Where do younger folks RP these days?

Wavert · Mar 23, 2016, 4:00 AM

These days it seems to me like the average age of people roleplaying on MUs averages at around thirty and over-at least this seems to be true for my group of friends and the general population of games I've hopped around the last few years (star wars games, comic games, multithemes, etc).

But i'm sure there are plenty of people born from 1990 and onwards that still use the internet to roleplay-but does anyone know where? Stepping aside the question of whether or not MUs as a platform are struggling/dying off (Not a conversation I care to get into this time), I think we can certainly say they're not the most popular way to do pretend games anymore. Anyone have an idea where that stuff tends to gravitate now, and any hubs/resources for them?

I'm mainly thinking of suggesting more and different ways to advertise for up and coming games my friends are making besides the usual haunts to try and pull more outsiders in.

Three-Eyed Crow · Mar 23, 2016, 4:02 AM

Tumblr seems to have a huge RP community.

I occasionally try to read it and want to gouge my eyes out (I'm sure decent RP threads exist but I've yet to find them), but it does seem huge.

lordbelh · Mar 23, 2016, 4:03 AM

I've heard tumblr is a thing, too. And like @Three-Eyed-Crow I've wanted to kill myself when reading that shit.

ThatGuyThere · Mar 23, 2016, 4:04 AM

Roll20 also attracts a lot of folks.
I could never really do the online table top thing myself though.

Roz · Mar 23, 2016, 4:35 AM

I'm active on Tumblr, though I don't RP there myself. There's a big RP community there, and I feel like a lot of them would thrive in a medium more conducive to RP. (Tumblr is kind of terrible at back and forth in general.) We have a game tumblr for Transformers: Lost & Found and advertise there, among other places. We've gotten several great people through there who were mostly familiar with Tumblr RP but were happy to learn MU*. It's definitely a potential source of players, but you have to make sure you have good resources and support for players new to the medium.

HorrorHound · Mar 23, 2016, 4:54 AM

The primary problem is not finding people who use other mediums, but letting people know MUing exists and letting them find you. Then being patient enough to teach them the method as I can tell you with confidence that the mass-population of people who wish to write, or engage in pretendy-funtimes, have no clue what MUing is.

Just, uh, prepare for the psychologically challenged. M'kay?

ThatGuyThere · Mar 23, 2016, 5:22 AM

@HorrorHound said:

Just, uh, prepare for the psychologically challenged. M'kay?

We are mushers aren't we kind of used to the psychologically challenged?

Apos · Mar 23, 2016, 5:38 AM

Some of the forum play-by-post roleplaying things are downright gigantic in population and there's some really huge MMO roleplaying communities, and most all of them are dominated by younger people. It's kind of a hard sell for a lot of them to try out MUs, since extremely few people have played tabletop games before- most have never even heard of them, let alone MUs, but I found even roleplayers used to total free form, system-less full consent things tend to be fine on MUs once they get used to them.

I think mushes are the best format for offering one very specific roleplaying experience, in having a truly dynamic world with a lot of people at once that is still persistent and accessible. It's just kind of hard to get that across in an elevator pitch to people that have never heard of it.

HorrorHound · Mar 23, 2016, 1:59 PM

@ThatGuyThere said:

@HorrorHound said:

Just, uh, prepare for the psychologically challenged. M'kay?

We are mushers aren't we kind of used to the psychologically challenged?

Not even close, in comparison.

Olsson · Mar 23, 2016, 12:13 PM

Me being a reasonably young person (21 now) and I started on HM when I was 15-16 I can say I had been RPing in MMOs for a fair few years before that, and they do usually have communities which are well, much bigger then most MU*s atleast. As Apos says though, many of them have not had any experiance with other formats. I myself started tabletopping when I was around 11, so I am a bit different there and hence why I sought out HM by just googling nWoD Online Roleplay basically.

One thing I think which they often have problem with who have never played in a system before is that they well, are only acustomed to freeform. I know that on my server on WoW for example there's grown an increasing dislike towards chance based system (as some did use the /roll command to simulate simple ones) as they feel they want utter control of their character.

To me that speaks especially to how different they view it from well, traditional RPGs where the dice roll is kinda a main thing. MMO RP is also quite a bit more fast paced. If you spend more than a minute or two writing you're slow, which is simpler as you have more visual means to use so you don't need to describe you walking somewhere, but still.

Mind this dislike for other mediums you find everywhere, I for example have gotten mocked often enough by people who MU* for RPing in MMOs the same way people on MMOs seem to find the notion of RPing in tabletop or in purely text based mediums, to not talk about LARP.

With MU*s I think a big thing is still there is a fairly high barrier to entry, I remember it took me ages to get used to the various commands, and even now when I try something not WoD or using well, what has become the common code and commands there I often eventually get tired of having to look everything up.

Coin · Mar 23, 2016, 12:17 PM

@HorrorHound said:

@ThatGuyThere said:

@HorrorHound said:

Just, uh, prepare for the psychologically challenged. M'kay?

