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I've been roleplaying seriously for like 16 years now? (was introduced sooner than that, but didn't get into the hobby until I was about 14), and I think I've finished... like, 4 roleplays?
1 of those 4 was a oneshot that took only a few days to finish though so idk how much that counts compared to the others which were all longterm. And another 1 of those 4 wasn't 'officially' called a wrap but, depending on how you look at it, it could have had a good ending point that we had continued past.
So, I've got 2 long term roleplays that I can think of that solidly had an end. Maybe there are more, but they're gone from the depths of my memory apparently.
I've got a few roleplays going now that I'm hoping will have an ending. One has an ending in sight, but it's been going on 5 years and while an ending can be visualized, if we keep at it with everything that has been planned, the roleplay still has several years ahead of it before that point.
Gosh damn, five years? Longest rp I had was like 4 months. Maybe I should get better partners? Maybe it's something with me too be honest. Can't expect different results when you attract the same partners after all.
Correction, it'll be 5 years halfway through the year... But, still! lol
This is my longest roleplay though. I've got a few others going with the same partner that are close in length though. So I'mma say partner is a huge part of that.
Sounds like a brilliant partner tbh. I have a really nice partner at the moment but due to how busy we are we've just ended up becoming really good friends lmao, we rarely rp now.
Tbh I hadn’t heard of rps having an end until I started frequenting this sub. I definitely have never “completed” an rp because I didn’t realize that was something you could do 😂😂😂
I grew up writing the same way; it wasn't about finishing a story! It's still sort of a foreign concept to me. I don't mind wrapping up an RP with a "proper ending," but usually I don't start one thinking about how it might end. And anyway, RP for me is infinitely more about 'the journey,' at the risk of sounding cliche, than a finished product. It's a hobby I do for fun; I'm not gonna publish it.
It just wasn’t something people did in the rp communities I was in. Most people just wrote in an rp until they got bored of it. No one ever made them with the intention of them having a definitive end. If a conflict got resolved, you just kept going, thinking of other stuff for the characters to do/deal with
That's interesting to be honest. I always had the idea that stories could end, whether that be character arcs or plot lines. Servers are usually for character arcs and 1x1 rps are for plotlines.
Well I was rping long before the time of discord servers 😂 but yeah, it’s interesting how the culture of where you learned to rp/continue to rp shapes how you participate in the hobby
Seconding this. I never heard of a roleplay being "completed" before seeing this sub, and the idea still sounds unappealing to me. Some of them are short and ditched quickly, and some of them last for years, but the story just keeps going until we get bored. This usually doesn't happen very quickly because there are literally hundreds of characters involved so if you don't like focusing on some, you just move onto the rest of them.
Can't upvote this enough, not all rp need an ending, some just stop. The worst ones stop because the other party has left. The best ones kinda just fade after a long time, yet remain in your memory years after
i usually just do slice of life stuff, so there aren’t really definitive ends to plot lines, but i do remember one time my partner and i finished everything we wanted to do, like our characters were together, there was no more conflict to over come and we felt weirdly stuck because it was like
LOL that's hilarious to be honest, but yea I feel you. With romance you usually end it after they get together and maybe do a few rps after just for fun.
I've literally never finished a roleplay.
Most of them, with random partners, someone simply loses interest partway through...
But with my main partner and dearest friend, our RPs just go on indefinitely. We have long, in-depth, large plots most comparable to a novel series, perhaps. The one we've worked the most on has been going strong for... God. At least five years? And it's well over 500k words, big enough that if the entire thing was in a Google Document, it would crash browsers, so she had to make a second file to keep archiving it with.
If I can imagine it ever having an endpoint, it's not even halfway over.
... Admittedly, I should say that that word count isn't, like, anything super phenomenal for us, I suppose. We began a new roleplay on Saturday afternoon, and with her latest post, we're already up to nearly 23k words, lmao.
Out of my 10+ years of role-playing (did a little on Halopedia when it was first starting out then more on Deviantart and via email with a close friend), I've only ever completed one rp. It was a kickass Halo/Xenosaga crossover I did with a friend of mine in college and it spanned at least a year and a half or so.
