Just wanted to discuss your RP ideas that for one reason or another, you couldn't just seem to get started and have just stuck in your mind ever since. Maybe discussing them here would help you find some people that actually are interested too!
I will start this off with saying two of mine real quick. One is a horror themed RP that takes place in the middle of the Civil War, where your scouting team gets lost in the woods as they try to return to their regiment. While here strange things start happening and they start being pursued by strange creatures and anomalies, eventually coming to the realization they somehow managed to walk into some strange existence in time that was neither past present or future and they had disappeared into this strange limbo. Sort of like that whole Backrooms creepy pasta stuff I suppose, only it was set in a forest. Couldn't find anyone who liked this one probably because of it taking place in the Civil War, and I planned on it being more short term. I might convert it into just being a personal short story but we shall see.
And aside from that I have had a lot of trouble getting a RP started for the past year now which involves the Metal Gear Universe where you play as your own original character on their own espionage mission involving finding a missing unit that disappeared while infiltrating a base, which is where you would come across my character and the two would uncover what messed up experiments where happening on said base. This one hasnt gone anywhere mainly because I think I just overestimated exactly how many Metal Gear fans there are out there. I have been considering keeping the same story idea, but simply dropping the Metal Gear canon so that it can be open up to people who are unfamiliar with the franchise.
Of course these two are quick summaries and I would advice you do the same, it would probably be best not to go and post your entire RP prompt and just make it short and easy to discuss, but hey if you have the RP prompt open on FIND RP, maybe you could give a link. I dont think that is against the rules at least.
I will start this off with saying two of mine real quick. One is a horror themed RP that takes place in the middle of the Civil War, where your scouting team gets lost in the woods as they try to return to their regiment. While here strange things start happening and they start being pursued by strange creatures and anomalies, eventually coming to the realization they somehow managed to walk into some strange existence in time that was neither past present or future and they had disappeared into this strange limbo. Sort of like that whole Backrooms creepy pasta stuff I suppose, only it was set in a forest. Couldn't find anyone who liked this one probably because of it taking place in the Civil War, and I planned on it being more short term. I might convert it into just being a personal short story but we shall see.
And aside from that I have had a lot of trouble getting a RP started for the past year now which involves the Metal Gear Universe where you play as your own original character on their own espionage mission involving finding a missing unit that disappeared while infiltrating a base, which is where you would come across my character and the two would uncover what messed up experiments where happening on said base. This one hasnt gone anywhere mainly because I think I just overestimated exactly how many Metal Gear fans there are out there. I have been considering keeping the same story idea, but simply dropping the Metal Gear canon so that it can be open up to people who are unfamiliar with the franchise.
Of course these two are quick summaries and I would advice you do the same, it would probably be best not to go and post your entire RP prompt and just make it short and easy to discuss, but hey if you have the RP prompt open on FIND RP, maybe you could give a link. I dont think that is against the rules at least.
Oh! I really like the horror RP idea! I have a plethora of wild west characters, most of which lived through the civil war. I'd love to play one of them in the horror game if you decide to run it as a group RP. (I'm not sure if my writing muse is back strong enough for a 1x1 yet... it's simply my turn too often. lol) It could be an AU for them! Oh... ya know... I even have a journalist character whose husband went officially MIA during the war. Maybe... just maybe... he wasn't simply shot somewhere. 
As far as my own, I tried to do a Dungeon Crawl Classics funnel game. It's a tabletop RP with this concept of a "funnel" - each player creates 3-4 bare bones, 0-level average townsfolk with some minimal equipment and then we force the whole group on a dangerous mission. Don't spend much crafting backstories because most of them are going to DIE!
On tabletop, it played marvelously. I got a bit attached to my plucky 1d4 hit dice adventurers. Survivors emerge with a cool backstory and "level up" to 1st level heroes. I tried two different scenarios here on RPR. One was a medieval fantasy genre. The other was a group of 1990s high school students that got sucked into a strange occult movie. Neither garnered much attention. It may simply be a format that does not lend itself well to play-by-post. Now that I'm thinking about it anew, it's probably better suited to more real time play like roll20.
As far as my own, I tried to do a Dungeon Crawl Classics funnel game. It's a tabletop RP with this concept of a "funnel" - each player creates 3-4 bare bones, 0-level average townsfolk with some minimal equipment and then we force the whole group on a dangerous mission. Don't spend much crafting backstories because most of them are going to DIE!
