Randomness Inc.

Roleplay Forms Rant

Ooh boy, this should be a fun chapter.

So, as anyone who follows my account or just pays a small amount of attention to my activity feed can tell, I greatly enjoy roleplaying. The endless possibilities for outcomes that depend solely on the individual character's actions can lead you to an experience that can be addicting. Most of the time this feeling of excitement and inspiration can lead to good things, as it can teach young ones the best methods of spreading across a character's inner thoughts and desires and prepare them for the wonderful world of writing. But unfortunately, as with all things, there is a downside as well.

Now, if I were to go over each specific fault with roleplaying or roleplayers in general, I would never finish this chapter, so I shall just speak about one specific issue that I have more immediately noticed.

And that, of course, is roleplay forms.

For those reading this that may be unfamiliar with this term, roleplay forms are what is used to line up your character's individual traits and give the owner of the roleplay a notion of what sort of person your character is like. Think of it like a book description; you want to provide some idea what the story inside your pages is like, so that others will actually become interested and start to read it.

So, what's wrong with them? Nothing really; except sometimes they happen to fall in what I tend to refer too as, "the Trap of Two Extremes." This is when an inherently good idea or project is tarnished because of two extremes that make up the vocal minority. (i.e. people who are obsessed with shipping, people who hate on every single ship)

The two extremes in roleplay forms are the Overly Detailed Analyzer, and the Illiterate Idiot. These are two types of people that probably aren't the majority of roleplayers, but are seen often enough in all types of roleplays that by now, their forms can't be escaped.

The Overly Detailed Analyzer may be seen making forms that take up ten posts, and smugly criticizing all those that don't do the same. They will purposely join smaller roleplaying books which may just be starting out, overwhelm everyone by posting an entire novellic post for each response, and thus drive out the active members who feel like they can't compare. I haven't seen as much examples of this, but the times I have infuriate me. There are several literate roleplays on Wattpad they could join, so why do they feel the need to shame smaller roleplayers with their skills?

Now, for Illiterate Idiots, there are several examples readily available. These are usually the types of roleplayers who will join a Literate roleplay, or one where some sort of English comprehensive skills are required, and write their forms in broken grammar and one sentence descriptions. Now, when the roleplayer who started the roleplay sees these, they will usually not even accept them because reading a form is all it takes to judge someone's literacy skills.

Here's an example of a bad form they might employ:

Name: penelopE v0nschwEetz dejuliUs buttercup

Age: 1,405 but l0oks 8

Gender: rainbowsexual!!1!!

Appearance: pelope has gorg3ous bwond hare wif gren eyes & whoreglass figure

Personality: pelops is charmig swet sassi smert & kid

...Most of them won't be that bad, but you get the idea.

And then there are forms where they make the dumbest of things mandatory information. Why is my character's blood type, sexual preferences, and favorite flower important wisdom? Forms should help you understand a character enough to visualize them in your head, but I don't comprehend how some forms think knowing whether my character likes blondes or not is influential in how I think of them as individuals. I might judge them as shallow, but information like that is best learned in the actual roleplay!