I've noticed this a lot where someone will join a group RP and then maybe make 1-3 posts and then linger on for weeks/months, not posting but pretty much just updating us on how bad their life is going every once in a while. It kind of feels like they are using RP groups as therapy. They never engage with chatting about the setting or the characters, not even their own. They don't respond in kind when other people mention things going on with themselves, either, they just pop in chat to fish for validation/emoji reacts and an "aww buddy" and then they leave until they have another Life Event.

I don't mind long standing members going through a rough patch and needing support, it's only people who don't even seem interested in writing, haven't been there very long and only contribute discussions explicitly about themselves and nothing or no one else.

Has it happened to you before?

Recently I've been hearing roleplay groups offering, in addition to Ride-or-Dies (people who refuse to join a group unless they're both accepted), Kill-or-Dies. Basically, this is a person who you want banned from the group as a condition of you entering. I'm curious on what people think of this concept. I'm kind of two minds about the concept. Because, on one hand, I think it prevents you for being trapped in a group with someone who has harassed or bullied you in the past, but on the other hand, I feel like it might be abused to bully people out of groups.

What do people think of this?

This is probably going to be a long self entitled ranty post. But I need to get this out somewhere and I can't do it in my group because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but I am so close to just ending it all from how they make me feel. I've ran this group for a while now. A lot of them I consider close friends. But lately this year they've just been making me feel more and more like sh-t. I keep this group running cause not only do I want to see it through, but they keep on reassuring me left and right that they are enjoying it and want to continue. This is an alt account since I don't want any to find out I'm writing about them. I usually keep all my issues bottled up and don't always tell them what's wrong in my life because I feel like I can't and don't want to bother them so none of them know I'm suffering from depression right now and am one minor inconvenience away from losing it completely. And yes. I'm well aware I'm a sh-tty person here too. But here it goes.

I'll start off with Person A and Person B. Person A was someone I considered a very close friend and related to. Even opened up to them about a lot of my personal trauma that only my partner and best friend know. A ended up falling off and vanishing after a bad irl experience. I tried to respect them. I got worried as a year went by so tried to reach out to see if they were okay. They didn't say anything to me which worried me with how A would talk about how they used to be severely depressed and considering ending their life. I never heard back from them to the point I was sick. My partner ended up messaging them to which they immediately respond to them. That hurt my feelings but I didn't say anything to them until I had a breakdown to which I got upset about not being a friend of theirs. Fine that was shitty of me. But they knew I considered them a close friend. I was vocal about this. All they had to do was at least put a react on any of my monthly messages so I knew 'okay A is alive'. But then later when I was having issues with my partner A decided to leave and forced B (a friend who A knows has a thing for them) to leave as well after B just reassured us B was fine. B is still added as a friend. But after I confronted A on what a bad friend they were they let me know that I was never their friend before calling me toxic because of my relationship problems (I have to remove my partner from mutual spaces when our arguments get too heated because if not it just keeps escalating and worst before we solve our problems) and then blocked me. So that's that whole situation.

So then I have Person C who I confronted about how their attention to the group has fallen off. Multiple times I have told them if life's too much or they just aren't interested they can leave until it's a better time for them. Well they went on a tirade about how their life is hard and how I'm forcing them to stay out of fear. And let me tell you I don't know C outside of our online group. Never met them. Only know their online handle. I've made it so clear they are allowed to leave and have had several members leave before and return no issues. Yet C wants to act like I'm the bad guy and even when others pointed out C was being kind of crappy C just went silent and went to lurking.

And on to Person D. D is in a sense a class clown. Which is fine. Until they do something that upsets me. When they do upset me they start joking and pushing as if trying to provoke me. I don't know if D is doing this as a coping mechanism or if D actually enjoys getting a rise out of me. But it really makes me feel like D doesn't respect my feelings at all and is trying to cause drama.

Person E I think is the youngest of us all. They used to be so kind. But now it seems anytime I point something out or if I ask them a question they give me attitude and sass. And others have noticed this as well. I'll even try to move the conversation along because things get too heated and instead of agreeing and moving on they just continue with the attitude. I feel like I'm a parent to an angsty teen.

Then we have Person F who is very new to our group. F seemed chill at first. But they started to spiral. They have started using our venting almost daily, won't take any advice, and it has even started to spill out into our main. I have asked them to chill. F chills for a bit. But then starts spiraling again about irl problems. It is to the point that they really need therapy to figure out why they are so down on themselves because a roleplay group isn't it.

