The Worst RPing Experience You Ever Had

[Karali]

Okay, so, admit it. Being an RPer entails a few hazards. And the main one of those hazards is... Bad RP's. Everybody has had at least one of them. Some people are unfortunate to get a lot of them (I fall into this category). So since everyone probably has something to talk about, I decided to make this thread where we can! 8D

Oh, and obviously enough... Don't name any names. 8<

Anyway, I'll start. A couple years ago when I first started 1x1 RPing, I had this partner. It was a fantasy sort of RP, yaoi, what I would qualify as semi-lit. Because I hadn't quite ascertained what was good RPing and what was bad RPing, at that time I would pretty much stick with anything, unwisely.

Anyway, the RP itself was... Well, I can't even say it was good. And I blame my partner. Her character was a spineless, stereotypically uke catboy. The RP started off well enough, but in the space of like maybe 20 or 30 posts, her character got attacked/kidnapped/almost-raped on at least three separate occasions. Multiple times this was for blatantly stupid reasons like running off because of some silly relationship drama. In the middle of the night. In a forest that was already established beforehand as Really Dangerous. Obviously, every time my character had to save him. Except the last time he failed; I got so fed up with it I killed my character in the middle of rescue mission #3433242. I was glad to do so.Amusingly enough my partner didn't seem to get it and still replied afterward. :<

Anyway, uh, that's mine. I have more to share but I shall wait until later. Anyway, I'm interested in hearing yours! GOGOGOGO.

[Kalon Ordona II]

Ooh, fun.
Let's see....

My 2 words RP experiences were both caused by STUPID role-players.
I'll start with the lesser of the two evils.

On Gaia, a couple years ago, I was in a RP and it was really going great.
Then SHE entered the RP. -_-
She was basically an amateur. She brought too much to the RP and had her own little story going on, and it was really shallow. It wasn't so bad at first, but after a while it started unraveling until it got ridiculous. Eventually, sadly, the RP died.

And now, WORSE, several years ago back on the Middle-earth kinship place.
There was a Middle-earth RP, of course. It was going okay. I was relatively inexperienced, so I thought it was cool.
Then HE entered the RP. -_-
Youngish guy. I think he must have been reading a bit too much Harry Potter, 'cause he had all these crazy potions and magic in a MIDDLE-EARTH setting. Ruined the whole thing, and again, sadly, the RP died.
Not fun.

That's really all. Some RPs were middling bad, like they start and then stop soon after, but it's not nearly as bad as when an good RP is ruined by a bad player.

[Stion Gyas]

Mine's from this forum:

The RP is called Sephiris: The Price of Peace, and the co-creator...

Just kidding.

In reality, I spent a couple months developing a place, and making a map, and all of that good stuff. We get to RPing, get seven pages in, and three people just disappear. It never got past the seventh page, and I was soon left alone, discouraged, and slightly pissed off.

[Kalon Ordona II]

I 'bout died. Don't do that to me!

Man, too bad about people disappearing. I hate it when that happens.
I normally just go on without them somehow, but still... ugh.

[Gadreille]

Hmm...there was this one RP that I was in that for some reason, my posts were always ignored...no matter how hard I tried to incorporate myself into the role play. They just....pretended I didn't exist....for the most part. So the owner left for a while, and when he came back he buggered me into rejoining...I was like, seriously? I decided to rejoin long enough to kill my character off, and....he left again. And didn't come back. -_-

To top things off, it was an RP of shorter posts that got me flagged even though I usually don't write short posts. I was so angry I left the damn site.

[Guest]

Since I hadn't really ever role-played publicly before joining FOG, I haven't really had any bad experiences yet. Hopefully, this being my first community (besides a short stint at Gaia), I won't ever have any horrible role-playing experiences to relate

[Kesteven]

I've only RP'd for a few years and so far I've been mercifully free of the horror stories I've heard elsewhere, even when I was tabletop roleplaying my group didn't suffer from any of the ridiculous player/DM resentment, powergaming or drama-whoring that you hear about, and so far I've found the contributions of everyone I've played with, even those with no literary or RP experience, to be decent if not outright fascinating. Possibly this is what comes of playing exclusively with people I already like and steering clear of places like Gaia.

