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Adults of LOTC, how do you keep a creative mind?


Troutism
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I want to ask those who are over the age of 18+ or have grown out of their childhood phase and move onto adulthood on how they keep their childlike spark and creative mind when it comes to Roleplaying and Storybuilding as a whole.

I've noticed as the years have gone on that my ability to RP has diminished beyond what it used to be. I'm still a new player on this server, but parts of me wishes that I came here much sooner to be apart of it when I was creative enough to do unique and bright things with my characters. In the past I have participated in and been a major part in many peoples roleplaying adventures, actually shifting the lore to drastic measures because of my characters actions. Characters I have written before were deep in lore, character development, and my characters deaths made people genuinely sad. I've been everything from a god to a peasant, a dictator to a soldier, to running business empires and hustling my ass off to make ends meet. 

Yet there is a part of me that seems to have completely lost my creative side. Its not that I don't want to roleplay, but the part of me that created these things feels faint and distant. Like a part of my creative and young mind has since been lost in time, in transation, and to be truthfully honest? I'm scared. (Regardless of how cheesy it sounds.)

Growing up is part of life, but I'd like to hold-onto to my childhood a bit longer before I have to move on. Spread me your advice, so I can too experience what I used to so long ago.

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I grow with my rp, and change where I acquire my inspiration from. When we are kids we are prone to grab inspiration from media/shows we consume, the world around us, etc. I still continue to grab from those sources but in a different sense of light, and additional forms of content I've come across with age. For me that is history and literature.  Don't compare it to your past either- you will never get that spectrum of roleplay back, you were literally a different person. Define a new perspective of roleplay, and you'll get a spark again. 

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I find that when I'm out of it creatively, the best way to address that empty feeling is to fill it with new influences. That means reading a book, watching a show, or even playing another video game, and allowing myself to absorb the tropes found in that medium. Then, when I come into a creative endeavor, I have these tropes and concepts in my head that I want to play with and adjust to make something original and fun, and all that comes together to spark creativity.

 

When you're younger, not only do you have a lot more time to take in new influences, but each new influence is much more exciting as it is more likely to be something you've never seen before, and thus an item that you are more eager to play and experiment with. When you add to the fact that you feel far less self conscious to express yourself at a younger age due to the lack of expectations, it can feel as though that these sort of creative efforts can only come from a certain point in life.

 

However, I disagree - even though I do think younger people can offer an invaluable perspective creatively, as you age you should never lose that sense of play. Education and creative expression is a lifelong journey. There are an innumerable amount of influences to embrace and concepts to examine in the world, and we can always make space to understand them and try to apply them in creative exercise.  

 

We often come into a space like LotC beginning with a flat concept like a knight, mage, politician, rogue, witch, farmer, samurai, etc. By themselves, these ideas are not that inspiring or engaging. Even when we flex a little more creative muscle and come up with a character whose background is more unique, the character may still fall flat or not resonate with yourself or others. What ends up making these concepts stick is when we give ourselves the time and space to bounce this idea off of other people until it begins to take a three dimensional form.

 

Perhaps this knight has a fateful encounter with elves, and picks up some tricks from them that leads to him practicing a new code of chivalry, or is cursed by some dark magic and has to find the cure to it. A barkeep begins to expand their collection of vintage by traveling across the world to collect rare and unique brews and builds a reputation as a friend to all. These notes in a story begin to shape an otherwise dull and flat character into something that is original, and more importantly, personal.

 

From there, you can find yourself beginning to build strong relationships with other characters on other interesting journeys, and you start to look forward to logging in and growing your character with them. That is when it becomes exciting to express yourself creatively, and in this context, immerse yourself in the roleplay.

 

I think LotC can be a challenging medium in that regard though, since the time investment can be quite high to find the meaningful roleplay that will shape a character into something personal and engaging. If you don't have an active, engaging, and stable community around you that will help you find that, you may find yourself stuck with a flat concept of a character unless you delve into forum roleplay and develop it by yourself - but at that point, you could do that on so many other mediums, and whatever strengths of LotC's persistent world fall flat. 

 

As we age, the time investment that our creative practices demand can grow less and less attractive as we realize that we have so many other things to do with our lives that we didn't have the opportunity to as a child or young adult. That said, there are ways we can support others that are willing to make the time investment and find small but notable ways to add to an ever-evolving world.

 

My advice is to treat the game like a sandbox to test concepts that intrigue you, whether that be historical cultures, art, business practices, agricultural practice, fantasy myths, martial arts, and so on, find the right people to support you in that endeavor and acknowledge your time commitments, and you might be able to find that spark again.

