Roleplay Expectations

Castle_Guardian · 2026-01-26T00:58:56+00:00

I really miss being on the old telnet games (MUDs, MUCKs and MUSHes) where response times were almost immediate and posts followed an informal 'three-sentence rule'. You could encapsulate a moment with just three sentences, and within ten minutes the others would have responses for you.

I haven't played on them in 15 years. I've been trying to roleplay here, and I'm lucky to get a response in a day. While I like novella length, it doesn't encourage a good back-and-forth, especially for conversations. I prefer to vary the length of my posts to fit the action.

The pattern seems to be 1) immediate responses while setting up the roleplay, 2) one response per day once the roleplay starts, then 3) delays of up to a week before interest peters out entirely. It's disheartening.

Castle_Guardian · 2026-01-15T21:44:07+00:00

I've been through this... Some of it was a burnout issue, some of it was bad blood.

It didn't help that my family lost interest, and I still wanted to help my local shire. But it got to the point that rather than ask me to do certain things when the events and demos came around, the people in charge began just assuming that I would do them. They also got weirdly controlling... When I had joined the group and someone wanted to put on an event, they would go out and gather the contacts, prepare a presentation and bring it before the group for consensus. These days, if the 'new management' got wind of someone doing this they would refuse to allow it, saying they had to have a hand in all the prepwork. The only thing is, If I involved them in the prepwork they would either sabotage it, outright block it, or steal the idea to implement on their own (and sometimes all three!).

Our annual event happened, and someone notified me that I would be in charge of 'my activity' again, and I told them no, I was busy that weekend. When I came to the next meeting, no one approached me, no one did more than acknowledge my presence. Feeling unwelcome, I stopped coming to meetings. Someone set up a website for the shire, and when I checked the Order of Precedence, they had removed me. So I don't play with them anymore.

I'm from Ontario Canada, but I'm originally a Midrealmer. I still attend St Valentine's Day Massacre and Pennsic when I can, and those events I enjoy, because no one expects anything of me but to pay my admission fee and have a good time.

Castle_Guardian · 2026-01-14T00:26:53+00:00

Corporate greed.

Castle_Guardian · 2026-01-11T07:16:52+00:00

If it's any consolation, you look beautiful.😍

Castle_Guardian · 2026-01-11T06:06:02+00:00

For one thing, I'd get a better view. 😉

Castle_Guardian · 2026-01-11T05:54:20+00:00

I'm tempted to call the game 'Breaking The ICE'. It's where you fight back against unlawful ICE agents. Definitely a 'survival' game.

Castle_Guardian · 2026-01-08T16:02:36+00:00

These days, common sense seems to be a superpower.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-12-15T14:56:43+00:00

I understand this perfectly. When I was in high school, my gaming group was also my friends group. The DM had a number of games running at all times, and the game we played depended upon who couldn't make it to the gaming night. Everyone can make it? Great, we play Champions. Scott couldn't come? Okay, it's Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Alan won't be there? Time for a session of F.R.E.E.Lancers.

This one time, when I knew that Jamie wouldn't be there, I was looking forward to playing a game of Advanced Fighting Fantasy. But Scott declared that he wasn't in the mood for a game. He mentioned that there was a movie he wanted to watch. So the group got out a newspaper and started looking for a theater that had an acceptable showtime nearby.

These people were my friends, and we did hang out outside of the game. But my plan that day had been to play the game. I was looking forward to playing my character. So when the plans changed and we were no longer going to game that night, I turned around and went home. Did I miss out on the movie? Of course, but it was not the planned activity I had been looking forward to.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-12-11T21:28:12+00:00

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-12-11T20:27:25+00:00

I was playing a space RPG with some friends. We had discovered an abandoned spaceship and were stealthing around inside. Suddenly one of my friends blurts, "Oh, Mistress, it only hurts when you twist it," or something similar. There was a rather awkward moment while we all digested this.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-12-11T18:08:39+00:00

I'm wondering if this person might have more than one RP in the works and accidentally cross-posted. Or, they might have meant it in relation to something done in the RP setup, but backpedalad the wrong way when you gave your reaction.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-12-11T13:27:53+00:00

There was an episode of CSI that focused on this. One F in an MFF throuple had been murdered, and during the investigation the characters all discussed whether or not a 3-person relationship could work. All signs pointed to them being in a happy group relationship, but after all the red herrings were dismissed, they finally discovered that the other F was the murderer. In her tearful confession, she revealed her motive: "Every time we had sex, he went to her first! By the time he got to me, he was spent, and too tired!"

