Stuck In The Rut - A Bit Of A Rambly Mess

[Conflee]

This isn't a normal thread it's kind of just gonna be me. Talking. Trying to work a thing out and fish for possible solutions because I'm in a bit of a spot and I've been in it for a bit. (a year and a half)

I've found for a year ish now, actually a bit longer but it became unbearable a year ago, that I just. Don't give a shit. And at first this was odd, I thought maybe I was burning out or something but even after a long break I've come back and I am excited to Roleplay, and when I actually get IN roleplay I have a blast. But I don't care about, 80% of what's happening give or take. And when you're only going to find maybe 2-3 public gatherings of more than 3 people anywhere in Regalia on any given day that kind of. Makes it difficult I guess?

Now normally the solution to this is social RP, the issue is I've been at this for well over 5-6 years now and I get excessively bored of social RP if theres nothing exciting to break it up time to time. I've never been one for cliques so I don't have a friend group I can fall back on, I dislike that stuff and vowed to not get into it after I fell in with a bad crowd early in (year 1-2) and I see a lot of stuff succeed ONLY because it has a clique to back it which doesn't feel right for me either. If I have a group I want it to succeed on it's own merit not because I know enough people OOC to keep the dead horse kicking on life support ya know.

And really no matter what I do I also feel like my characters never really have a strong social circle either. Maybe I just don't like socializing anymore idfk. But it often feels like nobody my characters meet really make an impact on them, nor their characters on my own. They meet a guy, chat a bit, maybe even straight up save their life my characters have the best worst luck with getting into shit and out of shit. And just. Go about their business.


I've had the thought before maybe I just need something to kickstart things. A fun character with some added intrigue, something that can really play a meaningful part in other people's stories. So I wrote up an Immortal Gentlemanly Adventurer because I love that trope to death, but the idea never stuck with the Special Perms Apps- I retried and tried to fix the concept based on the rejection reasons like 4 times and the reason just changed every time I applied so idfk there man lmao

Edit: To clarify this might not have worked either I'm not throwing shade at the Special Perms system. My wording be shit sometimes. Just going through the things I have tried.


It has become an eternal source of frustration for me. I have the will to Roleplay, I have the desire, I really wanna get stuck back into things and play something that will be fun for people's stories. And I know I'm good at RP, I've looped through the confidence-skill cycle up and down enough to know finally I actually am. I just. Don't have the... The In? I guess. A foot in the door. Consistent shit to do that's interesting and impactful. Tried guard and noble stuff and that extended it out by a few months, wrung the last drops out of me. Tried crime for longer and got a bit more juice out of the rag, but my luck running groups is terrible- probably because I don't do cliques I kind of hamstrung myself.

So I just. Don't know what the hell to do anymore lol. I've tried different RP types, guards and crime, politics and military, a dozen different characters, personality types, aimed at Special Perms and running Groups. Nothing has kick started it for me. The first lines stick. I don't give a shit and I don't know why. It's a bummer.

 

[evilyami]

Hey. I've been in mineman RP in general for about 9 years as of this year. Through this time, I've been apart of many different communities and groups, played dozens of characters that I still all have the skins for. I think about this sort of thing a lot. It's important to understand why you do this as a hobby, and what keeps you invested in all of it. While I can never give you the definitive answers, I can tell you my thoughts which can maybe help you come to your own conclusions. Also, I'm typing this from my phone, so bear with me EDIT: I got home, so I'll elaborate further.

Roleplay-Life Balance
You can't solely RP in your spare time. Don't do it. You WILL burn out at record speed. You need other games, other interests that aren't as heavily exhaustive or time-consuming. This will make you appreciate the time you DO RP much better, and also give you plenty of opportunities to find creative topics and avenues to explore.

