The 3-Month Players
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@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:
“BarRP” is usually used for time-filling “fluff” RP that’s just filling space because the players have nothing better to do
While that’s how you and I might mean it, I have quite legitimately seen the term used in discussion to tar all social “non plot moving” RP with the negative brush. As if the best bits of DS9 were the explosions and not the conversations between Garak and Bashir. I don’t think that’s the majority view, but it’s certainly one that is pervasive enough that the distinction isn’t always obvious.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
This has all been a fun tangent to the topic of the thread, but steering things back, is there any reason to believe that a server with “seasons” will in any way draw back the 3 month players at the start of every season? I would think that more substantial changes would be needed between each season, rather than just changing who the characters are and time skipping, to attract back people who left after the first season’s bubble.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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@Ominous Have there been any games previously that ran on a seasonal format? If not, it might be something to take a chance on. If nothing else, it gives the people who are going to stay around more things to be interested in as time goes on.
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@MisterBoring said in The 3-Month Players:
@Ominous Have there been any games previously that ran on a seasonal format? If not, it might be something to take a chance on. If nothing else, it gives the people who are going to stay around more things to be interested in as time goes on.
The Network and HorrorMU had seasons, I believe.
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@Pavel said in The 3-Month Players:
While that’s how you and I might mean it, I have quite legitimately seen the term used in discussion to tar all social “non plot moving” RP with the negative brush. As if the best bits of DS9 were the explosions and not the conversations between Garak and Bashir.
Sure, no definition is ever going to be universal. Also I’m certainly not going to WrongFun anyone who doesn’t like social RP. I just think it’s useful to highlight that distinction. Social scenes can absolutely move a plot forward if that plot is “will the Duke of Nowhere undermine his rivals” or “will Mary reconcile with her estranged brother”. If all you want to do is RP flying a fighter jet and shooting Cylons (no shade, btw) then anything in-between can feel like fluff.
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@STD Ah, then I’m curious as to what their numbers looked like through the various seasons. Might help to answer some questions about the 3 month thing.
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@Ominous said in The 3-Month Players:
This has all been a fun tangent to the topic of the thread, but steering things back, is there any reason to believe that a server with “seasons” will in any way draw back the 3 month players at the start of every season?
More pertinently, would you want to? These are people who already don’t want to play your game anymore, for whatever reason. Why are you trying to appeal to them? Your efforts would be better served serving the people who actually want to play there. Appeal to new people as they arrive, certainly, but don’t try and coax back the “tried it, didn’t stick with it” crowd.
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@Pavel Well, it was kind of the point of the idea. Run a seasonal server so those who aren’t feeling the current season can get a new experience a few months later and maybe have it be more their vibe. I would much rather run and/or play a L&L server that is long running with deep politics, intrigue, economics, etc. They only other reason that I can think of off of the top of my head to go “seasonal/anthology” is if you’re doing a generational theme and want to timeskip rather than wait a few years for the next generation to age up.
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@Ominous said in The 3-Month Players:
Well, it was kind of the point of the idea.
Sure, and I’m asking why is appealing to the 3-Month players something you’d want to do? If you make each “season” different enough in order to appeal to the people who gave it a go and weren’t interested, you’re essentially making a new game every six months. Which is fine, if that’s what you want to do, but why is appealing to the influx of new people a thing you’d want to entertain?
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@Pavel No clue. I am floating ideas relevant to the thread. Though, it could be good because the churn of players may keep the game fresh and keep the population from dwindling.
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The Network did essentially recreate ‘the Bubble’ every new season. This was part of why it wasn’t my thing, but it maintained a decent playerbase and closed on its own terms.
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@MisterBoring As @Third-Eye mentioned, there was a mini-bubble at the start of each new Season on the Network, and at the beginning of each Hiatus between Seasons. Some people preferred the Hiatus time in the Dome, some people preferred the Seasons, some people came back whenever a particular Season interested them.
Since most Seasons were 4-8 months, there was definitely a tail-off partway through most Seasons, but it did capture the burst at the beginning.
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I’m going to go on a little rant here but stick with me, I promise it is on topic.
DarkMetal was the most well designed WoD MUSH to ever exist. Wanna fight about it? Here we go!
The reason your players are burning out after 3 months is that there are no stakes in your game.
I hate to sound like one of /those/ people but… game devs today are too soft on their players.
It practically takes an act of God to kill off someone’s character so they get stuck with the same character for long periods of time, or they make alts and that results in burn out just as quick because they can never find in-depth character development with their focus divided between multiple alts.Dark Metal got a few things right that no one else did.
- Anyone could die at any time.
- There were safe zones for each sphere if you wanted to just do soft RP. You never needed to be in danger as long as you stayed in your zone.
- Making a new character was fast and easy! If you died it wasn’t a big deal.
- Staff didn’t give a s*** what you played, as long as you played, so approval was automated.
On Dark Metal you had to fight tooth and nail to survive long enough to get to a point you could walk in the mixed spaces without being in danger of being made into someone’s midnight snack and you were never fully safe.
You had to struggle to become enough of a bad-ass not to have to live in fear all the time. I can not emphasize enough how important that feeling of progression is to the health of a game.
People want their actions and choices to matter.
When they don’t, people get bored and they wander off.
It’s the same reason people add stakes and drama to TV shows. If nothing changes, there is no point.If you want your game to survive, learn to crush your players hopes and dreams. Learn to let players kill each other off.
Character churn will save your game from player churn.