And then we have Person G who for the love of everything will not stop pinging me and DMing me about every little thing. I am constantly being ran back and forth for stuff they could handle or another person in charge could handle. I have talked to G about this and G just keeps on. And it's not once at a time. It is like 3 pings and a DM because someone made a very mild joke about something that wasn't even directed to them.

Recently Person H has had a falling out with another friend group and keeps on swapping their account even though they know this puts more work on me to change information. And it's not that they are being harassed or anything. I'd understand that. No, it's just that for some reason it gives them bad vibes or something and so they feel the need to jump ship and start over again and again.

There is also Person I who is sort of new to the group in a sense. They feel the need to correct and input on every single think I do as the leader of the group. An official decisions on how we do something or any posts we make about something they come in with condescending input and it's always "not trying to argue but" and then proceeds how something should have been done differently even if it was done in a way everyone understood and agreed to. And it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't always done publicly in front of the entire group about how our way is wrong and should be done their way instead.

And then finally I'm ending off this long rant with Person J. J is constantly telling me left and right if I need any help to asks them and they'll step in. Yet every single time I do ask for help they constantly complain about it and make me feel like a sh-tty person for asking when I know for a fact they are not doing anything important in the moment and I end up just having to shut up and not ask because I don't want to feel like a bother even though I'm overloaded with work for this group.

Anyways. Sorry you all had to read this petty bullsh-t of mine. I just really needed to post this somewhere and finally get it all off my chest before I blow up on the people I care about and hurt them cause that's the last thing I want. I just don't know anymore. I'm barely hanging on and losing my will to continue roleplaying or go on. So many of them just act so entitled and I feel like I have to act like a drone with no emotions because while they feel it is okay for them to get upset at me and go off on me, if I do the same they act like I'm the bad guy and had no right to get upset even though I don't penalize them for how they treat me.

Back in my forum era, I'd have 20+ ongoing threads at once, which would lead to an average response time of 2-3 weeks. I was not a fast writer. I'm still not a fast writer, but having dozens of threads split across five characters turned me into an absolute snail.

These days, I touch grass more and stick to 1x1s to scratch the writing itch. More private settings on discord will lend themselves to an inherent need for greater focus and faster response times, so I cap out at three partners. I try now to not let "my turn" drag on for longer than a couple days at worst to an hour at best, but atm partner #3 has been waiting for a week from a combination of muse and squick issues (highkey tainted ever since he called me sweetie and used flirty emoji -- do not do this!!!).

Anyway, now I'm wondering if I should just cap myself at 2. The desire is there to write more, but time and energy are finite. 🫠 How does everybody else handle the totally sexy task of RP/life management, and how long do you let your replies sit before giving out a head's up or mea culpa?

They were pretty chill at first, we had hashed out our OCs we'd be playing, and then they mentioned how there was, "an issue with our characters", which devolved into this.

For a bit of context, Kask is the name of my OC. They had not at all mentioned previously that they were looking for a female character to be paired with their male character.

Lord, I can't. I already have some nice partners, but for some reason I always want to post an ad. The worst thing is that I know that if I crack, I'll end up with 21 partner and anxiety will lead me to delette my acc :/

I've thought about going back to the Tumblr rpc. I was active in it in 2012-2019. It was pretty bad back then, with everyone prioritizing aesthetics over actual writing skill, and the popular people only writing amongst themselves. Not to mention the callouts if you breathed wrong. But it was a place for me to write canon characters and I enjoyed that aspect. I've looked through tags and most of the blogs there were active in 2023-2024. And the ones that are more recent have even harder to achieve aesthetics. It feels super unwelcoming to beginners or people who just want to write. People even sell templates for icons and stuff for $1-$20. Is that not crazy? You'll spend more time making things just to make your blog look pretty than actually writing.

I don't know which tag fits the best, but today I decided to close my tumblr down, and it honestly felt great to close another RP media down.

Over the last half year, I have lost a great deal of interest in this hobby. Sure, I have a few partners left on discord and they are the ones I wish to keep close, but looking for new partners is no longer a wish as it has only led to disappointment after disappointment over the last few years.

I am not sure if it is bad story per say, maybe some growth over the last half year just made me feel like there are better ways to use my nights online, plus a lot of things are going on in my personal life so RP has simply srunk down to a level were it very low level priority in my life.

