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newbie request thread feedback
- Thread starter kalopsia
- Start date
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2017
It's a pretty nice setup. Very clean and clear and everything is organized very nicely. You also have presented a lot of relevant information but not an overwhelming amount. It's a pretty great RT.
What does it mean in your listed expectations "ability to write with god modding or metagaming"? Are you expecting your partner to god mod your characters? Or are you saying they should expect you to do that to their characters? How do you define god modding? Usually, it's not a positive term; like, most people looking for rp partnerships get kinda turned off by someone else trying to god mod their characters, meaning, taking them over and writing their reactions rather than letting the owner of that character contribute to the story. So, right off the bat, seeing that, it comes across as an odd and confusing selling point. I think it might help to better define what you mean by god modding and then more clearly define WHO is going to god mod who's characters.
As stated, it's generally not a positive practice. So, if you want your partner to expect that you will be writing reactions for their character(s) or making them do things in the story, this might have an effect to turn a lot of people away.
What does it mean in your listed expectations "ability to write with god modding or metagaming"? Are you expecting your partner to god mod your characters? Or are you saying they should expect you to do that to their characters? How do you define god modding? Usually, it's not a positive term; like, most people looking for rp partnerships get kinda turned off by someone else trying to god mod their characters, meaning, taking them over and writing their reactions rather than letting the owner of that character contribute to the story. So, right off the bat, seeing that, it comes across as an odd and confusing selling point. I think it might help to better define what you mean by god modding and then more clearly define WHO is going to god mod who's characters.
As stated, it's generally not a positive practice. So, if you want your partner to expect that you will be writing reactions for their character(s) or making them do things in the story, this might have an effect to turn a lot of people away.
OP
OP
kalopsia
Planetoid
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2022
LMFAO YOU KNOW WHAT ; IT WOULD HELP IF I HADN'T TYPO'D
oh my god, I can't believe I overlooked that. I meant to say WITHOUT godmodding or metagaming. Editing that now.
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2017
Ah! That makes a lot more sense! Heh, I'm glad I was able to help in some small way. ^^
As I said, it's a great thread, I love the simple, clean-cut look and organization, with just a bit of colour and design to make it interesting.
OP
OP
kalopsia
Planetoid
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2022
thank you! I appreciate it
Mitsu
Supernova
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2009
You're playing a numbers game.
You have advertised what you want to do, and there are only so many people that would want to do it. Take that into account, and then subtract all of the cismen you've declared you won't play with. That leaves you with an even smaller pool of players. While your typo issue above likely contributed to some people turning away, this preference of yours likely turned off anyone of any gender who sees that sort of thing as a deterrent, or as a potential red flag. To some people it might be a subtle advertisement that you aren't looking for a writing partner, but someone to get inappropriate with OoC. There are plenty of people here who view the gender of the other person behind the screen as irrelevant and might be distrustful of those that do care.
I am someone that values being as restrictive as possible to narrow down who I want to play with. However, you gotta realize that such an approach will naturally lead to less interest than if you cast a wider net. There really isn't anything wrong with your thread. Any changes to make it more appealing might land outside what you are looking for. Below is some copy pasta I put in a different thread and it outlines my thoughts and ideas on search threads in general.
Creating a search thread is a very personalized experience. There is no one-size-fits-all approach that will achieve success. The very notion is determined exactly by what your goals are. Some people are only looking for one or two role-plays, while others aren't satisfied unless they have two or three hits a day. You have to consider what kind of role-player you are looking to attract and at what rate you'd want to attract them. Only once you figure this out, can you really look to tailor your thread to your needs. There are, of course, road blocks that will get in your way if you are looking for highly specific role-plays, especially if they are not particularly popular or well-known ideas, genre or fandom.
Keep in mind that there are exceptions to everything here, as outliers are an inevitability.
These are generally the three factors I think attribute most to the success of a search thread:
How popular your listed topics of writing are
This is the most obvious factor on this list. If you list popular genre or fandom, then you are going to get more hits on your request thread. Anything Slice of Life is super popular, and you'll also get plenty of hits on whatever is the pop culture zeitgeist at the moment. You can't expect plenty of people to ask you for role-plays if you have a ton of esoteric genre or fandom listed in your thread. People can't play what they don't know, or rather few people are willing to go into something so blind.
