. What they play may not be your thing, but they may know folks (again likeminded) that can lead to your thing or you might find you love what they do. Take a different path if you don't like the scenery around you. If it's not something you enjoy or the people aren't what you feel joy with, then move on. The RPC is expansive even if we seem small. In the mean time, write little stories for yourself (if the Discord idea isn't your cup o'joe). Write characters, enjoy seeing it come to life. Then go from there. Best of luck to you. I hope you find what you're looking for.

  • Love 1

spacer.pngDecadence

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I've also gone through my own experience of losing interest in the roleplaying realm that I've frequented for many years (forum roleplays). I predominantly roleplay on animanga forums and the community is much smaller than RL as well as a much younger generation than myself. In a sense, I feel like I've outgrown that particular community and with age I find that my values and expectations are different than most of that communities values and expectations.

 

Thankfully, at least, I know that roleplaying branches off into many various sub-groups. There's DeviantArt, Tumblr, and the 1x1 email/Discord/GoogleDocs lists. I may eventually branch away from animanga forums all together to try these different avenues. But, for now, my friend and I run our own site and we hope to bring like-minded roleplayers to our forums and have a happy as well as fun experience there.

AFF1.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...
On 8/12/2021 at 1:10 PM, Guest Anonymous said:

I find that I still have a passion to write with others but slowly yet surely I have been losing interest for RP as a whole. Its hard to explain because I love the community here on the Initiative but RP in general is just filled with petty drama queens and vindictive people that go on crusades to ruin other peoples enjoyment in this hobby.

 

Whether its to spread rumors (whether true or not) just to black list a person from other sites because someone doesn't like them or they found they did something wrong or whatever. I find that forgiveness is not in most RPers natures which is very sad for me. Once a sinner, always a sinner. Though I can't fault them too much. I'm a rather unforgiving person myself.

I also mourn friends loved and lost through the sands of shut down sites.

Getting the motivation to post has been a trial.

Finding a site has been a trial.

 

I find playing with new people sometimes a daunting and perilous task even though I seriously WANT to find new RP partners and play on new sites with new things to do.

Creating a site seems exciting still but all of the things that come along with creating it are daunting. Putting my site on directories. Advertising to people etc.

 

I don't necessarily want to leave RPing but I'm struggling to find what I first loved about it. The good and fun people. The excitement of creating a new story or someone doing something unexpected because you've never RPed before.

 

All I want is the be inspired again and all I find are cynical reasons not to be.

 

Anyone else feel this way or know how to deal with it?

 

Find a small community. They hold the best experience. 

I've never lost my drive in the last 24 years of writing. However, I stay away from communities based on signs. If the world is just background noise, and there is no internal logic governing magic, I walk away. I feel settings should be more important then anyone OC and must evolve (along with the Lore) to reflect the players choices. For both good and ill.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/14/2021 at 5:11 AM, Dragon said:

 

 

I was in this exact headspace when I joined the Initiative back in 2017. 

 

I started out my roleplay career on this obscure site called Vampires! The Dark Alleyway. It was (maybe still is?) an ultra simple grid-based mid-90's created game where you made your vampire and navigated squares based on blood power or some shit. You could feast on mortals or try to attack other vampire players. The grid game itself never held much interest for me, but there was a chatroom attached to it - that was where I was first introduced to RP

 

My next step into the RP world was through Neopets, back when Adam and Donna still owned and ran the site - long before they sold it off to Nickelodeon. Back then there were two primary RP means. There were the actual RP forums where players would set up short term rapid fire RPs that would eventually burn out either through time or max number of postings. The second method was through Guilds. 

 

The forums were really where my love of RP blossomed. We would form friend groups and jump into the threads created. Between one another we'd post between 20-30 posts each, in groups up to 10, per night. For  years.  There was a 350 character count on every post so you could only reply with so much, and it made players focus on actionable content. 

 

In short, it was rapid fire style RP. No one was focused on word counts or unnecessary descriptions - we all had imaginations and would fill in the blanks. It was great. Things happened. Plots moved forward rapidly. 

 

Well, Nickelodeon bought them out (No blame, they're probably still retired comfortably off that money in their early 40's now) and started going PC/PG. That was when I moved into forum RP

 

Forum RP was a different animal. All the word count elitists. People convinced you can't have a good RP without word vomiting. The curtains can't just be blue - you have to write a whole paragraph about how blue they are and/or why they're blue. It was all a low key competition. Who could write better. Who thinks they can write well but really suck, how were we going to black list them. 

