What to do when the roleplay flame dies out?
So, no, this isn’t a guide or an advice article, it’s a real question that I’m asking my dear readers, and I invite you to share your answers and suggestions here.
Because it’s something I’m experiencing more and more intensely at the moment, and I would attribute it to an accumulation of disappointments but also to unwanted stress (such as that generated by my haters and harassers). It seems obvious to me that, in a better state of mind, I wouldn’t be asking myself this question, and I would happily throw myself into any roleplay that came my way and see what happened.
But the thing is, I’m not in a position to be enthusiastic, due to all the disappointments and stress. So I wonder what the general solutions are for rekindling the flame and regaining a more optimistic mindset?
Over to you, dear readers, I look forward to your comments on this subject! I’ll then write an article summarizing your responses and suggestions.
Copied from Discord:
I think each of us goes through this to different degrees, where fatigue sets in and the spark of inspiration for your story just isn’t there, perhaps because someone who was so key to your ongoing story has left abruptly for whatever reason, or a myriad of other possibilities.
If you’re thinking of your roleplay as the writing of your story, then if we’re following the Hero’s Journey, this is probably in the ‘Ordeal’ stage of Initiation, and from here it’s a case of thinking about how to write yourself back to the Return. You are the author, and have agency to take the stimulus provided by other players and craft it into the continuation of a story that might have plenty of pathos in it, but short of death, has the potential for something better.
Dum vita est, spes est – *while there is life, there is hope*. Not a bad credo, which is why I stuck it on my status
Sometimes you run out of steam, or get frustrated and burnt out. I think it happens to everyone.
One of the ways I find to rekindle my enthusiasm is to make a new character and go exploring.
Unfortunately some members of our community loathe and stigmatize playing alternate characters, and preach viewpoints that if you are an enjoyer of more than one character your connections and stories are lesser. I think this deters people from exploring and traps them on one character until they burn out.
It’s totally valid to enjoy more than one narrative scenario, more than one flavor of personality, caste, career, explore the world through the lens of different personas. It doesn’t make you a lesser writer.
In reality, most famous and great published writers of fiction over the years have developed multiple characters and written them concurrently in the same scenes while keeping the characters’ knowledge separate. In roleplay they’d be considered baddies and scorned for the appearance of metagaming.
So hop on an alt and explore. Maybe something will rekindle your enthusiasm.