Roleplay Nopes and Horrors of the Past

[Hiroku]

Just pasting up some old favorite horror stories from my past roleplay experiences. Newbies, you may want to pay attention so you don't make the same mistakes.


Worst roleplay I was ever a part of was so bad it was funny.

Old Rabbit three foot tall, my character, war veteran from ancient times. Taking challenges in town square, an elf maiden challenged him, RPer asked if they could have known each other from the war, I said okay but my guy was prolly not going to remember her with any fondness, being a mean sort. Rabbit hurts elf, elf bleeds profusely, rabbit tries to take elf to healer, elf coughs up insane amounts of blood and tries to get him to remember her, he is way ticked off, gets healer who takes care of elf, he leaves to pay healer, elf tried to get up, calling his name, falls and bleeds profusely.

Rabbit comes back, grumbles and puts elf back to bed, elf bleeds profusely, PRer tries to play for sympathy. By now this elf should be dead three times over from blood loss, but she's still going. My favorite part is she was trying to somehow drum up a romance despite the fact that she was a tall elf and I was a three foot rabbit who was getting on in years. She tried to get the elf to "fall into his arms." out of bed again, but I had the rabbit fall from the impact and weight, then get mad and threaten to leave if she didn't keep still.

Ah memories. I experimented later in the roleplay with adding a nice handsome human character but she persisted after the rabbit. It was a little scary.

-----~~*

I offered to play the villain once in a med/fant tavern RP because they wanted one badly, and as is the habit of people, everyone was in their own corner. One person was muttering rather loudly about something, so my guy, a little disturbed by the fact, and a bit genuinely worried came over and asked if she was alright. Instantly every single person was hostile and more or less threatening to spill his guts. He was seriously confused because he hadn't even done anything and nobody knew him.

In the end I brought in a second character who laughed at the others' foolishness and explained that they had no reason whatsover to be so hostile. I think he actually won a few people over to seeing how foolish they were being and they actually started being nice. It was pretty funny.

I hate when people type in chatspeak and painfully bad grammar, so once In a wolf roleplay I made my character unable to understand the beautiful-blue-eyed-white-wolf(a major cliche). She’d be like, "Hlo m ynam is So-and-so wuts urs??"

My guy was all, "... What?"

------~*~

Alright, maybe this one was the worst.

In an RP in my early days there was a girl who had some demons after her character for no apparent reason. She kept getting stabbed in the stomach and spilling killer amounts of blood. Even when we tried to protect her and another RPer's character healed her with magic she kept getting stabbed. Then she started controlling another's character, and that person was totally okay with it.

Needless to say the healer girl and I left and then afterward ranted about WTH was that?

-------------~*~
Ha ha, good times, goood eyegougingly bad times honestly.

People don't seem to understand that humans are not filled with infinite blood, or that after being shot or stabbed a certain way, you're not getting back up even if it's not a mortal wound.

Here is a prime example of giving a character major wounds and then not making the character affected by them:



I'll show you our posts, cut down a bit of course:

(His)... he started to limp away then feel to his knees in pain and then passed out from the pain. Some people came out from buildings and looked at the two figures and some gasped and some began to say a prayer for Jason. "Where are the cops when you need them?" said a male, "Yeah...Now it cost a life to protect us." said another
~*~
(Mine)...When he came out onto the street where Jason lay he sniffed the air and froze, eyes shimmering for a moment. But then he mastered himself and ambled forward, poking Jason with the toe of his boot, "None o' youse gunna h-help 'im, neh?" he looked about at the few who had gathered. When none moved to aid the fallen human Sev shrugged and hoisted him up on his back, stumbling from the weight.

"I'll take him... hospitlll.... or summit..." he slurred, stumbling down the street crookedly.
~*~
(His-full post) Jason got up, "Thanks for the kindness but i have to walk alone..." said Jason as he pulled away and started walking away. "In this city I need to stay strong or the evil will feed of my injury." said Jason as he started walking to a clinic that was near by. Jason walked into the clinic and fell to his knees again. "Oh My" shrieked a Nurse at the front desk, "Doctor!". A doctor walked into the room to see Jason on the floor. "Jason what happened?! Never mind we need to get you to the ER." said the Doctor as he helped Jason up and put him on a near by gurney and rolled him into the ER.
~*~
When Jason abruptly lurched up and off of him, the smaller Sev fell flat with a "Wha-omff!" He skipped up quickly, shaking the dirty snow out of his face and pawing at his nose, which was now bleeding again.

"Ah, nosmuch of a thnksuu," he sulked, scrunching a corner of his sweater up and holding it to his nose, "Jerk." he spat then imitated Jason sourly, "Danks for kindness but you're evil action eats my injury! Pttthhhh!" he spat again and skulked off, now in a thoroughly bad mood.

