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Social/Bar RP
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Almost everybody I know in the MU community is someone I met in social/bar rp, before moving into GM’d events or org/group based rp. Even org/group rp is usually pretty social as well.
Social RP seems like the basic method of how one meets people and finds new people to be friends with. I feel like “bar rp” picks up a lot of smoke as a bad thing though.
Why’s it got such a terrible reputation?
Edited to add: What other kind of rp are people encouraged to offer if not social and nobody can GM a combat/storyline at that time? Is social with friends different from social with strangers?
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fuckit i love some good social/bar rp
without bar rp, i’d have never met @Third-Eye
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Bar RP.
How can I articulate this?
It can sort of be interesting in the way that watching a comfort show is, because it often retreads the same beats for your character, unless someone bounces off of you just right and gives you something really meaty that your character just can’t help but sink their teeth into.
So, yeah, it’s not necessarily a bad thing in its own right.
But fuck, sometimes it feels like rewatching the same season of The Great British Bake-Off. You know how it’ll go, there aren’t stakes, and everyone’s usually on their best behavior.
And Paul Hollywood doesn’t understand cookies, they shouldn’t snap.
This got away from me.
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I think bar RP fell into the ‘good behavior’ because for so many people in the past you had people ignoring the already going ons and throwing big dramatics into the scene or doing the complete opposite of what is going on. Sometimes the disrupting can be fun but it loses its appeal when it doesn’t make sense with what is going on.
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I’m a small minority but because I don’t drink irl I find I just don’t understand fully what one is suppose to do in a bar. I get bored really quickly end end up doing something to shake things up and end up feeling like I’m scene stealing.
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I like Bar/Social RP just fine if there’s something to talk about, which is usually related to the game’s plot.
When it feels like the equivalent of lunch with co-workers I’m not so into it.
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@Snackness This.
I love social RP and I think it’s where a lot of character development and growth can happen but there’s got to be something to talk about beyond ‘hey how’s the weather’.
There’s nothing wrong with those kinds of scenes once in a while either but if it’s the majority that’s (for me personally at least) when social RP starts becoming kind of exhausting
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I’m okay with even mostly social Bar RP as long as there is something to drive the scene. I also like it practically when it facilitates introducing/being introduced to new people.
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@junipersky I don’t drink irl either. I just fake it 'til I make it when it concerns bar RP. >.>
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I don’t mind social fluff scenes if they come with a purpose, I guess? Like if I’m just ‘Bear_Necessities sips beer and laughs’ over and over, it’s going to get real boring real fast. I like to keep a scene moving, add in some humor or hijinks, and have a good time. Bonus points if I get to talk about plot or if the social fluff somehow manages to move plot along!
My PROBLEM comes when that’s all you can do on a game. Just social fluff scenes over and over and over and over and over.
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@imstillhere said in Social/Bar RP:
Why’s it got such a terrible reputation?
In and of itself there’s nothing wrong with social RP, it is the backbone of many other forms of RP. However, if all a game or a person offers is bar RP then it’s sort of like living a life where hanging out at a coffee shop is all you do, with no work or family or narrative to your life.
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Oddly (or not) people tend to find BaRP more satisfying if you take it out of bars some.
Players are usually some degree of exhausted though, and literally bar-sitting becomes a sort of default.
The effort-to-value of scheduling little regular social events or crowdsourcing them seems to be pretty good. People often get a lot of mileage out of stuff like:
Here in the Old West town of Dry Hump, people do their laundry at the stream on Wednesdays, and chat.
It’s late June and raspberries are ripening on the mountains to the east of Dry Hump! Go berry picking with your friends. Anybody who wants to can PrP an encounter with a bear.
On Sundays (nnnn time RL) Reverend Custard is preachin’ up a storm at the Dry Hump Church of the Rolling Hole, and there’s a pot-luck lunch after.
And so on.
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@tsar said in Social/Bar RP:
fuckit i love some good social/bar rp
without bar rp, i’d have never met @Third-Eye
That glorious, glorious scene where we randomly posed somewhat incorrect things about our roster backgrounds because we only knew theme spottily, but were very happy to see another character over 30 on the grid.
Which actually is kinda the point to me, random social RP is where I meet new RPers a lot of the time. And sometimes it’s stilted and banal because it’s not someone you play off of well, other times it’s just fine or really surprisingly fun. It’s what I bring to it, to me, but I also just leave scenes I’m not engaged with pretty quickly. A just fine 1.5 hour scene easily becomes a banal 3 hour scene, but idk nobody’s holding me hostage in a MU bar.
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@imstillhere said in Social/Bar RP:
Why’s it got such a terrible reputation?
Like I’ve said elsewhere, I hate bar RP because it’s always small talk with people who don’t know how to do small talk and therefore give off every vibe that they want you to go away.
Edited to add: What other kind of rp are people encouraged to offer if not social and nobody can GM a combat/storyline at that time? Is social with friends different from social with strangers?
Social is fine. Just have a goal in mind instead of defaulting to wallflower mode.
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I still feel like I did here:
https://brandmuday.mythicus.net/topic/53/mu-peeves-thread/1576?_=1679150982770
I don’t want to RP the same thing over and over, even “being social.” It hits the same nerve as sex scenes for the sake of sex scenes or hyper-detailed combat: this takes too long and is doing nothing to enhance the story, let’s FTB.
We need to be exploring something - whether that’s an action, a character aspect, or just something we haven’t RPed 10,000 times before - or I’m not interested and will wander off, bye~!
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@KarmaBum Yeah, you said it so well in that post but I was too lazy to link it.
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I think social RP got a reputation because of the sandboxy games where a lot of people only ever had social RP to do.
But taken for what it is, as a way to develop bonds between PCs for team building in later plot, it’s great.
Just have to do it with a purpose, and not just for its own sake.
Think of yourself as a TV show writer. Why is this scene happening? How can I use it?
Be proactive, even in the midnight Tommy’s run.
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@Polk Not everyone wants a goal/purpose for their social scene. Social scenes can be a destressor after a big plot thing and they just want to do something that is light with no goal beyond chatting. I would more say check what the people in the scene want. Do they want some purpose for the scene besides something light with no end goal? Do they want to use it as a means to get involved in plot or to learn about going ons related to plots? Going in a social scene with a goal/purpose can feel like you’re just using the person for the stuff they can give.
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@icanbeyourmuse Let me clarify. The goal can be for yourself, developing your character.
It’s very easy, as a plot-oriented person, to forget about what your character might do in downtime. Social scenes can help you expose that, which can help you expand and nuance how your entire character plays.
And the more you do that it’s easier to roll out of bed and do a destressor scene.
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@icanbeyourmuse said in Social/Bar RP:
@Polk Not everyone wants a goal/purpose for their social scene. Social scenes can be a destressor after a big plot thing and they just want to do something that is light with no goal beyond chatting.
“De-stressing after a big plot thing by chatting” can absolutely be a goal. You’re trying to lessen the stress your character is feeling or the stress between characters. “Having two (or more) characters meet who might make good plot later” can be a goal worthy of a scene. Even “finding out more about each others’ characters” can be a goal worthy of a scene. But “spending a couple of hours RPing about nothing in particular” usually isn’t worth a scene, in my opinion.
