When it comes to RPing, of what can you just not get enough? Is there something that just makes you so excited that you cannot help but refresh the page every three seconds? Or perhaps your RPing joy comes from something a little broader.

Share with us here, please. ^_^

Yay! I get to be optimistic. ^.^

Tolstoy once wrote "All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones are more or less alike," but in the case of the fundamental joys of role-playing, when you do it right, it's easy to describe the heady feeling of absolute immersive realism. This list will be short and heartfelt.

• Characters So Realistic You Can Feel Them In the Next Room, sometimes having sex with another character in your kitchen... er... that only happened the once... but you know what I mean. That beautiful alchemy of not quite knowing what your RP partner or your character will do next, but being absolutely sure of what they are doing...
• Wonderful OOC Friends, those RP partners you come to respect as writers and people, whom you come to know through their writing and their characters.
• The Perfect Scene, one you can visualize over and over, one that's like a favorite movie. It has everything: drama, real heart, a piece of the human spirit. And sometimes it also has dismemberment and/or torture! What more could you want?
• Beauty. Beautiful writing. Beautiful words. Hell, beautiful image signatures and skins. I'm not ashamed of being an aesthete. There's beauty in RP.

That made me happy. I'm glad I really have all of those things.

And humility. Lots of humility.

Personally, my favorite part is working out characters. Call my crazy, but for some reason I enjoy spending time researching mental illnesses and explosive compounds to make my characters as believable as possible, so if I'm playing some sort of scientist, I can rattle off the names of explosive compounds and ingredients instead of blathering on about how he just KNOWS this SECRET recipe to make nuclear weaponry out of a spatula, two mouldy Triscuits, and a nuclear weapon. Regardless of what I plan on doing with them, I like being able to know without a doubt that what I just said or did would actually work.

Following that, my favorite part would be when a scene just works. No dumbasses ruining it, no illogical bullshit, just a moving monologue or tender moment or "holy SHIT did you just SEE what happened?" escapade. It happens rarely enough to make each occurrence remind me how awesome it is.

Thirdly, jamming Molotov cocktails into people's mouths and breaking them (both the cocktail and the teeth) in the process is pretty sweet. Not much else need be said about that one.

It depends on the game and who I'm role playing with and what I'm role playing. For example, there's someone I've been doing a Star Wars one-on-one RP with for...God, maybe four years now? And it's gone so far. We started out with our two characters that were boy friend and girl friend, and right now the game mainly revolves around their children, with our original characters as secondary characters. There have been tons of scenes where I've just gotten really excited because of how much things have developed and what's happening n the game. Right now I'm in one of those scenes, and unfortunately my RP partner is busy and is sort of getting back into RPing after he had decided to just not do it any more...and then suddenly he decided to start posting again.

So I have to sit and twiddle my thumbs until he posts again.

In my old Star Wars game, there were so many things happening that I loved about it that I love to go back and read the posts. I do that with another old fantasy game I did one-on-one with a friend. I have two binders of pages from the transcript (though I'm missing part of it) that I go back and read over and over again. I think it's gotten to the point where I can pretty much remember what the characters said in certain scenes.

Those kind of games are what makes it worth it.

Plots! I pretty much live and breath plots. Once I have a couple good ones set up with other charries, I become an obsessed, post devouring online list stalker. I'm blessed to have many RP friends that are excellent writers, and every post from them is a treat. It's all about the story we create, for me.

First off, I second all of Sam's things. Secondly, here's my additions:

Spontaneity - lately, the number one thing missing from RP. But when it does happen, it's awesome. It's anticipation, it's like sitting on the edge of your seat for a movie you're not only watching but wrote. Most things seem so planned out over PM or IM that it's simply not nearly as entertaining.

Character development - I started RPing with my main character because I didn't want to do character sheets alone. I was trying out a character type for both original fiction and fanfic, and now I'm simply addicted to it. Over a year of writing with this character and he still surprises me- and that's just awesome.

Gratification - You know that feeling when something just goes right, you actually took a step FORWARD in the plot instead of staying stagnant? And it encompasses the two points above? Yea, it's a similar feeling to finishing a huge chapter while writing a novel. At least I'd assume so.

Inspiration - This is a give and take, of course. Sometimes RP inspires, other times it requires inspiration that doesn't always come. But the fact that writing collaboratively gives back in the inspiration field makes it just that much for worth it.

Characters. Words cannot express how much I love my characters and how much I enjoy making them up. I have so many different ones that it's great; some are normal, some are psycho. I like having a variety.