 

I've always loved to write and I've always received accolades for my skill. I let myself get sucked up into the elitist asshole side of it all for a long, long time - one of my biggest regrets in my RP career.  Eventually the burnout became real. Dozens of sites joined. Hundreds of threads written. Yeah, they had nice long posts but...they all died without a finish. Nothing was ever resolved. I would find myself looking at threads that hadn't been replied to (or that I hadn't replied to) in 3-6 months to over a year. It was disheartening and depressing. 

 

Anyway, I say all this to encourage you to let yourself free of all those stressors that you mentioned in your original post. 

 

I think you may be best off not even trying to join a forum based site. Look for Discord based rapid fire roleplays - or forum based, though those are harder to find than Discord bsaed. You'll be able to create and present your characters, then actually use them consistently. 

 

Joining the Initiative re-sparked my love of RP because I found a partner who didn't give a fuck about word counts or flowery descriptions. She was - and to this very day still is - only concerned with the actionable content of posts. She rekindled the joy I felt back in the early days when it was simple. Prior to joining and meeting this person, I'd flat given up on RP for nearly 3 years because the social politics were such energy draining BS. 

 

Anyway, by simple I mean focus on writing only what is actionable. What good is a 500 word post if only 25-70 words within that post provide content to actually reply to? That's how you wear yourself out as a writer. Find a space that will let you post and actually progress. Forums aren't the end all be all of RP - give other mediums a shot. 

 

 

 



 

 

I like your words a lot. I'm inspired to create a Discord rapid-fire RP now.

Edited by Ethereal
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I found the RP community to be really toxic, honestly. You say something on accident that upsets one person, they smear your name even if you've technically done nothing wrong. It's unfortunate, but I feel like after a small hiatus and a longer one before that, I'm ready to get back into the RPing game. My interest waned a bit because I got a new job and life kinda hit me hard (having surgery on the 24th), but other than that there's no reason I can't get back into RPing the way it used to be for me. I have a site that's lasted almost two years at this point, which is a lot to say for the RP community in its current state (public forums on Jcink anyway).

  • Agree 2

 

spacer.png
V A G A B O N D C O D E
Guidebook • Canons • Site Canons • Discord
AU STAR WARS RPG • 21+ • Jcink Premium • 2+ years
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
Guest Anonymous

This is something I've been wrestling with for months now. When I first came back after not RPing for over 10+ years, I found discord RP and a couple of slower moving sites that helped me get back into the swing of things. Met some cool people, but unfortunately drama reared its ugly head from said people that left me feeling deflated. Add that on top of joining a very booming site that started off well but cliquish behaviors and extremely slow replies, on top of drama there and RL personal issues. My muse took a huge hit and I nearly quit altogether. 

 

Only recently did I make a new site with someone, left a couple of sites altogether and now my muse is starting to come back slowly but surely. I think taking care of yourself mentally helps with this. I don't like just disappearing without saying something but I had to do it for me and just take a step back. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a preface I'd like to mention that I suffer from and was diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder when I was nineteen turning twenty after a rather strong series of hypomania and depressive episodes. While genetically it 'runs in' my mom's side of the family; it has been suggested that a collection of 'experiences' with an older cousin when I was a child and the grooming/pedophilic behaviors of a certain online stalker in the jcink RP community may have been contributing factors to the disorder triggering so early in my life. I've taken meds daily ever since but some may know sometimes they do more damage than good and aren't always effective.

 

For all of August and half of July, I was basically experiencing another bout of these episodes and lost all interest in most things, especially roleplaying. The cause? well, basically since my site was in the planning stages, the mentioned online stalker had returned to their habits in full swing. I had been handling it pretty well despite the harassment, lies, and attacks made against. Countered most of them, and disproven them on most platforms other than ones this stalker has made friends in. We run sites within the same fandom that take place in the same era of it. A former member of their site came to mine and when they realized who I was (since apparently this person/their friends there love to talk about me) and was presented with stories and proof of this person's actions against others. How most of the RP community knows them to be a toxic and bad person not just as a human being or an admin, but as someone that steals money from friends and customers of their 'skin making' business. What really triggered my recent episodes though was learning that my stalker was claiming my experiences as their own. The depression, the pain, the mental agony and drain of it. Even making claims that their past grooming and such on me was actually reversed but they had to omit a few things since I was a minor and they were in their twenties and someone that doesn't even have a piggy bank full of pennies can spend money to dox and harass someone like she did me.