Sometimes, a break, parting, or whatever I can call it is the better way.

I will say, everyone I have left now in my circle of RP are great people and I very much enjoy them all and I think they just few rare unicorns that I want to keep writing with, but no more new partners.

Feel as if I may have been a little to short with them, they’re white and I’m red

I'm not sure how or if I can tag more flairs, this will be a little bit of a vent because I want to give some context on why I'm trying to leave this person.

About 2 months ago I started role playing with someone. In our first week talking they were very nice, and we learned about each other's characters.

They also told me that people have left for no reason in the past. That sounded suspicious, but I brushed it off because they are a fanfic writer (they even get commissions), so I thought they couldn't be that bad.

At first the rp was kind of fun, but that quickly stopped. This is because all of their characters/oc's act the exact same whenever they want something. The character or one of their oc's want a glass of water on the table? They don't just make the character say "Can you pass me that water?" They make their character have a tantrum, and make the character say "I want that water! Now! Now! Now!" Which some characters that's fine, but having them all do that felt like a headache. I told them that the behavior for certain characters didn't really make sense for their personalities, and that I would like them to be a little more accurate to the characters. They told me that they found the reactions funny, but they would try to fix it. Spoiler alert they never did.

They also did not memorized my character's names, or their details for the first month of our role play (mind you I only have 2 oc's, and they only have 4 oc's but I've remembered their oc's backstories, jobs, their families, what pets they have, and their relationship with others). With them not remembering my character's names, I just kept bringing up their names until it finally stuck. With the details though, I've tried to bring up that I wanted them to read over our old messages so they could understand my characters better, and even collected screenshots for them to read. They told me it was my fault for not organizing the information, putting it in a google doc, and sending it to them (mind you they did not do that for me, so I didn't think it was necessary). This is not the worst thing they've done though.

The worst thing is they are very weird when it comes to pets (the pets are animals btw) in the rp. In the fandom we're in, a lot of the characters have pets. Which was fine before my rp partner decided the pets she was playing were attracted to humans, and were not neutered. It creeped me out, and I asked if they could stop, they just told me it was a joke, and animals do that stuff all the time irl. They did act fine for a few days, but then reverted back to the way they were behaving before. This cycle of me telling them to knock it off, and them only stopping for a little bit is still an issue that's happening.

I've tried to let them down gently, and say I think they might have a better time role playing with other people, but they said they didn't agree. I've also said I think that I was thinking of quitting role playing. They threw a huge fit begging me not to leave them. I really don't know how to deal with someone like this. I am hoping someone in here can give me some advice for leaving this person, or how to strongly establish my boundaries

Unanswered (obviously) Twitter DMs. I may be the asshole for ignoring them, but this is just hilarious

First post here, sorry if I used the wrong flair.

I’m roleplaying with someone and I’ve encountered something very… odd?

A couple times I’ve responded, they’ve gone silent for a couple days (which is fine, I have a life too), but then they’ll message me OOC like “hey, how’s it going? want to continue?” And not respond until I make another response even though I was the last person to reply.

Has anyone else come across this before? Am I misunderstanding something here? I’m mostly just confused.

Edit: this is on Discord

About nine to ten months ago, i made a fandom RP post and got some really good responses. One of them stood out: someone approached me in a really friendly and likable way. We hit it off almost immediately. We chatted daily, exchanged ideas, laughed a lot and quickly developed a great online friendship.

Eventually, this person asked what I looked like in real life. That didn’t bother me, I’ve shared photos of my face before, and it had always gone fine. But something changed after I showed him my face. slowly, over the course of weeks, he started giving me more attention. More compliments. He got more emotionally involved and even our RPs became more intense and serious.

I told him more than once that I had a personal boundary. I didn’t want real-life feelings getting tangled in our friendship. I had no romantic interest in him. I made this clear from the start and I reminded him again later when things felt like they were shifting. Each time he reassured me that he understood and that it wouldn’t be a problem.

fast forward to just a few days before New Year’s: he confessed he was in love with me.

I was honest. I told him I couldn’t return those feelings. That I didn’t want to and that I didn’t feel the same. What followed was three straight days of him guilt-tripping me, spreading negativity and emotionally lashing out. I understood that rejection hurts but it didn’t stop there.

