General thoughts on forum games

valiant-quest Holy shit I feel bad for laughing. Threw a little temper tantrum over something out of their control. I hope any onlookers at least got a laugh out of it.

i personally like ones with slight roleplayesque aspects but honestly i also wait for other people to reply to it first if the previous character seems too off with my oc combined haha
like you, idk how to place my middle aged dudes with anime girls etc

I participate in a lot of art games. I really went HAM on them on few years ago, as it felt like drawing alongside people, as a community, and it inspired me a lot! Coming back to it a few years later, I don't feel quite the same. I think it's partially myself and how I tend to fight with my art more, on top of seeing a lot more users claiming others with the intent of not really participating in the game itself, the games feel spotty sometimes. I guess I miss people playing for the spirit of the game- or maybe it's always been this way and I just have horse-blinders on.

Referring to what Aarix mentioned, I do remember being a bit discouraged some years ago when the same people claimed each other over and over again, or being very frequent to many threads to the point where I seemed to be claimed by someone over and over again as well. It's not a bad thing overall, but I enjoy seeing variety, and like drawing for people I haven't drawn for before. I would sometimes claim someone back if they had claimed me at some point-- but I continue to stress that I love variety! Nowadays, I don't see that same circle of people around, not in the art games at least.

I also used to participate in non-art forum games here and there. Currently I am not too confident in writing or RPing, I get stress relief from drawing, but overstress when it comes to writing. I am a bit vulnerable with it unless I'm writing a shitpost or something of that nature. I don't participate in non-art games because of this. It's a skill issue on my side-- LOL!!

When it comes to claiming others with a character base that's different from mine, it becomes a nice challenge to draw for them. I own an art/character design game, and when I see that claims have been halted because someone isn't asking for what some people may be comfortable drawing (species-wise usually), I like to take it on. It always feels great to know that people like my art and designs too. The same goes for threads I see halted because of similar claims.

Overall, I enjoy the forum games, not as much as I did years ago, but being as I don't really enjoy interacting and reaching out regularly, it's been a fun way for me to find and follow other artists, which I love doing. Sometimes I get worried that I'll follow someone and they'll think "who, what, when, where, why," (self projection right there- LMAO) especially since I see some people using Toyhouse to store their characters for personal reasons. When someone is active in the forum games, I worry less-- hahaha!!

TLDR; Forum games cool, I do art games lots, but not many other forum games.

i love seeing your characters around mutonian!! it's funny, i sometimes avoid claiming you because. you are too cool 4 me SJDFKS

i love forum games (mostly the IC ones where i can write like five billion paragraphs) but i have similar feelings to you; i sometimes avoid claiming because i feel like i 'dont fit in' in some way or that people are tired of seeing my characters/think i am annoying. so . classic anxiety feelings on my part anyway. i am pretty active in fgs nevertheless but i do have my off days. i notice i tend to use some characters over others that i prefer because of how i feel people will react to them and the dreaded feeling of holding up a game even though everyone does it at some point

They're fun. I used to be a lot more active in them, but I've slowed down as of late though I do come in from time to time. I used to do IC roleplay threads but I've more-or-less stopped with those since I'm always worried I can't do the character above me enough justice ajshdfjashdf. Other than that, they're nice

Personally I'm never bothered by whatever styles people draw their characters in. Your characters, your taste, none of my business. I'm aware that I fall into the "cute anime person" category but I don't think I have a preference to which characters I interact with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ FGs tend to be a lot more diverse in style and aesthetic than other parts of TH, and I end up caring far more about what's in the profile rather than what's on the design anyway (though I suppose you could make a case that a character's design will influence the way they're written, but even then I think there's a fair amount of variety).

I have the tendency to write a lot in my characters' bios so for the longest time I just had a bit of anxiety that I'd be bothering people kfjljkd. I've ameliorated that fear by breaking my longer profiles up into "versions" where the person responding to me can choose how much they want to read, so hopefully that helped?

All-in-all, forum games are really just one of the nicer parts of TH. Of course there's the intimidation with joining games when it seems like everyone else knows each other and is writing a lot but y'know what, I'm just glad the games are there.

silket I really like your characters, picking favorites isn't my thing but I think Pony is especially neat. A novelty. And I don't bite, claiming each other would be interesting.
 I don't have anxiety or anything, but that feeling of being out of place really does concern me. What if the person above feels weirded out? Feels like I've disrupted something. Better off waiting my turn kind of feeling. But you know, try to turn your brain off. Don't write those fat chunks of text for the other person, write them for yourself. I mean, it's all fun and games right?

