Poking my nose in...

[trickster_tree]

Hello, all! I’m excited to find a community that speaks to my favorite aspect of role-playing – collaborative writing.

I started out on a small message board RP headed by excellent writers, got utterly spoiled, and never found another place that felt comfortable. Although I still talk – and occasionally write – with my two main partners from there, the last year has been dire on the RP front due to their lack of free time and my intense focus on finishing a novel. Now the novel is in the boring proofreading stage, and I’m nostalgic for the sort of immediate creative excitement that goes with RPing.

While mainly I’m interested in incorporating folklore and myth into fiction, character-driven plots, and writing for writing’s sake, I will get all idealistic and frothy about the great benefits of cooperative writing – which is why I keep making forays into RP, only to drop out because my basic narrative kinks (nonromantic relationships, neuroatypical minds, and mortality, among others) don’t seem very common in the community.

I’m rather curious, actually – what is it that drew you to RP, and what keeps you coming back?

(And if I’ve said anything interesting, do feel free to message me; although I’m a hesitant conversationalist, I really will be happy to talk.)

Comments

[dray]

XD To be honest? I was drawn into RP because of Pern when I was a teenager, stuck around for super-powered dragons, hung on for character interactions that shifted from dragons into human stuff (though there were still fantasy elements, I admit) and then petered out once school started and I began to have deadlines like crazy.

I linger around the outskirts because I like to see what other people do, and occasionally join in, but what I think I enjoyed the most was planning the world we were playing in (or conversely, reading what other people had put into it!) and the epic storylines that would occasionally crop up out of that. Didn't happen as often as I'd have liked, but I still have nostalgia over it.

These days I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate RP elements into an ARG (alternate reality game) because while it's bad to blur the IC/OOC divide, I like the thought of being able to take part in a game where the players can speak directly to characters to advance the plot. Sort of bending the 4th wall a little, I guess. (That, and it's new! I'm a fan of new and shiny things.)

I love mixing in myth/folklore into fiction as well. XD Usually taking from bits here and there and twisting them is my favorite.

[trickster_tree]

Ah, the Pern books! I bombed through those when I was thirteen; I can see how they’d be fun to RP. I’ve got no leg to stand on when it comes to embarrassing places to start out, considering I began in animal role-play, which seems to be the big pariah genre, heh.

What little I know of alternate reality games intimidates me, but adding RP elements is an intriguing idea – and not too dangerous so long as those individuals are framed as a sort of actor within the context of the game, I think?

As for myth/folklore, that’s my general MO as well, although I have the occasional hankering for writing something in the nineteenth-century literary fairytale style/idiom – so completely inauthentic, yet so satisfying. *g*

[scarlet]

OOT but I love your icon. LOL
I'm going to declare that to every family who walks by after I complete building my world for a personal project of fiction. :P

[linden_grove]

I like to role play because the going back and forth is very stimulating. I write a lot on my own too, but without having a good reader/sounding board at the moment, that tends to stagnate. I've made a huge push lately to write more and RP a little less, and the logjam is breaking.

But I like having other people excited by what I write and reading things they write. RP has something a bit personal about it too.

I started role playing online on Le Cafe at the Les Miserables website. The message board is gone now, which is very, very sad. Then I moved on to mailing lists and LJ. I tried a few message board games, but the players were more interested in getting me to abuse their people. If I didn't want to do that, they didn't want to play. That is still far too prevalent. I can dish out if a story/character demands it, but I want equal measure in return. I am not here just to fulfill someone else's needs. I want some back too.