RP Advice request: Global goals and Burnouts

[KOPOJIbPAKOB]

S-sooo. I noticed all of my characters face one and the same problem at some point of their existance — lack of global goals. This always leads me to burnouts and withering of otherwise well written characters. How do I solve this problem? When yet again my active character faces a wall called "What's next?", how do I overcome this crysis? (Don't suggest me rolling a new toon, because 1) I still enjoy the previous one 2) this scenario is going to repeat itself). For me, it's always problematic to come up with a global goal and motivation for a character to do certain things (except chaotic urge), so I'm asking for advice from those who are better at it than me! (anyone is, really -_-)

Also, I'm mostly interested in opinions of players who have characters active for 1+ years — how do you manage to keep them going? Do you still have global goals giving them a direction to move towards or just go with the flow? Are you making the global goals up yourselves, or form them based on in-game character interractions and metaplots? Share your thoughts!

[Okan]

I am a firm believer that tying characters to others is the easiest way to have a prolonged playtime without burning out. But the trick is to not tie your toon to a specific friend, love interest or clique/guilds but to character archetypes.

To give an example I have played a dwarven character from Earthfast, someone who lost too much and in extreme grief as he is the last of his line. His main purpose to overcome his grief by helping the younger generation using his past mistakes to redeem himself. But it did not matter if the people he is in for at the moment stopped being active in the server or the guilds he was affiliated were disbanded, because he was there for an archetype; a young reckless generation that needed guidance desperately, in his eyes. That way even the young random runecrafter NPC that existed for maybe 4 hours total for a Kraak Helzak event becomes an anchor point for the toon. If you tie your characters bonds into something you know that will outlast other player characters, it will last longer in my opinion.

[Hoihe]

I found my enjoyment is intrinsically tied to having people to RP with. No need for big over-arching goals, simply having the goal of learning more about people, progressing in trust and companionship and framing this all in a dangerous world to act as catalysts for big changes helped me out greatly.

I took a pretty long break of a year when a lot of characters my char relied on retired about the same ish time or became much less active. Sure, the players got new chars but didn't really have the hook.

Basically logged in only for guild meet ups and sometimes to try and find someone interesting with a good hook.

After about a year, I wound up having a less active/retired character log back in and through them get hooked with new characters and then these new characters keep hooking me with even more new characters in a snowball effect, greatly increasing enjoyment to be as it was years ago.

So

Persistent and available IC friends/frenemies/enemies/rivals/apprentices whatever tends to win. As long as you can manage a certain level of them over the years, even if there's some turnaround, you should be good.

Really, really glad for some new chars I met for being so easy to pry into their being to always learn sth new whenever meeting them.


Another thing that can help are interactions and scenarios that force your character to revise some things. One of the major themes since 2016 for my char was "I used to be good at this, I'm no longer." Got voluntold into a situation that was supposed to be easy, wound up becoming much harder with greater impact than the voluntelling person or my char expected. It removed the theme of "I used to be good at this" and replaced it with "I still got it", giving a fresh take and emotions to tackle.

[Steve]

First, I'd ask yourself if playing a Character for only 1 year and retiring them after the initial objective/experience is acquired, is really such a bad thing, after all.

My opinion is that, one's greatest experience of BGTSCC is when focusing on the RP of a single Character. I know it's a silly thing to say, since I myself have 3 "mains" that I explore and enjoy RP with, but still, the point being that singular focus can give the most options. Which brings me to:

Consider being "casual," that is, actually RPing a Character with very few goals, and is just something you, as a Player, log on to "be," that is, your Character, for X hours per day/week. If you are not setting yourself up for MAJOR GOALS and reasons for existence with every Toon, then I'd say "burn out" is far less a factor, because you simple have less to judge by.

The actual casual aspect is much easier if you log in in order to "hang out" with other Players, and their Characters. I know, that can also sound a bit like joining a glorified Chat Room on a daily basis, which may or may not be your cup of tea.

Having "global goals" doesn't mean much unless you align yourself with the "goals" of the yearly Server Campaign, or, whatever campaign a DM is running that you get swept up into. Global goals themselves are rather meaningless if you have no real and direct way to influence the Environment.