 

My last actual run in with this person where we actually talked was when they made a racist comment on a face claim I was using. So I made a very general no names given just 'this happened on this site I'm on from this admin I knew was a toxic person'. I even said despite all the horrible things this person as done to me an others, I didn't think they were racist but they said a racist thing in an attempt to get me to do what they wanted with the face claim. They spent weeks claiming that by making that one post that didn't have any identifying info and I didn't even tell anyone about, I was smearing their 'good' name all over the community and discord servers. Claimed they never said that, (the next day) said they said it by accident and didn't know it was racist (a few days later) then went on to claim they did nothing wrong technically speaking. Then have almost two six months of just none stop harassment, theft of codes and claiming MY codes were her codes then when I prove she did the stealing its 'you can't steal aesthetics or fandom lore (even when you rewrite some of it to fit your AU and their copy is just the sentences worded different..slightly)

 

Hearing this person was taking my extremely traumatizing and depression and claiming them as their own.... I dunno it just kind of broke whatever was keeping my mental state level. This person triggered a cascade effect when I was a teenager that just destroyed me mentally.  To this day I have damn near panic attacks whenever an admin on a site contacts me even if its just to welcome me because I'm afraid their going to harass, dox, send me a pic from my facebook of me to me, groom me, or try to force me into having sex with their characters or they're spend years destroying me like this person did. Its bad enough I have to see my cousin whenever I get together with my mom's family since no one believed what happened, now I got this person hounding me and pulling me back into the cycle teenager me had to go through with them and then claiming the trauma is theirs not mine. Now this person is around here and pulling the same passive aggressive bullshit they always do when following. I don't get why this person who is approaching middle age is still acting like a toddler who finally got told no. They need to serious grow up and move on, I already tried in the past to give them their wish of 'destroying me' and never wanna go to that place again. So yeah, I kind of just left everything for almost two months. Now I'm back and trying to put everything back together and hoping this doesn't happen again and this person knocks it off before something else happens or I have to get the lawyer I have looking into anything they can do to stop them to really earn their money.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

It's always hard when drama, toxic communities and such get in the way of a hobby you love. My best piece of advice for anyone struggling is to keep searching for the right community and maybe get to know a couple of people 1v1 before investing or if it is a community that lets you hang out for a while before being active, you can get a feel for the community. Not that this will assure a drama free community and stuff sometimes happens but it might help point out any possible red flags before they happen. It's not full proof by any means. 

While the RP community is full of valleys there are some peaks as well. Hopefully anyone loosing touch with RP will be able to find what they are looking for and continue doing something they love. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it's normal for your interest in a hobby to wax and wane. And it's true that sometimes other people can really suck the fun out of it.
What helps me is to step back and give my brain a break from writing, and sometimes that break is something like months long. My longest was several years where I didn't RP at all.
And when I came back to it, I felt refreshed and ready to take on the good and the bad of rp communities. This probably seems like a simple solution but I feel like there's pressure with roleplay to constantly be involved in it, like you're not a true writer if you quit the game for just a little while. But everybody needs breaks here and there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Roleplay, is just like books for me. Sometimes you run into a great series and you get really 'hooked' and just can't put it down until it's finished. Almost all the characters and plots involved are intriguing, and can draw you in, keeping you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. 

 

Whilst other roleplays can be dull and have barely any hook at all. This can sometimes lead to wanting to leave the rp unfinished or abandoned altogether. Typically this is not always a fault of the writers/roleplayers, but of a lack of structure overall. And sometimes it's because the writers/roleplayers involved are not actually dedicated to the roleplay at all. That seems to happen a lot more now than previously. A lot of writers these days, are not as dedicated to the stories as they used to be, which tends to end up in many roleplays ended unfinished.

 

To me, there is nothing worse than writing a beautiful story or post, andy partners not wishing to reply, or not putting any effort into them. It's a shame to write up a post, only for it to never get a reply. 

  • Like 1

Everything has an end, everything but me that is. I shall live for an eternity, watching as the petals fall from the trees. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

I've found that I'll loose interest or struggle after a particularly bad row with the inevitable drama that RP forums tends to bring on. Through those struggles, I've learned that breaks are important after those things, and establishing boundaries and expectations helps set myself up to not loose interest when the bad times come. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've never lost interest in RP, but my mental health has thrown me into dry spells here and there. The last couple years were rough for me because of the pandemic and all the craziness there, the subsequent abuse in retail, and then my dog got cancer. (She's better now! Surgery was a success!)

 

I'm finally crawling out of it now and my interest kind of shot through the roof now as my mental health has improved. So for me, it's not about RP itself, or even my interest! It's just about my mental state. My creativity always takes a dive when I'm emotionally spent.

soteadvert(1).png.4ef5e4df94405914a2b988b8ea3cde3a.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use, Guidelines and Privacy Policy. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.