Freeform Roleplay

[LordJoyde]

Hello.

I apologize in advance if this isn't the forum section meant to hold anything like this, however I feel that I would be extremely amiss to not ask this question here on ScribbleHub.

To keep things concise and short; a friend of mine intends to create a freeform roleplay setting. Its still in the infancy stages,- we don't even know where the RP will be happening, though we are aware of some candidates, such as discord, 9gag or rpol.

None of these has been chosen as of yet and, in fact, the rp may spread depending on how many people get interested in it. This is why I'm here.

So, is there anyone present who happens to be interested in joining some roleplay?

To keep it simple, this isn't the NSFW sort of RP, although that wont be forbidden. We're all adults and we'd like to keep ourselves, and anyone who joins, as free to be themselves as is humanly possible.
Freeform roleplay, for the uninitiated, means you can roleplay as any character in existence, regardless of if that is your own OC, a comic superhero, an anime character or something from a video game. They all come together in one huge melting pot of personality.

So if this sounds interesting to any of you folks, please give me a dm.
That is all, thank you for reading.

 

[TotallyHuman]

I remember when I was a kid (like 6 or even less) we'd play with friends like this.
We'd come up with characters and play as them. It usually ended up with us just sitting on a bench or a log or whatever and going all xianxia "I do an attack that gives infinite damage!" "I am immune to this! I return you an attack that gives two, no, three infinities of damage!" "No you cannot block it! I give you an infinity of infinities of damages!"
Gosh, what psycho killed that adorable twerp that I once was? Sigh.

 

[LordJoyde]

I remember when I was a kid (like 6 or even less) we'd play with friends like this.
We'd come up with characters and play as them. It usually ended up with us just sitting on a bench or a log or whatever and going all xianxia "I do an attack that gives infinite damage!" "I am immune to this! I return you an attack that gives two, no, three infinities of damage!" "No you cannot block it! I give you an infinity of infinities of damages!"
Gosh, what psycho killed that adorable twerp that I once was? Sigh.

lmfao

There's a lot of such childishness going on with freeform. You'll always have people going into these communities while roleplaying as essentially themselves, but invincible. You know the kind? Half angel, half demon, seen as pure evil but is actually misunderstood and a softie?

This is why we'd like to keep our new community adult. 20+ only.

 

[SailusGebel]

I'm not trying to be a dick. I have a legit question. What is RP, and why is it interesting? What's the difference between your RP; and DND or other tabletop RPGs?

 

[LordJoyde]

I'm not trying to be a dick. I have a legit question. What is RP, and why is it interesting? What's the difference between your RP; and DND or other tabletop RPGs?

Nothing about it is you being dickish and dunno how someone would even consider it that way.

As for how its interesting, that entirely depends on you. I personally find a fair bit of interest in roleplaying as a character I've made, interacting with other characters created or impersonated by people. Its kind of like having a social life as another person, with fantasy and scifi and all the other cooler bits incorporated.

As for the difference, the only thing I can think of is that Freeform is completely and utterly rule-free. You are as free to do as you want as you are in real life. DND and other tabletops all have rules you need to follow, such as limiting your character race options or how much power you can wield or what sort of personality you can have. In freeform, no such thing exists. The only 'limiting factor', if you can even call it that, is your own ability to write, express and showcase yourself and your character by proxy, to everyone else involved.

To me personally, the best part about Freeform is entering situations you would never have seen coming otherwise and trying to respond to these situations as the character would. In dnd or otherwise, you still need to follow rules of engagement or events, such as dice rolls or skill checks. In our RP, these again, do not exist, and all of it is based in your personal linguistic, social and creative ability.

 

[SailusGebel]

Nothing about it is you being dickish and dunno how someone would even consider it that way.

As for how its interesting, that entirely depends on you. I personally find a fair bit of interest in roleplaying as a character I've made, interacting with other characters created or impersonated by people. Its kind of like having a social life as another person, with fantasy and scifi and all the other cooler bits incorporated.

As for the difference, the only thing I can think of is that Freeform is completely and utterly rule-free. You are as free to do as you want as you are in real life. DND and other tabletops all have rules you need to follow, such as limiting your character race options or how much power you can wield or what sort of personality you can have. In freeform, no such thing exists. The only 'limiting factor', if you can even call it that, is your own ability to write, express and showcase yourself and your character by proxy, to everyone else involved.

To me personally, the best part about Freeform is entering situations you would never have seen coming otherwise and trying to respond to these situations as the character would. In dnd or otherwise, you still need to follow rules of engagement or events, such as dice rolls or skill checks. In our RP, these again, do not exist, and all of it is based in your personal linguistic, social and creative ability.

I would've agreed with you if not for two things. In DND, there are such things as homebrew rules. And overall, you can modify the rules of any tabletop RPG. No one stopping you from that. The second thing that bothers me. If there are no rules, what's the point? I understand that the point is interactions. What I'm trying to say is, if there are no rules, what stops you from dealing an infinite amount of damage, but in a less exaggerated form? With people having different definitions of fun, you can't expect everyone to follow the set of unspoken rules you make in a freeform RP, right?

 

[LordJoyde]

I would've agreed with you if not for two things. In DND, there are such things as homebrew rules. And overall, you can modify the rules of any tabletop RPG. No one stopping you from that. The second thing that bothers me. If there are no rules, what's the point? I understand that the point is interactions. What I'm trying to say is, if there are no rules, what stops you from dealing an infinite amount of damage, but in a less exaggerated form? With people having different definitions of fun, you can't expect everyone to follow the set of unspoken rules you make in a freeform RP, right?

I know of homebrew rules, I am a DM myself after all. And you do make a fair point.

Hmm, the point of it is to engage in social interactions, I suppose? In general, freeform roleplay is created by and populated by the social anxious or awkward. Its a lot easier to be social when you're pretending to be someone else.

