Part of me wonders if meet-and-greet threads are the primary reason open threads have a certain stigma attached to them. I.e. Why some players are so adverse to making or joining open threads is because of their association with meet-and-greets. Even though not all open threads are meet-and-greets! (Though to be fair, most are)

To build on what others have said about RPing combat... I think problems arise when RPers view IC combat as a contest or challenge that they need to beat, rather than simply a narrative device that serves to move the plot.

Thread tax: I find myself getting less and less fond of RPing superpowers that call for using hard numbers to quantify the magnitude of a character's abilities. I feel that quantifying attacks with hard numbers is one of the key things that make RPers feel backed into a corner when writing battles.

I prefer more allegorical descriptors like "medium damage" or "heavy damage", and let my partners decide for themselves what constitutes their character taking "medium damage". On the other hand, if I write my character's attacks hitting with the force of one ton of TNT, I can't blame the other party for feeling backed into a corner because they will perceive it as a "sure kill" on their character, and thus would bend IC logic to avoid what they believe would be their character's death.

Animanga superhero RPs aren't exactly uncommon (And I imagine with Shy getting an anime adaptation, we might be seeing another resurgence in superhero RPs, no less), but what about an animanga supervillain RP (in a world without superheroes)? Though there's a catch; you're not restricted to playing baddies. The premise I imagined would be that it's a world where the emergence of supers is a fairly recent event, and for whatever reason the Powers That Be really, really, hate supers. So while one can technically play good guys, but the thing is that since the world hates supers, you're going to be viewed as a villain regardless in the eyes of the general public. So I imagine a lot of the plots will revolve around newly-awakened supers having to struggle with the moral dilemma of whether to use their powers for good to challenge the prevailing narrative that supers are evil, or to just indulge in their power fantasies and in the process, prove the anti-super propaganda correct.

After watching The Creator last weekend and noticing how the design aesthetics of the movie had throwbacks to 80/90's cyberpunk/sci-fi anime such as Akira, Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed, is it wrong to be hankering for an animanga-themed cyberpunk RP set in a Southeast Asian metropolis? It could either be a futuristic version of a real-life city (I.e. Bangkok, Manila, etc.), or it could be a fictional city. (I.e. Roanapur from Black Lagoon, Madripoor from Marvel comics, etc.)

Just thought it would be cool to RP in a futuristic Southeast Asian metropolis with a sizable posthuman (I.e. Cyborgs, androids, Gene-spliced, etc.) population.

That pretty much sums up the rise and fall of Hihou in a nutshell. My friend and I were regular players on Shin Hyakuji High School back then, and the former said, "What if we borrow Hyakuji High's "anything-goes" premise, but expand upon it x100?" It was a neat idea on paper, but in practice what we ended up with was one hell of an overdesigned setting with overly bloated rules filled with unnecessary legalese, templates for just about every possible anime archetype under the sun (that we don't even know will even see any RP action to begin with), and too many IC location subforums.

It's not helped that I wasn't really into this project to begin with, and was only roped in because I didn't wanna disappoint my friend. (I.e. I knew deep in my gut this was never gonna catch on, but I didn't have the heart back then to outright say "no" to him) To nobody's surprise, the site failed to draw in anybody besides the two of us and a couple of RP partners we made on Hyakuji. Turns out, the sheer open-endedness (as I said earlier, it aspires to be what Hyakuji was but "do it bigger") turned out to be quite an audience-alienating premise in and of itself.

Hihou pretty much taught me 2 lessons. 1) How not to make and run a site, and 2) never to be a people-pleaser, I.e. Sometimes, you just have to say "no", even to your closest friends.

Simple and elegant answer that I can get completely behind. Because I can say with great confidence, that 9.9 times out of 10 my grievances in RPs have always been an issue not with the characters, but the writers behind them. Like, I've had my share of reading characters that have pretty interesting profiles - like say, has an interesting backstory, a neat gimmick, a strong personality, etc. - but when we do get down to threading the RP experience fell massively short because the RPer writing that character turned out to be a petulant little shit with an ego that could fill a castle.

Cringe culture sucks, but one particular subset of cringe culture I find particularly irksome are those who shame others for consuming media that isn't targeted at their age demographic, and/or that's "well past its time".

See, one of my hobbies as an adult is consuming media from my childhood/teens. I.e. Playing the video games I always wanted to play but never managed to do so (or alternatively, played but never managed to beat back then), or watching the cartoons/anime/movies I always wanted to watch when I was little but never managed to.

Unfortunately, it seems among my peers who know about this hobby of mine there are always those who like to cringe over how I'm consuming media that is either way past their time (I.e. That I should be more "up to date" with my tastes), or that isn't targeted at my age group. (Due to having aged out of its target demographic long ago)

Hearing some of the (largely negative) opinions fellow Millennials hold towards Gen Z makes me feel like Millennials vs. Gen Z has become the new Boomers vs. Millennials.

Knocking others down a peg whether they deserve it or not (sometimes they deserve it, but the majority of the time it happens to those who don't deserve it) seems to be Twitter's favourite pasttime.

Because I recently binged through some Rifts/Palladium Megaverse related materials... it left a part of me with a hankering for taking the panfandom premise but applying it to OCs instead. Thought it might be cool if there's a setting that's like some kind of multiversal hub, a Nexus of All Realities that attracts heroes and villains from all over the multiverse.

I.e. An aspiring Dark Lord or Galactic Conqueror might see the world's status as a dimensional crossroads a valuable asset because it could open up paths to new worlds to potentially conquer, paragons of justice might take it upon themselves to safeguard this world to prevent its resources from falling into the wrong hands, and still others might just be your typical everyman (by the standards of their native realm, anyway) who were just minding their own businesses and were unfortunately isekai'ed.

Like sure, panfandom likes to go for the approach of "how would characters from unconnected fandoms interact with one another when forced out of their native contexts?". On the other hand, this would be more like a venture into "how would different genres cross over?" Like, what kind of adventures might a fantasy knight errant have with a space bounty hunter? What kind of stories could a wild west gunslinger and a barbarian hero trade? The possibilities are endless.

Random thought of the day:

Being nice to others may not always earn you their friendship, but being mean to them will most certainly earn you their enmity.

Not too sure about people in the RPC working as professional designers, but I've known a couple of folks in the RPC who had written and published novels.

I think that might just be the reason why I never seem to finish any of my writing projects. Must be due to the premature gratification I get from prattling about them every chance I get. The dopamine rush I get from doing so must be what kills my drive to actually finish them...