My first rant here; it was about time :)

OK, so I was reading an LJ post of a person who I really respect in the RPG & Graphic community. I am continually blown away from his writing and his graphics. I've heard great things about him, too, from other people. Well, I was again blown away from this certain post of his, but not in the way that I thought I would be.
See, he was saying that he misses what he used to love to do: role playing for the fun of it. He said some other things that I agree with, but I want to focus on this portion. He was saying how he hates to worry about his own forum, and make sure that it doesn't die or anything. He just wants to RP, he says.

I agree entirely.

Where did Fun go in role playing? I feel so incredibly lost when I make forums. I might talk to people like I know all the answers to forums, but I don't. I know very little, in fact. Sure, I've been doing this for years. But I think, along the way, I lost the beauty of role playing. I lost how it felt to have a good time. I was at a forum recently where I think I got back into that, mostly because it wasn't actually my site, I was just a member. I had fun. I made friends. I appreciate my time spent there, but now that it's gone, I need to find a new home. I can't find one, though.

Some of you may have noticed how I am hopping into new things. While I am no Forum Hopper, I am always on a craze to make new forums or help out with forums. I do have the time, since I'm not exactly a busy person. Why? I think I'm trying to get back into the fun of rping. I just want to rp endlessly, and not care that I just keep doing it. And I think that if I make the forum, then, perhaps, I will have fun. I am so critical when it comes to forums; I know this. This is why it is very hard for me to join sites, so there are times when I'm too busy making forums, because I can't exactly find one to my liking.

I know everyone thinks their forums are great, but where did Fun go?
I see a lot of forums that has some Fun, but not a lot. Others have no Fun at all. Some seem professional, but too professional for my taste. Others just LOOK elite, you know? Sure, I'm all into great graphics. But if all I see is great graphics, it is almost a warning that the forum is 1. Advanced and 2. the Admins are very arrogant and secretly want you to worship them, even if they act as if they are nice.

Where did Fun go? I just want to have Fun in my life again when it comes to rping. I don't want to feel lazy. I don't want to regret making my characters. I don't want to make butloads of forums, hoping one of them will be a success. I don't want to put effort into something that I can't even have fun doing when it is open.

Does anyone else have this problem?
I've noticed that this is a problem with a lot of forums.

(BTW, please do not try to advertise your site. What I mean is this: Don't say, "I have a ton of fun on my forum! My forum is very active, and everyone has a great time!" No, I want to know if this is the same with anyone else when it comes to RPGs overall)

I know just how you feel.
Having your own board can sometimes do that to people, I can't agree more. It happens since managing the board becomes the priority, instead of actually rping - which was the whole point in the first. I suppose it is natural for the admins to concern themselves, since they don't want all their work to go in vain if the board just ends up dying after a month.
I've actually closed down my own boards, even if they were fairly active, simply because I couldn't stand all the work it put me through. I used to log in simply to see if there were people to approve or ads I had to reply to, and I ended up straying from my own characters there. It became so bad by the end that I realised the board had just become another concern for me, it was all about work and not at all about fun - so I had to let it go.

Still, it's not impossible to own a board and still have a good time with it. It is easier when you're just a regular member, since it's other people who do all the worrying about the administrative, labours stuff, but I find that if you have an administrative staff instead of trying to run everything on your own, things can go very smoothly, and it's much more relaxed for everyone - it's even better for the members, since the admins can manage time to actually interact with them. So, trust me, you can still have loads of fun with it. Like everything in life, it has some frustrations and sometimes it can piss the hell out of people, but it all fades out in the end. :)

I totally agree with you, and have been dealing with that very issue myself this week. For me, it's all the background OOC drama that's been ruining the fun, and it makes me not feel like RPing.

((Bear with me on this post, I just woke up from a nap and I'm groggy.))

HA, I love the cynicism of that end bit. You're awesome. <3

As it happens, I really do know what you're talking about. I've recently just... not been in the mood to do admin stuff at all. On the sites I admin, I just end up feeling... I guess ego-invested? Like it's a job, and people are judging me by the players on my forum, by the activity... by all of these standards, when, in reality, the reason I created the forum to begin with was just so I could have some fun without stupid admins getting in the way. Well. Perhaps, also, I wanted some control. And some pride. I don't know if there's actually anything wrong with taking pride in a forum, but when that motivation starts to outweigh pure pleasure, it's an issue.

