The 3-Month Players
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@RedRocket said in The 3-Month Players:
Yet, few shows were as successful or as well known as GoT. The stories where your favorite characters might be lost at any moment are the ones people become most invested in. Investment is what we are looking for.
MASH, Friends, Dallas, and the 21st season of Grey’s Anatomy would like a word. Investment does not require death. It just doesn’t. There have been plenty of MU*s that have proven that. If PC permadeath is your thing - no shade! It’s a perfectly valid playstyle. It just isn’t the only way to be successful.
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@Pavel said in The 3-Month Players:
I’ll use another metaphor. If all you do is Event RP, Plot RP, or whatever you’re calling Not-Social-RP, then you’re playing the first 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan over and over and over again. The only character information you get being the how not the why.
I like that analogy. I’s the “social RP” scenes in Saving Private Ryan that elevate the movie beyond just a shoot-em-up. Like the quiet scene in the church where the captain and sergeant are remembering the guys they’ve lost. That’s character development.
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@Faraday I knew I’d get a good metaphor out there eventually. One shouldn’t make analogies when one is on a rewatch binge.
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I’d honestly take three months of good RP over a game that drags on and on past its expiration date
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@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:
I like that analogy. I’s the “social RP” scenes in Saving Private Ryan that elevate the movie beyond just a shoot-em-up. Like the quiet scene in the church where the captain and sergeant are remembering the guys they’ve lost. That’s character development.
But not what I would call social RP. What you’re describing has a point to it, even if it’s just talking. It’s an exploration of their predicament, founded upon the plot. It’s, well, part of the story, even.
I think the ‘social RP’ is the stuff where characters randomly bump into each other, for no reason other than their players being bored, with nothing to really talk about beyond what they randomly come up with. So I appreciate the metaphors, but they’re not really addressing what I was talking about, which was that social RP by itself, with no plot, seems to never actually sustain a population, at least from my observation. From what it sounds like on this thread, that’s a common problem everywhere.
Yes, both are needed. Unfortunately in the case of my game it’s the plot part which keeps on being left out unless certain key players are there doing it, and the hardest part of all seems to be getting social RPers to understand this.
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@Tapewyrm said in The 3-Month Players:
I think maybe what’s been missed is the point that social RP by itself, with no plot, seems to never actually sustain a population, at least from my observation.
We may just be using different definitions. In an earlier post (which I’m too lazy to dig up) I gave my personal ones:
- Plot RP (direct plot action)
- Social RP (not directly connected to a plot, but furthering relationships, characterization, and setup)
- BarRP (fluff RP, usually just to fill the time because nobody has a better idea)
The church scene in Saving Private Ryan falls squarely in the Social RP category for me. You could take it out and the plot would be the same, but it’s important for character development.
If you’re saying that BarRP alone cannot sustain a MU - I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, but I’ve just never seen that happen. There’s always some kind of Social RP going on. And in fact, BarRP often leads to Social RP, since it’s the way characters first meet each other. It opens doors to further RP.
Can Social RP alone sustain a MU? I’ve seen games where that was most/all of what was going on. They were smaller, but the players were happy. Is that successful? YMMV.
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Okay, then we’re talking about BarRP, by those terms, and the question then is: can BarRP alone sustain activity? Not in my personal experience or observation.
But even using such terms, what actually sets Social RP apart from BarRP, aside from the existence of a plot?
@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:
The church scene in Saving Private Ryan falls squarely in the Social RP category for me. You could take it out and the plot would be the same, but it’s important for character development.
Sure, but that character development is still within a story. If it were a couple of guys at the bar talking about friends they lost in the war, it wouldn’t be the same scene with the same character development.
If you’re saying that BarRP alone cannot sustain a MU - I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, but I’ve just never seen that happen. There’s always some kind of Social RP going on. And in fact, BarRP often leads to Social RP, since it’s the way characters first meet each other. It opens doors to further RP.
This is the crux of the issue, for me, because my personal experience tells me the exact opposite. I have literally never seen BarRP (by itself) lead to anything other than IC fizzling out, precisely because it doesn’t seem to have anywhere to go without something plottish happening.
You mentioned something else a while back, about how the more social-minded RPers are the ones left when you turn the lights out, and I don’t doubt that. The question I would have is: why are you turning the lights out?
If the answer is similar to: ‘most of the players left because things ran their course and the plot ended’, then I would argue that’s exactly what I’m talking about. The social RP, even if it is enduring to certain individuals, is not sustaining a population worth keeping the lights on for. And, lest I be misunderstood, as an abstract situation that’s fine, and maybe things really did run their course, and there’s no problem with that.
But in my attempts to revive activity on a game long dead, I’m aiming a little higher than that. Attempts have been made in the past, usually by “social RPers”, and it always fizzles, whereas whenever I come in with my plot-heavy staffing things pick up, a community builds, and it even takes a while for that momentum to fade after I leave. To me I can’t find any clearer indication that my approach works, and certainly works a whole lot better than the opposite approach.
