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Asking for RP
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I really am feeling like the majority of the issue ties to ‘I want to RP but can’t think of the details so I won’t ask’ which I hadn’t really considered before.
I’ve tried pretty hard over the past week to just do the thing and ask people to play, which I know isn’t always that easy for people, but it’s worked out pretty well for me I think.
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My main RP impediment is time. Not that I don’t have time for RP, but people often want hours long scenes, whereas I’d much prefer 30-45 minutes of solid RP than three hours of drek.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
@Pavel said in Asking for RP:
whereas I’d much prefer 30-45 minutes of solid RP than three hours of drek.
It takes me like 10 minutes to write a pose, so 30-45 minutes of solid RP is like me making 2 or 3 poses.
I envy people who have the creativity and writing skill to crank out a good pose faster than that.
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It also depends on the game. If it’s a game where I know a lot of people, have RPed with them before, I am practically brazen. If it’s a game where there’s some kind of primary established playgroup and I’m outside of it, I’ll throw out feelers, I’ll ask people, but it’s more fatiguing, and at a certain point I feel that “if people were interested, they’d say something” and then I generally just fade out entirely from the game because that usually doesn’t happen; people like to play within their groups and there’s nothing wrong with that, unless you’re not in the group and you want to play.
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@Sammich said in Asking for RP:
@Pavel said in Asking for RP:
whereas I’d much prefer 30-45 minutes of solid RP than three hours of drek.
It takes me like 10 minutes to write a pose, so 30-45 minutes of solid RP is like me making 2 or 3 poses.
I envy people who have the creativity and writing skill to crank out a good pose faster than that.
Sometimes a scene can just be 2-3 poses each.
This actually ties into the topic in a roundabout way because a lot of people seem very reticent to have quick, short, to-the-point scenes, and I think it’s because it takes so long to work yourself up to asking, then getting a response, then setting the scene, that if it’s over too quickly it triggers the Sunk Cost Fallacy (i.e. ‘I put X amount of effort into this, it should last at least Y amount of time’). Except a short scene, in my experience, can be so satisfying, too.
I dunno. Maybe I’m weird. I like short scenes. I also think if more people were willing to engage in short scenes, we’d have broader networks of character interaction in games and things would be less cliquish, because people wouldn’t feel like ‘that person never interacts with anyone but them’ when the truth is they’re probably just keeping to their friends because RPing takes so much time.
But that’s a rabbit hole.
In Occam I trust.
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Double post because: this is why I enjoy playing NPCs a lot, too. There’s no expectation of ‘are we gonna bang?’ ‘are we gonna form a deep connection?’ ‘are we gonna… whatever?’
If I’m playing an NPC, the scene is the point, not whatever is behind it, and people will often go straight to it, because they want that nugget of plot or whatever out of it, and the scenes can move things forward in a way that a PC holding plot elements often can’t because the scenes turn into something people are far more invested in.
(This idea feels a little less worked out than the previous, but I still think it has merit. But again: rabbit hole.)
In Occam I trust.
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@Coin said in Asking for RP:
I also think if more people were willing to engage in short scenes, we’d have broader networks of character interaction in games and things would be less cliquish, because people wouldn’t feel like ‘that person never interacts with anyone but them’ when the truth is they’re probably just keeping to their friends because RPing takes so much time.
+1 for this. So many times I feel like a scene has run its course and it would be better to stop and do something else, but it feels rude to do so. Like the expectation is once you start a scene you’re locked in until you have to log off.
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One thing I appreciate about Ares is that if we’re going to maintain the idea that scenes must have a minimum length to be valid, then async posing at least allows you to spread yourself to more than one person at a time.
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@Faraday said in Asking for RP:
@Coin said in Asking for RP:
I also think if more people were willing to engage in short scenes, we’d have broader networks of character interaction in games and things would be less cliquish, because people wouldn’t feel like ‘that person never interacts with anyone but them’ when the truth is they’re probably just keeping to their friends because RPing takes so much time.
+1 for this. So many times I feel like a scene has run its course and it would be better to stop and do something else, but it feels rude to do so. Like the expectation is once you start a scene you’re locked in until you have to log off.
Amen.
I’ve just started playing somewhat energetic characters who announce when they’re bored and leave to do other things. Lifesaver.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
My characters suddenly have somewhere to be all the time. Oops, gotta get back to work bye!
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@Pavel said in Asking for RP:
I’ve just started playing somewhat energetic characters who announce when they’re bored and leave to do other things. Lifesaver.
@farfalla said in Asking for RP:
My characters suddenly have somewhere to be all the time. Oops, gotta get back to work bye!