Good community. It's hard to find, but when you do find it, you'll know. I like people who will support you and who will understand that you don't have to submit the most spectacular post every time you hit the "add reply" button as long as you try hard and you have fun.

Oh yay, positive time! : ) First, I have to say I agree with most everything everyone posted above, those are all such awesome aspects about roleplaying. Now, onto my little list...

Unexpected Character Development: I love, love, love it when one of my characters, while staying in character, develops in a way I would have never expected. While plotting relationships and everything can be helpful, I think it's awesome when things just develop naturally. Like if one of my characters is having a few random chats with another character and, without any pre-planning, it turns out they just play off of each other so naturally that it is almost as though we talked beforehand or something. That's always cool.

People who have fun: Um, roleplaying is supposed to be fun, sillies. x) That's what I want to say to people sometimes when they're getting upset over people taking more than an hour to post some Hemmingway-esque reply or whatever. What I've noticed is that, in my experience, the sites that do the best are the ones who follow the rules, but realize that Rping is a game and thus should be fun. : )

OOC Banter: It gives you something to do if you're waiting for a reply and everything. : ) Often, if everyone is friendly and chatty, these conversations can also be sooooo amusing.

Good Drama: I am an in character drama llama. x) I love being able to create all sorts of mayhem for my characters and when I meet other people who also love slowly ruining (and then fixing) their character's lives. When we come up with really good ideas, it makes things so much more interesting.

Those are just some things I like, but you guys hit a lot of them already. ^^

All of the above and, bizarrely enough, Research. I love learning things. I love diving into a period or even just a concept. I spent days once working out the theory behind some superconducting Magneto-proof power armor, and I still have my copious notes on the Merovingian kings around here somewhere. Years ago, I worked out a genealogy tracing Owen Glyn Dwr's descent from Owain Gwynedd (it's thin, but it's there). One of my greatest joys in rping is when two or more little factoids come together in some character or plot epiphany. It's fun.

Strong OOC communities. Everyone knows everyone, everyone can plot with everyone and no one is singled out. I've experienced this on a single number of games, so while it's not common, it's gooooood.

Plots that make my feet itch to just, gogogo!! but I have to hold back and doing so is such a sweet, sweet feeling. Knowing you have all sorts of great things in store is just...brilliant.

Finding the mojo I thought I lost. RPs helped me the most in this. I have trouble posting. I struggle to write something in under half an hour and everything is thought about because 'flying by the seat of my pants' always leads to falling on my face with a bare bum in the air. So sometimes I will get this surge. I'll be talking to someone about a character or about a scenario, or I'll have a post to reply to and I go vroooom! And can post without thinking about it twice. It isn't constant, but it happens.

Getting to talk to people about writing!!! Really, this needs no further explanation. I cannot do this anywhere else these days.

- A thread that makes you want to post and post. There was one time where a friend and I made 75 posts between us... in a week, spread between two threads. We had no plot, no premeditated ideas. We just posted... and it went places.

It was insane. We got so much done, and I was really feeling my character. It was amazing.

- The OOC community. Seriously, I love our OOC Garbage chat at 'Souls since it is insane. We have our own IC tabloids, which have led to a ton of silly jokes, including one of our Administrators reportedly being a Bidoof, a male character who was actually a shemale, squirrels that threw acorn bombs, etc... We have silly threads and serious threads, as well as threads that go COMPLETELY off-topic and start as a discussion about your character's name and ends up being a discussion about Animorphs. |: (<3 Animorphs!)

- The OOC AIM community. I love chatting with my rpg friends, and they're some of my best online friends. I've been talking to some friends of mine for four years. It's insane. I have one friend who I sent a Christmas gift to, and wrote to her when she was in South America!

- Chatting about characters. I love talking about people's characters like they were real, and all the silly little jokes that follow behind. It's so fun!

- The characters themselves. Seriously, I love roleplaying them, and that's what I'm here for! It's great once you really start to get into a character and get a feel for who they are.

- When characters change. One of the best things is that everyone is DYNAMIC. Like people, my characters change, evolve, and sometimes devolve. They grow and age, and... I love discovering new sides to my characters. (: I really do treat my characters like they were people, rather than fictitious beings.

- The unexpected things that can be thrown at you. My friend, who runs and GMs our games, is amazing at this. Every so often a big wrench gets thrown in the works, generally leaving us going "...what." ...and also posting and refreshing the page like mad to see what happens next.

- The friends I've made. We've become SUCH a tight-knit group over the past five years. We talk outside of the game all the time, I've met a couple of them...it's really great.

- Character development, the characters themselves, and talking about the characters. So much fun.

