The 3-Month Players
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@KarmaBum The same thing we RP every night! Sex and bar-related things!
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This is probably my cynicism talking, but the games that keep a sizeable number of players post-Bubble usually have one of two things:
- Inventory/econ/XP/gimme shiny gamified rewards that tickle the MMO brain.
- Sex as a basic premise.
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@Hobbie That maybe so, but what is a “sizeable population” and why is that our default metric for success? I’d much rather play on a game with two dozen committed, skilled writers who are enjoying themselves with an event every other week than a high-octane game of five hundred people all trying to compete in who can come up with the most confusing name for their genitals.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
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@KarmaBum said in The 3-Month Players:
@Ominous this idea sounds neat but what will people RP?
Blatantly ripping off @Roadspike 's template:
Woo the crown prince of the kingdom with wits, wiles, or wyrdings in this fantasy setting. Characters will be trying to find out what they can about the prince, use that to their advantage, and try to thwart the efforts of others in getting closer to the prince. They will attend balls, gossip amongst themselves, participate in duels, attend events to showcase their brilliance to the royal family, and plot against one another.
Pretty Princess Simulator is a game of romantic intrigue and politicking in a fantasy renaissance setting. Players might be eligible noblewomen trying to win the future queenship, the family members of those noblewomen working to help them, servants of those noblewomen or of the royal palace, or a small cadre of the prince’s friends, tutors, and personal staff who hold the secrets to the prince’s heart.
All characters will belong to one of the many noble families of the kingdom or their servants. You will be endeavoring to get your one of the eligible noblewomen in your house selected as the bride to the crown prince or you will be one of the prince’s inner circle working to achieve a personal secret agenda. The first month will be the arrival of the eligible noblewomen to the royal palace leading up to the crown prince’s debut. The next few months will be filled with varying events to attend and make oneself known, leading up to the crown prince’s final selection and marriage.
But yeah probably a lot of BarP. Unless the royal family goes full reality show and has the eligible noblewomen participating in ridiculous contests. And, since this idea started as a parody of L&L, that might actually be the route to go in.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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@Pavel if I have to read seven hundred different linguistic interpretations of “globes” again it’ll be too soon.
Honestly in regards to “sizeable” I was thinking something like a few dozen. I wouldn’t call it a metric of “success” so much as “a lot of people passed the three-month mark”. Quantifying success objectively is risky territory in this highly subjective hobby.
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@KarmaBum Eh. I know how it is. You can run an event every hour, 24 hours a day, and some people will still only do BarP for all their interactions while complaining that there is nothing to do.
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@Ominous I realize we’re talking about a game that doesn’t exist. And I’m not saying it’s a bad thing for staff to facilitate social fluff.
Just that 4/5 of these sound like the L&L equivalent of Bar RP: “attend balls, gossip amongst themselves, participate in duels, attend events to showcase their brilliance to the royal family, and plot against one another”
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I wonder how players would respond to a game where the entire grid was just a bar, and no options for anything else. Just a weird bar full of weird characters floating in a void in time and space.
All plot through BarP. All BarP in plot locales.
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@MisterBoring Last Call of Cthulhu
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@KarmaBum That’s kind of the entirety of what lords & ladies involves. If you watch Bridgerton, that’s what they do and not much more. The moment the lords and ladies start going out on missions to slay dragons, exorcise bad spirits from villages, quest for magic swords, etc, you’re doing the fantasy adventure genre instead of L&L, and the adventurers just happen to be nobility. About the only thing you can add to L&L that’s crunchy would be heavier political intrigue, army logistics, economic systems, etc, but that would require a game longer than the short time frame being aimed for. I guess one could do L&L in the midst of a very short war that has already started, but I am not sure how to do that as recurring seasons. It’s going to get odd that the wars these nobles have only seem to only last 3 to 6 months.
Or maybe that’s how they do things in that setting. Short wars to settle disputes. I guess that could work.
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@Ominous said in The 3-Month Players:
Short wars to settle disputes. I guess that could work.
What if wars weren’t fought with armies but with duels? The Lords and Ladies involved appoint a champion and they fight a quick single combat. The monarch that doles out the feudal nations witnesses the duel and the winner gets the spoils.
