Thread: Please can we get some sort of system for TYPE of RP?

Athornyprose said BMR does not force any member to adhere to a certain template when creating their Request Threads. Some people write in 1st 3rd, some write in only one or the other. Some people play Male, Female or Trans only, while others will play all of the above. It is nice to have an informative title and equally as nice to have an informative intro, but each RT belongs to the OP. They own it and are free to craft it however they see fit. Some of the things that matter to you simply don't matter to other writers, so they don't list it. It isn't meant to be a slight to you in any way, but it just doesn't factor to them. We've placed threads out there to offer suggestions, but at the end of the day, your RT is yours. All I can suggest is if you are uncertain about a potential partner's writing style, either check their posting history to see if they have an RP thread viewable to the public -or- message them with a cookie cutter, I'm potentially interested in writing with you. Do you write in 1st 2nd or 3rd person? Do you RP over thread or PM? Do you... and list out the things that you want to know that they have left out before moving forward. Click to expand... I do the things you suggest. In fact the greater proportion of my time on this site consists of going back through people's threads to see if they anywhere mention first third person or real time vs. PbP. What I find is that in the huge majority of cases if they don't mention it in one place they don't mention it ever, though there are exceptions. I have, more recently, settled on the fact that my responses to people have now, due to no stating of preference, changed from being I like your ideas, here's my ideas and would you be interested in varying it like this or enjoy that to - as you suggest - Do you do 1st? Do you IM and not much else. It makes a poor fit for all those people who spell out in their threads Don't just PM me saying I like you ideas or I wont reply! Which is common. I don't know why every person responds with some variation of You can't force people and people only care about themselves. I've never said the first and I don't believe the second. I've suggested putting a few lines in the request thread and promoting a standard format for request titles that includes a few extra characters. E.g. Looking for con scene MxF, fptp, IM This helps everyone - requesters and responders alike and is easy to encourage. I've identified three common divisions in style of RP that affect people's RP preferences, based on my experience. There are 40 threads at any one time on the first page of the request forum. At present, one of them has IM in the title. That is 39 PMs that someone who only plays by IM would have to send to find out if there's even any possibility of it being a match with any of those. Someone putting IM in their thread immediately gets more attention by someone seeking IM only than the other 40 threads on the page at any given time. But people don't know to do that. It's not a matter of force. People see MxF and go oh, that's how you make a request thread. People don't see fp,RT so they never add it. Suggesting and promoting it begins that process. Status Quos are self-perpetuating. They don't change without intervention. Once intervened, they then continue in the new format. Typically.