---
How casually your thread reads
Most writers consider themselves within some range of skill. This range of skill generally corelates to how proficient they are at writing, and how much they like to actually write. Skill at role-playing is an entirely different conversation, but you can generally think that it's common for it to be broken down in that way. Better role-players will write with more lush detail and explore their ideas with more words on the page. Weaker role-players will seek to limit their descriptive detail and explore their ideas in fewer words.
What does this have to do with a search thread?
Consider, if you will, the same mentality applied to what people look for in a search thread. Stronger role-players will seek out threads with more detail and specificity, with more words and features, and with a more beautiful appearance. This kind of thread tells them that the person behind the screen will be more willing to apply effort and is more capable of doing so. Weaker role-players will want a thread that is more simple, to the point and without a lot nagging rules and exhausting chunks of paragraphs to read through. This kind of thread isn't as intimidating and will allow them to feel at ease, let them know that the thread is made by someone that isn't going to type two-thousand word replies at them. I'm sure, from there, you can extrapolate the inverse for why those two groups would pass over the opposite type of thread.
So, essentially, you have to figure the ratio of stronger to weaker role-players, and the gradient of "levels" within those vague classifications. Do you reckon there are more stronger or weaker ones? This will, of course, affect how many hits you get.
---
How much of a slut you come across as
Unfortunately, many people on this website take the "adult" classification of the site to mean sex and porn. While this website very clearly permits that sort of writing, it is not the end-all of what the site is supposed to be. It's simply a space for adults to write with other adults, where sexual activity and other mature themes may take place. At a certain point, you can't really hang around websites intended for children anymore. Blue Moon Role-Playing is just one answer to the problem of: where do I write with people that aren't children?
However, there are many that flock to a website like this with one thing in mind, and in the immortal words of Filthy Frank, "let's get some pussy tonight!"
I'm only half joking, of course. A big factor in how attractive or unattractive your thread will be is how sexually aggressive you are with it's contents. This can range anywhere from simply using text to express how badly you need that cock or pussy, or outright using pornographic images and gifs to set the mood. A bouncing pair of tits at the top of your thread will attract a great deal of attention from the people that are looking to role-play with a pair of tits. You are very directly advertising for exactly what they are looking for, and those people are in no short supply on this website.
On the other hand, you can come across as more business oriented. You write and structure your thread in such a way where sex and kink are not the main priority. This will turn away people looking for smut, and attract people that are primarily looking for plot, character development and all the things that actually create a story.
Somewhere in-between is a balance, where you can use sexual imagery (written or otherwise) in a tasteful and alluring manner to get your point across. This will certainly attract erotic writers looking for a skilled partner. However, you should still keep in mind that appearances matter and the content of your thread will set some level of expectations.
---
You want to keep these three things in mind. You then create your thread with the "type" of partner you have in mind, and do so by adjusting the "how" of those three things. If you are looking for a bunch of fuckboi role-players looking for "gud fuk bb big cawk i have" then you'll want to really lean heavily into the thread being written in a very sexually aggressive manner. Don't complicate it or list too many rules either. This will likely get you the most clicks from the hoard of horny, lonely men that frequent the site.
You'll find that if you want a more story oriented partner, those that aren't looking primarily for smut and quick fuck, then you'll want the "how much" of those things to slide in the direction of "not very". Generally more "advanced" role-players will seek out threads with more care put into them, and threads that don't advertise strictly for smut. If you're looking for the real snobs that inhale their own farts like whip-its, then you want to go heavy with the BBcode, long-winded rules, paragraphs about who you are, and a whole lotta plots and highly-specific pairings. This route will get you far fewer requests, but generally a higher quality or role-play (arguably).
If you take my search thread for example, I get almost no requests. I've built it with that strictly in mind to sort out certain types of role-players. I don't want smutty role-players, so I specifically made my thread unsexy. I decided to make it very visually based to maybe make it somewhat intimidating. I decided to use very little text to keep it vague, to make a viewer pay attention and use their brain to figure out the gist of what I'm looking for. Essentially, if someone cannot figure out the bulk of what I'm looking for based on my thread, then I'm not interested in playing with them.
The type of role-player I'm looking for is the type that likes to think. They ingest information and then take the time to process it. This is important for me, because I want creative and engaging writing, where I feel as though my partner fully understands the situation and stakes. Where they can conjure up a reply that responds appropriately in a dynamic way. Now, surely, I can't ensure that my thread will provide me with such a partner, but I tried to design it in a way that would get me that. I don't get very many hits on it, very nearly none, but I still think of it as a success for that reason. I really don't have to deal with disappointing requests from people that aren't to a standard I would like to enjoy.
