Forums » RP Discussion » Pet Peves in characters and/or RP

Oh, man, that happened to me so often that I stopped picking up RPs after 9 PM xD

I thought I was the only one!

That is assuming the dragon is of the flying variant and not an anthropomorphic dragon whose build is so whacked up that he wouldn't be able to fly anyway and has no reason to have a hollow bone structure! Ahem.

Joking aside, these people list their character's weight. Sometimes the dragon is over 1000 pounds in weight, if not more. That's the weight of an average horse, then sat down on a chair and the weight focusing on one small area.... No chair lives through that, hah. But if I were a dragon, I wouldn't WANT to sit on a tiny chair anyway. I'd build myself a throne of skulls and keep a princess in my cave etc. etc. m/

I've discovered a nice "list" in recent weeks off-site:

• Player Domination: this comes from playing more than one character at a time (in this case I'm guesstimating 7+, maybe 10+). I'm impressed that certain people can play that many characters at once, however it gets annoying to see the roleplay dominated by that one player because they can carry on conversations/plots with themselves so damn quickly that I can't begin to hope to interject myself
• Godmodders, Powerplayers, Twinks, Autohitters: Self-explanatory, but when the player(s) willingly do this, it starts to get bothersome (more-so-than-usual!)
• Metagaming: Saw this yesterday, but someone had a character who had the power of being distinctly aware of their fictional status and could interact with the authors/players, giving them the advantage of knowing pretty much anything said OoCly and ICly. Fortunately they didn't have supermega powers of any other variety. I think.
• The 1UP War: I ranted about this last week or so, but this seems to be happening to block the primary godmodder around. Loads of fun to watch when I seem to be playing one of the "average joes" of the group!
• Too Wussy To Join: This is a personal peeve against myself-- I am too wussy to interject myself due to the above & fear that I'll end up adopting all those peeves just so I can "keep up" and "be like the others" so I don't feel so left out.

Okay I think that's it. >>; Just. Oi. >< What do, what do? I want to have fun, but it's hard with all of this afoot in the chat I'm in-- doesn't help that I've been so used to playing DECENT characters for the last few years.

Two choices: leave, or criticize the other players, be ostracized by them, and then leave.

I would provide links to resources that explain exactly why wish-fulfillment and self-insertion are always bad ideas in writing, and even worse when that writing is collaborative. This is a good place to start: describes what a mary sue is, but isn't full-on against them. This is a more thorough deconstruction that also provides specific examples.

Of course no one's actually going to change just because you pointed out their mistakes. You can break the chains and point out the shadows and the fire and puppets that create them, but we all have to find our own way out of the cave. Be prepared to never come back to that community. If most people are engaging in these behaviors though, you'd probably be better off.

I've already been told that I should go (in this case, just exit out of the chat group), which I may consider since most of the folks I like in that chat are in another OoC one-- really it's only 1-3 players (same people) who do these RP "blunders", and not all of them do it all at once every time, but it's still obnoxious since it takes over so much of the IC.

And believe me, in at least one case we've tried criticizing* (the person in question just doesn't give a darn and ignores it). So there's yet another frustration onto of everything else. I'm not sure how to deal with the 1UPing/"self-defense" against the primary godmodder in our group. Only once has it really gotten totally out of hand, but seeing it nonetheless is making my "hackles raise".

*Edit: criticizing, in this case, is along the lines of "Look, we know you godmod and have mary-sues and love to do so but c'mon can we please try to explain why to this extent it's not a good idea and look here are some links about good writing" and yadda yadda.

Sounds like you should just leave. The godmoders clearly don't care about you or the other members, nor do they care enough about their hobby to take criticism seriously. No doubt you can find a better place to spend your valuable time and energy, not to mention staying in a group like that can be poisonous to your mental health over long enough periods.

*staring at the ceiling* I do this a lot in that chat when things get heated. Mostly accompanied by mental "Whhhhy?" because I have my mic on.

But yeah, I'll consider it-- I'm slightly torn because I DO want to rp with the decent folks in that group who are truly my friends ano not people I tolerate, but it's taken up by the godmoding most of the time. Ah well, I'll figure something out. This isn't the first time I've had to persevere in the realm of roleplay. Thanks for your advice & input, mross. It really is appreciated. ^^

If it was me, I'd tell my friends I'm off to find an RP that doesn't suck. Sometimes being blunt with people is the only way to help them.

But, you're not me, maybe your friends are smarter than that. Good luck??

(Also no problem)

Haha! I've learned to be more blunt in recent months-- sometimes I've been seemingly TOO blunt (especially with this lot).

Why do we hang out with the godmodder in question (and give into the 1Uping/self-defending), I don't know. I'm not them, and I won't speak for them. Some of them (the decent folk) are on RPR-- they can answer for themselves if they want to (notice how I've been avoiding names?)

Anyway, thanks for the luck too. Off I go to finish reading those links you gave-- I know a lot about MS-ing, but I find such articles a pleasant read anyway!

Mario~

I would just like to say that I hate when people write "a bit" a million times in their posts.

This used to be one of my big problems. Now I vary. A little, a bit, a tad, a... well, that's about it for me.

People who keep using the same words/expressions/etc tend to tick me off quite a bit, too, since we're at it. USE A SYNONYM NOW AND THEN. IT'S GOOD IN MODERATION.


Edit: Apparently one of my other big problems is failspelling stuff.

Is it rude to subtly suggest a thesaurus? lol

I use them quite a bit, actually.

And dictionaries, to try to understand people who use thesauruses - yay for being a wacky foreigner. I wish I had your racial bonuses to English.

People I speak with in real life tell me I know too many big words o_o

Words like "idiosyncratic"?

Pretty much. I got into an argument with someone over the weekend and later I was told that "I was so good with my words that I made her think it was her fault and she had nothing to say"

In that vein of thinking, "thesaurus-humpers". I have literally seen descriptions (and posts) like this one:

And for my "What Makes a Decent to Excellent Desc" essay, I had to figure it out like so:


That was not as fun to figure out as one may think. >< People, ease up on the thesaurus.

Copper, that almost made me want to end my life. I HATEHATEHATE that kind of description. It tells me nothing at all about the character.