So it’s been a while, and a lot of that is due to generally stagnation in my own roleplay, but that’s no excuse. I said last time I would do a recap of my “Character Building” series, but after dragging my feet on that for so long, I guess I’m just going to cut my losses and roll with what’s next. It’s getting kind of late, my legs are starting to hurt, and I have a quiz tomorrow, but right now I’m waiting for something; if I stay up late enough I might get a chance to see the blizzard start that’s supposed to slam us. I really love the snow, and I love storms even more, so a snow storm ranks up pretty high in favorite things to watch, but why should you care? Segway!
The thing I love about snow storms is that there’s so much anticipation leading up to it, and then you get several glorious hours of being surrounded by the storm, and then the aftermath seems so… tranquil; you might even spend some time out in the storm, and that’s fun, but you don’t spend too long in it. Being in it is the most intense part of the experience, maybe the greatest amount of consolidated “pleasure” during the whole event, but the beauty of the storm isn’t being stuck in it, it’s being surrounded by it. Roleplay, in fact, is very much similar to this.
The beauty of roleplay isn’t about non-stop climaxes and big events; it’s about the buildup and a new world ensconcing you. If you don’t have the gentle rising action leading into the climax, if your reader can’t take time to enjoy being surrounded by what you’re writing, you’re going to find things seem very lack-luster. You can’t attempt to do roleplay and then only give attention to the large events. What makes games so immersive? (The good ones, anyway) I can tell you it’s not the boss battles or the part when the music gets the most intense. It’s the NPCs in the villages, the journey, the grind, and the story that’s the true meat of a great game. You have to pace yourself in order to produce the best final product, not just what feels cool right at that given point.
Before writing this post I made the decision to “cut my losses” on my previous plans and just move ahead. Sometimes it’s the only solution, but you usually get there because you screwed up in a previous part to cause you to have to sacrifice that. In my case, I was so happy that I had finally finished the bulk of my character building series that I just sort of put it on the shelf for too long. Because I got caught up in it all, I made an error that cost my series from being truly complete. It’s something I’ll probably regret in the future, and that’s the price we pay for not planning ahead. Get all legalistic if you want and get frustrated, saying that “Well what’s the point in writing if I’m not going to enjoy it while I do it?” But the answer to that is that nothing good comes without a price, and it usually gets more expensive the longer you put it off. Go ask someone (if you even know anyone) who’s been “happily married” for over 15 years, and ask them if it’s the sex that holds their marriage together. It’s funny, because people who tend to get hooked up because they’re infatuated physically and sensually with their significant other tend to have 2-6 great years before things finally fall apart. I don’t want to get all poetic or anything, but while love-making is a beautiful thing, a beautiful relationship with another person dies very quickly if that’s your only support. Anyway, you see what I mean, I think.
The same is for roleplay! So… what can we do about it? It’s a pretty pervasive issue that plagues our roleplay (and usually our lives) quite consistently, but no one ever seems to acknowledge it. Ever notice when roleplaying, or writing in general, that you seem to run out of gas every 2-6 months or so? Why? Well, kind of like with my example about writing this blog entry, the issue isn’t so much what I’m doing this very moment, it’s what I failed to do back when this problem could’ve been taken care of. What happens a LOT with roleplayers, I’ve found, is they go through this cycle.
1. Get an idea that sounds like it would be awesome to roleplay. It could be a character or a general theme.
2. Find a site, get excited, and make a character.
3. Start roleplaying and get knee-deep into it.
4. The person you’re roleplaying with has finals or goes on vacation for a week and takes a while to respond to your posts.
5. When they come back, that fiery, hot love between you two seems awfully cool.
6. Maybe finish the thread or get so sluggish with your response that it starts collecting dust
7. Stop posting for 2 months.
8. Get bothered back into posting until you can gain momentum and repeat the cycle OR come up with another sweet character or general roleplay idea.
9. Pursue the new interest until you lose steam and stop again.
10. Repeat.
Yeah. If you haven’t noticed this in yourself then one of the following will be true: you’re new to roleplaying and haven’t completed your first cycle yet, you’re lying, or you’re a really good roleplayer. I’ve known maybe a grand total of 4-5 people out of hundreds I’ve roleplayed with who were better than letting this cycle control them, and they were all phenomenal roleplayers. Even if you might not say it about yourself, I bet you’ve noticed it in other people. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that it’s just your nature to be a little more free-flowing, unable to sit still, or maybe you just have too many good ideas to sit on one for more than a couple of months. Garbage.
Let’s take care of this problem at its roots, so suck it up and gird your loins. You CANNOT roleplay off compulsion. When it strikes me one day that I really love snow storms, so much in fact that I want to roleplay as a character who can make them or lives in one, it would be a complete error on my part to run off and pump out a character sheet. I guarantee you that in 1-2 months at max I will be completely over the character idea and it will go on the shelf as sheet number fourteen. Some people take pride in how many characters they’ve created in one area, and love to talk to you about each one. Then you notice that they only roleplay one of them, if that. These people worry me. If you’re going to be ruled by your compulsion in roleplay, you’re going to end up creating a billion characters that all have mediocre involvement, get tired of each one in a row and find yourself not really… enjoying it. Creating characters can be fun, but if that’s the extent of your enjoyment, that temporary, quick pleasure of creating a character and using them for the first time… It’s kind of hollow, isn’t it? If you spend all the time devouring all the sweets of roleplay without getting the whole sustenance meal, not only will you enjoy it a lot less, but you’re going to have to take breaks of months at a time where you go get sick over it.
So what now? Well, honestly, plan ahead. Be cautious of all those ideas and inspirations you get, because if you can’t roll with it in the long run then you’re in trouble. It’s really tempting after playing an awesome game or watching a great movie to go, “The character was really interesting – roleplaying them, or someone similar to them, would be awesome.” And then you do it, and a couple of months later you couldn’t care less.
More than just characters, though, if you decide you’re bored mid-RP and want to spice things up again or “cut your losses and pick things up,” then you’re in for equally useless roleplay. Constantly writing while feeling like you need to shock your reader with something even crazier than the last thing over and over is really foolish, and it leads to the same issue as having too many characters. Pretty quickly your roleplay is going to seem incredibly boring without constant action; good luck getting out of that hole once you’re in it.
Well, with that being said I’m going to continue waiting for my blizzard and maybe try and get back on track with posting. I think it’s important to say in closing, though, that while taking that immediate inspiration for starting something new can be dangerous, it can also be important. Think things through and make wise decisions, but your task as a roleplayer still is to write, not just sit on your hands and deny any creativity. If you’re behind in your posting, go make an effort—an EFFORT—to get back into it. After a couple of painful hours those 2 months of dreading to post disappears really quickly, actually.
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