Then again, I've also heard the saying that if everyone else seems fine then chances are that you're the aggravating one, a thought which has on some occasions haunted me. There were a few incidents of creative exuberance when I was much younger that in hindsight I realise were examples of truly atrocious roleplaying, but I don't think I ever really ruined anything that had much worth to begin with, so I mark it down as acceptable damage in the process of development and move on. Still, of the RPs I've joined most have died in a couple of weeks and I tend to be the last poster, which could indicate that I'm merely a creative and committed individual in a sea of apathy but could also indicate that my posts contain some kind of poisonous death-touch.

[Alphariusthemad]

Let's see... I don't count my start on Pokemon forums in the 90s as RPing really, because I was shit at it and didn't fully understand the concept as I do now. Technically worst RP thing done _by_ me would have been on the Age of Chaos forums, when I powerplayed someone elaborately in a single post, but we pretended that didn't happen. Then there was some character I made on... no wait, this is meant to be where I bitch about what I've suffered through.

There was this one on Gaia's Literate RP Guild, which mostly went well until it abruptly died. The bad stuff was OOC, in an overly venomous and vehement argument between myself and another RPer; basically, he was totally convinced that his demon NPC had to be unimaginably and ridiculously powerful to require a group effort to beat it, and refused to acknowledge that demons there weren't Always Chaotic Evil despite one of them being very much non-evil in the backstory. Maybe me playing a psychopathic half-demon didn't help.

Worst things that happened IC... In ascending order of awful.

Ages upon ages ago, when finding good RPs in Barton Town actually worked sometimes, I joined as the villain of an elemental RP. Lame plot idea IMHO now, but it was handled well. Sadly we had to restart it once, as the water elemental girl refused to put effort into posts, could magically tell who my evil henchmen were on sight having never met them, and was magically able to realise that a manipulating voice seeding doubt in her mind was the primary villain and utterly evil. Possibly the last time I use Slaanesh as primary inspiration for villainous tactics, but still.

A little later than that, I had an RP of my own, where a bunch of supers had been made by a now-cancelled gov't project. We had one person who thought Magneto powers could stop a guy dead in his tracks even if he wasn't carrying metal. Then we had another person who decided that - in direct contradiction to the intro text - a bunch of cops were hunting supers with shouts of "SURRENDER AND YOU DIE QUICKLY!". The RP died after that.

Then there was another supers RP, with more detail, where I was one of the villains. The heroes were shockingly ineffectual, but that isn't the big problem. One guy joined with "member of an advanced alien race" as his only power, then proceeded to have a huge Earthside base within hours of construction. Then when my character (a centuries-old dark wizard masquerading as a CEO) personally teleported in, magic-mapped the area, and teleported out, he claimed he was somehow able to erase her memories of the whole incident with no save, destroy her copy of the map, and start nuking the whole world. We ignored him after that point though, so the RP didn't die.

Finally, the cream of the crop, I foolishly joined a noobish Barton RP. There was a fairly literate looking guy in there whose character was a fire elemental with fire powers. He stretched this to mean animating magma into a servant, which I thought was fine as he could be personally pulling the strings. Then he kept insisting that absolutely nothing except water could possibly harm a fire elemental, which is right out of order. When I finally killed his summon knight - having accepted I couldn't just chop its head off because it was a construct animated by someone else's will - he summoned another one about five times the size, and then claimed he wasn't to be drained because these were their own entities. So, in summary, he went from fire powers to nigh invulnerability to summoning anything he liked. I actually got angry enough to kill the RP with an OOC argument at that point.

I can't think of any really bad experiences I had that weren't on Gaia. This probably means I should be finding other pastures...

[Guest]

I had a long screed, but then I deleted it all and condensed the thoughts once I'd written out a long version.

I have been in a lot of RP communities over the last decade or so and the thing that usually ruins them is the blending of IC and OOC considerations, such as when everyone's RPing in one setting together and the OOC social stuff starts to dictate IC. Or on a forum with multiple topics, like this, where someone is in charge and has too much time on their hands, so they start coming up with new ways to mess with people and show off their shiny badges.

(That's how I left the last place -- writing on the wall when the new rules started coming down from up high and they seemed rather authoritarian, giving the mods a lot to do, but also poking their nose into a lot of RP -- unnecessarily, I might add.)

The nice thing about this system is that people who detest each other don't have to deal with each other and the RP doesn't wind up suffering for it. Fine by me. I've seen what happens in settings where people are forced to deal with each other -- cats in a sack.

