but my main character syndrome

[socksuke_uchiha]

Rundown: rpanons is an anonymous community for role-play related topics. This place serves as a forum for game discussions, canon discussions, RP solicitations (ATP, game ads, open memes), and advice. The occasional off topic comment is inevitable, but please keep heated social and political topics to their respective communities. Posting them here will only get them frozen. Subsequent threads made to bypass a freeze will then be deleted.

Rules:

Do not post pornographic or shocking images.
Do not share private entries, plurks, chat logs, etc.
Do not post personal information. This includes but is not limited to full names, addresses, phone numbers and so on.
Do not use this community as your social/political/hatespeech soapbox.
Do not be redundant. One page does not need three or more threads on one topic/theme. Your unfunny, forced memes also fall under this rule.
Do not treat this comm like your personal therapist. Threads about nonfictional suicide, self injury, rape, and abuse will be deleted. There are better resources out there for you.
Do not treat this comm like your personal Plurk or Twitter. Off-topic happens, but it should be open for discussion and not just a play-by-play of your life. No one cares.
Shut up about Tumblr. If it's not a discussion about Tumblr RP it will be deleted.


CONCERNS | RESOURCES

ANON HOLIDAY GIFT THREAD

Navigate:

Political topics are banned. Report threads and they will be deleted.

LATEST PAGE | LATEST FLATVIEW PAGE

GAME DISCUSSIONS | CANON DISCUSSIONS | HTML/GRAPHIC HELP

ATP/ENABLE ME | GAME ADVERTISEMENTS | PB SUGGESTIONS | USERNAME SUGGESTIONS

GAME IDEAS | CHARACTER ADVICE | RP WITH ME | TEST DRIVES

KINKS YOU WANT TO PLAY | PAIRINGS YOU WANT TO PLAY | RECOMMEND A CANON/CHARACTER | GENERAL DWRP QUESTIONS

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

anyone ever think dwrp is just... a lot of time and energy and effort to devote to a hobby?

when i sit back and think about how much time i spend working on tags, or my journal, or icons or any rp related stuff it can be anywhere from 3-6 hours a day, and i feel like the expectation is that it's normal and that should be every day just to keep up, especially if you're in a game. when i'm just doing memes and psls i don't feel nearly this much pressure, but, i also NEVER get the same amount of cr variety and speed of development outside of games. and if my rp partner is in a game and i'm not? forget it, things aren't going anywhere because they're (understandably) prioritizing the game.

i really can't think of any other hobbies, other than mmorpgs, that ask so much daily time and dedication. it feels...kind of unhealthy?

[(Anonymous)]

i agree with you and i really struggle with this. i love rp, i love being in a game, but i get burnt out quickly because it's so demanding of my time. i'm not sure how people juggle it, short of just being flaky or not active. some of my favorite rp experiences have been dedicated/long term psls, but it's really challenging to find that for the exact reasons you said.

[(Anonymous)]

uh what

not even in the old days i spent six hours a day on dwrp and i was in big, fast games. idk why you think that is normal this is the first time ever i see such a number

two-three hours is more what i would see as normal and honestly i don't see the big deal. some people watch a movie a day, that can be two hours. not to mention the duration of some sport matches. now i understand you think the problem is the expectation but... you said it yourself. there are options that don't have those expectations (psls and memes). so saying this is a problem with the hobby isn't fair. it is not inherent, like it isn't inherent to mmorpgs either, there are different styles of playing. in forums and f-list i have seen people that want daily commitement too even if they are psls. i have been in book clubs that asked you to read a book every two weeks instead of one once a month.

i can't think of hobby where you can't find find a speed that matches yours, there's all kinds of people in each community

"unhealthy" is a case by case basis thing. if you have free six hours i think you can do whatever you want them, it is not unhealthy to have fun in your free time even if it is in one sole hobby. it becomes unhealthy when you aren't having fun, or ignore responsibilities, or ignore your sleeping/eating, etc