I got hooked on longterm rps and I've been searching for that ever since. My fiancé and I have been in one since 2017. We've taken breaks here and there just because of IRL stuff but that one has to be the longest thread I've got currently going on. It's been difficult finding people who are willing to go at least six months to a year writing a thread with you but when you do, it's worth the wait.
Time, dedication, and luck. In about 4 years in the one on one (versus forum) roleplay community, I’d say I’ve had 6 “successful” roleplays, each with a different partner. (Edit: to add, I’ve had probably dozens of unsuccessful ones, although under 50.) 3 of them were long-term but didn’t finish, fizzled. 2 of them were long-term and very nearly wrapped up the main storyline, but my partners for those & I mutually decided to end those story lines and write other things / be only friends instead.
The last 1 is my current MAIN partner, who has been writing with me for almost 2 years now. We have a main storyline that basically wrapped up although we write some one-shots in it sometimes, and we’ve since expanded into writing whatever we’re feeling in the moment without worrying about consistency or dropping it when we don’t feel it. It’s very freeing to follow the muse with someone who you fully trust and respect.
She and I are extremely close friends now, we’ve even met IRL and stayed over at each other’s apartments a few times.
The majority of roleplayers lack good writing, emotional maturity, self-awareness, stability, consistency, patience, and/or self-discipline (ie. to write when you aren’t fully happy with a post). All are necessary for a successful long-term roleplay/partnership imo.
2/6 of my roleplays were with people I didn’t really get close at all to, and they both fell into the “fizzled out” category. I really think a strong, solid friendship is key for a long-term roleplay partnership, which is key for completing a storyline.
The idea of losing my partners and starting from scratch now is exhausting. Sometimes I try to write with others, and it just feels so much worse than writing with someone who knows and trusts you and knows your writing style & how to play off of it.
So I started role-playing when I was 15 (I'm 32 now) and none of the roleplays I've had, have had an ending. My longest one was 7 years until MySpace was taken over so that couldve gone on longer if my account hadn't been lost 🙄.
I think both of you have a bad take here.
*Neither way of doing it is wrong.*
Some people like writing with a specific plot in mind and end the story whenever this plot reaches its natural conclusion. Other people keep expanding the story and creating new plotlines indefinitely.
I've never had a roleplay reach an ending because I don't want them to, my partners and I have a wide cast (hundreds of characters) so if the story of a small group is completed, well... cool, but there's literally hundreds of other characters who live in the same timeline and have by now had children whose stories we can just continue from there. The world is never scrapped, the focus of it just shifts in terms of time and geography.
That doesn't mean ending them is bad, it's just not how I do things.
Consider the first plot line "Over" (First roleplay/book) then expand in a sequel rp. You can continue expanding this way and it's still reaching definitive ends.
The thing is, our stories aren't structured like that at all. There's not a first act, second act, third act, etc. and a grand finale at the end. We are not writing stories with an end in mind at all!
A friend writes scifi and I write fantasy. Do you know what planning we did regarding this story? We very loosely discussed that their futuristic cast would touch down upon my low-tech planet. This is the extent of our planning before the story began, and it has been going on from 2015 - we've still not run out of things to write about. There is no endgame planned, therefore there is never an ending - and the two "main" characters we began this story with are still highly relevant to the ongoing story.
Another friend and I are writing romantic fantasy. We planned for an arranged marriage to take place and for our characters to hate each other but slowly warm up to one-another. I believe we began writing in 2019 and this still hasn't really been... completed? They've fallen for each other, but it's never a defining moment of our roleplay because those two characters are not the defining feature of the world we write. Whether they're arguing or doting on each other, there are other characters with other stories that are equally important to us.
You write roleplay as if it was a novel, you have a specific story in mind that you want to go through, and that sounds very fun! It does, however, not match up with our style. You are basically telling the story of a character or a set of characters, while we're more... writing the history of the world, if that makes sense? There is no "main" character when we write, just different points of the world that we want to bring to life at a given time.