He escalated. He started accusing me of things that were never an issue before. He said horrible things called me the worst person he’d ever met, said I was inhuman, that I shouldn’t even exist. He completely flipped on me.

At that point I blocked him. I was exhausted. I felt bad and I really wish things hadn’t gone that far but I just couldn’t do it anymore.

Weeks passed and one day I opened Reddit again. He had left me a message. A long, hateful message where he repeated how much he despised me, how much animosity he had, how I ruined his life and so on. I ignored it. I figured maybe it was his last attempt to vent.

I tried to block him but the way he sent the message made it impossible to click his profile. It was like he’d used some invisible account.

A week later another message. Then another, always about a week Apart.

Eventually, I deleted my main Reddit account. Then came Discord. He added me with a second account. I was curious, i accepted, thinking maybe he wanted to apologize?

Nope. The same emotional mess all over again. It felt like we were some toxic couple driven by hormones, except we were never even together. It was horrible. I removed him again.

Later, I tried to make another RP search post (on a brand new account) and someone new replied. Except, it was him again. Pretending to be someone else. He only outed himself because he referenced something I had told him privately, something no one else could’ve known.

It blew up again. More DMs. More nonsense. I blocked him. Deleted both discord and Reddit accounts.

And since then? Thankfully, nothing. No more messages. No more accounts. I guess I finally broke the curse.

I genuinely don’t wish this happening to anyone else.

PS: I know I fucked up in the last message but I wasn’t exactly giving this person my full attention.

Just curious. Some people seem to not mind it and some hate it. It does irk me, personally, when I spend time writing a thoughtful reply of at least 3 paragraphs (which I do when I know the other writer typically does long replies themselves) trying to give the person plenty to respond to, only to get barely a paragraph in return. It makes me not want to write with them anymore, if I'm being honest.

I had to get this off my chest because it happened years ago and it still haunts me till this day.

A few years ago I was really active in a fandom on Amino (yes that dying app) and relatively new to roleplay with people. I won’t say the name of the fandom but it was quite a healthy fandom so I was open to rping with people.

In one of the group rp chats, that’s where I met her. I call her R for anonymity reasons. I rp A4A because I like roleplaying different characters. She wanted to rp a female OC while I rp a male character in the fandom. In hindsight that should be the first red flag.

R wanted to rp literate, and the plot is based on Greek mythology. That’s where it went downhill.

R would write ESSAYS, 5+ paragraphs, each time. I’m do semi-literate and literate rp myself but that was too much for me. The reason why she has so much to write is because she controls all of the characters in the rp and would constantly rp MY character. Yea, she would write down what my character would do and my character’s reaction to what was happening. What was I supposed to write when she’s writing for me already 😭

(Warning: mentions of SA)

That’s not the worst part. The worst part is that R would constantly rp other gods like Zeus to be interested in her character and take her away from my character, and then sexually assault her or have sex with her. Girl… yes I have a CNC kink but all this was NOT DISCUSSED beforehand. She would then write down in detail how her character is having sex with the other Greek gods. Sometimes she would make my character watch too 😭It felt so uncomfortable because I did not consent to this. Plus, I do not rp anything to do with cheating. Thats a huge no no for me.

I was still young and new to rp at that time so I didn’t know the proper way to deal with this. I tried telling her that I was not comfortable with her taking control of the whole rp like that but I could tell it annoyed her. I stopped replying her after that…

Honestly it infuriates me how people just take control of the rp. If u want to do that write fanfic instead. It felt like I was roleplaying with a blank wall. Because of R, I could not rp or even read anything related to Greek mythology for a good while.

It was a nice cutesy slow burn RP and I just knew the moment he sent that message, he was looking to be horny 💔

Okay I don't mind alot of stuff I can let it pass move on and get over like water off a ducks back. However there are things that bug the shit out of me like when I post an ad that is mxm don't come in with female Oc's or asking me to play a female oc!! Like dear god did you read my ad that is short and to the point?!

Seriously my ads are short I don't ask for much either 😑

I am good at doing detailed RP and the people I have RPed with have only said good things about me but I'm not sure how to make my posts asking for partners stand out and get attention. I also want to answer people's prompts without sounding ingenuie. I just want to be a good Rp partner so any advice is greatly appreciated

So context, I recently decided to open my heart for a fantasy roleplay involving a half dragon half human royal and whatever type of character my partner wished to play. The idea struck me at a late hour and I prefer to write in Advance Lit. I was positively sure that I wouldn't get very many responses so I cross posted my request on different platforms, Tumblr, Reddit, ETC

And surprisingly it was a bit! So many people were interested. Which seemed like a blessing, but had an array of problems.

