RP Safari - Pacing Styles
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@bear_necessities said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
i don’t actually believe anyone would eschew a social scene with a new character that turned out to have great chemistry and was an awesome time. i just don’t. because everyone loves fun, engaging RP. and social scenes can turn out to be literally anything.
Except there are some scene premises that are just inherently not fun for me so I would truly not have a good time and would not be engaged. Case in point: movie night scenes. I absolutely do not like scenes where we sit around with 20 other characters, or even 2 other characters, and pretend to watch a movie. It’s not fun for me, and has in fact on three occasions killed my enjoyment entirely for a game despite being in those scenes with people I have actually good chemistry with and enjoy roleplaying with.
This is one example but surely if you all need others to accept that we can all actually enjoy different things, I can keep going.
i mean…yes, sure, that is a very specific premise you don’t like. that is not the same as someone claiming they don’t like social RP across the board, considering that social RP would include a huge swathe of interactions. talking about very specific premises don’t actually run counter to my point at all.
@KarmaBum said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
i don’t actually believe anyone would eschew a social scene
I’m fine if people don’t actually believe this.
lol you didn’t even quote my entire point???
my point is that sometimes a social scene is nothing but meaningless fluff. sometimes it is a scene where two characters hit it off in some fashion and end up having extremely meaningful interactions that build character connections and offer meaningful character development. both of these are social scenes. my point is that “social RP” encompasses a hell of a lot of stuff. it doesn’t stop being social RP when it turns out to be incredibly meaningful.
she/her | playlist
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@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
lol you didn’t even quote my entire point???
Sorry, that’s more an issue of replying on my phone.
My entire point is just that I know what social RP is, I have enjoyed it in the past, I do not enjoy it anymore. I do enjoy many other types of RP.
Whether or not you believe that is irrelevant.
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@KarmaBum said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
lol you didn’t even quote my entire point???
Sorry, that’s more an issue of replying on my phone.
My entire point is just that I know what social RP is, I have enjoyed it in the past, I do not enjoy it anymore. I do enjoy many other types of RP.
i’m actually curious what the list is! i mean that sincerely. because for me, the types of RP are pretty broad categories. like i think of social RP, and then plot RP, and i guess i can put smut/TS/whatevs is a category. but those are the big buckets for me that i can think of.
which comes back to my earlier point of “i think people are just arguing about different definitions”
she/her | playlist
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@bear_necessities idk why she needs you to speak for her but here we are
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@bear_necessities i’m trying to determine how people are defining things. my point with your example was just that it was a specific premise of social RP. i didn’t argue about people disliking very specific types of social RP. the same way people will dislike very specific types of plot.
i am asking what other types of RP she enjoys because i want to know how people are defining what is and isn’t social RP. i wasn’t asking what types of RP she dislikes, i’m asking what types of RP she likes. because i think for me and some others, social RP is largely the vast majority of RP that isn’t super directly plot RP. and if that’s not the case for others, then this is an argument about semantics. i’m asking what people think of as “types of RP” that aren’t plot and social. not specific scenarios, but overall types.
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I also don’t like movie night scenes but that’s just conceptual because it is inherently uninteractive to me to rp about watching a thing. RP that took place AFTER a movie night with a big dumb pillow fight or that interrupted a movie night with rocket launchers would be fine.
I can think of several ways to make mail sorting impactful or fun especially if there’s a war on.
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@sao said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
that interrupted a movie night with rocket launchers would be fine.
That is not social RP to me. I would do that. So I guess there’s my definition
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@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
i wasn’t asking what types of RP she dislikes
Thank you for clarifying, as I also read it that way, and was like… damn, I tried to explain that it just doesn’t hit me as fun, and people were like NO I BELIEVE YOU DO LIKE IT!!!
Alas, all the games where I used to play are no longer open to grab my default RP prefs, but they generally went something like:
- YES - Action, adventure, travel, cool scenery (and then generally something theme-specific, like “dark magic” or “rebel alliances” or something)
- NO - Slice of life
Specific examples?
- Always enjoy playing weird NPCs for story purposes, so currently enjoying storytelling with some friends; historically enjoyed lots of scenes on GH where I got to play the weird creatures.
- The whole zombie arc on Crimson Compass.
- On Horror2 where we used the holy water in the stupidest possible way, which I think was just a 2-3 scene arc?
- The training montage on LA (even though I wasn’t actually in that scene).
- When my character exploded himself as a weyrling on HT.
- “Travel” scenes are always fun for me, especially travel to a surreal or impossible place. Preference for me is as a storyteller, but I’m down to be along for the ride.
Hopefully, this helps.
p.s. r u fr rn?
p.p.s. Double-edit to add… as I’m rereading the past few go-rounds…
I am not trying to sell this to anyone as a better or even good way to be. I wish I could still enjoy playing pick-up scenes the way I used to. I’ve spent at least a year trying to find that old oomph, and it just is not there.
If anything, I do not wish for others to fall off the same way that I have. So take my story as a warning, for I do not play right now, and that is not what I would wish for the rest of y’all.
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@Roz for what it’s worth I was attempting to show you my definition of.social RP by providing an example of what I consider to be social RP.