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Read books. Play other games. Watch movies and shows. If LOTC is your only media engagement you will soon run dry of inspiration. 
 

For people who really tryhard LOTC in order to get more activity or grow a community, it can feel like using your free time on non-LOTC stuff is a waste. That is not true. Don’t be that person who plays for 50 hours a week without developing your character or any narratives in that time due to chronic burnout.

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Well since I’m over 30 and I’m  near death with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel I feel like I can speak to this. XD


First off, hurtful. Look at the amazing movies made and great books written by people over 18. Shows and web series as well. 
 

Creativity and imagination are not something that can be forced. It is something that needs to be nurtured. As a youth the worries of life are usually minimized by others such as caregivers and family. The future is full of possibilities and opportunities. 
 

Once the reality of adulting hits your world views narrow and the amorphous possibilities of the future begin to harden into the daily grind of life as you learn to provide for yourself. 
 

I understand that I am speaking in generalities and some are forced through circumstances to start this process early. But it is what it is and everyone goes through this. 
 

what I have found is my creativity and imagination goes through cycles much like everything else in life. Think of it like the tide. Sometimes you are at high tide and the ideas are flowing. Your creative juices are generating fantastic rp and everyone is having fun playing with you. Other times the tide is out and you feel like a potato sitting there slowly growing sprouts waiting for someone to toss you in the compost. Your rp is stagnant and you wander the server looking for inspiration and find nothing. 
 

With all that being said there are some things you can do to help optimize your time and experience during the high tide and minimize your time during the low tide. It’s all about life balance. 
 

you need food, water, sleep, safety, shelter, financial security, emotional support, exercise, etc. if you are deficient in one area that is not to bad but if you are running low in multiple areas your mind becomes stressed and has trouble functioning thus decreasing your ability to be creative. 
 

So what’s your point you ask? Life is a cycle of ups and downs. It gets crazy then calm. Take care of yourself and those you love and don’t stress about your creativity. Sometimes you need a break but if you keep coming back to it you will find your creative spark. It may be different from when you were younger but that is not bad. Change is part of life. 

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4 hours ago, Troutism said:

Growing up is part of life, but I'd like to hold-onto to my childhood a bit longer before I have to move on.

 

The concept of "moving on" is dumb. I think it's such an old, aged concept where you need to "Have a Family" and dedicate your entire being to work. I'm 25 and I enjoy a lot of my time just doing what I like outside of work - if anything it got better because now, I have excess money to spend on things I love and to be more creative. 

 

If you think that getting older is the cause of your creativity being stifled that's not it. It's likely you just need to find things that you enjoy. There's more to being creative than roleplaying shortform type rp on a Minecraft server. There's a lot of different kinds of writing among other various ways to be creative. That's my take though. 

 

Dunno how old you are but (my assumption) it sounds like you're scared of growing up. Don't be it just gets better and easier. Take care of yourself first and foremost. 

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The concept of what I find fun has certainly changed since 2011, but the 'fun' of roleplay and games and such has never left me. Granted I took a large gap between maps- years, but in that time I was always playing other games and such. Even dabbling in DND - The want to RP just never vanished.

 

4 hours ago, Troutism said:

Yet there is a part of me that seems to have completely lost my creative side. Its not that I don't want to roleplay, but the part of me that created these things feels faint and distant. Like a part of my creative and young mind has since been lost in time, in transation, and to be truthfully honest? I'm scared. (Regardless of how cheesy it sounds.)

 

It's very easy to feel like this, for sure. Part of the reason I make alt characters is because sometimes, I just need a change of scenery or even a brief break, to recoup that creativeness. Currently, I haven't RP'd properly for about a week - work has been busy irl and such. But I've found that playing other games, taking to people in the community, and doing OOC stuff like writing has tweaked my want to get back into character again.

 

4 hours ago, Troutism said:

Characters I have written before were deep in lore, character development, and my characters deaths made people genuinely sad.

 

As you can imagine, I've had a lot of characters since 2011. My two main ones hit me hard when it came time to retire them. But their deaths came years into their lives.  In that time, I developed them, spent countless hours working on their skin and character sheets to build their personalities and such just how I wanted.

New characters, I find, always feel rather bland and lacking. Until you get months in and make proper connections both IC and OOC, it's likely you will feel like this.

The dwarf I play now I made as an alt, with no intention to play full time. Now, thanks to the community @VerminHunter has created- I'll be clocking around 700 hours on her since I made her. When her death comes- (I've stated that I've a PK rule on her that if it is good, valid RP then she will die) - I will be heartbroken.

