Roleplaying Pet Peeves

Arthro

Arthro

Arthropod Enthusiast
Post em.

Mine's gotta be really short posts that contribute next to nothing to the story that's unfolding, extremely shallow characters with no apparent goals in the story, and those that explain their character's 'gorgeous' looks a little too much.
 
I already posted some of mine in another thread.

But yes, godmoding is one of them. 'Godmoding' or all too easily defeating other characters (especially other players' characters) in a fight. Stealing other player characters' tools or weapons without consent from the character's player, especially if they have special significance and aren't easily replaceable or can't easily be stolen back. All this is stuff that should be avoided.

Another pet peeve of mine is when people disrupt the narration by putting an OOC remark in parenthes, such as in the following example:

He would have reacted sooner, but he was still weary from the last battle (OOC: and the guy who played him was stuck in traffic and didn't get home till late). Before he could stop them, the door had already closed and the Masters were already on their journey.
​
That is jarring, and throws us out of the story. If you have to have an OOC comment, keep it separate from the IC portions of the post. Here is a better way of doing it:

OOC: Sorry I'm late. I got stuck in traffic.

IC:

He would have reacted sooner, but he was still weary from the last battle. Before he could stop them, the door had already closed and the Masters were already on their journey.​

There, that's much better. The OOC is much less intrusive and immersion-shattering.

Anyway, those are a few of my RP pet peeves.
 
I absolutely hate when characters are so unbelievable that I have to stop reading just to envision the character. I understand there are some extenuating circumstances, but when a character isn’t realistic then I lose the ability to empathize for them and then I’m unable to enjoy the character at all.
 
When I posted a decent amount of paragraphs with enough action and dialogue from my character for yours to react to, and then you respond with just a few sentences of your own, only reacting to certain parts of my post and ignoring other important things completely. Like, why do I even try at all? And by 'you' I mean the universal 'you' of writing partners, not 'you' as in the people who posted before me in this forum.
 
All the ones above and:
  • Depends on the roleplay, but when everybody's characters are all really good at combat. Nothing wrong with having a character like that of course but it's annoying to see so often rather than characters who have to rely on other ways to solve conflict like stealth, throwing money at the problem, running away, talking their way out of it or whatever.
  • You see it most often in fantasy when there's different races to choose from - characters who are half one race and half another and have the strengths of both and none of the weaknesses.
  • Elitism - pretty self explanatory.
 
I hate it when the parties involved in a pvp environment are operating on different levels of realism. For instance, I usually prefer to make combat as realistic as possible even in fantasy or sci-fi environments, keeping movements quick and simple, no flips and spins and such. This sort of style is going to clash pretty heavily when pitted against a player with a more showy style as it will be difficult for either side to realistic react to the other. It's usually nobody's fault, but when the issue arises it's hard to resolve without fracturing the likely intense mood of the scene.
 
All of the above. I guess replying in first person drives me nuts. One of my biggest well no, my absolute biggest pet peeve is not writing enough. As I said before, I write four paragraphs on minimum. When someone replies to me I want and need their replies to at least match mine. It drives me nuts when my partner puts not enough effort into their work after I tell them so many times.

Other pet peeves are ignoring me forcing me to repeat myself and feel like I'm scolding a child. It's better to just listen to what the person says and not force them to repeat themselves.
I hate when partners leave. Again feels like the child runaway from home. Drives me nuts why anyone would do this.
I hate when your rper only seeks you as a sex fling and then runs off after, kind of with the idea I said above. I hate when your partner doesn't coordinate with you and just throws something on your face without any warning. Kind of like sucker punching you and then asking why your mad after they sucker punched you.

All of this probably sounds obvious but you'd be surprised how many rpers pull anything on this list
 
I hate pressure on post length. There's this unspoken elitism behind how much you should write for each post and it makes me sad. Good writing isn't found in length, it's found in content.

Scene movement is so important. Sometimes we have thick, slow, or emotional moments and they truly merit a page post so we can encapsulate every detail that needs to be shared. But other times we have dull moments. Or conversations. Or action. And in these moments, we will find ourselves with less things we need to write out. I absolutely do not want the scene slowed down with fluffy details we don't need, just so we can meet this unspoken 'good' post length. I wish we focused more on writing true to the scene and trying our best. The rps read more like a book then, and I tend to have the best results with others when we do.
 
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Honestly, I hate it when I can't think of anything to say. You just run out of ideas, and your reply ends up being short, bland, and dumb. Especially when you have to think of a smart way to respond, depending on what the theme is, I guess.
 
Half-assed vriting of things you dont know anithing about. Dont. Please. Its embarrasing. All it does is make a character look fake and un-convincing. If you dont know how to vrite something out, dont try. Ask for help/advice on how to do it right. And I'm guilty of that myself too, vhen I tryed RPing that char I mentioned in https://www.storytellerscircle.com/threads/lack-of-imaginetion.5388/ this thread.