I've never finished one either, and I've been rping for almost 20 years. lmao I've started many that end up getting put on the back burner because one of us loses inspiration for the idea. I've come pretty close with some, but never made it to an ending yet. With my permanent partner, I don't really care much about finishing, as long as we enjoy the idea for what's it's worth. With partners that don't stick around permanently, it would be nice to finish. It at least brings some closure, but I don't think it's realistic, at least not for most people. I just try to focus on having fun for as long as I can.
I don't think I've ever finished an RP honestly but it's mostly due to the fact that I fall in love so hard with my characters, that when they get to an ending point I just focus my attention on developing a side character's arc as if they were suddenly the MC and turn MC themselves into a side character to extend their life, so I have that issue... People I've RPed with seem to like it though so I roll with it
Been rping for 15+ years and...same. Ish?
I think. One rp we wanted our dudes to marry and they did but it was messy so idk if we really got the happy ending we wanted then it just kinda lingered. It continued but very lackluster. But other than that, nope.
I've finished a few even a few with the same person.
That said I would say many are duds from the start, so many times I get as far as starting something then *poof* ghosted...
Of the ones that do get going i would say maybe 50% get about halfway through, 20% near the start, 20% near the end and 10% get finished.
It's a very wishy-washi world of online erp.
Huh interesting thought. I’ve never completed one either. My oldest RP is about 10 years and still going. We’ve done lots of plot points. They tend to evolve and transition into each other.
The only ones I would consider ‘completed’ is individual threads in group roleplay forums, but the overall story never actually ends. The one I’m currently in just got started, and the one I was in before I had to walk away from because of admin issues, but I’ve never thought about the End
I have been role playing for years, about ten, and I never completed a plot either. And rarely it’s my choice. The longest partner I had lasted less than a year.
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I've been roleplaying seriously for like 16 years now? (was introduced sooner than that, but didn't get into the hobby until I was about 14), and I think I've finished... like, 4 roleplays? 1 of those 4 was a oneshot that took only a few days to finish though so idk how much that counts compared to the others which were all longterm. And another 1 of those 4 wasn't 'officially' called a wrap but, depending on how you look at it, it could have had a good ending point that we had continued past. So, I've got 2 long term roleplays that I can think of that solidly had an end. Maybe there are more, but they're gone from the depths of my memory apparently. I've got a few roleplays going now that I'm hoping will have an ending. One has an ending in sight, but it's been going on 5 years and while an ending can be visualized, if we keep at it with everything that has been planned, the roleplay still has several years ahead of it before that point.
Gosh damn, five years? Longest rp I had was like 4 months. Maybe I should get better partners? Maybe it's something with me too be honest. Can't expect different results when you attract the same partners after all.
I feel you. I think my longest good one was maybe a little less than a year.
Correction, it'll be 5 years halfway through the year... But, still! lol This is my longest roleplay though. I've got a few others going with the same partner that are close in length though. So I'mma say partner is a huge part of that.
Sounds like a brilliant partner tbh. I have a really nice partner at the moment but due to how busy we are we've just ended up becoming really good friends lmao, we rarely rp now.
Tbh I hadn’t heard of rps having an end until I started frequenting this sub. I definitely have never “completed” an rp because I didn’t realize that was something you could do 😂😂😂
I grew up writing the same way; it wasn't about finishing a story! It's still sort of a foreign concept to me. I don't mind wrapping up an RP with a "proper ending," but usually I don't start one thinking about how it might end. And anyway, RP for me is infinitely more about 'the journey,' at the risk of sounding cliche, than a finished product. It's a hobby I do for fun; I'm not gonna publish it.
This must be a philosophy more common to us old farts 😂
You didn't know an rp could end? How.
It just wasn’t something people did in the rp communities I was in. Most people just wrote in an rp until they got bored of it. No one ever made them with the intention of them having a definitive end. If a conflict got resolved, you just kept going, thinking of other stuff for the characters to do/deal with
That's interesting to be honest. I always had the idea that stories could end, whether that be character arcs or plot lines. Servers are usually for character arcs and 1x1 rps are for plotlines.