So, to make your thread a success, you have to first understand, "what is it you really want?"
Ultimately, though, you are at the whim of other people's desires. Even if your thread is designed perfectly, there's nothing you can do if someone doesn't want to play with you. There are numerous factors, far more than I've listed, that determine if someone wants to role-play. My advice is to just understand what you want, and design the thread in a way that gets you what you want and advertises it. That way, when you do get a hit, it'll most likely be the kind of hit you want.
You have advertised what you want to do, and there are only so many people that would want to do it. Take that into account, and then subtract all of the cismen you've declared you won't play with. That leaves you with an even smaller pool of players. While your typo issue above likely contributed to some people turning away, this preference of yours likely turned off anyone of any gender who sees that sort of thing as a deterrent, or as a potential red flag. To some people it might be a subtle advertisement that you aren't looking for a writing partner, but someone to get inappropriate with OoC. There are plenty of people here who view the gender of the other person behind the screen as irrelevant and might be distrustful of those that do care.
I am someone that values being as restrictive as possible to narrow down who I want to play with. However, you gotta realize that such an approach will naturally lead to less interest than if you cast a wider net. There really isn't anything wrong with your thread. Any changes to make it more appealing might land outside what you are looking for. Below is some copy pasta I put in a different thread and it outlines my thoughts and ideas on search threads in general.
Creating a search thread is a very personalized experience. There is no one-size-fits-all approach that will achieve success. The very notion is determined exactly by what your goals are. Some people are only looking for one or two role-plays, while others aren't satisfied unless they have two or three hits a day. You have to consider what kind of role-player you are looking to attract and at what rate you'd want to attract them. Only once you figure this out, can you really look to tailor your thread to your needs. There are, of course, road blocks that will get in your way if you are looking for highly specific role-plays, especially if they are not particularly popular or well-known ideas, genre or fandom.
Keep in mind that there are exceptions to everything here, as outliers are an inevitability.
These are generally the three factors I think attribute most to the success of a search thread:
How popular your listed topics of writing are
This is the most obvious factor on this list. If you list popular genre or fandom, then you are going to get more hits on your request thread. Anything Slice of Life is super popular, and you'll also get plenty of hits on whatever is the pop culture zeitgeist at the moment. You can't expect plenty of people to ask you for role-plays if you have a ton of esoteric genre or fandom listed in your thread. People can't play what they don't know, or rather few people are willing to go into something so blind.
---
How casually your thread reads
Most writers consider themselves within some range of skill. This range of skill generally corelates to how proficient they are at writing, and how much they like to actually write. Skill at role-playing is an entirely different conversation, but you can generally think that it's common for it to be broken down in that way. Better role-players will write with more lush detail and explore their ideas with more words on the page. Weaker role-players will seek to limit their descriptive detail and explore their ideas in fewer words.
What does this have to do with a search thread?
Consider, if you will, the same mentality applied to what people look for in a search thread. Stronger role-players will seek out threads with more detail and specificity, with more words and features, and with a more beautiful appearance. This kind of thread tells them that the person behind the screen will be more willing to apply effort and is more capable of doing so. Weaker role-players will want a thread that is more simple, to the point and without a lot nagging rules and exhausting chunks of paragraphs to read through. This kind of thread isn't as intimidating and will allow them to feel at ease, let them know that the thread is made by someone that isn't going to type two-thousand word replies at them. I'm sure, from there, you can extrapolate the inverse for why those two groups would pass over the opposite type of thread.
So, essentially, you have to figure the ratio of stronger to weaker role-players, and the gradient of "levels" within those vague classifications. Do you reckon there are more stronger or weaker ones? This will, of course, affect how many hits you get.
---
How much of a slut you come across as
Unfortunately, many people on this website take the "adult" classification of the site to mean sex and porn. While this website very clearly permits that sort of writing, it is not the end-all of what the site is supposed to be. It's simply a space for adults to write with other adults, where sexual activity and other mature themes may take place. At a certain point, you can't really hang around websites intended for children anymore. Blue Moon Role-Playing is just one answer to the problem of: where do I write with people that aren't children?
However, there are many that flock to a website like this with one thing in mind, and in the immortal words of Filthy Frank, "let's get some pussy tonight!"