At least he had the guy's wallet.

---------------

Notice the roleplayer's complete lack of awareness, making his guy stand up when it is physically impossible, and ignoring that my guy is carrying him. I slip up myself sometimes and miss something, but this guy also got to the hospital, got an operation AND paid the hospital with his none-existent money.

Did I mention he was shot in the knee? You don't limp anywhere with a shot knee, your knee won't support you.

Unfortunately a lot of people do this, and their characters are exactly like this one, they posture, spouting out nonsense to make themselves look cool and honestly they just annoy everyone because they try to hijack the roleplay to make their character out to be super cool, when actually no, they are super superficial, and hollow, empty little things. Also making NPC(none-playable character/background characters)s think your character is the best ever even though the NPCs actually have no reason to think so, such as in the example above when in reality they would be more likely to assume the character was just another thug, is a big NOPE because if you have to sit there and tell us how awesome your character is, you're character is not awesome.

Laughing one moment, then randomly remembering a tragic pas and crying. Not if there is absolutely nothing there like an item or a stray word said by another to set your character off, your character is not going to randomly remember their sad past in the middle of a conversation.

I got more, just ask.

[Omega]

This is hilarious. I would love to hear (I mean read) more some time.

[Hiroku]

Certainly, here's the old post if you want to read other's experiences as well
theroleplays.proboards.com/thread/6582/worst-roleplay-moments

(This next bit turns into a bit of a rant, so bear with me.)

One of my most favorite roleplays was a Legend of Zelda Occarina of Time epilogue story. One girl played Malon, another Zelda, and I played Link. The two were blatantly after his affections so I made him very dense about it and I got the two of them mad at him at the same time. I can't even remember what got them mad. Then a Goron introduced himself and patted Link on the back so hard that he fell down.

Another time there was a Twilight Princess spin off/epilogue. I played Link again because the last time was so funny, and I got swamped by twili girls, Hylian girls and who knows what else girls. I literally could not reply fast enough to do anything. The setting was Lake Hylia and a girl fell off the bridge, before I could make Link hookshot to catch her someone else had caught her, they all talked over each other, it was chaos. Then someone was playing a wolf pup, so Link zeroed in on the one creature not vying for his affections ( think it may have been drowning and he saved it but I don't remember), and at once everyone was interested in the pup because Link was, and trying to act so kind and tender. I think Link told them to all get lost for being so fake and then everyone "had" to leave.

These were roleplays on a little slice of the internet called neopets. These roleplays only lasted a day because they were not meant to be permanent, sort of the fast food joint of the roleplay world. Most of my bad experiences like the bleeding elf and the stabby girl were from there. If I didn't say it already playing the victim card to extremes like the stabby girl and elf girl are excruciatingly bad ideas. Getting hurt in general is not a good idea unless another roleplayer inflicts the hurt. “he stabbed” “She got stabbed” Not “She tripped and cut herself just becuz.”

Ah, on neopets the “Teens lost in woods find haunted/vampire/serial killer's mansion is a bad one that never works. One time though a person came on and like a new reporter, started reporting on what was happening, “Jake fell and cut his knee on a random piece of sheet metal, and Sarah is still left behind with her dress caught on a branch. Will she ever get free? Stay tuned for more updates.”

Surprisingly they all took it well and it was extremely funny.

Having been home-schooled all my life I never got into high school roleplays, but for a long time I kept trying “gifted” high schools. The main problem with these is EVERYONE played an introverted character who sat in a tree or on a bench either reading, writing, DRAWING or SINGING BEAUTIFULLY TO HERSELF EVEN THOUGH SHE NEVER HAD A LESSON IN HER LIFE.

That last one is “golden”, and lots of people used it. I started making a more extroverted character to get the action moving because we would sometimes take four or five pages to get interactions actually going. And on neopets four to five pages takes about two-three hours and then everyone has to get off because it's bed time or dinner or, in the case of early risers, time for school.

Wolves and warriors. Oh my gosh people they're EYES not orbs marbles diamonds emeralds sapphires, they're freaking EYES. They are not pillars, they are legs, they are not flags they are tails they don't always have to be maws they can be jaws or muzzles or noses! Gosh people!

Siiiiiiiigh. I got bored of the pretty cats in Warriors roleplays so I made a big fat cat who could crush a warrior by falling on it. People have told me he frightened them, but of course since he was not pretty like the other cats, or youthful, no one would interact with me.

Describing your eyes as shining beautifully. It's kind of my decision whether my character sees them as beautiful. “He thought her eyes were beautiful.” Not, “MY EYES ARE BEAUTIFUL HINT HINT I'M SOOOOO ATRACTIVE!” Kind of repulses me. But that could be more of a pet-peeve, after having several warrior cats do it to my cat before the fatso, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth when other people do it.