I enjoy the art games, I dont mind if the same people claim me, I  just enjoy finding new characters to draw. Whether it goes quickly or slowly before someone claims me, I don't think about it. Have a few characters, and whatever people may think, well, I'll leave that to them. It doesn't touch me, I just want to draw, that's it. Have both found quite a few characters through art games, which have been inspiring, have even found writers too, even someone I wanted to commission by chance as I claimed them. So I got a lot out of it, can’t forget the practice to.

I usually just do chill ones, I can't do the IC ones for the life of me, cause I feel like I'd like not do any of them right. Especially when the main examples given look completely different to the recent posts on the thread, and I just stare like 👁️👁️ maybe another day. 

Or the ones that require lots of information on the profile, I forgot how to code, and I usually store lore elsewhere, so mostly my character profiles look empty. However I do draw my ocs and fill their gallery enough to where you'd think there would be some sort of idea, especially if it's on a thread that requires the person to just make something up for them 

I like them when they don't require a lot of effort. There have been a LOT of forum games in the past that I wanted to join, but the really high sentence/paragraph requirements (I vaguely remember reading one which required FIVE paragraphs) scared me off as an amateur writer.

Alot of them are too difficult for my pea sized brain

WHY DID GOD MAKE ME STUPID 

Atleast there are some that aren't so challenging 

I don't know how to write out fancy paragraphs so quickly and clearly 

I also feel out of place with people fancy characters and high lore hurts my dumb brain

Ambivalent? I used to participate more frequently years ago but I got fed up with people putting in 0 effort and ignoring the rules (such as people RPing with themself and ignoring other peoples' OCs, or just plain doing the wrong thing, etc). Now I'll poke in every once in a while, but it feels like the RP-style has become more popular in the last couple of years. Which is fine and all, and sometimes it can be fun, but I usually just don't have the mental energy or focus to read and write lengthy replies. It's been pretty discouraging to see what are supposed to be easy, quick games (such as Kiss or Diss) be full of people writing long, high-effort posts bc I don't want to do that but I also don't want to give a short reply to somebody who wrote a novel. Y'know?

In general it's nice to see the variety of OCs and stories, though, and there are a bunch of fun interactions to read through!

Art games can be fun, too, but it's also very hit-or-miss with people giving low effort or just not filling claims at all. I like to drop in every once in a while, but I've been mostly focusing on other stuff lately. I do like checking filled claims just to see some fun new art, though!

I'm not really active in fourm games myself so I'm not sure. but I heard and idk if it's of them or something else for the site, but people ghost often and leave it hulted in place. leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

plus I'm not finding any of my interests

Im not much of a fan of oc roleplaying but i do sometimes check out the “show me a character who/that…” or non roleplay threads once in a while. Plus, i have trouble reading/understanding certain sentences so getting hit with a gigantic paragraph in a writing/roleplaying thread would probably turn my pea brain into slime ksfkjdkfkjjs

I do like the drawing ones though! Sometimes i participate when idk what to draw but the deadlines have been getting more and more of an issue for me, since it takes me more time to draw, and a  two or three week deadline just does not cut it for me lul.

admittedly, i've been a regular of the ic/roleplaying forum games for about two or three years now, so i'm pretty biased, but i think they're nice! there are options for casual responses [and i think more would be nice ngl] but i get being intimidated by giant walls of text, anyway -- sometimes i get a little nervous and/or insecure about my replies but in the end .......... i am here to have fun, and fun i am having.

if anyone here wants to join in on the games but have more "unconventional" characters, go for it! from my experience watching others interact with me or among themselves, the regulars actually do seem to love diversity in the forum game pool, if that makes sense? trust me on this one. someone's going to love your middle-aged dead-end divorcee as much as someone else loves another's hot 20 y/o anime prince, and i've never really experienced judgement for my own characters. like, no one's gotten upset that i responded to them with a gruff old man or a little arsonist girl or a literal computer. i think as long as you follow thread rules and are polite/have basic roleplay etiquette, you'll be fine.

but, if i see anyone from here post on there, i'll at least try my best to give you a good response! we're all just here to hang out and have some pretty non-committal roleplay sessions, and i hope we can get some more variety in there, too.

really, most of the time the aversion, more so being scared of giving bad replies, seems to be that little voice in someone's head telling them they're not good enough. the only remedy for that is to get out there and try new things. if the games are still not for you, then that's cool! you know what works and what doesn't, and you can at least say you tried them out.