What do you think makes a good RPG? Share your thoughts here.

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^Sig set made by me. PM for requests.

"I am he [she =P] that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death."

I think a good RPG is one with a good backbone, one with a steady plot. Without a plot the story will take off into many places at once and the characters all have a different sense of what is going on and not really follow a certain similiarity with the others... >.<

Also the Plot has to have some leeway, i cannot stand when I am forced to follow an exact timeline or day by day agenda, it's nice to have some room for the characters to interact and breath on their own without being forced to fall in love or to die.... it gets annoying that way

Another piece that makes a good RPG is a good character/ rper.... Nothing irks me... yep i said irk ... more than a thread filled with one line posters and the occasional paragraph. It is okay once in a while to have a little dialouge, but the RPG seems static if it isn't descriptive enough....

just my thoughts.... xD

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The waves that C R A S H E D upon
The R O C K S that you were trying to step along

And in my head I heard them play a S O N G

I would have to agree with what Pandora had to say.

Gotta be romance, thats the best sorta RPG.

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~Thank you to Estë Undómë for the Beeeautiful Banners & Avvie <3 ~

I like something were there is a plot, yet freedom! And you have to get the right people on to join! Like people who say they will do something in the rpg, than never get to and never post again!

I like the ones that go fast enouph to feel the action.. but not too fast that you can't keep up!

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(}--{)Imagination Inspires Ideas -Zandain(}--{)
Married Cloud Strife 9/17/08

I agree with you all, a plot is good, I like feedback on my plot. I think about an RP a lot before I decide to make it and if I'm unsure about it then I put it in the 'Help and Ideas' section to see what kind of reaction I get.
And people that join and then never post really annoy me but I guess it can't always be helped.
So that's what I think and as Keira said, romance is good.

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"Without music, life would be a mistake." - Friedrich Nietzsche



"Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come."

Fwee!

Like everyone else has said, a good, original plot is really important to me in RPGs (and also the reason I'm not in very many). Call it the curse of being a writer, but I can't stand a free-for-all RPG where there's no objective or destination. There can still be plenty of room for creativity within the guidelines.
Another thing that's really important to me is the skill of the people involved. Some people are just not cut out to be writers/RPers, and that's okay. If everyone was a writer, we'd have no actors, directors, producers, or audience members. I know that makes me sound like a horrible person, but it's true. And I'm not just talking about the amount of substance a post has; sometimes I'd much rather have a bit of quality over quantity. I feel like it's very crucial to the RPG that each character seems like his or her self at all times, rather than just another two-dimensional character. I've played just about every character there is in various Star Wars and PotC RPGs, and obviously I'd never write the same way for each character, even down to how I describe their movements. No one simply walks. Captain Barbossa strides, Jack Sparrow saunters, General Grievous stalks, Davy Jones hobbles, Darth Vader lurches, etc. Each character also has their own manner of speaking, and that's a huge thing for me. Captain Barbossa probably wouldn't say, "Okay, let's go." His manner of speaking is more, "Very well. Shall we be on our way, then?" Little subtleties like that really make a world of difference for me, though maybe that's just my OCD showing through.

The biggest, most vital thing to me, though, is NO MARY SUES. I absolutely cannot abide the foul creatures. For some reason, everything about them makes my skin crawl. It may be partially because I often end up playing the male with whom said Mary Sue becomes/is infatuated, and it's always very awkward. I'm also a firm believer/enforcer of canonicity in RPGs, and it's very rare that a Mary Sue is canon. So...yeah. If there's a Mary Sue involved in the RPG (especially if it centers around her), it's highly unlikely that I'll be joining.

Basically, I'm pretty picky about my RPGs. It may limit my options as far as the number of RPGs I get involved in, but at least I have fun with them.


Oh, and I also have a problem with people who drop out after the first day or two. If you're going to join, follow through and stick with it til the end. Nothing irritates me more (except a Mary Sue) than an RPG that dies within the first month.

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wow, that was quite eloquent, pirateoftherings! *applause*

I tend to get confused when there are too many characters in an RPG, because often everyone wants to be the main character - understandable, but still annoying.

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"If I had a button that would cause all guns everywhere to disappear, I might push it.
Wars would be more fun if we used swords again."
– one of my guyfriends

i think loyal RPers. Ones who will keep an RP going

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Hello, I'm Amoniel
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I join almost every RP that gets posted (on the LotR forum, anyway.) I actually disagree with some of you, an RP doesn't need a plot to be fun, I've been in lots where we just had fun with a random idea someone came up with and played it through to see what happened.

I semi-agree with the whole post-length thing. I find that a good four-or-five line paragraph is the most I usually post, and one-liners, while they don't have much substance, don't really annoy me.

I don't often try to play pre-created characters (Jack Sparrow, Legolas, etc.) because I don't think I can do them properly and it annoys me.