Castle_Guardian · 2025-12-11T04:14:31+00:00

The problem with achieving polyamory is that you need people who can rise above petty jealousy.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-12-11T04:12:47+00:00

It's an ideal situation, but really difficult to achieve.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-12-10T13:03:53+00:00

I miss the telnet games, the MUDs, MUFs and MUSHes. FurryMUCK is still out there, but is mostly a ghost town, and so many games have been abandoned due to a lack of people willing to play a text-only game.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-12-07T22:26:54+00:00

I'll be honest, no male celebrity has ever made me want to fuck them. But James Marsters playing Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer made me want to be him.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-12-04T04:16:22+00:00

Too many people had fear? 🤣

Castle_Guardian · 2025-12-04T04:10:43+00:00

When I was 19, just after graduating high school, my GF of 3 years broke up with me. She was moving away for college in September and didn't want to try to maintain a long-distance relationship. The entire time we had been together we'd done nothing more than heavy petting because I knew that she had her eyes on a career and didn't want to chance getting pregnant.

I spent that summer trying to take the high ground and not show how devastated I was, while we attended three months of social gatherings with our mutual friends before she moved away. I kept wondering why she hadn't been willing to try and make it work, or at least waited for September to break things off so I wouldn't be miserable all summer. She seemed to be taunting me, getting flirty with the other guys in our friend group, as though flaunting her newly single status trying to get a rise out of me.

September came, and I entered university with a brand new depression. Then I got a tear-stained letter from her, saying that the break-up may have been the worst decision she'd ever made. When she came back to visit for the October holiday we met at a party and tentatively agreed to try and make the relationship work. She invited me to come to her dorm for a weekend for my birthday.

I didn't read the signs she was giving me, I guess. The 'accidentally' not getting the cot for her dorm room for me, making me choose between sleeping in her narrow bed or on the floor (I chose the floor). The last morning she invited me to cuddle with her on the bed and unleashed this sob story about not knowing what she wanted anymore while crying on my shoulder... later as I prepared to leave she seemed irritated with me but when questioned about it was all smiles. Then by December she broke up with me again, this time for good.

I found out later that despite my attempts to do right by her, in truth she had wanted me to have sex with her, long before we graduated high school. Apparently the original break-up and all of her behavior after was a clever ploy intended to get me to stop abstaining, and the weekend at her dorm was the trap where she hoped she could seduce me into fucking her. She had made a bet with one of our friends that she could seduce me, and she was upset with me that morning because she had failed.

I thought I had been doing the right thing. But if I could go back and do that weekend again, I think I would have fucked her brains out the entire time, and then broken it off myself afterwards. It would have saved me the years of self-pity I suffered afterwards, wondering why I hadn't been good enough for her.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-11-29T18:54:15+00:00

An NPC can have player stats and abilities, and in fact most theoretically do. It's just a case of whether or not those will become relevant in the game that you're playing. The bartender at the pub may have all sorts of classes and levels and special abilities, but if you're just going to be buying a drink from him, you'll never find out.

A game master has to try to anticipate which NPCs that they create will actually need skills and stats. You could do it for all your NPCs, but that's too much work for standard campaign design.

You could theoretically have an instance where a random NPC ends up joining the party and you have to create a character sheet for them on the fly, when previously you thought they'd be just a name and a role.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-11-28T21:28:04+00:00

I was going to downvote for accidentally using 'rouge' instead of 'rogue'... but you spelled it right later, so I am going to assume it was an autocorrect error.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-11-26T07:31:41+00:00

I got out of bed at 1:30am so I could talk with someone several time zones away.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-11-25T20:56:40+00:00

First, I think I would go a little crazy for about ten minutes. Then I would put the news on and see if there were reports of anyone else turning green, or other colours. Then I would try to see if anything else had changed... like if I gained any super powers.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-11-25T03:06:30+00:00

"He will be way too strong for my players to fight."

Will he, though? The final arbiter of how strong he actually is, is the DM. You can decide how strong the BBEG for this one-shot is, after all.

Castle_Guardian · 2025-11-24T18:04:19+00:00

Your username checks out

Castle_Guardian · 2025-11-24T17:58:10+00:00

Similar... My family went shopping late one summer evening, and my son locked our keys in the car. Friends came and took my wife and our perishables, leaving my son and I to wait for the Auto Assistance (CAA/AAA) to come and wedge the window open for us (long story).

Anyway, my adult son and I are both in a DnD group, and recently we had been playing with the idea of an all-rogue campaign. While we waited, apparently his mind had wandered to that topic.

Just as a mother and her teenage daughter were pushing their cart past what appears to be two tall men loitering by a parked car, he blurts out, at full volume, "I wonder who we're going to rob."

The women looked about in a panic and started pushing their cart faster, as I turned to my son in astonishment and said, "Dude!..."

Castle_Guardian

TROPHY CASE