What Do You Do With A Person Who Rps . . .

[Solaris]

I had started to do a roleplay with another person dealing with one of her characters and one of mine with the Autobots of the Transformers.

The rp started out really fun but even when we were really going hard on it, but it seems that I try to keep the story going she doesn't seem to care about keeping the story flowing, she would actaully have it to where her character is with the main bot of the Autobots and to hell with the story itself.

I even told her stick with the story, when the story gets to that point it is okay to have them snuggling but not in the middle of a battle! of all places.

I even gave her the heads up of how to rp and she still does the same thing over again.

But she is still demanding of my attention with the roleplay which has gone stagnant and she doesn't really do a good rp at all. She wouldn't keep in line with the rp at all she kept on dealing with her character snoozing up with the main character and the story is dealing with something else at the moment. I got to the point where I don't want to rp with her anymore.

So how can I go about telling her that the stories have gone stagnant to the point where I do not think that it could be revived?

Beth

[Melrick]

I had started to do a roleplay with another person dealing with one of her characters and one of mine with the Autobots of the Transformers.

The rp started out really fun but even when we were really going hard on it, but it seems that I try to keep the story going she doesn't seem to care about keeping the story flowing, she would actaully have it to where her character is with the main bot of the Autobots and to hell with the story itself.

I even told her stick with the story, when the story gets to that point it is okay to have them snuggling but not in the middle of a battle! of all places.

I even gave her the heads up of how to rp and she still does the same thing over again.

But she is still demanding of my attention with the roleplay which has gone stagnant and she doesn't really do a good rp at all. She wouldn't keep in line with the rp at all she kept on dealing with her character snoozing up with the main character and the story is dealing with something else at the moment. I got to the point where I don't want to rp with her anymore.

So how can I go about telling her that the stories have gone stagnant to the point where I do not think that it could be revived?

Beth

I think the only way to go is with honesty. Try to do it with lies and they'll end up coming back to bite you on the arse. And assuming you still want to be friends with the person, that's not the way to go. I think the best thing you can do is to tell them in an honest, but friendly and diplomatic way, that you feel there's no real point in going on with it because she seems unable to fully understand the concepts of role playing. The only way an RP can successfully go for any length of time is when both (or all) people involved can fully understand and cooperate with things, to give and take, otherwise it's going to end in a shambles, or with people arguing, or usually both. And since you're clearly the more experienced role player out of the two, she should understand that the advice you've been giving her is out of experience, because you've been there and done that and know what should and shouldn't happen in RP's. Tell her gently that the role play you're doing now has effectively ground to a halt and there's very little point in continuing with it. Tell her that she really needs more experience, and to listen to the advice of experienced people, before you'll be able role play with her again, but you're looking forward to doing it again as soon as that happens.

Some people will take offence whatever you do or say, so she may still be offended. If that's the case, and you know you haven't done or said anything out of spite or nastiness, then all you can do is shrug your shoulders. If she's sensible and mature then she'll understand and take your point. If not, then...

It's sad that she seems unable or unwilling to listen to what you're saying, but maybe this will be the push she needs to understand that she really is going about it the wrong way and to change. Good luck.

[Solaris]

Thank you for your advice, Melrick, I am also hosting her website on my servers so in a way I have a business relationship with her and I am pretty good with that. But when it comes to the rp, she just doesn't really get the picture of how to do a roleplay and that she does one sentence on all of the roleplays, except when she starts them off, she'll do a huge paragraph, but after that I'll be doing two or three paragraphs worth of work. It is like I am doing the majority of the work itself on the story and all she does is have her character in a way fuck around with the main character and she doesn't seem to get into the other characters that I now have to bring into the story because she wants her character to be snuggling with the main character and her character is a bigtime Mary Sue, while my character isn't one and actually has a rock the size of the planet on her shoulder. I may talk with her tonight and just tell her that the storylines on all three roleplays have gone stagnant as I don't know if I can finish the stories we've started. I have lost the vibe on all three roleplays and that I will not be doing anymore on the stories.

I will bet that she'll start up a new one in hopes that will draw me back in. And she'll hop on her AIM and say Hi posted without even going into pleasentries with me first. When she does that, I promptly X out her IM and ignore her IMs when she messages me, unless I am free at the moment to handle the roleplays.

I may go do a websearch for roleplay information and send her the link to it and let her know that I have lost the vibe for the roleplays we're doing.

Beth

[Melrick]

I do think it's very important that you find some gentle way to tell her that her role playing sucks donkey dick. Otherwise she's only going to do it over and over again, and nothing will ever change. She obviously gets some enjoyment out of role playing, but she needs to try and understand that if she plays it the right way then she'll get even more enjoyment out of it, and so will others role playing with her. Role playing really isn't something you can do for any length of time without rules. I've seen role playing groups (sim's) descend into chaos because too many people decided to just do their own thing, regardless of what others in the sim were doing, and the inevitable result is always for the sim to come to an ignominious end sooner rather than later. When I ran my own sim, I was strict in applying the rules, but not in an overbearing way, and the result was that the sim ran a lot smoother with most people being happy.

But as far as your friend is concerned, I feel it's vital that she's made to understand that her style of role playing is basically wrong, and is not conducive to good role playing. And a little lesson would be good on why Mary Sue's are okay to start with when you're a beginning writer, but is something she really needs to move away from as soon as she can!

[EveKnight75]

How about looking up guides on performing improv in theater or some basic round-robin exercises? Both are closely related to role-playing.

Improv allows more room for silliness, especially in comedy; but improv is basically about learning how to interact with fellow performers when creating a story without a script. You get a basic plot or situation and that's it. It's up to the performers to create the story without discussing a game plan in advance.

Round robin is the same thing, but even newcomers have general experience in writing stories so guides on that wouldn't be too extensive on the basics.

Once you have a basic idea of what to teach, you can ask her to do a short one-on-one RP involving original characters. You assign the situation and tell her that the characters you two create for yourselves are the only ones allowed in the game. No random third characters. You have to finish the game in 15 minutes (you can't get into too much trouble that way). It'll give you room to guide her character without taxing you.