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Hmm... what makes a good RP. I definately agree with Pandora on this... it just HAS to be descriptive.. I can't stand being involved in something, that has absolutely no description in it..
... it makes it seem unreal, and just boring.. plus, its unfair on other people who actually want to be descriptive.

Let's see... I like RPs with a good plot, but what I dislike, is an RP that's been planned before, and then people have just been invited to join in with. That's not an RP; that's a story.
Power-playing irritates me beyond belief... it really spoils an RP, if someone else is trying to control your character...

Fan based RPs are annoying... that's probably just me, but its not something I take pleasure in, at all... I enjoy very diverse story-lines, and characters, so fan-based things aren't my style, at all.

Hmm.. I don't like it when people take ages to answer an RP.. without a reason. I know I lag sometimes, but there's always a reason.. and I have the courtesy to actually tell people about it, rather than just leaving it.

Romance is fine... but I hate it when its planned.. and maybe its just my out-look on things, but I don't like floaty, happy romance... that gets boring, after a while.. romance for me, is more fun when its a tragic... unplanned thing.

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Those who find ugly meanings, in beautiful things, are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. -Oscar Wilde-

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In my opinion, which is based on four years of RPing experience, the things that make a good (actually, the best RPs) are these:

1. Medium-length posts, which are at least a paragraph, and descriptive. If they're too short, it tends to not contain much worthwhile content at all, which makes it pretty much superfluous. If they're too long, however, people tend to skip through them and miss important details. Getting the right length can be very hard for people like me, who don't generally have to scrape their mind to come up with something to post about.

2. A nice, medium speed. One or two posts a day per person, depending on how many people there are. If people post a ton of times per day, it makes it really hard for people to keep up and stay in the loop. If it's too slow, people get bored pretty fast.

3. Dedicated RPers, who don't give up on it because it looks like it's going downhill. If it seems that way, remember that an RP is flexible - post and start to guide it back to an interesting level.
It's also good to remember, that even if you're not interested in it all that much, you have a responsibility to post, because other people might have their characters doing something with yours, which might kill the RP if you don't reply.

4. No Mary-Sues. Ugh.

5. No extreme power-playing. The best RPs I've been in (hate to dissapoint you guys, but none of them were on this forum) had minor power-playing, but it was on a General Forum, so we were the Elite group of RPers on there. Since we all knew how each other posted their characters, we could all guess how each other's characters would respond in certain situations, and make minor plot advancements with them. Anything major, though, was out of the question, and nobody ever did something like that, nor should they.

6. No power-gaming. This is different from playing someone else's character - I've heard it called God-playing before and stuff like that. It's when you have a super-powerful character who's practically invincible or something. That makes for a very boring RP.

7. Many might contradict me in this, but I think that it's actually best when RPers aren't on opposing 'teams' in an RPG. Most people just don't have the skill required to post against others, and the RP deteriorates into arguments and the like. If the players are good enough, this can work, and works brilliantly, but most of the time, the players just don't have the skill.

8. A good plot line, but one that leaves plenty of freedom to move. RPGs that are just there for the sake of having an RPG about something don't tend to last long.

9. No romance. In my opinion, that just makes it awkward for a lot of RPers (including myself) who aren't exactly sure how to post if they find themselves in a situation like that in an RPG. Maybe if those posting are really good RPers it could work, but in general, this doesn't seem to work out so well.

Those are all my opinions, and every RPG that I've seen going by all those has turned out extremely successful. One of them has actually been going for four years, now, though actually the oldest RPers in it are now in College and don't have time to post, which means it's not going to last much longer (I'm the youngest in it, at fifteen....most of them are at least 17).

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^ I agree with most things, there... apart from the power-playing bit.. I've been in RP's with my closest friend, and neither of us would ever play as each others character... even though we know them inside out.
It just ruins the flow of the story, as far as I'm concerned.
What's the point on doing it, if you already know what's going to happen next?

Mhhmm... as for romance.. I do like a little, though, as I mentioned, I hate the stereo-typed versions of 'Man meets woman, fall in love, get married, break up'.... that's so boring.. and probably why I'm more of a fan of characters who either refuse to fall in love, or characters who fall in love with someone they can't have.. and never tell them. There's something very real in those situations, which always makes for a better RP.

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Those who find ugly meanings, in beautiful things, are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. -Oscar Wilde-

...what I meant about the powerplaying bit, Seral, was, say, if two or more characters are going somewhere, instead of just writing "Such-and-such got on his horse," and then waiting for the next person to post about themselves getting on their horse, you could do "They mounted their horses." It's much less pointless than having to wait for everyone to post about such a minor thing. It's not a huge plot advancement, it actually is barely considerable as a plot advancement, so I'd say something like that is fine.

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