[(Anonymous)]

yeah i play in murdergames and even then i don't spend 3-6 hours doing tags per day except during trials, the fuck

[(Anonymous)]

ugh yes. i try really hard to keep myself from getting too anxious about tags being left in my inbox for a couple of days

like, it really is okay to just chill with a book or video game. my anxious brain is almost convinced

[(Anonymous)]

I think most hobbies that involve this much time spent quietly plugging along at something for a few hours a day usually result in sweaters or blankets or other things that are a lot more tangible show-offable than an intricate escapist fantasy you built co-operatively with some friends.

But I've finished more PSLs and threads than I have afghans, so I'm actually LESS of a flake here than I am as a knitter.

I think as long as I'm getting that nice little dopamine zing from some good threads and good company, I'm satisfied enough with RP to keep at it.
But then, I'm also one of the lazier RPers out there as far as the aesthetics go. I have info entries and all that, but I've never had a custom journal layout and rarely go over fifty or so icons for most of my characters, so most of the time I invest is is into tagging.

It also helps that I enjoy the process of tagging out, responses or not. Sometimes I'm just pleased with a tag I think was clever, even if I found the wrong player for it.

[(Anonymous)]

idk anon 3-6 hours a day every day is pretty extreme, i don't know anyone who rps that much. for most people it seems like it's more like 3-6 hours a week which feels fairly normal and comparative to other creative hobbies?

in any case if it's not fun any more and taking up too much time then you should consider cutting back or stopping altogether

[(Anonymous)]

i used to struggle with this and now i don't, and the only thing that changed is i stopped second-guessing my writing ability and started just slamming out tags

+1

[(Anonymous)]

once i realized that overthinking tags doesn't actually make them better and just wastes time, i started just going with my gut instinct for tags and sticking with the first response my brain comes up with instead of second-guessing it and rewriting it multiple times. it's made my rp life so much better.

[(Anonymous)]

gosh, teach my dumbass brain the trick to this

i really want to let go of the perfectionism aspect and hit that flow again, but i’m in the trenches where even pulling together a starter gets me paralyzed in that “shit gotta crap out something interesting, what do” way of staring at blank text boxes. sucks, man!!

da

[(Anonymous)]

preparing to get haughtily insulted for this, but i've found that rping on discord and another site has greatly increased my enjoyment in rp. dwrp definitely requires a lot to be "passable" here, unless you're only playing with friends. strangers have a degree of expectation as far as presentation goes, unfortunately.

as for games? my god, how does anyone manage to balance a job and social life and hobbies outside of rp while being active in a game? it doesn't make sense to me unless you're rigidly planning out how much time you're going to devote to it every day and that's unappealing to me.

[(Anonymous)]

one hour-one hour and a half per day is enough to be active in games unless is a murder game

Re: da

[(Anonymous)]

DWRP has this weird thing where you're doing a lot to stay active, but day by day things often don't progress as much.

When I do Discord RP, I spend less time on stuff, but the plot advances much more swiftly.

Re: da

[(Anonymous)]

my god, how does anyone manage to balance a job and social life and hobbies outside of rp while being active in a game?

... how long does it take you to write a tag? i usually average around eight to ten tags per night in my inbox and it takes me a little under an hour to knock those out unless i have a bunch of lengthy log tags.

Re: da

[(Anonymous)]

my god, how does anyone manage to balance a job and social life and hobbies outside of rp while being active in a game?

easily? most of the people in my game have jobs, social lives and hobbies outside of the game and manage to stay on top of tags as well. i'm surprised this is even a question tbqh.

[(Anonymous)]

i'll say in my experience i feel like most everyone i've run across nowadays thinks if you get to a round of tags a day you're doing good. most of the pressure i felt to do what you're talking about, constantly answering tags and always being on top of stuff? was totally me pressuring myself.

basically dwrp is what you make it for yourself. if you feel like it's taking an unhealthy amount of your time and attention then be realistic with yourself and decide what pace makes you comfortable, then follow it.