I also understand what you mean about high standards. It's taken me forever to find a place I really like, and my criteria are pretty rarefied. I'm lucky in that I have found a few places. They're out there--there just aren't that many of them, you're right.

For me, I think the main problem is just that I'm not really in the mood for RP on my board right now. It happens. I'm taking a few days' break, and it's no catastrophe. When I am on my board, or on the other board I help admin, I try to focus on just the RP, and let 'admin stuff' take up a minimum of my time--you know, so I can pretend I'm just a member, with more power because I earn it through my activity and my characters--if that makes sense. It does help a bit, and staying really involved in actual RP is nice. It's also very important that you like the members on your board--on any board you join--and enjoy speaking with them, make friends with them, etc. The players are what make the board.

In fact, when I RP, I don't enjoy boards, per se. I enjoy RP partners and characters. Is it bad that I enjoy the novelty of a new character on a new board? Of meeting new people, finding really admirable new RP partners? I don't think so. That's what it's about, not which 'board' is better. If there are people I like, even just three or four, I've found a board I like (given it doesn't have all those plot pages and character sheets that ask for a paragraph on eye color, etc.).

It's also sometimes easier, oddly, to love a board that's not yours. I get too self-critical on my own board; I'm always thinking of ways it falls short, etc. It's rather sad. So, in that sense, it's nicer to be just a member; there's less pressure.

More embarrassingly, I admit I like attention. I like the attention of making a splash with a new character on a new board. But hey--why not, right. It does make it harder when I get to a new board and I'm rather anonymous, or unrecognized. :p You guys have probably noticed I'm kind of arrogant (no, really?). I like to be appreciated.

Whew. Thank you for this rant; it came at a good time, because I've been feeling precisely the same way.

Photoshop fiddlings help. ^.^ They make me mellow.

You can have a lot of fun by running your own games. My games are the only I play on, and I have lots of fun with them. The trick is that making buttloads of forums is not going to help you. :\ That's work--it's hard work creating a game and THEN getting it off the ground! So if you keep on creating forums, you're just going to keep giving yourself work and you'll never really have time to RP.

If you're picky about other games to the point that you'd prefer to just run your own, there's nothing wrong with that--create a game!

But stick with it.

Create a game you know you are willing to stay dedicated to for the long haul, a game you know you will be passionate about. Don't create a game on a whim--more games die because the admins lose interest with their concept which was oh so nice and shiny a couple days ago when that cool movie they saw came out but is already old hat.

If you create a game you intend to last, a game you are willing to stick with through thick and thin, then eventually the game will stabilize and you can focus more on RPing. But when you create a game, it should be with the intent that you will be having fun on it, too. It's about balance--balance advertising and adminly duties with actual RPing. "If I get THIS many ads out today, I'm done and can post the rest of the time," for instance.

On my own games, I spend 95% of my time RPing. xD I do very little adminly stuff anymore because, honestly, there's not much TO do. One's almost 8 years old, the other's almost a year old. They pretty much regulate themselves so I can advertise when I feel like it, but the rest of the time? I'm posting and plotting, man! Sometimes I have to do a little update. No biggy. I guess it helps that I don't have applications to approve, too. That cuts out a lot of work.

I think a lot of admins make more work for themselves than is actually necessary and they forget that they're not just the admin on their game--they're a player. Set aside one day a week or something to do updates and adverise. The rest of the time? Play! Get some mods to help out.

RP is a game. It should be fun, not work.

I also think taking things too seriously is a drawback. xD I see so many people who are picky as, and I don't really see the point. But then again, I've been RPing for about 12 years, and I'm extremely laid back about RP. If people just loosen up a bit, they might be surprised at what sorts of fun there is to be had in unexpected places. *shrug*

But, in short...you're in charge of your own fun.

