no
i'm looking for private partners at this point, i don't mind the communication aspects and plotting. i actually think "no communication, place your characters" will lead to even more pointless meet n greets. i don't want to thread with people's randomly placed characters. i want to talk about a plot, write the plot, and not spend 3000 times playing with someone's blorbo that they had to play that i already had to go through hoops to get to thread with mine, and it's boring anyway. i want you to pitch a character idea to me and we come up with pre-connections and we ignore all the boring "establish everything" storylines.
the site i dream of is a site that doesn't allow random, unconnected characters at all and outright rejects them, like a wolf pack RP where your character needs to be related to/connected to someone else. but like i get that sort of thing is hard, especially for new members. at the same time, i kinda don't care. i am tired of randomly placing characters and seeing what sticks. i want a story at this point where everyone involved has a point. this is why i think looking for private partners is better; if they have a character they ABSOLUTELY have to play, I can then riff off them and make a character that fits their story. i don't have to care about the politics of the site and "how many characters do you have? how many face claims are you sitting on?" because i can just make the new character and not think about that aspect of things.
i actually think about this kind of thing a lot. might be better suited to its own thread rather than this one, but let's see how far i can push it
i've come to accept that pretty much every big public roleplay site that runs how you would expect an rp site to run in this day and age will inevitably become a slice-of-life sandbox if it isn't advertised as one already. "plot-driven" stuff is insanely hard because you have to imagine it like a TTRPG game, except you have around 10-20 players who don't know each other and all have their own different, sometimes outright clashing expectations/opinions for what is fun and what they wanna write, and you have a small team of GMs who also wanna be players, and the sessions never end. you just can't actively engage twenty-something people and make them all play a part in some big story without either a staff team approaching a small company in size or a time investment way higher than what is reasonable for a hobby... or if everyone has just such good chemistry with each other that there is no chance for drama to occur, but
*shrek tearing piece of paper out of book* like that's ever gonna happen
the most appealing form of roleplay from both a staff and player standpoint is an open setting where people can make their own fun with some light rules on the side, and occasional events to stir up threads and provide a hook for players to incorporate into their own personal plots. this isn't really a bad way to roleplay at all, but i can understand how frustrating it is to do the same old song and dance on every goddamn site if you don't already know everyone there. in my experience, most sites that try to actively push for a sitewide plot that changes the world and incorporate player characters into it end up dying quick because of staff burnout/frustration. obviously, it's fun while it lasts to feel like you're a small part of something much larger, and some sites definitely pull it off and are able to keep a steady momentum with a sizeable community, but I consider that shit to be a herculean feat on the staff's part, definitely not the norm.
i've gotten burnt out on this kinda thing before but i ended up finding that tabletop stuff is closer to what i want when i feel like i'm apart of a cohesive long-term story with a small group of people who "get" the vibe, while public forum roleplay is more for "in the moment" writing. no thoughts, just words, pure expression.
bottom line is, you aren't alone in feeling this way. hopefully, you'll find what you're looking for