+1

[(Anonymous)]

This.

Also, it's a multi-taskable hobby for me. I do it in little chunks spread across my afternoon/evening in between or at the same time as other stuff I need or want to do. I keep thread ideas bubbling in the back of my mind during boring day-to-day stuff that needs minimal brainpower.

the only time I sit down and devote multiple consecutive hours to RP is for tabletop.

[(Anonymous)]

Murdergames and ECATS-style games where everybody is boomeranging short tags can easily consume several hours a day, but most of the games I've been have been more like ~1 hour of active tagging 5-6 days a week. I write tags in my head when I'm working/driving/cooking/etc. so typing them up doesn't take too much time. I prefer slower games and prose tags, though.

[(Anonymous)]

i'll say it's not required for you to tag that much, because yes it can take that long IF you choose to tag more than you can handle. i'm in games throwing out around 30 tags a day on average and if i do it during lunch, i can finish half. the other half i do at night. so that's less than two hours a day so long as i'm focused. this is about the length of a movie. some tags take a lot longer because i have to think more but on average i can throw out a tag in less than 5 minutes for easy threads (not ecats).

i think the only reason it would take 6 hours is if you have too many tags + are a slow tagger. in that case, you either do less tags or pick up your speed.

[(Anonymous)]

n...o, not at all. i spend maybe eight hours a week on tags.

now art. lemme tell you about how time-consuming that one is

[(Anonymous)]

that's a wild amount of time per day to be devoting to rp, yes. i'm pretty active in games and i rarely spend more than an hour on it in a day, and most days much less. i wouldn't be capable of spending much more than that unless someone was sitting down and boomeranging with me. how much work are you doing on your icons and journals??

[(Anonymous)]

this is such a strange take to me.

a lot of hobbies take a lot of time. i know badminton hobbyists who can spend two hours a day after work playing, and about five hours on the weekends. Some people can binge episodes daily from their favorite shows. my dad spends around four hours a day taking care of all his guppies (it's a fuckton of guppies) because he enjoys having them.

if you don't want to spend a lot of time on rp, then you can always cut back on tags and slow down. it's only unhealthy if you aren't enjoying it and forcing yourself.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

is anyone else with ADHD reading this thread and sweating self consciously

[(Anonymous)]

I've never heard of anyone spending six hours a day on DWRP, especially on a consistent basis.

My other hobby outside of DWRP is playing the guitar and I typically spend 1-2 hours a day, every day, practicing my guitar, learning new songs, etc so spending 1-2 hours a day on tags doesn't feel that excessive.

Also sometimes I'll do quick text tags (like TFLN and similar) from my phone if I'm bored while waiting in line at the grocery store, riding the bus, etc so I like that it's a hobby I can take on the go with me and do while I'm doing other things. I don't really feel like doing TFLN tags while waiting in line at the bank is any different from scrolling my Instagram feed while waiting in line at the bank, which I also do.

[(Anonymous)]

Every hobby can get really invested. We're nerds. That's what we do. But DWRP is one of the last things that isn't monetized. YouTubers are almost all monetized, most fanartists take commissions if not live off them entirely, Let's Plays gave way to game streams, all because we all want to do what we love for a living. Even fanfiction, with its history of struggling while pushing the fact that no money was being made, has people taking commissions now, although they have to dodge the ToS of all leading sites in order to do it.

While actual plays exist in the TTRPG sphere, DWRP is mostly a fandom space and the copyright infringement alone has put everyone off of even trying to make money aside from doing fanart commissions of other people's threads. And we all remember the wank storms every time someone so much as suggests that mods be paid for their work. Thus, DWRP is purely for fun, for everyone, in a way that many other fan activities aren't anymore. And because of that, it might look like we're way too invested... because we aren't paying our bills with it.