 

But that, along with a lot of her worth to me, has come from the people around me. @Terry@SharpString@Lego XBOX

 

41 minutes ago, Danjahb29 said:

Well since I’m over 30 and I’m  near death with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel I feel like I can speak to this. XD

 

As a 31yo, I feel this spiritually.

 

52 minutes ago, NotEvilAtAll said:

Don’t be that person who plays for 50 hours a week without developing your character or any narratives in that time due to chronic burnout.

 

This is really important. If you log on to force yourself to play, you'll find nothing but stress and pressure.

 

I hope some of this helps you in some way. There's plenty of older players around to talk to, if you need it.

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I stop taking my meds 

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I'll echo everyone else in the thread and say that the best way to deal with burnout is to take time to read. Or watch movies, or play games, listen to video essays on 2x speed while playing games, or do whatever the source of your inspiration is. A large part of creativity is the function of your brain taking apart and recombining stuff that it's exposed to; it's hard to wrap your head around how much more stuff you were taking in as a younger person - between having more claims to your time, no one forcing you to take on challenging material, etc., it's not that anything has fundamentally changed about you - no one loses their imagination, but time and circumstances radically change to interfere with it.

 

I can also recommend looking up literary magazines for topics/genres you're interested in. I say this not because I'm a pompous jackass (I am) but because they tend to publish a variety of curated fiction + articles from people who have read a bunch about some interesting but somewhat inaccessible topic and are inviting other people to look into it too. There are lots of great fantasy fiction zines, for instance, who publish stuff by authors who are honestly not far off from LoTCers in background. Regardless of what you're into, there are lots of ways to make the internet do the legwork of finding stuff to read for you. 

 

I'll also add a word of recommendation warning for the wonderful world of online piracy. Definitely do not use sites like Library Genesis or 12ft to get material that's too expensive or obnoxious to obtain. The purveyors of paywalled online articles and ebooks provide you with the ISBN/DOI for their content out of infinite generosity and a commitment to academic rigor, not because you can copy-and-paste it into the search engine of a Kazakh piracy website and get the full text for free. 

 

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7 hours ago, Troutism said:

I want to ask those who are over the age of 18+ or have grown out of their childhood phase and move onto adulthood on how they keep their childlike spark and creative mind when it comes to Roleplaying and Storybuilding as a whole.

I've noticed as the years have gone on that my ability to RP has diminished beyond what it used to be. I'm still a new player on this server, but parts of me wishes that I came here much sooner to be apart of it when I was creative enough to do unique and bright things with my characters. In the past I have participated in and been a major part in many peoples roleplaying adventures, actually shifting the lore to drastic measures because of my characters actions. Characters I have written before were deep in lore, character development, and my characters deaths made people genuinely sad. I've been everything from a god to a peasant, a dictator to a soldier, to running business empires and hustling my ass off to make ends meet. 

Yet there is a part of me that seems to have completely lost my creative side. Its not that I don't want to roleplay, but the part of me that created these things feels faint and distant. Like a part of my creative and young mind has since been lost in time, in transation, and to be truthfully honest? I'm scared. (Regardless of how cheesy it sounds.)

Growing up is part of life, but I'd like to hold-onto to my childhood a bit longer before I have to move on. Spread me your advice, so I can too experience what I used to so long ago.

 

As an adult, I am going to make a couple of comments that I merely would recommend meditating on, but that you don't have to adopt or even agree with.

 

I think the association with creativity and the childish psychology is somehow propagated as if you can't have one without the other. You can easily be creative without being a child or behaving or adopting child-like psychology and personally I feel it is healthy to divorce the two as you enter adulthood. In fact, and this is not a critique against you the poster as you are "the new person on the block," but I rather think a maturation of the ego and one's psychology would help with some of the out-of-character behaviors exhibited by certain people, but I won't delve too much into that as it isn't congruent with the overall thread here.

 

I will mirror what some others in this thread are recommending and that is to engross yourself in great literature (classical, perhaps not the most modern) so you can glean some of the tropes, archetypes, and themes that resonate in great literature that you might find entertainment in deploying them in your gameplay. To tie this more with my previous paragraph, part of maturing from the child-like is being able to pull the curtains back on the stage and understanding rather than reveling in the stories and playing more the part of the puppeteer rather than the child sitting before the animated puppet.

 

When I came back recently to the server, I came back with the goal being the developer of stories rather than the audience of stories. There is an appreciation that comes with age, with education, and with discipline in that you understand the themes and mores you can scaffold through your storytelling that we, rightfully, don't expect of children. This is why stories, myths, and the classics have, throughout cultures and times, been written by adults for the enjoyment of children - they use the vehicle of entertainment to actually impart some wisdom or useful moral/ethical/philosophical tools to the next generations.