Roleplay is About Listening, Too
This is obvious, but I need to clarify what I mean. Part of the joy of roleplay is also being able to experience the character depth and ideas of others. If you are only worried about the impact your characters have, consider the impact other characters have made before you as inspiration. What makes these character interactions interesting? Surround yourself with characters whoms' backstories and personalities keep you interested in reading, and see what you can apply from that to your own characters. Even then, sometimes I like to just people-watch in RP. Helps you appreciate the RP people develop as you witness their ongoing stories.

Cliques Are Normal and Okay
Controversial, and there's a reason for that. People see groups as a bad thing that keep you away for OOC reasons. Cliques exist as divisions in a large community to get everyone involved in the group into RP everyone enjoys coming back to every day. Some cliques have higher bars of entry compared to others, but the biggest driving factor is how pleasant you are OOC, followed by how interesting your character is. By far the easiest way to join a group is by grabbing a public invite during recruitment posts in #OOC-noticeboard or trying to join a group via invitation from another member of said group you're familiar with.

I'll go into more detail on this one specifically because I think this might be your most painful restriction. You really need to let yourself trust other people again. Wrong crowds happen, and will happen again. Surround yourself with individuals that you enjoy the company of, because having a group of people to hang out and be able to catch their subcommunity specific RP prompts really helps you flesh out your RP.

When I first joined, I was really stubborn in that I wanted to make all RP feel organic, and solely approach other people at a whim based on meeting them IC, but it's not always a sustainable model. People have lives, and want to make sure the time they spend here is time they spend enjoying it mid RP. That's normal, and you should embrace it again.

Stay Involved With The Community
More specifically, stay OOCly friendly, social, and in the know with respective sub-communities. It might seem minor, but friendly banter and conversation keep you socially engaged and help nuture desire to RP in groups.

Graduate Yourself From Tavern RP, move to Interpersonal RP
You're showing that tavern RP isn't really doing it for you anymore. That's fair. You can easily survive without it. If you want your character to have a serious personal conversation with somebody else, get interpersonal - but how? By moving into a smaller select subcommunity as previously mentioned, you gain base acquaintances with everyone who shows up to group RP in such subcultures. This grants you more room to OOCly invite people to RP 1-on-1 or even just talk with them 1-on-1 in the street.



Walk past your comfort zone. RP is huge, and Massive is a sizeable chunk of that. A lot of these may seem super obvious but they're super easy to forget about and overlook - easy to deny and act like you've done all of this, when really - have you? Have you in many years? Think positively about what you can do, rather than what restricts you, and you may find yourself with many opportunities you didn't think available before. This is coming from a dreadful pessimist and jaded cynic too - it's just not worth getting yourself so worked up about things you can't control.

Enjoy your time here. I think you really can apply these, but just remember that there will always be a point for all of us at some time down the line where we all move on. I haven't reached that point yet, and I suspect it'll be when I'm both working full-time and have a family. For others, it might be earlier - or even later.

 

[Conflee]

This is obvious, but I need to clarify what I mean. Part of the joy of roleplay is also being able to experience the character depth and ideas of others. If you are only worried about the impact your characters have, consider the impact other characters have made before you as inspiration. What makes these character interactions interesting? Surround yourself with characters whoms' backstories and personalities keep you interestes in reading.

Click to shrink...

To an extent I could care less about my own stories and characters, theres only so far that that matters. You can have the most compelling arcs ever and if nobody knows you are the equivalent of an author who writes a thousand 'masterpieces' and never publishes anything because nobody knows anything about any of it.

I want to play a role in other people's stories. Be an interesting factor that contributes to THEIR development. I won't ever be able to tell if anyone saw or understood my characters' internal developments, but I can tangibly see the impact an action has had on another person's story and see that butterfly effect years later. To see the course of how things played out and be like "I played a part in that." Derive satisfaction from the story other people told. Not to say that personal development and those silent internal developments are bad but I'm not relying on them at all personally. They are the foundation not the mansion.

