/erp/ - Erotic Roleplay

Friends! Sluts! Horny men! Lend me your ears! As much as it pains me to say, cocks will have to wait for now

As some of you may know, I've been spending some time looking over old Morrigan-nee/Fapbait threads and doing a bit of research and soul searching as to how the threads got to the point they have. Naturally, meatspace obligations have slowed my progress on this a fair bit, and while I'm not quite done, I'd like to make it clear to the board that it isn't just going to be in limbo forever, as well as invite feedback and opinions on the matter. With that in mind, I'm opening this thread as a meta discussion on the threads themselves. Hopefully this will also attract new blood, slut and cock alike, to the threads going forward to keep them as fresh and fruitful as they once were.

First, a bit of history. Something that's easy to forget with how long they've been running is that the start for these threads was very spontaneous - in fact it was directly out of response to an idea someone posted in another (now lost) thread, itself a relating of an experience on another board that some people expressed interest in giving a try. Essentially, it was what we now tend to refer to as JOI (Jack Off Instructions), where someone posts sexy pictures and talks slutty to arouse Anons and get them to masturbate to them (hence the term Fapbait being used for the threads) and at the time I figu "why the hell not" and threw up a thread, which apparently enough people agreed with the sentiment to give it a run early on (including one of the mods! Eva you amazing slut I hope you come home to us someday) that the thread quickly took off and was a major hit, continuing on to fill out 3 threads in less than a week at a time when board activity was, while healthy, nothing on that level. As I note in the OP to Thread 4, the first two threads each made up about 60% of posts on the board for their duration, and Thread 3 was an insane 80% of board activity while it was alive. These threads exploded in a way I don't think anyone anticipated (I certainly didn't) and quite frankly I didn't know what to do with it. It was clear that it needed something resembling a bit of order and organization, but at the same time I was wary of getting too forceful on it because that very lack of structure allowed for people to experiment with different ideas - for instance, clearly establishing a setting would've pre-empted a lot of scenes that ended up taking place "elsewhere" like the play with the Pokemon trainer disobeying every rule of "stranger danger" a child should pick up. People were coming up with interesting ideas, both ones that took off well (duet plays like the Remilia/Sakuya combo in Fapbait 3) and ones that didn't quite last (erotic exercise from way back in Fapbait 2, which I still think was cool and would love to see someone try again, maybe a Wii Fit Trainer?), and the last thing I wanted to do was discourage that. Shit had been working very well without a guiding hand, and like the saying goes "If it ain't broke don't fix it." Even now, as I try once more to bring structure to the threads, I still want to leave room to encourage that kind of experimentation and creativity, because I know there are going to be sluts out there with ideas I can't even begin to conceive of on my own, and what better place to let them play it out? Anyone who is hesitant to start something without approval of course is welcome to message me directly to run it by me, but I doubt I'd say no - give it a try; at worst it'll just flounder and we'll move on to something else.

The unmistakable trend is that it's been difficult or outright unappealing for sluts to play in the threads for a variety of reasons. With that in mind, the core philosophy I've come up with to guide the thread as a whole is to put power in the hands of the sluts who put themselves up for play. Whether she wants Anonymous partners or actual characters, one-on-one or a horde, performing in the main hall or taking her act on the road, dominant or submissive, real time play or play by post, post length, what sexuality/fetishes might be involved… as much as possible, I want the slut to be in control of her session, because while I do highly value Anons and their contributions, I feel that the one putting in the most effort to any single session is almost if not always going to be the slut, and so they should be in control of their scene generally speaking.

Another large problem that stands out to me is timing. I've seen sluts advertise themselves to empty rooms, and cocks likewise waving about futilely in the wind. This is especially bad on the sluts' side, as from personal experience I can tell you that performances can go for hours, and considering we do have real life obligations and the like, not only is setting aside the time to be available in the first place difficult, but if cocks only show up an hour or more into your time, you may not have time to do more than a post or two. Not to mention, compulsively refreshing would be silly even on a board the speed of /b/ or /v/, and so on a board of our pace, it's all too easy to spend our precious free time while waiting for takers to show up focusing on something else, and the auto-refresh rate of the page might mean we don't see that there's a message in the thread until 10 or 15 minutes later - by which time the poster might've vanished themselves for any number of reasons. There have been amazing and passionate nights of intense real time hours long sessions in the past, and if they can happen again by all means that'd be wonderful, but I think the key to flourishing, especially with the population decrease due to , is going to be in taking advantage of the BBS nature of the board to make the default something akin to forum RP. This way, sluts can put themselves out there to get something started even if at that exact moment they can't drop everything for two hours to fuck and suck to their heart's content, and we lower the problem of 'missing' players.

Another problem is quality on the part of the Anons. While there have been a number of amazing dicks who've managed to put just as much effort in as the sluts they play with (and yes, even while keeping as just the faceless Anonymous in some cases,) there is still the fact that we have a large amount of simply low-effort approachers. Part of this is in the roots as pure Fapbait before it started evolving into ERP proper, but part is also in the fact that more often than not sluts were running gangbangs and to keep things flowing at a decent pace (and even then, hours-long sessions were not rare) replies on both ends tended to be a fair bit shorter than the lengthier replies common to Orgy thread scenes. I hope to address the latter part of this problem with the previously mentioned shift towards the slower BBS style posting as the norm (though again, I don't want people to shy away from fast-paced real time play if they have the stars align right for them and they enjoy that style, because lord knows it can be a lot of fun,) but regardless we're going to need to generally encourage slightly more meaty responses from our Anons. I say generally because there's certainly room for faster paced replies - while a bit of detail goes a long way to painting the scene, there's no need to spend a paragraph describing each and every gesture or fidget to go along with one sentence during a conversation for example. There's also some scenes that just naturally invite quick bursts from Anons, like the Matoi Ryuuko gangrape scene in Fapbait 31 that ended up pulling Anons in as the audience (though in that case the Audience player(s) actually did put in amazing amounts of detail and work, as much as the main partner running the Club Leaders really), and more than a few sluts get off on the idea of multiple Anons even not directly involved jerking it to the view and maybe running up real quick to bukkake spurt on them. Again, I think the key is keeping power in the hands of the sluts - if an Anon isn't putting in the work or otherwise doing it for you, feel free to just ignore him. If effort is requi to get noticed and replied to, then Anons will naturally work harder to join in. That being said, I would suggest as a courtesy that if an Anon is at least clearly putting in SOME effort and not just spurting out a one line plea of "please make me cum," even if it's not doing it for you at least tell him why. Ultimately it's up to the sluts in my view, but I do want to keep encouraging the Anons to put their best foot forward.

That's what I've got for the moment. Feedback/questions/comments/suggestions/ideas are all welcomed.