Oh, so true! On one site I have this character who is just sort of easy to annoy (she just takes things a little too seriously sometimes and has a short fuse) and a friend of mine on the site has a character who, well, he's a bit of a womanizer and prankster. We made up this sort of ridiculous encounter the two characters had a couple years previous to the plot of the board in their pasts which has lead to her basically avoiding him at all costs. : ) Not for a bad reason or anything, he just gets on her nerves...

Now, these characters are way too much fun to leave purely to IC posts, so we do, on a pretty often basis, find them in the chat box, going at each other there in little chats, which is tons of fun. ^^ And leads to even more inspiration for our actual posts! Love it.

We do that as well! It's so funny some of the things that we'll come up with.

Like, we decided that one of my characters (a Dark Jedi) and one of my friends' characters actually met each other before friend's character had joined the group in the game. They had accidentally come across each other, he recognized her as having (several) large bounties on her head (murder Jedi and let it slip that you're alive, that'll happen), and decided he wanted to take her in. Ended up with a lightsaber duel that she won.

We also decided that that character of mine and another character in the game are going to, at some point in the future, hook up. We don't know why or when, but it'll happen. And then afterward, there will be violence.

And recently we decided that character of mine also collects random things and has a "shiny things" shelf in her room. We've had a lot of fun thinking of random things she'd've kept. I've a feeling that other characters' lightsabers end up there occasionally.

I LOVE being in a really good thread with someone and having moments where it is like reading a fantastic novel, you want to know what happens next. You are as much in the dark as your character until you open up that thread and read it.

Someone messages you on MSN or in the C-box to let you know that your reply is up. Three little letters, tag, can send a shiver down your spine as you race across cyberspace to open the thread and read it.

I love that moment.

Character Chemistry: nothing gets me more motivated than characters meshing in new and exciting ways. Not necessarily love, hate and friendship and jealousy and other such relationship dynamics are just as interesting. If an RP lacks this kind of chemistry, I leave.

Character Creation: I love creating my characters and discovering them as I RP them. Never having been a fan of bios, I usually have an idea of their personality, a bit of their history, and then I play them. I find out things as I RP, little things that shaped them in their past, other quirks they have that I didn't yet consider (I didn't expect my vigilante as the domestic type, but he loves cooking and feeding his friends -_-*) and generally just discovering that 'spark' in a character that brings them to life. The characters who come alive are the easiest to post because it feels as though they're writing through me... Or something.

Plotting/Brainstorming: when done with someone who's open to new ideas and willing to take risks with their characters this can be the most fun. I enjoy carving stories with others and knowing that I'm not in complete control of what happens because someone else is weaving half of it.

Spontaneity: as someone else said, this is also really refreshing in RP. When a thread starts and all of a sudden it's going places you didn't expect, THAT gets me really excited about RP.

The Collaboration: Finally, and this is the main reason I love RP, I get to collaborate with other creative minds which results in more imaginative plots and characters. I like writing a story with a BUNCH of people. Often times I wonder if people are losing this by plotting out the whole RP from beginning to end and just gathering pawns to play out their story. I don't understand this method of RP, but to each their own. I prefer to watch events unfold that I didn't expect and write stories WITH people. I love writing novels for myself, but RP brings in this dynamic of more minds and I love that.

1. Seeing how people IRL resemble their characters- It's fun and it makes me laugh. On one RP for example we have a character with an obsession with squirrels, and the person that created him is also obsessed with squirrels!
2. Plots! The really intense, good drama ones. For people like me whose lives are boring.
3. The fact that you can be someone else for a little while without even leaving your room.
4. For people that write stories and poems regularly, like me, it gives us a chance to maybe explore new things we'd like to write about.
5. It's relaxing. When I am having problems I can make my characters' problems worse than mine so it all evens out.

Not being in control is the thing I love the most. By that I do not mean the other player(s) is taking control of the thread and leaving me no say. I mean when the characters take over the thread and do crazy yet logical things and all I and the other player have to do is sit there and watch with ecstatic anticipation as our fingers type amazing things.

That is not only the best thing in RPing, it's the accumulation of all the other good things. Things like having a good plot, great characters, an awesome OOC relationship, spontaneity and beauty within writing.

-nod-

Some of the greatest things about RPing is developing your original characters. That is if the RP you are on allows for OC's. If it is a canon RP, sometimes you can develope them to a certain extent while keeping in line with canon.

Another thing is making friends. You can make some great friends while RPing. I've met several of the people I Rp with in person. Or I have talked to them on the phone. Some of us would love to meet up for the San Diego Comic Con in 2009. ^_^