[Kathryn Lacey]

You've already found another pasture. You've found FoG. ^^_^^

Okay, so... I have this annoying one that happened. Anyway, this neat role play was made with everyone carefully constructing their characters to mesh well with the role play. This one person decided to make a character who was not only nothing like he should have been within the world, he also set this character up for major power play. I know I'm not the only one who was in that role play that was irritated about that.

Anyway, the role play starts, and everyone is really good and working well together- not necessarily the characters liking one another, but we worked well as writers creating a story. The problem was that as soon as this one person posted, he not only wrote in a different point of view and a different tense ((we were third person past tense while he was first person present tense)) but he also couldn't maintain either that point of view or that tense. He kept switching between various tenses. His grammar and spelling were total crap, too. I really think that if some of us hadn't mentioned anything about his power play bullshit, he would have had an invincible character. As it is, I think it's his fault that that role play died. =\

Oh! I forgot to mention that he would also completely disregard any interaction made by other characters. It was utter crap. ._.

I've experienced other issues with crappy role plays, but that is one of the worst that I've experienced. It also made me the angriest. ^^_^^;;

[Guest]

Its not dead unless the role-players let it die. I would suggest moving on without that particular poster, as that person seems to have no interest in continuing with the story. Though someone should, perhaps, PM the creator to see if he is still interesting in continuing with it.

[Kathryn Lacey]

Sh! You're not supposed to make it obvious you know about whom I'm speaking! ^^_^^;;

[Guest]

Sh! You're not supposed to make it obvious you know about whom I'm speaking! ^^_^^;;

I know nothing of what you speak! I was simply offering a suggestion to help in your role-play.

[Kathryn Lacey]

Okay. Good! ^^_^^;;

[MetalEgo]

*taps chin thoughtfully* I've been in some pretty bad ones. I'm a bit of a masochist that way. ^_^; Lemme see...

On my home forum, I joined one that belonged to a guy that I KNEW sucked, but all the cool kids were joining (because the forum was [and is still] just about dead and we leap on any RP idea), so I entered an alien religious zealot that was actually programmed for close mindedness. Like she could not mentally process any ideas but her own.

So, like probably one out of every ten RPs ever conceived, it was set in a made-up, japanesey realm of Hell. I spent thirty pages with a warped personality for my character because everyone kept fighting about religion. In Hell. Because every time she'd get them calmed down, the GM's character would go, "Veritas is right, we should work together... But your gods still aren't more powerful than my ninja father who is a god! Who the other gods seek counsel from!" and it would start all over again.

And then it died. And then the maker tried to rezz it, but he restarted from twenty pages ago. Like, after all of that, he wanted us to retcon everything so another member could join the bad guy's side. Granted, said member is definitely a cool kid, but there's another way, you know?

(...Oh! Hi, I'm MetalEgo. Pleased to meet ya'll. ^_^; )

[Kathryn Lacey]

hahahah That sucks. Retconning is made of fail. ._.

((Go make an introduction thread here, so we can officially greet you! ^^_^^ ))

[MetalEgo]

Oh, my gosh! It's ridiculous! I could write full length novels and make a seven-part series and then write two prequels that only create more questions than answers about how ridiculous it gets, out there in the wilds of forumland. (Originally, that sentence just went, "I could write pages.") Sigh. And then there was this other time...

(I think I might already have made an intro, but darnit, I can't remember, and to make another would be just awful...)

[Inerio]

Worst roleplay experience ever?
Oh god, there were several. I'll narrow it down to two.

Okay, first experience.
There was a horror survival RP. It was high school based and so everyone was a stereotype. The girl was the shy quiet one and of course she had a tragic past. So, every post the damn girl makes is in reference to the bad boy character whom she'd just met and in the span of maybe eight hours falls in love with. She was constantly whining, crying, and asking "do you love me?". What's worse is the male character showed no interest. Eventually to get her to go away we just paired him with my character. Then they killed her. It was fun revenge.

The second was a RPG based in a video game.
The girl was like, a level 99 Mary Sue yet again with a tragic past. She was a general bitch to the female characters and pined over the males. She'd then cry for some unimportant reason unrelated to the story. What's worse was she was the GM. The user was so annoying that everyone else left.