(And also...I see so many great games fail just because the admin judges success by numbers. Who cares if you only have three people on your game? Is everyone having fun? Well then, the game is a success!)

Ditto. It's great having a site that's become this big, but at the same time, there are so many more things that come up and get in the way of roleplaying. Like member-member drama and cbox failure, in this past week. They're just growing pains I suppose. But they're still a pain. I'd love to create a site with my friends where we don't have to worry about that stuff, like the good old days.

That doesn't happen too much with me, but that is definitely an issue! I don't understand why people think they can act like a 2 year old online. Yes, it is the internet, but is it necessary?

It irks me when people do that. It's like, I'm not going to join your site, kk? If I wanted to, I probably would have done so already XD

Amen to all of the above!

Rhi-Rhi, thank you very much for your advice, although you might have missed my point. I will admit that I'm not having trouble with making boards, I just get so caught up with Admin stuff, and it isn't just Admin stuff, it's just finding boards in general to rp on)! I do love my past members, and I get very close with them. Most of the time, I find that my members and I rock out. It's just a lot of OOC, though, for me, anyways. I get so worried about the board, that I am constantly 'working', not 'role playing'. It's not because I am sick of the board, that I'm sick of the genre, or I want to make a new one, it's just that I get scared that it will die. My members have no problem role playing.
And I didn't mean just on my own, I mean on RPGs in general.
Mostly, I hop to hop on forum ideas, rather than forum themselves (I have exactly 6 forums that are ready to be open, I just haven't gotten around to doing that).

Gosh, what I'd do for something like that...

I totally understand how you feel. I started RP'ing when I was around 15-16, and I thought it was the bomb. I introduced my best friend to it as well, and we've been into it ever since. There have been slow periods for both of us, and times when we've given it up completely, but bottom line is, we like RP'ing... most of the time.

Not too long ago, we discovered the link to the first game we ever played on, and amazingly, the site is still there. It's been long dead, but the layout and some of the posts are still there. Reading though some of them sure was a walk down memory lane. Man, we sucked back then, but we loved what we were doing. You'd think we'd have more fun as we got better at RP'ing, but that just wasn't the case. Yeah, we can both easily post 1000+ words now, and our characters are much more sophisticated than they used to be, more real, but now I sort of feel obligated to polish applications over and over again, and write posts that go on and on just because I can, as if people are expecting it of me. Hell, I expect it of me. And then there's the responsibility of admining games: whether you've been asked to help out, or if you admin your own game, that's something that can take a lot of the fun out of RP'ing. I've been co-admining for quite a while, and the fact that the head-admin was overly demanding didn't help at all. I felt like admin duties were more important than actually playing the game, and I was doing more dirty work than posting, and I felt that if I didn't do my work fast enough, I'd be deadmined and/or kicked off the board. I understand that as an admin, you have to be active, but we're not just there to evaluate, update and do other adminly stuff, are we? It's supposed to be fun. Sometimes, it's just not.

Ohhh, gotcha!

Well think of it this way: as an admin, it is you 'job' to roleplay! Admins are a hot item in RPGs--players wanna play with 'em. xD That's part of the 'duties'.

In fact, I think it's actually the most important one. RPs die when no one's playing--as an admin, it's your job to keep threads going and people playing. Create threads when things get slow. Play with new people. Stuff like that!

As an admin, you should be RPing a lot!

Set aside time for working AND for playing. Playing should take up the majority of your time, RP-wise. ;D Otherwise, in my opinion, you're Doing It Wrong. Roleplaying should never feel like a job; it should be fun.

As for the fear of games dying...

Games only die if you let them die, and all games go through dry spells. The trick is to roll with the punches and keep on trucking. Games don't bloom overnight. :3 And again, so long as everyone is having fun, you're doing good, no matter how many or few of you there are.

Don't be afraid of your own games dying. The way I look at it...well, that's one of the reasons I made my games. I'm afraid of other games dying because I don't really trust other admins to make them last, and that's one reason I created my own games because I know how persistent and stubborn I am. xD

When you create your own game, you're in control of it. You choose whether it lasts or shuts down. That shouldn't be a scary thought--draw comfort out of it. :3