What're your red flags?

[Umbra9948 4]

I do not like when admins are unfriendly or do not make you feel welcome when you join, but pressure you to get started without answering enough of your questions. I had that experience recently and left a board that otherwise looked awesome.

[akakios 14]

God-moding before there's even a thread. 😞

[DivineRabbit 64]

@Penny OMGOSH I am sooo like that about SMUT.  I have written a muted sexual encounter if it made sense but I am a HUGE fan of fade to black.......there are just so many times I am going to read .....he places his length into her honey pot..........before I just throw the hell up

[D-S 21]

A red flag I am grateful I haven't seen in years but still is vivid in my memory: when a person who only just joined the site and only just showed up on the discord is inexplicably rude to the other members.

 

We're always happy to have new people and we'll show and discuss what is nice about our community, and try to plot and help and integrate new folks. But the regular members are real people too, they are potential friends and playmates, not an army of bellboys or serfs or NPCs 😄

[Agatha Harkness 59]

• When a staffer seems to only post with other staffers.
• When only one staffer seems to do any work.
• When staff seem bias towards members.
• When the staff are rude when you ask questions and make you feel unwelcome to talk when they're in the chatbox.
• Being put through the emotional blackmail ringer vibe that makes you feel you aren't trusted, and also blame shifted as if it'll be your fault if shit messes up. 

 

 

Edited July 20, 2020 by Lady Croft

[DivineRabbit 64]

Adding !

 

The have to join cbox or discord someone mentioned above......

OIY

 

I love to write- I do not require hours upon hours of chat to plot - hit me up say hey I wanna and then bloody well do it - tag me - and its off to the races.

 

I do not mind a dm with questions or ideas--BUT DO NOT chat me up tell me you want to write and to start and then never do anything. 

 

I do not have unlimted time on the chat thingers. I pop in , chat everyone up and then depart. I am admin- I have a lot to do plus what I am writing. I absolutely adore writing but I cannot abide by the judgement that because I do not join chat boxes and such I am kicked off the writing island.

 

 

 

-rant over-

[Huskerdust 625]

Players that don’t play with others? Like it’s fine you want to write with me but please please try playing with other members too! It fuels my anxiety when I see people lurking online and waiting for me to post when I’m not in the mood to post. 
 

It’s a red flag because it feels like they don’t want to actually rp. Have you ever noticed that when an admin takes a much deserved break, the site goes quiet until they come back? Why, though? It reminds me of class when the teacher is late and nobody does anything until they show up. 
 

It’s perfectly okay to also take breaks but I don’t understand why player to player interaction isn’t a thing. 😔 

[Tris 8]

Uh, I have feelings on this. Sorry if this gets intense, more than half of these are consent issues.

• When players act like characters relationships are our actual relationships as players, as if we're family, lovers, or enemies.
• If players do that and treat slow posting players as negligent/bad romantic partners.
• I'm gonna reiterate others' commentary on players ONLY posting with you, and getting fussy at you  for not paying constant attention to them if you're online.
• If players or staff refuse to accept no for an answer, whether its a thread, a romance, or plot involvement.
• If saying no to a plot or relationship basically punishes a player.
• When someone just assumes that when your characters are in a relationship, anything goes without discussing what the players involved are comfortable writing and to what extent.
• When someone just decides your characters are in a relationship on their own.
• When players use the public chat to make fun of players/ prospective players apps or someone's post +  staff ignore it or join in.
• If calmly refusing to debate a player publicly OOC results in them sending multiple essays in PMs.
• When players that bring up concerns about bigotry are treated as the troublemakers.

[NyxDarklore 92]

Unnecessary trauma (or trauma for the sake of trauma). I have some characters with #tragicbackstories but from a narrative perspective the trauma is not unnecessary, it serves a purpose. One thing that I cannot stand is people who add trauma in for the sake of trauma or to make other characters like them (we recently had a prospective member do this and reading the backstory made me want to bang my head against a wall). To me, trauma should serve a purpose (out of character) within the narrative. It should be used as a means to explain why a person is where they are, as a means to explain how they got to where they are or what their reactions are, it should be used as a way to help them grow and develop. It doesn't matter what the reason but there should be a reason for it, even if it seems senseless in character.

 

My most traumatic character has dealt with the deaths of her parents, accidentally killed multiple people, dealt with rejection from her family, and suffered through a miscarriage and she's only thirty. Now, this is a lot to pack into a backstory when taken out of context, but when the context of the reason (most of) these things happened is because she lost control of her powers which she is not only now afraid of (and thus doesn't use often) but is seeking to learn to control, suddenly the trauma makes sense and is put into perspective. It serves a narrative purpose because this character would never have sought help until something bad had happened and she knew she wasn't out of control (she's that kind of arrogant). That justifies narrative purpose because without something extreme happening at her hands, she was not going to develop.