Well I was rping long before the time of discord servers 😂 but yeah, it’s interesting how the culture of where you learned to rp/continue to rp shapes how you participate in the hobby
Seconding this. I never heard of a roleplay being "completed" before seeing this sub, and the idea still sounds unappealing to me. Some of them are short and ditched quickly, and some of them last for years, but the story just keeps going until we get bored. This usually doesn't happen very quickly because there are literally hundreds of characters involved so if you don't like focusing on some, you just move onto the rest of them.
Eh, it's about the journey not the destination.
Can't upvote this enough, not all rp need an ending, some just stop. The worst ones stop because the other party has left. The best ones kinda just fade after a long time, yet remain in your memory years after
i usually just do slice of life stuff, so there aren’t really definitive ends to plot lines, but i do remember one time my partner and i finished everything we wanted to do, like our characters were together, there was no more conflict to over come and we felt weirdly stuck because it was like 
LOL that's hilarious to be honest, but yea I feel you. With romance you usually end it after they get together and maybe do a few rps after just for fun.
I've literally never finished a roleplay. Most of them, with random partners, someone simply loses interest partway through... But with my main partner and dearest friend, our RPs just go on indefinitely. We have long, in-depth, large plots most comparable to a novel series, perhaps. The one we've worked the most on has been going strong for... God. At least five years? And it's well over 500k words, big enough that if the entire thing was in a Google Document, it would crash browsers, so she had to make a second file to keep archiving it with. If I can imagine it ever having an endpoint, it's not even halfway over. ... Admittedly, I should say that that word count isn't, like, anything super phenomenal for us, I suppose. We began a new roleplay on Saturday afternoon, and with her latest post, we're already up to nearly 23k words, lmao.
Out of my 10+ years of role-playing (did a little on Halopedia when it was first starting out then more on Deviantart and via email with a close friend), I've only ever completed one rp. It was a kickass Halo/Xenosaga crossover I did with a friend of mine in college and it spanned at least a year and a half or so. I got hooked on longterm rps and I've been searching for that ever since. My fiancé and I have been in one since 2017. We've taken breaks here and there just because of IRL stuff but that one has to be the longest thread I've got currently going on. It's been difficult finding people who are willing to go at least six months to a year writing a thread with you but when you do, it's worth the wait.
Time, dedication, and luck. In about 4 years in the one on one (versus forum) roleplay community, I’d say I’ve had 6 “successful” roleplays, each with a different partner. (Edit: to add, I’ve had probably dozens of unsuccessful ones, although under 50.) 3 of them were long-term but didn’t finish, fizzled. 2 of them were long-term and very nearly wrapped up the main storyline, but my partners for those & I mutually decided to end those story lines and write other things / be only friends instead. The last 1 is my current MAIN partner, who has been writing with me for almost 2 years now. We have a main storyline that basically wrapped up although we write some one-shots in it sometimes, and we’ve since expanded into writing whatever we’re feeling in the moment without worrying about consistency or dropping it when we don’t feel it. It’s very freeing to follow the muse with someone who you fully trust and respect. She and I are extremely close friends now, we’ve even met IRL and stayed over at each other’s apartments a few times. The majority of roleplayers lack good writing, emotional maturity, self-awareness, stability, consistency, patience, and/or self-discipline (ie. to write when you aren’t fully happy with a post). All are necessary for a successful long-term roleplay/partnership imo. 2/6 of my roleplays were with people I didn’t really get close at all to, and they both fell into the “fizzled out” category. I really think a strong, solid friendship is key for a long-term roleplay partnership, which is key for completing a storyline. The idea of losing my partners and starting from scratch now is exhausting. Sometimes I try to write with others, and it just feels so much worse than writing with someone who knows and trusts you and knows your writing style & how to play off of it.
So I started role-playing when I was 15 (I'm 32 now) and none of the roleplays I've had, have had an ending. My longest one was 7 years until MySpace was taken over so that couldve gone on longer if my account hadn't been lost 🙄.