Collectively - does this actually work? It’s a convenient IC excuse to get out of a scene, but in my experience people still get bent out of shape if you stop RPing with them and go RP with someone else instead. Like: “Oh so I’m not good enough to hold your attention?” (never so directly of course)
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@Coin said in Asking for RP:
Double post because: this is why I enjoy playing NPCs a lot, too. There’s no expectation of ‘are we gonna bang?’ ‘are we gonna form a deep connection?’ ‘are we gonna… whatever?’
If I’m playing an NPC, the scene is the point, not whatever is behind it, and people will often go straight to it, because they want that nugget of plot or whatever out of it, and the scenes can move things forward in a way that a PC holding plot elements often can’t because the scenes turn into something people are far more invested in.
(This idea feels a little less worked out than the previous, but I still think it has merit. But again: rabbit hole.)
I had not posted in this thread up to now because my experience seemed so different from others, but this has clued me in a bit I think to why.
I do a lot of asking for RP in a MU* but I can’t recall ever being rejected except based on timing, and usually that would result in scheduling the session for the future. I would guess that more than half of my scenes were scheduled hours or days in advance. I’ve always had an idea what the scene was about if I am asking, and it’s almost always for the purpose of moving a story along. I don’t necessarily dislike slice of life RP but I would get enough of it in scenes people invited me to. That’s probably because I tend to play PCs for whom that sort of RP is best kept at a minimum for impact.
I think this is because I’ve been the forever-GM since middle school. Even when playing a PC I see them more as a vehicle for story and drama than a character that is personal to me that I am inhabiting. I’ll go just as deep into a character exploration as anyone but it’s got to feel to me like doing so is appropriate to the drama of the character or the beats of a story. I don’t think this looks very different from the outside but when I’ve explained this approach to others I’ve been universally told it’s different from their own way of being, that seems much more about living through their characters.
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@GF said in Asking for RP:
One thing I appreciate about Ares is that if we’re going to maintain the idea that scenes must have a minimum length to be valid, then async posing at least allows you to spread yourself to more than one person at a time.
The flipside of this (and I
Ares all day every day) is that it can make it real hard to END a scene, especially if it’s not a scene that started with a goal or purpose. The default assumption that someone will “pose out” when they need to leave a scene seems to be sliding toward “we’ll pause the scene and pickup tomorrow.” Which is great if the scene has some kind of mileage left in it, but if we’re really just :takes a drink and laughs at the conversation… I’m good to wrap, thanks.I stopped going to even pre-planned social events on one game 'cause I don’t like being trapped in the equivalent of Bar RP for three days.
@shit-piss-love said in Asking for RP:
Even when playing a PC I see them more as a vehicle for story and drama than a character that is personal to me that I am inhabiting. I’ll go just as deep into a character exploration as anyone but it’s got to feel to me like doing so is appropriate to the drama of the character or the beats of a story.
I think this is what I mean when I say my RP has to have a purpose. That doesn’t always have to be metaplot-related. It could be a strictly social purpose, but the purpose still has to be there.
Slice-of-life is charming, but once I finished my slice, I’m not just gonna sit here licking the plate endlessly. I need more to do.
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@Faraday said in Asking for RP:
@farfalla said in Asking for RP:
My characters suddenly have somewhere to be all the time. Oops, gotta get back to work bye!
Collectively - does this actually work? It’s a convenient IC excuse to get out of a scene, but in my experience people still get bent out of shape if you stop RPing with them and go RP with someone else instead. Like: “Oh so I’m not good enough to hold your attention?” (never so directly of course)
I don’t think that “this works without upsetting or offending anyone” is really a bar we can hold to on MU*s. As you said, there are always people who will get bent out of shape at the idea that someone doesn’t want to RP with them. I unfortunately don’t think that’s avoidable. If I exit a scene because I’m not having fun and someone wants to get offended at it – that’s not a me problem. And it doesn’t mean that exiting a scene when you’re not having fun is bad.
Sometimes, if people get bent out of shape, the answer is to just let them and walk away.
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@Roz Sometimes its not even ‘not having fun’ but just ‘less fun’ because a scene has reached a very natural stopping point, but some need/expectation to ‘keep on RPing because I’ll still be around’ just causes people to linger.
I’m generally a fan of just letting a scene come to an end rather than force it to continue for the sake of more playing – even if afterwards I’m sometimes like, hmm, I want to keep playing, maybe I shouldn’t have left!
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I notice this far less when there’s usually an unspoken agreement between the players that the point of the scene has come to a close.
I understand that doesn’t always happen, but a good deal of players seem to be cognizant of it.
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Yeah, I have been in many very fun and diverting 1.5 hour or even 1 hour scenes that became kinda tedious 3 hour scenes. I do just leave when I’m done now, though I def feel self-conscious about searching for other RP right away. It’s no shade to anyone, pick-up RP just runs its course eventually.
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I just do the same thing I do in real life and say I have somewhere to be. Sometimes that’s even true!
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Man I just pose out and go “Thanks for the RP!”