Wolf roleplays. Somehow the creator was always the “Alpha Female” even before she had a pack of her own and had fought for supremacy. Everyone wanted to be a loner, so I started playing two or three that were already a pack. And the roleplays were overrun with pure white wolves with “Ice-blue” eyes and pure black wolves with red or gold eyes. Warriors cats were either that or flame colored. And the blue-eyed white cats were never deaf. I was going to make one with two different colored eyes so she would be partially deaf, but that never happened.

“Piercing Ice-Blue” eyes, oh my gosh they were EV. RY. WHERE. In every genre imaginable. Unless you had something like gifted or med-fant in which “Blood-red” and Golden eyes were a close second. There was a flare up when bright green was also huge. I once saw four green-eyed people in one board and I had to change mine to another color. Ha ha.

Even though neopets had certain rules about roleplaying, somehow modern human trafficking was never banned. There were tones of “Gifted girls sold to rich boys.” Usually for a ball or event(way to pick a date amIright?) these were phenomenally bad, and somehow the girls could never use their powers to escape. And it was always girls sold to boys.

Still makes me sick thinking of those when I lurked on them out of boredom.

Speaking of balls. Medieval Fantasy Balls where the Prince must choose a Princess to be his bride were dismal. Every single girl; Didn't want to be there: hated wearing flouncy dresses: Something else involving not wanting to even meet the prince or care.

All of them. And no one ever actually played the prince so it was just a bunch of girls being whiny about having to go to the ball. I think sometimes someone would bravely pick the prince, and then get ignored, and I often played another courtier or an assassin who slipped in among the guests or some such roguish sort. Usually though I just lurked and laughed silently.

Roleplaying by oneself. I hate when a person has two characters and only makes them interact with each other, not even attempting to interact with another player's characters. It's like, if you don't want your characters to talk to anyone else why are you roleplaying? Go write a book.

Gifted vs. Government.

It's never explained what government, or what branch of the government. Just that all encompassing evil “GOVERNMENT” Dun dun duuuuuun. And no one plays the government agents, everyone is the gifted, because no one wants to be a bad guy.

[Hiroku]

Oh yes, and the guy with the shot knee then came back to thank my guy who only had barely been able to do anything more then examine someone's parked motorcycle. My guy naturally freaked out.

People people people, you cannot get from point A to point B, do stuff like have a surgery, and then come back in the space of eleven seconds. And you don't walk off a gunshot wound after surgery, you stay in bed.

That's a big one newbies forget, it takes time to get from point A to point B and then back to Point A. Two other people may be in conversation and before even five minutes of conversation can take place the third person has shown back up when they should in reality take 20 minutes. Even in shorter increments such as walking down a block, or even getting into a fight, if you're several yards off, your enemy should have time to draw his weapon and dodge or block.

Romance. I'm jaded because I've never seen a good one played out, and if other's characters became interested in mine they tried to move too fast or pull the old "tears in the eyes" trope. Naturally I began playing very dense characters who would not pick up the signs. In a Warrior cats roleplay after my Cat said, "I like you too, you're like the little sister I never had!" her character ran off with tears streaming from her orbs, and instead of doing the stereotypical running after, I had my cat sit there confused at her reaction. Good times.

[Omega]

I don't think I've had anything quite as horrible as the ever bleeding elf, but when I started out role playing on the Runescape forums there were some pretty bad moments.

There was one time when my shadow character was confronting some other guy and they were about to fight. I had to get off at that time so I thought we would wait to start the fight the until I returned. However, when I got on the next day, the other guy had already made my character instantly lose to his and then later continued on as if my character didn't exist. There was also about ten more pages of posts past the point where I left off, so I was now way behind in the role play. After that I had my own moment of stupidity by making my character randomly end up in a void that makes everyone else forget who he is. I'm pretty sure I knew it was dumb when I was writing it, but I was desperate to get back into the role play. I was completely ignored though.

Another time someone just copied off of my character instead of using their own imagination. Both of our characters were dirty blonde 15 year old human males with a similar back story involving family members being killed in some sort of raid when they were young. The only notable difference I can remember is that my guy had a sword that was passed down through the family for generations, and the other person's guy had a bow... that was passed down through the family for generations.

One of the last role plays I did on the Runescape forums before I moved to a different site involved having to find a mystic white tiger so that it could fight an apocalyptic dragon that was going to destroy the world. You would think that something so important to the story would take a while to find, right? Nope! Instead, one person had the white tiger show up on the island where everyone started out just randomly passing through town. And then that person's fairy character touched the tiger and copied all of its powers while also growing a black and white striped tail.