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@RedRocket Man, I’m a little sad I missed this game. Sounds like something I’d have tried.
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@RedRocket said in The 3-Month Players:
You had to struggle to become enough of a bad-ass not to have to live in fear all the time. I can not emphasize enough how important that feeling of progression is to the health of a game.
Many players enjoyed DarkMetal.
Many other players wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole because that style of gameplay holds no appeal to them.
TGG was a game with permadeath, trivially easy chargen, XP-based progression, stakes, drama, rotating “seasons” to keep things fresh, and the some of the most impressive immersive code systems I’ve ever seen. It still had a lot of player turnover. (and about 10 very passionate core players)
People want their actions and choices to matter. … It’s the same reason people add stakes and drama to TV shows. If nothing changes, there is no point.
This I agree with, but routinely killing your PCs off is not the only way to accomplish this. There are plenty of successful TV shows that avoid the Game of Thrones style of knocking off main characters left and right.
There is no one-size-fits-all game.
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@Raistlin said in The 3-Month Players:
I know I might be in the minority, but I genuinely enjoy games that focus primarily on social interactions and “bar RP.” In fact, I’ve participated in private games where that was the main activity, and found them incredibly fulfilling.
Don’t misunderstand—I appreciate well-crafted plots and would certainly join global events. However, my personal focus tends toward developing character relationships and running private storylines with my RP partners. For me, having the tools and space to tell these intimate stories matters more than participating in numerous public scenes or global plot arcs.
I find the most enjoyment in those smaller moments between characters: the conversations that reveal backstories, the gradual building of trust, and the organic development of relationships (whether friendly, romantic, or antagonistic). These interactions often create the most memorable RP experiences for me.
Sorry to barge in on this, but you sound like just the type of player I’m trying to better understand, or maybe to get to better understand me. If you’re willing I would like to pick your brains on this topic?
See, I’m someone who thrives on running plots etc. partly because I enjoy storytelling this way, and partly because it’s an ingrained duty I feel as staff. It’s been my observation that when nobody is doing that, then everything tends to fizzle, and so since I’m good at running them I always default to doing so when no-one else is.
The problem is, this has largely felt like a thankless task over the years, because unfortunately the number of other people around who are like me dwindled to zero, and really the only players left were players who have the same preferences as yours, and so either I stick around and do things for them, or they fizzle out because none of them are doing any of the things I used to do. And here’s the rub, at least for me: they won’t listen when I try to explain or discuss these things, because it always runs into the same wall of preference, i.e. “I like it this way, so…”
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to attack either you or your preferences, and I’m certainly not trying to ask you to account for other people. I’m not even a plot-exclusive player, really. I enjoy social RP myself too. So I’m not trying to feed you some WrongFun theory, just that as someone who wants to see a given game or community thrive, I’ve come to be convinced of the necessity of having someone there actively driving things, in some way. Preferably staff, but if certain players have the gumption to do it themselves all the better. If not, then no matter how good the intentions, it’s been my experience that things fizzle, and then players who prefer social RP then have none either.
But, I also understand that some people are also attached to the idea of their RP freedom, so to speak, without staff oversight or having to surrender their RP to someone else’s plot. I don’t know if that’s how you feel about it too, but that’s definitely something I’ve heard.
So, really I’m just asking, from a player like me to a player like you, is there a happy medium to be found? Is there a way I can better appreciate your perspective, or a way to explain mine which might help bridge such a divide? I would appreciate hearing your thoughts.
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@RedRocket This speaks to my OSR D&D gaming heart.
@Tapewyrm You’ve got to have some crunch somewhere for the social RP fluff to be based on. How can we bemoan the ongoing war with the orcs, if there is no battles in the background? How can we gossip about the King divorcing the past Queen and marrying some nobody from a backwater house if that doesn’t happen? Meringue topped with marshmallow fluff topped with whipped cream is sweet but not very filling. You can’t make a good dessert with just that. You’ve got to have some substance under it all.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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@Ominous For sure. That’s what I try to do. Or are you saying that’s a good to way to try to get it across?
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@Ominous said in The 3-Month Players:
You’ve got to have some substance under it all.
I mean, yes it’s common (and also my personal preference), but you don’t -have- to. For example, I used to play on several Western games. There were those of us who wanted plot/adventure, but there were a LOT of players who were happily off on their own doing costume drama/soap opera stuff. People MU for all kinds of reasons.
Mostly these different playstyles can peacefully co-exist on the same game. I think it only becomes a challenge when you lose critical mass to sustain a type of RP (like to @Tapewyrm’s point, when you don’t have enough plot/adventure peeps to run or participate in the plots). I’m not sure a middle ground exists though, because they’re just looking for different things. You can’t force someone to engage with a style of play that doesn’t interest them.
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@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:
People MU for all kinds of reasons.
This. There’s no one magic bullet to MU success, 3 month or otherwise. It takes a number of things. There are a lot of things to be handled to address all the many reasons people join a game, some of them mutually exclusive. It is a delicate balancing act. Not everyone can do it. Not everyone wants to do it. Some people want to and can do it, but not forever.
A lot of the games that get trashed often handled all this better than others. People tend to focus on their complaints about a game without acknowledging all the things done right and the reasons games keep going strong for years, despite the problems. I’ve been guilty of this as well, especially when it has affected me personally, negatively, or unfairly.
But it doesn’t take away from the fact that running a successful game is a daunting feat, however one defines success.