On tabletop, it played marvelously. I got a bit attached to my plucky 1d4 hit dice adventurers. Survivors emerge with a cool backstory and "level up" to 1st level heroes. I tried two different scenarios here on RPR. One was a medieval fantasy genre. The other was a group of 1990s high school students that got sucked into a strange occult movie. Neither garnered much attention. It may simply be a format that does not lend itself well to play-by-post. Now that I'm thinking about it anew, it's probably better suited to more real time play like roll20.
I actually never considered the Civil War rp as a group one and now that you bring that into light I actually think that is a terrific idea. If I could get three to four people interested, then I could play the role more as a narrator and dungeon master instead of being a player character and lead people on their journey and present the situations and obstacles. I will have to give it a moment of thought but I think you might have helped me find a way to make the idea work well, and hopefully you will be able to join in on it. I often just have trouble with group RPs because it is reliant on too many people to be actively posting and keep things moving, however I have never attempted it on this sight and I have met great people that could probably hold it together better then others.
And I never heard of that Funnel idea but it honestly sounds like a lot of fun. The concept of having a character that is defiantly going to die is a much different approach then treating your precious characters like the plot armored heros they were always meant to be. I think the idea would work especially as well if the moment your character dies a new one can near instantly take its place, almost like some kind rouge like game.
And I love the 1990s teenager idea even more because I am SUPER into those old slasher films. I am actually in the process of working on a RP that involves a similar idea, where your characters will defiantly be killed but once they die it groundhog days and they restart the day only to be killed again, the goal being to work together to stop the terrible time loop. All of this being textured with a finely aged coating of 1980s slasher horror. I do agree though those things tend to work better on a Roll20, I am actually trying to put together a very lite and easy to use dice system for said RP because I want there to be a little bit of strategy involved and some gameplay so that players dont feel like I am just being a jerk when they are killed. I am mostly coming up with it in this way because I am trying hard to find a way to make a simple dice rolling mechanic that would better suit a play-by-post method, but when it comes to DnD type of things, Roll20 is defiantly better. I love this site but I use it to do literate RPs and what not, not DnD.
And I never heard of that Funnel idea but it honestly sounds like a lot of fun. The concept of having a character that is defiantly going to die is a much different approach then treating your precious characters like the plot armored heros they were always meant to be. I think the idea would work especially as well if the moment your character dies a new one can near instantly take its place, almost like some kind rouge like game.
And I love the 1990s teenager idea even more because I am SUPER into those old slasher films. I am actually in the process of working on a RP that involves a similar idea, where your characters will defiantly be killed but once they die it groundhog days and they restart the day only to be killed again, the goal being to work together to stop the terrible time loop. All of this being textured with a finely aged coating of 1980s slasher horror. I do agree though those things tend to work better on a Roll20, I am actually trying to put together a very lite and easy to use dice system for said RP because I want there to be a little bit of strategy involved and some gameplay so that players dont feel like I am just being a jerk when they are killed. I am mostly coming up with it in this way because I am trying hard to find a way to make a simple dice rolling mechanic that would better suit a play-by-post method, but when it comes to DnD type of things, Roll20 is defiantly better. I love this site but I use it to do literate RPs and what not, not DnD.
Almost all of my ideas pretty much.
RoundTableKing wrote:
Almost all of my ideas pretty much.
Same.
In my experience, sometimes you might have an idea that struggles for weeks, and then bam, you get three or four interested people messaging you on the same day. I guess potential RP partners are kinda like buses huh? 
Alas... there are also times where that doesn't happen.
What I find on RPR is that certain themes are a lot more popular than others, even if you might expect a more even spread. Sci-fi pales in comparison to fantasy or modern for instance (seriously, look at the sci-fi forum - my summer soiree from last year is still near the top of the 2nd page). Romance is very popular (and often is advertised for binary-only pairings), and a lot of people can tune out depending on to what extent a romance can blossom in an RP. People also seem to vastly prefer human characters, or failing that, traditional supernatural beings such as vampires, elves and werewolves. The adult forums also seem to be worse when it comes to thematic bias, as there's much less experimentation with fun themes - everyone just wants to be dark and gritty half the time - typically the half that isn't real-world slice-of-life.