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@MisterBoring Duels were called out as being BarP, and we are trying to answer the question of what people will RP that isn’t BarP.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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@Ominous Duels were the one thing on the list that didn’t strike me as “Bar RP” (social fluff).
attend balls
gossip amongst themselves
participate in duels
attend events to showcase their brilliance to the royal family
and plot against one anotherJust strikes me as more of a case in point as to how difficult it can be to actually come up with what will people DO.
I think we’re talking about different things at this point. What counts as Bar RP in an L&L setting is not the discussion I was trying to have.
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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.
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I also like “the bubble.” It was one of the reasons I became really engaged in Concordia, for example. Coming up with Alistair’s cat was a happy bonus to that. That cat was a built-in bubble for me, because I could just make up vignettes/short stories about him. >.>
As to the “burst bubble” status, so to speak? I don’t think I could even opine upon this, to be honest, and I’d be preaching to the choir and/or broken-recording what’s already been said in this thread. The people that will stay, will stay, and for their own reasons: plot involvement, friends they enjoy IC and OOC interactions with, bar rp, and so on.
Personally, I don’t think a game should “entice” people into playing via anything other than the theme and any game-specific features/rules its runner(s) want to have.
In other words, the game should speak for itself.
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@Ominous What if they were duels to the death and always included PCs? Are they BarP then?
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@MisterBoring I have no idea. I don’t consider duels to be BarP.
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@Ominous said in The 3-Month Players:
@MisterBoring I have no idea. I don’t consider duels to be BarP.
I don’t think anyone does? Folks are reacting to @KarmaBum who literally said: “Just that 4/5 of these sound like the L&L equivalent of Bar RP”. The 1/5 that didn’t was the duels.
That aside, I think it’s important to consider a distinction between social RP, RP that happens to take place in a bar, and BarRP. They are not really the same.
Social RP can include deep, meaningful relationships (not just romantic) between characters; backstabbing plots; high drama; fallout from other plot/action scenes, etc.
RP in bars can be exciting. A bar fight, confrontation, breakup, backstabbing plots, etc.
“BarRP” is usually used for time-filling “fluff” RP that’s just filling space because the players have nothing better to do. It’s the MU equivalent of small-talk. There’s nothing wrong with it, but if that’s all you ever do it can feel unfulfilling.
L&L games aren’t really my thing, but on the surface it seems like most of the balls/plots/drama would fall more on the social end than the BarRP end. YMMV of course.
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@Faraday Agreed 100% – what defines BarRP for me is that it’s just two or more characters sitting in a bar making small talk without any purpose behind it, usually because one player asked on a public channel “Hey, does anyone want to RP?” and then another said, “Sure! Meet you at That Bar” without having any further idea of what they wanted to do.
I think that characters going to a bar to try and show off their fan-language skills and send increasingly-elaborate messages with them could be fascinating, as could meeting in a salon to have piano-forte duels, as could being presented at court (although there would have to be some chance for interactivity to that one, or it could get seriously boring).
Add in to this meeting in salons to make and break alliances between the prospected prince(sse)s, having scuffles between commoner supporters, duels of honor and dishonor, accusations of pre-marital hanky-panky, trips to the seamstress that are more like putting on a suit of armor for battle, and carriage races or chases… there’s definitely a whole lot that could be done with a Bridgerton-ish setting (especially if there was also the opportunity to make a match with a lesser noble if you fail hard at wooing the Heir).
@Ominous As for the description “in my style,” I think you could do that even more directly:
The Heir of Kingdomname needs a match! Each Season will be filled with grasping members of the high and low nobility, all struggling to stand out among the crowd and nab themselves a crown through demonstration of their clear social quality.
Pretty Princess Simulator is a humorous game of dynastic intrigue and politicking in a fantasy renaissance setting. Players will portray eligible nobles trying to win a future crown, family members of those nobles trying to advance family fortunes, or servants looking to engage in some skullduggery to get ahead.
Staff will provide opportunities for the prospective spouses to meet with the Heir and their intimate circle to learn more about their likes and dislikes, and will guide players through a Season of matchmaking, providing a backdrop on which the characters can create and break alliances as they chase the crown. Once the Heir makes their choices and the Season has completed, there will be a time skip with a new generation of would-be Consorts and a new Heir. The game is intended to poke light-hearted fun at the Lords & Ladies theme, especially shows such as Bridgerton, while still being a high-quality example of such entertainment.