[Kathryn Lacey]

Oh. I guess you did, and I even greeted you. XDDD

Ugh! Inerio, I know what that's like. For the hell of it, I joined this Academy based role play on Roliana. Actually, it was because it was fast paced, and I wanted gold. I even told the creator that I was only doing it for gold. XD

Anyway, in the beginning of the role play, there were a bunch of girls and only one boy who was active, so of course, three different girls wanted him. One gave up right away, one was all shy around him and such, and one was straight forward. Those two took turns running away, sobbing hysterically every so often. It was incredibly obnoxious... I quit that role play. It wasn't worth the measly fifteen gold per post I received.

[Zovo]

Worst RP experience I've ever had was in an old pen and paper RPG about 10 years ago.

We'd been running this same campaign off and on for roughly four years, lots of character advancement, lots of learning, some really really dramatic RP. . . gereally just a great game for more reasons than just good dice rolls.

Until we started nearing the end of the one epic storyline when the GM started trying to tie it up a little too quickly and began twisting his story in knots, contradicting himself, basicly just getting sloppy.

Ultimately it culminated in all of us being nearly killed in some apocalyptic battle, and suddenly he hands us each a sheet of paper which were copies of our character sheets from when we were level 1, four years ago. And he says, "It was all a big illusion."

That's right, he basicly wanted to negate everything we had done in four years because he had painted himself into a corner with his own story. He never lived that down.

[Kalaam]

Well, I spent three months trying in vain to validate another author's thread because she was indeed a good writer. The other two participants were terrible. Their grammar was consistently poor, and both came up with utterly implausible ideas that they would force down both the original author' and my throat. Also, not only the ideas impossible given the environment, characters and situation, but one of the two could never spell the main villain's name correctly. Now if I become significantly irritated by short, or sloppy, or badly punctuated posts in a given thread, I write myself out of it immediately.

However, there is a story I wish to relate from a GM with the tabletop RPGs. Apparently, the role play was going well, when one guy had to leave for a little while, and went to a brothel. Anyway, the story continued without him. When the man came back and caught up, some of the others were mildly disapproving of said activity as a pause. So he vocally says, "What's the problem, it's not like I am going to lose it, am I?" The GM roles the dice, looks at them and says, "Actually, you are."

From the day I read this onward, I have memorized a simple rule. Never ask the GM a question you don't want an answer to.

[Dax]

Hehe, my story goes a bit like this...

It was a fun, intriguing RP. We were about four people writing and it was the most fun I had in an RP.

Then SHE came O.O (I’m adding that part for a dramatic effect)

Basically, she was a mutant or whatever. She could time-travel and become invulnerable to, well, everything. Not to mention she was the fearless and revolutionary leader of one of the worlds most powerful factions (of which, of course, we never knew the name of...ever). She was basically making it HER thread. I continued writing until two of the original four left. I followed them soon after. I did not want to suffer any longer without any original posters with me.

It was.... was.... c'etait horrible! Bordel! I find swearing in french makes it soo much easier on the ears.

[Kana_Takashi]

I made an amazing RP. The plot was awsome, the characters that people came up with were fine, and I was having a kickass time with Inerio.

Then this one girl, though her character was a male, decided that she needed to spice the RP up a bit. I was all for spicing things up, have to keep everyone interested. Thing was her character was completely in love with my own and my character was with Ine's. So her character got excessively emo because of that.

It got so bad that she was ruining the RP. I tried to salvage it by having our character have a "friendship" talk and set things straight, but her angsty guy ran away and met up with another character.

Well I and a couple of the other participants went to find them and what happens? Well as Ine puts it, "*Angst, angst* The girl I've loved for the majority of my life has dumped me." *Sees other female character. "OMG, I love you~!"

I just couldn't see my plot go down the crapper any longer so I ended it.

[Guest]

Well I and a couple of the other participants went to find them and what happens? Well as Ine puts it, "*Angst, angst* The girl I've loved for the majority of my life has dumped me." *Sees other female character. "OMG, I love you~!"

Speaking as a guy, that's actually a pretty accurate portrayal of a man's mind. Though with less time spent pursuing the first woman.

[Kana_Takashi]

Yeah I know, Ine was playing a guy but her character was devoted to the plot. This character was just getting in the way of the plot and ruining it.

[Inerio]

Oh I remember him. Not only was he vapidly in love with everything but he also had OVER 9,000 PWR LVLS!!!!! You know, because while we're all trying to fight evil it's perfectly acceptable to have a random temper tantrum and shift the earth's tectonic plates in ways they should not be shifted.

All in all bad roleplay experiences are created by dumb-assery.

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