Controversial, and there's a reason for that. People see groups as a bad thing that keep you away for OOC reasons. Cliques exist as divisions in a large community to get everyone involved in the group into RP everyone enjoys coming back to every day. Some cliques have higher bars of entry compared to others, but the biggest driving factor is how pleasant you are OOC, followed by how interesting your character is. By far the easiest way to join a group is by grabbing a public invite during recruitment posts in OOC-noticeboard or trying to join a group via invitation from another member of said group you're familiar with.

Click to shrink...

I don't see cliques as a bad thing per-say (though some I can definitely say were, the concept itself isn't) It's just not something I wanna get involved in. I prefer to drift and have things happen naturally, untainted by potential ooc positive or negative bias. To that end I've even RPed a fair bit on unknown random alts for short periods just for the sake of RP.

--------------------------------------​

I don't know how to word this without it just sounding like pessimism so I wanna emphasis I love Rp and how it all works and I try to be optimistic 'give it a chance'/'hear them out' sort of person. But it really just feels like nothing that the vast majority of people do matters more than a month after. Groups rise and fall, character arcs come and go, and nothing changes. Nothing sticks. Everything just feels static. Like theres a handful of tropes that need filled and who fills which tropes cycles out as new characters are made, old ones are retired or die, and people leave.

Church Gang, Smuggler Gang, Posh Vampires, Galant Guard, Corrupt Guard, Brutal Guard, Flowery Nobles, Sexy Bar, etc etc.

It just. Cycles. Nothing's happened to significantly change the status quo of day to day life. It's a system that works but now that I've seen the cycle repeat a few dozen (for real dozen not exaggerated dozen) times it feels samey and despite many of these groups being fantastic and nailing everything you'd want in a great RP, it just. Drops off. And nobody even remembers a month or two later.

And I don't quite know why. Maybe it's a side effect of just the sheer number of being in this RP, interacting in this setting, that speeds the process up? I've seen shadows of this pattern in other smaller scale RPs but never even a fraction as strongly.

So it's all just lead to, like I said in the main post, me not really caring as much.

 

[evilyami]

I've elaborated on my main post since I arrived home on some things you might want to consider. Otherwise, I'll just leave you with this last bit then:

You're looking at things far too much into the grand scheme of roles and not into the individual personal and subtle accomplishments of characters because you seem to have no investment in that sort of thing - which is probably one of the biggest driving factors to keeping you dissatisfied. There will always be, as you quote, "Church Gang, Smuggler Gang, Posh Vampires, Gallant Guard, Corrupt Guard, Brutal Guard, Flowery Nobles, Sexy Bar", but none of them are exactly the same.

Each individual interaction among those groups are tailored specifically to what those players are playing, and with the constant cycle of new blood and new characters in Massive, things really do change a lot. Most characters have their own goals, dreams, ambitions, agendas, and reasons to continue that are never quite the same as the predecessors before them, and you would only discover them if you explored them with the notion of an individual character rather than a trope filling a role.

You really might have just been doing this for so long you've become jaded into the idea of 'nothing I do matters', but I assure you, I remember many individual character interactions, no matter how small they were, even 8 years down the line. Memories I still recall fondly, and I think ultimately, that should be your reason to RP. To form memories, and create memorable characters that other people will remember in the future to come. This is all temporary, after all. Do you remember the small things from character interactions, the little things that happened that put a smile on your face still? Things that give you a giggle from how silly they were? A deep moment where you consider what those characters would be doing now?

You're playing the role in the story, whether you feel you are or not. Let yourself reminisce and remember the moments between other characters, and you might realise that others do, too.

You might reply relatively quickly to tell me this doesn't really apply to you or Massivecraft, but if that's the case I implore you take a deeper look. If you aren't finding what you're looking for here after all of that, I advise turning toward D&D campaigns with DMs that encourage heavy interpersonal RP between the player characters. You'll probably find a lot of the stories you're looking for there, even if just as a break to give you inspiration.