A Timeline or Perpetual Changelessness

If I hadn't cut up role-players into different groups enough I've noticed I missed a way I could dice up all of role-playdem into two more different playing styles. As the title suggests one takes on the timeline where as the other one not quite perfectly named is a state of "Changelessness." Lets go with the first one and talk over the advantages, and disadvantages to this role-playing style.

A timeline role-play is one where each new role-play with a certain (set of) character(s) takes place from where the last one left off. So if you go on a crazy adventure one moment the next role-play you have all the stories from the previous ones to talk about in your new role-play. The advantage to this is that you get a lot more self background work that comes into play... if your character's background wasn't exciting it suddenly can become exciting. This also lets you not set aside any good role-play that could be a great piece of background for the character. If your character changes due to the role-play and you want to role-play them like that from now on... well you have perfect reason because they changed and that's a part of their background! It also leaves time for a character to grow and develop if you want it to since it's always moving forward. However if you don't want your character to change... this leads you to problems. So....

You may try Perpetual "changelessness." What this means actually isn't about not changing, but rather just not having a timeline format. Each new rp with a certain (set of) character(s) starts an entirely new rp that has nothing to do with the last one. This lets you keep your character(s) at a certain age if you don't want them to get older but also lets you modify their background/personality with each new role-play if also wanted. It's certainly more flexible in and of itself, which is why the changelessness title isn't quite as descriptive as it could have been. However this loses something called a "Self Moderating" aspect that the first set has... meaning if you can't role-play all your characters at once because they're currently in a role-play and doing two at once would mess up the timeline, this keeps you from doing the same role-play over and over again with the same character. You got vary it up! It's moderating within itself.

Really though there is a compromise area that one may have which is the only doing timeline if the content of it is really good, but throwing out the 90% of garbage rp that comes your way. Frankly as great as moderation within itself is great, moderating yourself is probably better anyways because it practices your willpower. All in all though it really just comes down to what you're actually interested in. I tend to do the "perpetual changelessness," but it's not for any of the proposed reasons but another... I feel weird having someone else's character be a part of my background. It feels like I'm stepping on their toes since its THEIR character... but frankly that's just silly. Again, it's just subjective, but I'd like to say that trying other styles may help you learn your rp style better so I suggest if you only do one to just TRY another once and see how you like it. :) Time for me to try a timeline character. If I ever get the chance to rp again :P Take care y'all!