 

Grammar and spelling. I understand that not everyone speaks English as a first language and even I make grammar errors from time to time. If you are mixing up fundamentals, however (they're/their/there, hear/here, who's/whose, your/you're, etc.) then maybe roleplaying isn't for you. I don't expect everyone to use appropriate editing format when writing a post, but I do expect that people have a basic grasp of the English language and the capability of writing as such. Typing errors happen, mistakes happen, but there's a point where you have to question if someone is even capable of stringing two words together in normal conversation if they write like that. Bonus (negative) points for people who still use chatspeak or leetspeak in posts (*cringe*).

 

Finals or other 'endgame' plots. I don't even know where to begin with this one. There is nothing more frustrating than someone who insists that two characters will end up together no matter what, even to the point of going out of character to make it happen. To be clear, I'm not against the idea of "these two people will be married because their parents arranged it" or "these two people are mates whether they like it or not (thus giving the option for those characters to fight for it to end)", it's more the "these two people will fall in love and have children and ride off into the sunset together". No. Life doesn't work that way. Sometimes you're not right for a person or they're not right for you and that is okay. 

[NFT47 40]

My red flags are being forced into relationship plots. Players that want to control how you play your character. People that take IC actions to reflect OOC feelings and take things personally. People that can't pay nice or are just in general super toxic.

[Sara 34]

As staff, I find players that cannot accept basic rules as a red flag. Especially members who consistently try to find loopholes. For example, on my site we have a rule for all players - admins included, about the land your original characters can have (aka, no fictitious Duchies or similar, as we're real world historical). People have tried plenty of times to get round that by creating and app-ing a character who owns a Barony, only to start playing and suddenly they're the most 'powerful' Baron in the country. Just  s t o p. The rules are there to make the site more fun, I promise, they're not there for you to bend!

 

As a player, red flags for me are when staff aren't open with their members. On a previous site admins only appeared to 'punish' members for infractions (perceived or real), and that was it. No away notices, or casual chit-chat etc. I get people are busy and staff can't be around all the time (I know I'm not!) but it was quite jarring and felt like a bit of a disconnect between the player base and the staff. 

 

Equally, any kind of trash-talk or overt negativity in the Discord/cbox. I come to RP to escape RL stresses, I don't want to have to skirt round quite clear and visible animosity between players in my free time.

[Arceus 1,081]

• "Okay, so here's my idea, do you think it'd work? Are you SUUUUURE?"
• "What's godmoding/powerplaying/metagaming?" "(Explanation)" "I didn't do that."
• "Please don't do that anymore." "Stop being mean to me! I HAVE (insert mental disorder that may or may not even explain their behaviour)!!!"
• "You're not a staff, you don't know what you're talking about."

[Siren 3]

• New members who fail to read any of the board information before apping a character
• Staff members who gossip about other staff or members
• Cliques
• Members who are not welcoming to new members.

[reuwille 4]

On 7/25/2020 at 9:51 PM, Zozma said:

Players that don’t play with others? Like it’s fine you want to write with me but please please try playing with other members too! It fuels my anxiety when I see people lurking online and waiting for me to post when I’m not in the mood to post. 
 

It’s a red flag because it feels like they don’t want to actually rp. Have you ever noticed that when an admin takes a much deserved break, the site goes quiet until they come back? Why, though? It reminds me of class when the teacher is late and nobody does anything until they show up. 
 

It’s perfectly okay to also take breaks but I don’t understand why player to player interaction isn’t a thing. 😔 

 

I know this was posted almost a year ago, but it's such a big mood. It's especially annoying when the person who isn't plotting around is someone who came in to take one of your requests, and you've even tried to get them connected to other characters but they seem wholly uninterested. There's little else that makes me lose interest in a plot faster than someone who doesn't want to expand their character beyond the confines of what we're plotting.

[NyxDarklore 92]

Staff or other members who... god-modding isn't the right word but who do things to your character without discussion when they don't know you is how I'll phrase it. I'm a pretty big advocate for in character actions have in character consequences. If my character (and one of them has) decides to poke a bear then she's probably getting mauled, that is the price of stupid, but if you do something my character doesn't like then assume they go along with it (I can't think of more recent examples... my brain lost them all) then I am going to recon everything you did with my character involved unless you spoke to me about it.

 

I have people who I've roleplayed with for years who can do that - if they mildly god-mod to move a thread along or whatever, that's fine, but it's only fine because I trust those people to ask if it's something major and I know they know the character in question (because they always ask for new characters or major lifechanging things)... If people are doing that regularly with people they don't know? Massive red flag for me.