 

Also, I agree with all those in previous comments who discussed burnout. You owe no one your time and you'll be all the more healthier taking a break or breaking whatever mental contraption that makes you think you must participate or you owe any other player anything. Take a breather, take a break, refuel and recharge.

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Think of it less like play time and more like exercising your ability to tell a story. You are an author of your character's story, of the story of your character's in-game community, and of the world as a whole. There are not less authors as they age, but often more, being drawn to create the stories they have imagined for decades. 

 

Let me share a moment of my own experience. I find myself, with each passing year, hurtling closer and closer to middle age. Why, then, do I RP with teenagers on Minecraft server? Well, first of all, most of us aren't teenagers, but that's really irrelevant. I love to imagine worlds and stories and be able to act them out like, in some way, an actor and writer, sparks my creative juices even at this age. 

 

I don't have the time to RP as someone in high school or college, true. My wife and son will always take precedent over a game. And so I can't attend multi-hour events and I miss important court sessions or warclaims as I'm out with family or working. And I might never be able to devote the time to be a nation leader. But, in the moments that I allow myself some time alone, I have chosen, instead of passively reading a book or watching the television to make a story of my own. And more than that, I am working with others to tell a grander and more epic story than I ever could by myself. 

 

That's what, as an adult with a family, keeps me here. That, and the stories I can tell my son, often simplified and exaggerated, of the heroes of Almaris before he goes to bed. Those stories, too, are worth every moment. For, as C. S. Lewis once said regarding children, "since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage." 

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I peak my head in here and there to take a look around. Left in February. I joined LoTC in 2012 on my first account, left almost two months ago to prioritize the gym & my other hobbies that I find more preferential. I don't find this sad. The way I see it, if I cared about LoTC as a game more so than a community and loved text-based role-playing, I would have kept on going. But there's a point really where you round the corner and you've done all that interests you. 

 

Creativity is not something that goes away. If you cannot muster it, it is not due to your age, it is because you aren't fulfilled. There was no "correct time" to get into this server, this is your make it or break it moment, and the inspiration will come with time. Especially once you invest time into the server. 

For me, my creative work was always bolstered by my thoughts. Especially when I'm out walking in nature or traveling by foot to my favorite café or to a bar to kick it with my friends. I think quite a bit while I'm out and use my experiences to inform my writings. I attend numerous clubs at my University that foster a love of learning, which in turn lends me the ingenuity to write things I deeply care about. I now write for myself and not others, and my interest in role-playing has been confined to Baldur's Gate 3. For me, I love that, but even before that was the case my writing ended up being heavily inspired by tangible feelings I've truly experienced. Loss, compassion, horror, and the other complexities of our everyday world that can inspire us or seize things away from us in the blink of an eye. 


Out along the worn pavement of your city block resides stories of every caliber. Tragedies, comedies, inspirational tales, and most of all the words and actions of people just like you that will inform you not only on the world that you live in, but also your perception of people from your own unique vantage point. The greatest instructor any of us has is life. Most of all, a life well-lived.

 

So, maybe you don't wanna quit LoTC; but go kick it on the pavement and find something new. Learn a martial art, play some guitar, read up on mycology, do resistance training or running, maybe even some swimming - a life well-lived, in my opinion, informs the greatest writing. Don't limit yourself to one thing, you can do many things, and you can inspire yourself by cultivating your own experiences and fostering creativity by doing, rather than being inspired in totality by the works of others, the so called "Greats" who have come and gone in real life and in fiction.

 

There is no better time than the present. 

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Just popped onto the page to see how some people were doing and stumbled across this. Honestly, I don't feel like I have much room to speak since so many others on this thread are far more active in the community than I am. But as someone who is a bit older (literally retiring out of the military in a few years), I think it is important for a creative mind (whether young or old) to be free from fear of exploring new concepts or ideas. Anyone who knows me on here pretty well knows that I literally started in the LOTC community just to kill some time before a deployment and because I was burnt out with writers block while working on a short novella. I never imagined I would be inspired by a Mine Craft RP community! But, it led to me working on my first published book, and the two to follow it that I am currently working on now. Point being, I think that when you reach a creative "slum" the first thing you should do is allow yourself open to be surprised. Echoing what @excited put out there; try new things, gain a new focus, do something that you know you might fail at, and then do something else. I know I'm echoing what everyone else has said to a degree, but I will never forget what my Gunny said to me one time. "The moment you quit moving forward, you're already dead." So, move forward in any way possible. Know this isn't 'awe inspiring' but I hope it helps.

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