RPing with Nobody
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Ok, let’s start some fights.
In some places there’s a level of weird showboating that goes on around “solo RP”, putting a lot of effort into writing that just goes into the void and nobody ever sees. The more pointless, the more noble.
That’s weird. Like at that point, at least write a vignette and post it on the forum so someone can read it. Or write a book offline?
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Aside from the above-mentioned writing of vignettes the only time I’ve ever done “solo RP” was… I can’t even remember what game it was, maybe Serenity? It had a space and cargo system, cargo hauling made money, but you only got XP if you were actively posing? I don’t remember the details.
But there I was, elbow deep in a solo flight from one place to another, hauling my mystical space crystals or whatever trying to make an extra spacebuck, posing “Pavel continued to stare blankly out of the main window. Occasionally, he was tempted by a thought, but he was never one to let himself be distracted from his duty.” Etc, etc, etc. I made it a challenge to myself to become as weirdly Douglas Adamsian as I could in my writing style.
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If you compare RPing by yourself to an artist doodling in the margins, suddenly it makes sense.
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I have a few friends that regularly play Solo RPs that use IC journaling as a method of play, and they get together every month or so and read each other’s character journals. Through a few bundles online, I’ve acquired a small amount of books for these type of games, and they are definitely intriguing.
One of the most interesting examples of a Solo RP game is VOID 1630 AM. You play by recording an hour of radio on your computer or phone, in character as a DJ. The game provides a method of generating song prompts and callers, and you make up what you’re saying as a DJ, and what you play on the air, in response to that. The coolest part about it is that you can submit those sound clips and your song list to the creator of the game, and he will play it on his ACTUAL AM RADIO STATION and add it to his Youtube. Example below:
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@Juniper Wait, for real?
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Man, I feel weird even writing journals and vignettes. Mia’s were (mostly) private for reasons beyond just IC secrecy and I think the first Ares game I was on that had them, I wrote a total of three of them. Two of them resulted in multiple people messaging me to give me compliments and at least one person told me that they cried reading it, but like…
As nice as they were being and as flattered as I should’ve been, I just felt wildly uncomfortable. Like this was the RP equivalent of dropping unsolicited dick pics in the entire game’s lap and expecting a positive response when everyone else would be sitting there like “WTF? Why did you think we wanted this?!” or something. Not knocking anyone who writes them or enjoys them, but I just don’t expect other people to care about my writing or my characters that much unless they’re actively participating, too.
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(Thanks @watno)
I forgot that this was a thing on Ares MUSHes. Most of my experience with solo roleplay has been with solo TTRPG games. Speaking of which, there’s a new sourcebook for Cyberpunk RED called Single Player Mode, which has solo rules for play.
I think there are some useful things with journaling in games, but it’s one of those things where you have to consider the point, perspective, and tone of what you’re writing.
- Is the actual point of the writing to be a journal for you? If so, it’s probably not going to be any more useful to have it on a website or wiki or something so that other people can read it. Having that is essentially a way to say “Hey, check out the depths of my character, wouldn’t it be cool to RP with me” rather than free creative writing.
- Is your perspective from your character’s internal thoughts related to something they’re witnessing, or are you mentalizing another character’s perspective? Even if you are taking a relatively positive view of someone else’s character’s perspective, it’s likely best to have a scene with that person.
- Is this journal going to make you feel worse about a situation that you’re in with your character? Is it going to cause an amount of bleed that would be unexpected beyond a standard scene? If so, for your own mental health’s sake, do not write it. That’s not to say “don’t write sad things,” but more “don’t get yourself further stuck in a rut if you feel your character is having problems that are causing you to relate too heavily to their struggle.” (i.e., consider the tone of what you’re writing)
"And the Fool says, pointing to the invertebrate fauna feeding in the graves: 'Here a monarchy reigns, mightier than you: His Majesty the Worm.'"
Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destines -
There was this one very sad sack on a game I used to hang who would join group scenes then post themselves doing stuff solo, not involving or inviting anyone. Even to ignoring invitation. They’d get real miserable and start adding editorial in their own posts like “because she is not needed.” They had very bad traits in addition to that, but I’ll never forget how performatively alone they loved to be.
Got what you wanted, lost what you had.
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@Muscle-Car said in RPing with Nobody:
There was this one very sad sack on a game I used to hang who would join group scenes then post themselves doing stuff solo, not involving or inviting anyone. Even to ignoring invitation. They’d get real miserable and start adding editorial in their own posts like “because she is not needed.” They had very bad traits in addition to that, but I’ll never forget how performatively alone they loved to be.
I guarantee that this person deeply wanted someone to be like “oh, no, you’re a critical part of our group!!! you have to stay!!!”
Ugh, haha.
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@Muscle-Car said in RPing with Nobody:
They’d get real miserable and start adding editorial in their own posts like “because she is not needed.”
Encountered this. They added aggressive meta and moodily (ICly) sulked on the lawn to pluck blades of grass, like an unhappy grade schooler.
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I first started RPing by joining PernMUSH and posing into empty rooms.
“Banain sat down at the table and watched the other people eat.”
Eventually someone saw me on +watch and joined me, lol. That person introduced me to RP, explained how the commands worked, and is the reason I’m still bothering all of you today~
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@somasatori said in RPing with Nobody:
I forgot that this was a thing on Ares MUSHes
It’s not really Ares-specific. I first encountered this with people posting solo vignettes on LiveJournal way way way before Ares. More recently it was a thing on various games with MediaWiki/Wikidot wikis. I think it just gets a little more formalized/visible on Ares games because of the scene type tagging.
@Juniper said in RPing with Nobody:
That’s weird. Like at that point, at least write a vignette and post it on the forum so someone can read it. Or write a book offline?
The showboating part is weird to me, but I’ve written a fair bit of solo stuff with no intent to share. Sometimes it helps me flesh out a character. Or it can be fun to put down the details of how an off-camera scene went down. I just like to write, really. It’s like someone above talked about doodling.
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@Faraday said in RPing with Nobody:
@somasatori said in RPing with Nobody:
I forgot that this was a thing on Ares MUSHes
It’s not really Ares-specific. I first encountered this with people posting solo vignettes on LiveJournal way way way before Ares. More recently it was a thing on various games with MediaWiki/Wikidot wikis. I think it just gets a little more formalized/visible on Ares games because of the scene type tagging.
Maybe not Ares specific. I meant more that other platforms typically don’t have a built-in journaling function.
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I just totally remembered something from my past. A LARP I played in years and years ago (all of the LARP near me is dead now, so much for keeping up that aspect of the RP hobby) had a thing where if you posted an IC story of your characters activities between games, you’d get an extra few XP before the next game. I technically have done solo RP before, but it was within the bounds of a larger non-solo game.
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My experience with ‘solo rp’ isn’t MUSH based. But in my pre-mush games, this was frequently called ‘blue booking’, and it was used for little peeks into a character’s lives that didn’t always warrant a scene.
In some games characters had a perpetual thread on a forum where they’d post their blue books, they were available to everyone to read, in others you just shared where you wanted, in some only staff saw them. Some sites awarded XP for them, some only for really well written ones, and some not at all. Some places allowed blue book submissions for XP justifications.
I tend to treat RP games like collaborative story telling between me and other players, rather than just a thing my character is experiencing, so blue books were often a way for me to add another layer to the story. Sometimes they’d be flash backs to significant parts of their life, sometimes aftermath to emotionally punchy scenes, sometimes legit journal entries.
It often felt like the RP equivalent of throwing in some material for the player, the way a cartoon throws in some material for the parent.
But there wasn’t really a showboating component to it.