I'm only half joking, of course. A big factor in how attractive or unattractive your thread will be is how sexually aggressive you are with it's contents. This can range anywhere from simply using text to express how badly you need that cock or pussy, or outright using pornographic images and gifs to set the mood. A bouncing pair of tits at the top of your thread will attract a great deal of attention from the people that are looking to role-play with a pair of tits. You are very directly advertising for exactly what they are looking for, and those people are in no short supply on this website.
On the other hand, you can come across as more business oriented. You write and structure your thread in such a way where sex and kink are not the main priority. This will turn away people looking for smut, and attract people that are primarily looking for plot, character development and all the things that actually create a story.
Somewhere in-between is a balance, where you can use sexual imagery (written or otherwise) in a tasteful and alluring manner to get your point across. This will certainly attract erotic writers looking for a skilled partner. However, you should still keep in mind that appearances matter and the content of your thread will set some level of expectations.
---
You want to keep these three things in mind. You then create your thread with the "type" of partner you have in mind, and do so by adjusting the "how" of those three things. If you are looking for a bunch of fuckboi role-players looking for "gud fuk bb big cawk i have" then you'll want to really lean heavily into the thread being written in a very sexually aggressive manner. Don't complicate it or list too many rules either. This will likely get you the most clicks from the hoard of horny, lonely men that frequent the site.
You'll find that if you want a more story oriented partner, those that aren't looking primarily for smut and quick fuck, then you'll want the "how much" of those things to slide in the direction of "not very". Generally more "advanced" role-players will seek out threads with more care put into them, and threads that don't advertise strictly for smut. If you're looking for the real snobs that inhale their own farts like whip-its, then you want to go heavy with the BBcode, long-winded rules, paragraphs about who you are, and a whole lotta plots and highly-specific pairings. This route will get you far fewer requests, but generally a higher quality or role-play (arguably).
If you take my search thread for example, I get almost no requests. I've built it with that strictly in mind to sort out certain types of role-players. I don't want smutty role-players, so I specifically made my thread unsexy. I decided to make it very visually based to maybe make it somewhat intimidating. I decided to use very little text to keep it vague, to make a viewer pay attention and use their brain to figure out the gist of what I'm looking for. Essentially, if someone cannot figure out the bulk of what I'm looking for based on my thread, then I'm not interested in playing with them.
The type of role-player I'm looking for is the type that likes to think. They ingest information and then take the time to process it. This is important for me, because I want creative and engaging writing, where I feel as though my partner fully understands the situation and stakes. Where they can conjure up a reply that responds appropriately in a dynamic way. Now, surely, I can't ensure that my thread will provide me with such a partner, but I tried to design it in a way that would get me that. I don't get very many hits on it, very nearly none, but I still think of it as a success for that reason. I really don't have to deal with disappointing requests from people that aren't to a standard I would like to enjoy.
So, to make your thread a success, you have to first understand, "what is it you really want?"
Ultimately, though, you are at the whim of other people's desires. Even if your thread is designed perfectly, there's nothing you can do if someone doesn't want to play with you. There are numerous factors, far more than I've listed, that determine if someone wants to role-play. My advice is to just understand what you want, and design the thread in a way that gets you what you want and advertises it. That way, when you do get a hit, it'll most likely be the kind of hit you want.
Last edited:
Island Gwen
Planetoid
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2020
Now this is just me, and I might be the odd one out. But when I look at request threads I am looking for ideas presented in sentences. With paragraphs structured around discreet ideas. I get that you are trying to impart a lot of information in a small amount of time, but when I look at your thread I just see lists. And we aren't going to write in lists. Your thread is nicely long so I can tell that you aren't phoning it in, but I have seen others with lists in a block or two and think there's no point even reading them. I know they won't be a good partner for me.
And maybe I haven't been at this long enough, but you have abbreviations I don't even know what they mean. That probably says more about me than it does you though, so don't fret too much about that.
I also don't like listing out specific plots, as that seems like a limiting factor like Mitsu wrote about. I would prefer to meet a writing partner that meshes with me and then figure out the setting and plot. But I think I am the minority in that, and the plotting approach is by far more popular.
Okay, not sure if this helped at all. Good luck in your searches!
~
And maybe I haven't been at this long enough, but you have abbreviations I don't even know what they mean. That probably says more about me than it does you though, so don't fret too much about that.
I also don't like listing out specific plots, as that seems like a limiting factor like Mitsu wrote about. I would prefer to meet a writing partner that meshes with me and then figure out the setting and plot. But I think I am the minority in that, and the plotting approach is by far more popular.
Okay, not sure if this helped at all. Good luck in your searches!
~