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@KarmaBum said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
i wasn’t asking what types of RP she dislikes
Thank you for clarifying, as I also read it that way, and was like… damn, I tried to explain that it just doesn’t hit me as fun, and people were like NO I BELIEVE YOU DO LIKE IT!!!
what i really meant is that — i think social RP is a fairly broad category, and it’s moreso that i think there’s gonna be stuff under discussion here that myself and some others are going to categorize as social RP. so it’s more just like. “i don’t believe people hate all social RP ever because i think the category is broader than they’re suggesting”
- YES - Action, adventure, travel, cool scenery (and then generally something theme-specific, like “dark magic” or “rebel alliances” or something)
- NO - Slice of life
i’d count a lot of “travel” and “cool scenery” stuff as being social!
and slice of life is another hugely broad category for me tbh. like in talking about fiction in various forms, it’ll get applied to everything from “high schoolers getting into comedy hijinks that’s entirely fluff” to “following a family’s life in the aftermath of a serious loss as they deal with the process of grief.” so again, it may just be a question of definition
- Always enjoy playing weird NPCs for story purposes, so currently enjoying storytelling with some friends; historically enjoyed lots of scenes on GH where I got to play the weird creatures.
- The whole zombie arc on Crimson Compass.
- On Horror2 where we used the holy water in the stupidest possible way, which I think was just a 2-3 scene arc?
- The training montage on LA (even though I wasn’t actually in that scene).
- When my character exploded himself as a weyrling on HT.
- “Travel” scenes are always fun for me, especially travel to a surreal or impossible place. Preference for me is as a storyteller, but I’m down to be along for the ride.
some of these i just don’t have enough context for cause it’s just referencing events on games i’m not familiar with. but stuff like training scenes, travel scenes, etc.? those are social to me. hijinks with items just for fun is social to me.
playing NPCs, doing a zombie plot arc (i say just from assumption without context), etc., sounds like it’d just all fall into the ‘plot RP’ bucket for me
Hopefully, this helps.
i do legitimately appreciate you writing it out, thank you
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I tend to be okay with “just talking” social RP if the characters involved are engaging enough. When I think of BaRP, I tend to think of more “primarily talking” social scenes. If that’s all I had access too would be sad after awhile though.
I think for some (maybe most?) people that may also include what I would count as more actiony type of social RP (playing a game/researching/building something) but I think that’s because I kind of like rolling dice too. I would put using abilities or little one-shot exploration stuff that isn’t really GMed and isn’t tied to a metaplot thing as mostly social too. But I can be perfectly happy with that for a long time. I’m not sure if that counts as slice of life (it certainly could, depending on the context!) or not. And then for some people dice rolling breaks immersion if it’s not important enough or it really stresses them out OOCly, or it is totally possible for someone to be a colossal showboating ass with dice rolls OOC too which isn’t super fun except to them).
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@Faraday said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
Are people trying and failing to run live scenes? If so, why? Perhaps there are tools to help.
I’m gonna just take a guess…
Scheduling is a pain and if you’re doing it through messages that somebody might take a day to answer the proposed date can roll past before you’ve heard back from everyone that it’s good.
With asynch on the game a player is more likely to discover and interact with players whose habitual online-times don’t match their own. This creates RP groups with greater than usual scheduling conflicts. And it meaans that timing-incompatibility problems that you’d otherwise never even know about become evident on an Ares game. Of course, you also wouldn’t know about the player and characters either.
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@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
i think for me and some others, social RP is largely the vast majority of RP that isn’t super directly plot RP. and if that’s not the case for others, then this is an argument about semantics.
Yes, I think that this is absolutely a semantic difference in definitions. Since there is no one true universal definition of “social RP”, everyone’s going to come at it with their own personal definition. So it is entirely plausible that some people will say “all social RP is boring” based on their definition of social RP.
Personally, I don’t think RP fits neatly into boxes like “social”, “plot”, etc. for reasons that folks have described already. It’s a more nuanced dial. But if I were forced to define “social RP” it would be smalltalk / slice of life where it’s only about the social aspect and nothing else interesting and/or plot-related happens. I generally don’t like that. I’m not here for Life Simulator. I want a little drama or adventure.
I’m not saying I’ll never do social RP, but it’s not something I particularly enjoy.
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To me, Bar RP is “let’s just throw our characters somewhere and socialize about whatever”.
Social RP can be Bar RP but it can also be picking up a scene with these intentions:
- building/furthering a relationship between PCs
- discussing plot
- sharing plot or other activity happening in the game
- doing an activity together to help raise stats (like the mentioned training scene)
- meeting a PC I haven’t met yet
Etc.
The difference is intent. “Let’s just see what happens” vs “Let’s have our characters gossip about NPC X.”
All Bar RP is social RP but not all social RP is Bar RP.
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@catzilla said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
All Bar RP is social RP but not all social RP is Bar RP.
I still want to make a game with a single IC grid square: The Bar.
All RP is Bar RP. The only plot is The Bar.
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@catzilla Where does interrupting a totally innocent demon while he is trying to enjoy his succulent Chinese meal in the comfort of his penthouse apartment come on your scale?
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I’ve thought up a new pacing style:
Tedium game pacing. The MU will be connected to a generic incremental idle game (like Cookie Clicker), and each player will be given a number of pose tokens. Each pose will cost a number of tokens based on length, and if you run out of tokens, you must play the idle game to generate more tokens, which can also be spent to make the idle game work faster. Scenes will progress at a speed decided by the various players progression in the idle game generating the tokens.
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