If it is at all possible to keep a "global goal" alive over years, it still can only be managed if you, the Player, keep it casual.

[Deathgrowl]

My character Laitae is the first one I made when I came to the server. She's still around (for now) although her activity has been fluctuating over the almost eight years I've been here.

A lot of my love for playing the character has indeed been with the Candlekeep Guild. To have the goals the Candlekeep Guild has, and to make missions based on that when Laitae was a Guide. So don't shy away from guilds that have meaning behind them. It's potentially risky to bind yourself to other characters or - as they say - "cliques", but a guild is often more of a philosophy, an overarching, collective goal that doesn't depend on which players are in the guild or not. Devouting yourself to the actual concept of the guild rather than the people in it, is where it's at.

[Kiran]

If my characters survive longer than 6 months I tend to think I failed somehow as a person, father to kittens and a roleplayer.

[Hoihe]

My character Laitae is the first one I made when I came to the server. She's still around (for now) although her activity has been fluctuating over the almost eight years I've been here.

A lot of my love for playing the character has indeed been with the Candlekeep Guild. To have the goals the Candlekeep Guild has, and to make missions based on that when Laitae was a Guide. So don't shy away from guilds that have meaning behind them. It's potentially risky to bind yourself to other characters or - as they say - "cliques", but a guild is often more of a philosophy, an overarching, collective goal that doesn't depend on which players are in the guild or not. Devouting yourself to the actual concept of the guild rather than the people in it, is where it's at.

On the risk of binding yourself to other characters - a way I found to mitigate the risk is to always keep a decent pool around of them, and either use in-character chains of connections to find new people to add, or just hunt down randoms that look interesting based off of interactions or examine (hooks). My big failure was only logging in barely to hunt for a player that quit, which allowed my pool of still available characters to interact with dwindle greatly, which led to logging in less and... you got a death spiral. Always try to keep a healthy pool up, preferably with strong hooks and such.

[Wyatt]

My main character, the Copper Fox, has gone through various stages of activity over the 5ish years I have been here playing him. In that time I have played several alts, shelved the Fox and brought him back active a few times and he has changed immensely from his original shipwrecked self. As far as global goals are concerned, I have found personally that having goals was more of a hindrance than help when it came to keeping my character fresh and I will explain why I have found it to be so.

Goals seem to come in two categories. Goals that you can realize and complete yourself, and goals that require other players and/or DM's. Goals that can be completely attended to oneself feel artificial. Either you simply accomplish them or you arbitrarily prolong them to drag it out and try to make a story out of it. Neither of these is particularly fulfilling as you are basically just playing with yourself. Goals that require others put you at their mercy and subject to their whims and wishes as well as their time frames and unannounced prolonged absences.

As for the DM staff, I know some players have had luck utilizing them but I have never found that to be the case personally. I can only opine that my character arcs are not interesting or far reaching enough to warrant DM intervention, and that is fine. When I first started, I used to mind not being able to garner DM attention. As I've grown longer in the tooth here, I actually prefer to avoid most such interaction, especially in events. To me it always ends up feeling like a competition to see who can get the DM's attention the most during events and everyone is just talking/emoting/taking actions over each other to try to climb to the top.

Up until the past week or so I had been playing my old main fairly regularly, given my hectic schedule, not because he has any specific goals he is trying to achieve, but simply to log in and interact. I just take every day as a new adventure and just interact with whoever I happen to bump into. It may lead to something, it may not, but as I have never been able to affect the server in any way that I am aware of, it is less of a headache to just keep it light. I find myself growing less attached to characters and not caring when they get killed off if I treat them as if they don't really matter also. The biggest downside, I've found, is that as I am less attached to characters, it takes less and less each time I return to get me bored with logging in, regardless of the character. These days I mostly just watch the forums and discord, almost ignoring logging in to the game entirely.

Finally, I would say, at least for me, breaks from the server have been welcome and they seem to grow longer and longer each time I take one. I hope that you can find more compelling reasons to log in than I have been able to.