In general, even if there are no rules, there's still the expectation that you will follow certain levels of politeness. Nobody is going to kick you out for not following them, but most often, people dealing 'infinite damage' get turned into memes and jokes, treated like clowns by the community.
We had one guy dodge every attack by saying "you got fooled, I didn't take damage, that's just red paint lol" and we kind of laughed at him for it for years. He's still part of the crowd, though!

The goal of the freeform is up to the person decided to be part of it. That can be anything, from people going around with the intent of seducing as many as possible, or picking fights between powerful characters. One thing you don't understand is that freeform isn't really based in combat, its more of a slice of life than anything else.

In-character fights do happen often enough, but they're not the focus. Roleplay is far more pleasant when one relies on their mentality rather than how OP they've decided to make their character. However, if that's not your forte and you just want to fight, that's also cool, however you'll have to understand if certain people simply wont have any interest in roleplaying with you.

 

[SailusGebel]

I know of homebrew rules, I am a DM myself after all. And you do make a fair point.

Hmm, the point of it is to engage in social interactions, I suppose? In general, freeform roleplay is created by and populated by the social anxious or awkward. Its a lot easier to be social when you're pretending to be someone else.

In general, even if there are no rules, there's still the expectation that you will follow certain levels of politeness. Nobody is going to kick you out for not following them, but most often, people dealing 'infinite damage' get turned into memes and jokes, treated like clowns by the community.
We had one guy dodge every attack by saying "you got fooled, I didn't take damage, that's just red paint lol" and we kind of laughed at him for it for years. He's still part of the crowd, though!

The goal of the freeform is up to the person decided to be part of it. That can be anything, from people going around with the intent of seducing as many as possible, or picking fights between powerful characters. One thing you don't understand is that freeform isn't really based in combat, its more of a slice of life than anything else.

In-character fights do happen often enough, but they're not the focus. Roleplay is far more pleasant when one relies on their mentality rather than how OP they've decided to make their character. However, if that's not your forte and you just want to fight, that's also cool, however you'll have to understand if certain people simply wont have any interest in roleplaying with you.

Thank you for explaining this.

 

[LordJoyde]

Thank you for explaining this.

Anytime!

 

[Sabruness]

It's been a long while but up til a few years ago, off and on for about 6 years, i did a lot of freeform RP. Got any more info? world details, frameworks? i love me freeform RP (it's so much easier to do than more structured and slow forum-based RP) but i generally need some skinny and a basic world idea to work with.
I take it this would be run on the 'gentleman's agreement' standard? extremely minimal, common sense rules like no killing other's characters without their permission and ignoring or working around clowns who just cant be willing or able to meet halfway in not going overboard?

Also, speaking from experience, Discord is probably best as it's greatly suited for 'floating' RPs that are available round-the-clock and can be jumped into and out of with no issue. anything forum or website based is hampered when it comes to multiple sub-RPs running at the same time as well as keeping track of different running RPs.

In general, freeform roleplay is created by and populated by the social anxious or awkward. Its a lot easier to be social when you're pretending to be someone else.

Totally agree with this. You'd probably find a lot of neuro-divergent people (like myself) who do and prefer freeform RP because it's more organic. At least half my old RP group were neuro-divergent in some way and we came up with whole ongoing connected stories that would not have been possible in more rules-bound RPs.

 

[LordJoyde]

View attachment 16476
It's been a long while but up til a few years ago, off and on for about 6 years, i did a lot of freeform RP. Got any more info? world details, frameworks? i love me freeform RP (it's so much easier to do than more structured and slow forum-based RP) but i generally need some skinny and a basic world idea to work with.
I take it this would be run on the 'gentleman's agreement' standard? extremely minimal, common sense rules like no killing other's characters without their permission and ignoring or working around clowns who just cant be willing or able to meet halfway in not going overboard?

Also, speaking from experience, Discord is probably best as it's greatly suited for 'floating' RPs that are available round-the-clock and can be jumped into and out of with no issue. anything forum or website based is hampered when it comes to multiple sub-RPs running at the same time as well as keeping track of different running RPs.


Totally agree with this. You'd probably find a lot of neuro-divergent people (like myself) who do and prefer freeform RP because it's more organic. At least half my old RP group were neuro-divergent in some way and we came up with whole ongoing connected stories that would not have been possible in more rules-bound RPs.

The gentleman's agreement is exactly what I meant!

As for info and lore, nothing's really set in stone yet. We originally planned to create a sort of 'starter example world' where we would roleplay 'alternative versions' of our original/favorite characters and fight some gods together. The premise being that in one of the previous timelines, the time gods got seriously fed up with (one of our rpers tendency to retcon his entire lore every once a year) the general time-fkery that went on with his sets of many characters. So instead of allowing him to do it again, they decided to reform the timeline into one which they thought was perfect. His new plotline is taking his favorite character and trying to kill those gods, but the dude is heavily into personal tragedy, so its highly unlikely that she will ever be successful. Not without help!; which is where the rest of us come in.

However, the freeform we now have in mind wont be tied to just this one world. I will personally create my own setting, while participating in the example roleplay at the same time. Time is, after all, relative to the needs of the roleplayers. What's important is to allow events to happen, we can have more fun figuring out exactly 'when' they happened later if it ever even needs to be put into logical order.

-- I, and my friends, also agree with you that Discord is our likely best bet, which is why we're currently in the process of setting up a discord server which we will inevitably put up as public and hope to attract an audience.

As for the neuro-divergents, well, yes. This is likely because such individuals often feel restrained by reality and need complete freedom in order to truly feel as if they're themselves for the most part.

In any case, if you feel like joining, please send me a friend request on Discord: Lord Joyde#4050