And ppl whining to me about grammar. Fuck. That. *sigh* No, I wont spell-check evry single little thing I vrite. If I did that, I'd spend 3 times as long vriting a post, and I dont have that much time. I generaly think up replys to my various on-going RPs in my head, as I'm doing something else, since I tend to do alot of stuff most days, then just put them to words vhen I got 5-10 mins to sit down and write up a post. Plus, its a casual for-fun roleplay, not a English dictionery.
 
I hate it when someone doesn't reply as frequently as you do. Its not that I necessarily blame them, schedules do get in the way, its just frustrating. Or when another persons character guesses your characters whole backstory because you previously told them, and then you have to try to explain to then not to do that, in a non-patronizing or mean way.
 
Mr.pizza said:
I hate it when someone doesn't reply as frequently as you do. Its not that I necessarily blame them, schedules do get in the way, its just frustrating. Or when another persons character guesses your characters whole backstory because you previously told them, and then you have to try to explain to then not to do that, in a non-patronizing or mean way.
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I was wondering if someone would mention this. I can’t stand when a character is omniscient and can read every character’s mind and pick up every hint of body language that most people wouldn’t even notice. No character should have as much information as an omniscient narrator. Just because you mention something in your writing doesn’t mean that the other persons character has to be aware of it.
 
I was wondering if someone would mention this. I can’t stand when a character is omniscient and can read every character’s mind and pick up every hint of body language that most people wouldn’t even notice. No character should have as much information as an omniscient narrator. Just because you mention something in your writing doesn’t mean that the other persons character has to be aware of it.
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I know right! Especially when they use it to make their character look like they're really intelligent.
 
Mr.pizza said:
I know right! Especially when they use it to make their character look like they're really intelligent.
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Unless your character has a knack for noticing small details in a persons body language and stuff like that there’s no reason for it. Let’s be honest how many people do you know irl who are that observant that they’ll pick up the slightest things and suddenly gain some sense of insight on your personality and backstory. You just have to take into consideration the limitations of your character’s perspective. You’re not rping to play a narrator.
 
Now it can be appropriate if someone’s character does something blatant or obvious like wincing at a fire might reveal their fear of fire and then your character might make an assumption that they’ve had a bad experience in the past with fire and that’s ok. But noticing a twinkle in their eye that reveals their darkest and deepest desires is just bs.
 
Now it can be appropriate if someone’s character does something blatant or obvious like wincing at a fire might reveal their fear of fire and then your character might make an assumption that they’ve had a bad experience in the past with fire and that’s ok. But noticing a twinkle in their eye that reveals their darkest and deepest desires is just bs.
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I agree, if someone deduces something normally and reasonably puts two and two together I'm fine.
 
I haven’t role played on here yet, but I do have a couple of pet peeves: everything above, as well as...

• When people write one word/one sentence responses with no content or “meat”.
For example: “He sat down.”
It irks me that I should put effort into writing a response with a lot they can go off of and they choose to say “Ok” as a response.

• God characters or power playing, as mentioned in previous posts. I kind of understand why people would want to win all the time. Whether it’s a pride thing or a need to portray their character’s power. Of course, people can express these things in other ways that are more realistic and helpful to the roleplay. I don’t think people realize the various other ways to branch out from combat. It was already given as an example above, so I want elaborate.

I feel like sometimes people genuinely don’t know how to role play to its full potential, though. That’s completely fair, and valid, but it would help if people could research a bit and read finished roleplays and learn from that.
 
I have a few role-playing pet peeves, and I get that some people can't help doing some of these things, but it still bothers me:
  • Not using proper grammar
  • Using word shortcuts such as "are" to "r"
  • People all of a sudden leaving the roleplay, never talking to you or responding again
  • People who don't reply as quickly as you do
And my biggest pet peeve of roleplaying:
  • One-liners
I cannot express how much I hate one-liners. The partner could at least put in the effort of making just two more sentences, pleassseeee. Give me something to bounce off.
 
I can't stand first person. First person just makes me uncomfortable sometimes
I also hate it when people doesn't give you enough to respond. Ei- one liners or lack of details. Especially if I gave them a few healthy paragraphs and I don't get at least half of the length in return and barely anything to work with.
 
Queen of Roses said:
I can't stand first person. First person just makes me uncomfortable sometimes
I also hate it when people doesn't give you enough to respond. Ei- one liners or lack of details. Especially if I gave them a few healthy paragraphs and I don't get at least half of the length in return and barely anything to work with.
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Ah good, it’s not just me, I can’t stand first person. Not that first person writing is invalid, but when everyone else is role playing in third person it’s so irksome to have it switching to first person whenever that one person responds.
 
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