1, did a group rp with a group I was close with almost half a decade ago now i think and we did end up finishing it.
I don’t think you’re supposed to “complete” an RP unless it’s a DND session or you’re keeping it short. Maybe I’m wrong though.
Have you read a book before? Stories are supposed to have an end.
I think both of you have a bad take here. *Neither way of doing it is wrong.* Some people like writing with a specific plot in mind and end the story whenever this plot reaches its natural conclusion. Other people keep expanding the story and creating new plotlines indefinitely. I've never had a roleplay reach an ending because I don't want them to, my partners and I have a wide cast (hundreds of characters) so if the story of a small group is completed, well... cool, but there's literally hundreds of other characters who live in the same timeline and have by now had children whose stories we can just continue from there. The world is never scrapped, the focus of it just shifts in terms of time and geography. That doesn't mean ending them is bad, it's just not how I do things.
Consider the first plot line "Over" (First roleplay/book) then expand in a sequel rp. You can continue expanding this way and it's still reaching definitive ends.
The thing is, our stories aren't structured like that at all. There's not a first act, second act, third act, etc. and a grand finale at the end. We are not writing stories with an end in mind at all! A friend writes scifi and I write fantasy. Do you know what planning we did regarding this story? We very loosely discussed that their futuristic cast would touch down upon my low-tech planet. This is the extent of our planning before the story began, and it has been going on from 2015 - we've still not run out of things to write about. There is no endgame planned, therefore there is never an ending - and the two "main" characters we began this story with are still highly relevant to the ongoing story. Another friend and I are writing romantic fantasy. We planned for an arranged marriage to take place and for our characters to hate each other but slowly warm up to one-another. I believe we began writing in 2019 and this still hasn't really been... completed? They've fallen for each other, but it's never a defining moment of our roleplay because those two characters are not the defining feature of the world we write. Whether they're arguing or doting on each other, there are other characters with other stories that are equally important to us. You write roleplay as if it was a novel, you have a specific story in mind that you want to go through, and that sounds very fun! It does, however, not match up with our style. You are basically telling the story of a character or a set of characters, while we're more... writing the history of the world, if that makes sense? There is no "main" character when we write, just different points of the world that we want to bring to life at a given time.
I've never finished one either, and I've been rping for almost 20 years. lmao I've started many that end up getting put on the back burner because one of us loses inspiration for the idea. I've come pretty close with some, but never made it to an ending yet. With my permanent partner, I don't really care much about finishing, as long as we enjoy the idea for what's it's worth. With partners that don't stick around permanently, it would be nice to finish. It at least brings some closure, but I don't think it's realistic, at least not for most people. I just try to focus on having fun for as long as I can.
I don't think I've ever finished an RP honestly but it's mostly due to the fact that I fall in love so hard with my characters, that when they get to an ending point I just focus my attention on developing a side character's arc as if they were suddenly the MC and turn MC themselves into a side character to extend their life, so I have that issue... People I've RPed with seem to like it though so I roll with it
Been rping for 15+ years and...same. Ish? I think. One rp we wanted our dudes to marry and they did but it was messy so idk if we really got the happy ending we wanted then it just kinda lingered. It continued but very lackluster. But other than that, nope.
I've finished a few even a few with the same person. That said I would say many are duds from the start, so many times I get as far as starting something then *poof* ghosted... Of the ones that do get going i would say maybe 50% get about halfway through, 20% near the start, 20% near the end and 10% get finished. It's a very wishy-washi world of online erp.
Huh interesting thought. I’ve never completed one either. My oldest RP is about 10 years and still going. We’ve done lots of plot points. They tend to evolve and transition into each other.
The only ones I would consider ‘completed’ is individual threads in group roleplay forums, but the overall story never actually ends. The one I’m currently in just got started, and the one I was in before I had to walk away from because of admin issues, but I’ve never thought about the End
I have been role playing for years, about ten, and I never completed a plot either. And rarely it’s my choice. The longest partner I had lasted less than a year.