[Hiroku]

Oh no! I hear you there about being left behind. I can't count the times people have left me behind because I was sleeping or at classes. What I hate is when two people take over the roleplay because they are more interested in having a romantic relationship than interacting with the other people. Suddenly they are more important than anything else going on.

I did once do that with another roleplayer but not romantically. Our characters got into a battle and somehow we just went along at a fast clip, and then suddenly we realized we were ten pages in and no one else had contributed.

I remember in my younger days, and lots of newbies, and even more experienced players fall into this trap; not letting your character get hit in a fight. I used to want my character to be too good to get hurt, but then I discovered it's actually a lot of fun to hurt your character and ruin their lives a little.

[Omega]

Thankfully, I've never been in any role play where the story was completely taken over by romance.

Another time in a role play, I had to get off for the night and the next day when I came back it had about twice as many posts as before. So I was expecting everyone to be much farther ahead of me at that point, but instead it was pretty much all just two people in a fight with each other that had nothing to do with the story in a completely irrelevant part of the world.

[Hiroku]

Ha ha, ah no!

Mary-Sues with "Clumsiness" or "Too kind/trusting" as their flaws. And terminal illnesses used to be a thing. I think I started it when I had a character with tuberculosis and I OWNed another character who had a tragic backstory that her dad was a crook and when he was busted and jailed she was jailed with him and abused in jail (which cannot happen because she would have been sent to juvi or fostercare).

My character was all, "At least you have the rest of your life to look forward to." and he admitted he could die within the year. That shut her up good. I didn't really use the terminal illness thing again but shortly after everyone had some undefined terminal illness that caused blood to be coughed up and fainting spells. The female characters anyways, or it was a curse, in which case either side could have it.

[Hiroku]

I guess I should also bring up my own short-comings of the past. I have my own proverbial skeleton in the closet in the form of a character called Shiro Oni, the White Demon, although his hair was usually gray or black, and he was sort of a typical nekoboy, although more a neko-man I guess. He was the pretty typical "Crazy guy"(you know the types if you've seen them), and also an accomplished assassin. At first he was an anti-hero, an assassin with a heart, but then I made him friends with a mercenary elf character of mine, and I suddenly discovered that having the one annoy the living daylights out of the other was fun for me.

Shiro became more and more a villain who loved to ruin the other character's life, and they traversed from site to site with me as each site eventually died. I used to only roleplay on sites where there was a single genre. Each board took you to a different area in the land of the world, usually a medieval fantasy one and their was an overarching plot and sometimes even pre-made character spots to fill. I didn't often actually roleplay them together, but in their profiles I linked their pasts together. Ah, the old days of a designated board for profiles to be approved. I kind of miss that.

People would even link to their profiles in their signatures, and the clever people added little quips next to each name in different colors. Good times.

Back to Shiro. As some of you know I had him start coming on the chatbox and generally make a nuisance of himself. He even tried to incite the other characters into kidnapping us and forcing us to roleplay more in the last dying days of one particular site.

He became a pyromaniac at some point, because that was sort of a big thing people liked to have in the makeup of a crazy character.

Gads he just got worse and worse until I proverbially shut him away in a box. I began to realize that he was not actually a good character to have around as he was just getting more overpowered and ridiculous.

On occasion I try to take him back out as a crazed character hell-bent on killing me, but still trapped in the roleplay trying to break the forth wall and exact his revenge. When I did I used "Hiroku the avatar" in the roleplay and he tried to kill her, thinking she was me.

Good times. Not likely to do it again. The other poor character went off the grid for a while before being reborn as Salamander, the guy who's always handed the short end of the stick. Because I still love to hurt my characters, to have them not quite dodge that bullet, not quite see inevitable pain coming. To not have it altogether.

[Hiroku]

Aww, I remembered another painful one from my long ago beginnings. A boy, I forget how old, sixteen, fourteen? Who was very tacit and moody around people. When I think of it he was obviously not fun to roleplay with as he would do as little responding as possible to people trying to converse with him. Fortunately he didn't last long. Mm, I used to have a different name for every site I joined. My first was Lady_Mist, and my first roleplay character was a typical shy girl with a pet fox creature.

Animal companions are usually the worst extras to have around because they take away from player interactions. I've seen people have some special dragon or hawk or some such and their main character was psychically linked with them and they'd have whole conversations with themselves. I always tried not to but occasionally I did an animal companion sans the psychic link. Had a half-wolf more or less looking after a happy-go-lucky elf minstrel. Had a good but short run with them.

Did I mention tattoos and special pieces of jewelry? Usually very obnoxious, some heirloom from parents who died tragically or some symbolic tattoo or scar that had to be mentioned a million times. Yup, good times.