Anyhow, I’ll bow out here I think. I get what people are saying about a balance, and that’s definitely something I strive to encourage. TBH there’s also a fair component of pride to the internal dealings of my game, hence me wanting to understand and bridge gaps where I can with the players I want to both court and ask for help, and I got some good feedback here.
Cheers for your time!
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It really depends on how you’re defining “plot.”
WWIII with Aliens and Zombies is plot, sure, but so is Gilmore Girls, and the latter would generally be considered social RP.
Any RP that has follow up, consequences, ramifications, further developments, etc, could count as “plot.”
Sometimes we need to sit in a coffee shop and chill (Bar RP), sometimes we have to say “I love you,” (social RP), other times we have to say the wrong name at our wedding (plot).
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@Pavel said in The 3-Month Players:
WWIII with Aliens and Zombies is plot, sure, but so is Gilmore Girls, and the latter would generally be considered social RP.
There are gray areas, sure, but in most dramas (like GG) some storylines are given more prominence and feel more like Plot than others. It doesn’t have to be action-packed, just impactful.
As an example - in the pilot episode from ER, some of the major plotlines are a building collapse, a new medical student’s first day, and a doctor deciding whether to leave the ER for a quieter specialty. Those I would call Plot. In-between are various scenes that don’t affect the overall story but promote character development, like one doctor turning up drunk and sleeping it off in an exam room. Those feel more like Social RP.
TV shows and novels don’t tend to have much (if any) BarRP, because they don’t have time to waste on random meetings between strangers or small talk that serves no other narrative purpose. But MUs generally aren’t as heavily plotted as those other mediums. People don’t meet because the plot demands it, they meet because they happen to be on at the same time and decide to have a scene.
ETA: I’m not claiming that these definitions are an infallible or universal classification scheme or anything. They’re just useful for me in terms of evaluating what kinds of RP I enjoy, and what’s going on in a game.
@Tapewyrm said in The 3-Month Players:
The question I would have is: why are you turning the lights out?
Games end for all kinds of reason. Burnout, goals being met, RL disruptions, running out of story ideas, and yes - to your point - losing enough critical mass of RP to the point where people stop showing up.
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@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:
TV shows and novels don’t tend to have much (if any) BarRP
… what about Cheers?
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@Pavel said in The 3-Month Players:
@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:
TV shows and novels don’t tend to have much (if any) BarRP
… what about Cheers?
How can I play my mysterious, be-trenched, katana-wielding cyber drifter if everyone knows my fucking name??
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@Tapewyrm said in The 3-Month Players:
Okay, then we’re talking about BarRP, by those terms, and the question then is: can BarRP alone sustain activity? Not in my personal experience or observation.
But even using such terms, what actually sets Social RP apart from BarRP, aside from the existence of a plot?
Meaning.
If the RP means something to one of the characters or the plot, then it is Social RP rather than just BarRP. And what is BarRP to you might be Social RP for another player, or even Plot RP and you might not even know it.
But you don’t always know the difference because 1) you aren’t in control of all the players so you don’t know what has meaning/value and what doesn’t and 2) you don’t always know what will come next for any of the characters. All you know (usually) is what it means to you and the enjoyment you get from it.
Just shooting the shit with someone in a bar because you’re filling time and waiting for plot or more meaningful RP can sometimes turn into something that creates meaning for your character or between the characters. This ‘nothing’ scene could actually be the very important meeting of two characters that end up saving the world! Now more often than not, this doesn’t happen, but sometimes it does turn out to be more important than it seemed at first, especially with follow up - which usually requires intent and interest on both sides to do so, which is why most times that doesn’t happen AND why BarRP doesn’t sustain a MU*. If the RP happening on a game doesn’t spur interest and/or intent, its doomed to fail.
Which, IMHO, is why Social RP can sustain a game, but BarRP can’t, even though they can seem very similar a lot.
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I don’t remember the original argument now about BarRP, SocialRP and whatever-else, but if all your game offers in terms of gameplay is for people to sit around and talk about their personal lives, it’s probably not going to last very long. With regards to the L&L genre specifically, it’s why most “popular” games have always offered something else, whether that’s magic or exploration element or something.
I think a lot of people say they want an L&L politics game but the vast majority of players aren’t actually politically savvy, nor would it be very fun in the long run. I can honestly only thing of one person in all of MUSHdom who would absolutely lean into it and be an absolute joy to write stories for, frankly. It’s why all popular L&L games in recent memory have offered something else beyond your standard L&L shit, whether that’s magic or some sort of mystery to investigate or what have you.
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@Warma-Sheen said in The 3-Month Players:
If the RP means something to one of the characters or the plot, then it is Social RP rather than just BarRP. And what is BarRP to you might be Social RP for another player, or even Plot RP and you might not even know it.
This exactly. Through the years, I can’t count how many of my RP connections started with BarRP. These people went on to be the besties, significant others, rivals, and in one case adopted child of my various PCs. Those connections wouldn’t have happened without BarRP, and led to a lot of great Social RP and even Plots. Personally if ALL I had to do was BarRP I’d quit, but it still serves a useful purpose.