Right now, I'm struggling to get interest in my newest character. I mean granted, I don't make it easy. The three ads I have going for them all have optional non-binary-exclusive asexual romance options, which I guess rules out the vast majority of the romance-required crowd. They're all paragraphs-required, they all have specific world themes and they all have some sort of restriction on characters that I know has ruled out more than one potential partner. Two of them are set in original settings, which also typically doesn't help, given it seems RPers typically prefer the real world or popular pre-existing settings that they are familiar with. Plus... remember when I mentioned dark and gritty? This character is like the total opposite.
One of the three ads in particular is heavily recycled from an older idea that I couldn't get any interest for. It's a sorta Millennium Falcon situation. A duo of space travellers just doing their own thing, living aboard a spaceship. Problem is that it's not the sort of RP I want to do with binary-gender human characters. Because that's just too boring to me. The first time out, the characters were quadrupedal pokémon. Because I was intrigued by the idea of coming up with technology designed for quadrupeds without opposable digits. Plus, it was cute to think about. And pokémon in space seemed like a hilariously fun idea. The current idea, however, requires non-binary characters instead; because I'm interested in trying out such an environment in a situation without gender roles where friendship can blossom in a way that doesn't fit any traditional gender binary dynamic. There's not actually that much beyond that in terms of pre-planned story for the current iteration though; but there are space bikes involved. Which are, as one might expect, the space equivalent of motorcycles.
Typical that I get a response not long after writing this. >.<
Alas... there are also times where that doesn't happen.What I find on RPR is that certain themes are a lot more popular than others, even if you might expect a more even spread. Sci-fi pales in comparison to fantasy or modern for instance (seriously, look at the sci-fi forum - my summer soiree from last year is still near the top of the 2nd page). Romance is very popular (and often is advertised for binary-only pairings), and a lot of people can tune out depending on to what extent a romance can blossom in an RP. People also seem to vastly prefer human characters, or failing that, traditional supernatural beings such as vampires, elves and werewolves. The adult forums also seem to be worse when it comes to thematic bias, as there's much less experimentation with fun themes - everyone just wants to be dark and gritty half the time - typically the half that isn't real-world slice-of-life.
Right now, I'm struggling to get interest in my newest character. I mean granted, I don't make it easy. The three ads I have going for them all have optional non-binary-exclusive asexual romance options, which I guess rules out the vast majority of the romance-required crowd. They're all paragraphs-required, they all have specific world themes and they all have some sort of restriction on characters that I know has ruled out more than one potential partner. Two of them are set in original settings, which also typically doesn't help, given it seems RPers typically prefer the real world or popular pre-existing settings that they are familiar with. Plus... remember when I mentioned dark and gritty? This character is like the total opposite.
One of the three ads in particular is heavily recycled from an older idea that I couldn't get any interest for. It's a sorta Millennium Falcon situation. A duo of space travellers just doing their own thing, living aboard a spaceship. Problem is that it's not the sort of RP I want to do with binary-gender human characters. Because that's just too boring to me. The first time out, the characters were quadrupedal pokémon. Because I was intrigued by the idea of coming up with technology designed for quadrupeds without opposable digits. Plus, it was cute to think about. And pokémon in space seemed like a hilariously fun idea. The current idea, however, requires non-binary characters instead; because I'm interested in trying out such an environment in a situation without gender roles where friendship can blossom in a way that doesn't fit any traditional gender binary dynamic. There's not actually that much beyond that in terms of pre-planned story for the current iteration though; but there are space bikes involved. Which are, as one might expect, the space equivalent of motorcycles.
Typical that I get a response not long after writing this. >.<
I know in my case a lot of it has to do with the fact that I have very specific taste.
I don't care for vampires, I don't care for werewolves, I don't care for fandoms, I don't care for romance, I will never do a school rp I absolutely refuse to. I don't really care all that much for smut either.
I also don't much care for sci-fi though that's not because I dislike it but because I want to know a lot about the technology that exist in the setting and I will spend hours reading info dumps about that kind of shit.
Honestly I'm mostly here for the violence, and adventuring. Everything else is either secondary or not worth considering in my opinion.
I don't care for vampires, I don't care for werewolves, I don't care for fandoms, I don't care for romance, I will never do a school rp I absolutely refuse to. I don't really care all that much for smut either.
I also don't much care for sci-fi though that's not because I dislike it but because I want to know a lot about the technology that exist in the setting and I will spend hours reading info dumps about that kind of shit.
Honestly I'm mostly here for the violence, and adventuring. Everything else is either secondary or not worth considering in my opinion.
Been there, tried like 6 or 7 times with this one idea and well I bought the t-shirt.
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