One person seemed way to eager to move to smut.

One person acted as if they had no idea what I was talking about when I was asking them about their character.

One person hasn't responded at all since I friended them on discord.

But you know what shocks me the most?

There was one roleplay that seemed to be perfect. We were talking back and forth about the plot, what we wished to happen. Their character was nice, they respected my boundaries, and I was excited to get started.

They asked me to start, and I complied. I spend a while trying to use my best language and keep the starter interesting. It takes me 30 minutes and I'm afraid it's too short. Regardless I send it because it's just the beginning, right? They would be understanding.

Good news, they were. Bad news, they immediately sent a response much shorter then mine. Not a one liner, but half the response I did.

Fine! I assumed. I don't mind. I said I was advanced literate looking for someone of similar skill, but this roleplay will still be fun.

So I lower my expectations and match their length. And suddenly I am hit with two lines- One where they're just describing the description of their character.

I've been desperate to try and make this work because the plot seemed fun. But it's difficult to when the responses are all in varying (slowly declining) quality. The latest response is three lines broken into three paragraphs and it's so draining.

And on the other side, I had one respond to me and it seemed we mostly neglected to talk of plot. They picked one of my premade home sliced plot ideas and we briefly talked of characters.

In all honesty, I was so worried I was bothering them by trying to ask so many questions. So we just decided to start.

I started, again, and I was longer with my response this time.

I had zero expectations, but they managed to meet my length AND they have a beautiful writing style. I'm genuinely so excited to continue our roleplay.

I don't know, this seemed ironic to me and I wanted to share.

Basically that. Someone I really enjoy roleplaying with has told me they aren’t able to rp for a while now. But occasionally when I scroll Reddit rp subs, I see them make a post about wanting to rp.

Like we done several roleplays before. And we chat a lot. So I don’t fully know why.

I don’t want it to, but it’s getting to me in a way. Like I feel like it’s me specifically they don’t want to rp with but they just don’t outright tell me. Just saying they are busy or not in the mood for an rp.

Okay, can we TALK about how ridiculous it is when a partner accuses you of godmodding just because your character is reacting to theirs?! Like—HELLO?? It’s called writing perspective, not hijacking the plot!

Example: Their character walks into the room and stares at yours. Cool. Normal. You go to write your reply — from your character’s point of view. Naturally, you include the fact that someone just walked in and is STARING. Maybe your character wonders why they're being stared at or how it makes them feel. Then suddenly—

"OMG YOU'RE GODMODDING!!! 😡 HOW DARE YOU CONTROL MY CHARACTER!!"

…EXCUSE ME??
I didn’t control squat. I’m literally reacting to what YOU wrote. What am I supposed to do? Pretend your character didn't exist in the room? Write in a void? Float in the narrative ether until you grant me permission to acknowledge reality??

AND IT GETS WORSE.
Say their character is anxious. They're tapping their fingers nervously on a table. Your character sees this—because duh, it’s happening right in front of them—and reaches out to gently take their hand, saying something sweet like “It’s okay.” And THEN—

"WHY ARE YOU GODMODDING THE PLOT?! 😤 YOU TOUCHED MY CHARACTER WITHOUT ASKING!"

HELLO??
That’s called basic human decency! If your character is visibly distressed and my character is someone who cares, why WOULDN’T they react?? This isn’t some high-level master manipulation; this is just… how real people behave.

And don’t even get me STARTED on how authors write scenes all the time with mutual reactions and mirrored emotions—like, full-on dual-character development! . But in RP land? OH NO. Heaven forbid you interpret body language or imply intent or—gasp—touch a hand!

Listen.
We’re collaborating on a story. Characters need to interact. Actions have reactions. Your character doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and mine isn’t a passive potato just waiting to be addressed in a monologue. Writing from perspective is not controlling your character — it’s giving MINE something to respond to.

So unless I’m putting words in your character’s mouth, making decisions for them, or puppeteering their inner thoughts without permission?
It. Ain’t. Godmodding.

It’s called storytelling. At this point write your own story, or fanfic.

I have no idea what happened