We are mushers aren't we kind of used to the psychologically challenged?

Not even close, in comparison.

I'm not sure which you're implying is crazier, but either way, you're probably underestimating the level of whackadoo of the other.

Kanye Qwest · Mar 23, 2016, 2:24 PM

@Olsson

Best RP group I ever had was in a MMO, years ago. Honestly the whole reason I keep roleplaying is trying to hit that sweet spot of storytelling again.

What I loved the most about it was the spotlight sharing. There were 6/7 of us, and we would take turns all creating alts and brainstorming up a plot to focus on one character. Then, we'd pick another and do it again. It was great! In theory, MU* rp could lend itself to this kind of environment. I think that's the hope, anyway.

I can't even comprehend tumblr rp. Didn't they remove replies??

ThatGuyThere · Mar 23, 2016, 1:59 PM

@HorrorHound said:

@ThatGuyThere said:

@HorrorHound said:

Just, uh, prepare for the psychologically challenged. M'kay?

We are mushers aren't we kind of used to the psychologically challenged?

Not even close, in comparison.

Wow that is a truly scary thought.

Roz · Mar 23, 2016, 2:24 PM

@Kanye-Qwest said:

I can't even comprehend tumblr rp. Didn't they remove replies??

They use reblog chains. I don't think they ever used replies for RP.

@Coin said:

@HorrorHound said:

@ThatGuyThere said:

@HorrorHound said:

Just, uh, prepare for the psychologically challenged. M'kay?

We are mushers aren't we kind of used to the psychologically challenged?

Not even close, in comparison.

I'm not sure which you're implying is crazier, but either way, you're probably underestimating the level of whackadoo of the other.

For real. The idea that MU* players are so much saner than the ~crazy SJWs of Tumblr~ is laughable.

ThatGuyThere · Mar 23, 2016, 2:34 PM

As an old man, I consider both tumblr and twitter to be blights on existence but yeah I would seriously doubt they are more crazy on average then MU* people are. Maybe crazy in different ways as each generation puts there own twists on the crazy, but not more crazier. (Yes i know what i did to grammar there it was intentional for hopefulyl humorous effect.)

Roz · Mar 23, 2016, 2:50 PM

@ThatGuyThere said:

As an old man, I consider both tumblr and twitter to be blights on existence

I find these sorts of things so tiresome.

Vorpal · Mar 23, 2016, 3:06 PM

There's also a good chunk of roleplaying 'sims' in Second Life, many of which have a rather active population. The Final Fantasy VII sim has been an RP staple for about seven or eight years now and it shows no sign of stopping.

BigDaddyAmin · Mar 23, 2016, 3:14 PM

I would be open to roleplaying via Tumblr, Reddit, or most forums as most MU*s, in my opinion, are a time sink. I no longer have the disposable time or patience to sit with a group and roleplay for two to five hours and wait ten minutes for someone to compose a coherent pose. Not to mention that on certain days I just cannot make the schedules of some of the scenes. For example, on MU that I was very active on a few years ago had major scenes every Sunday morning. Well, by the time I'd go to church with my family, go to brunch like I always do on Sundays, and get home, the scenes would be almost over.

The question is: are some of these groups of quality? Some of the best roleplay I had was back in the late 90s on Star Trek PBeMs (Play-by-Emails). It was nice. I could write at my leisure and not be confined to a time schedule.

HorrorHound · Mar 23, 2016, 3:37 PM

@BigDaddyAmin said:

I would be open to roleplaying via Tumblr, Reddit, or most forums as most MU*s, in my opinion, are a time sink. I no longer have the disposable time or patience to sit with a group and roleplay for two to five hours and wait ten minutes for someone to compose a coherent pose. Not to mention that on certain days I just cannot make the schedules of some of the scenes. For example, on MU that I was very active on a few years ago had major scenes every Sunday morning. Well, by the time I'd go to church with my family, go to brunch like I always do on Sundays, and get home, the scenes would be almost over.

The question is: are some of these groups of quality? Some of the best roleplay I had was back in the late 90s on Star Trek PBeMs (Play-by-Emails). It was nice. I could write at my leisure and not be confined to a time schedule.

If I did anything like PbE, or forums, or anything lone of that nature I would likely end up just writing novellas.

Then sending them to you.

I cannot imagine myself putting energy into a post, only to see my email ping a few hours later, just to open it up to a paragraph or two. But that is just me. Maybe.

BigDaddyAmin · Mar 23, 2016, 3:42 PM

@HorrorHound

I understand what you are saying and I grok you. But it is just very difficult for me to sit and even roleplay 1:1 with anyone , even. If the person isn't a fast writer, I'm waiting at least nine to ten minutes for them to shill out something to contribute. By the time I have finished a scene, whether it be slice of life or even something a bit more active, there goes three hours of my day. In between a 40+ hour work week, dealing with two kids, having to spend time with the wife, not anymore, baby.