The 3-Month Players
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@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:
te core players)There are plenty of successful TV shows that avoid the Game of Thrones style of knocking off main characters left and right.
There is no one-size-fits-all game.
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.
It’s like playing a video game where you only get one life and then you have to start all over. You will be very careful in that video game to try to stay alive with your one life but if you have three lives he will be less careful and less invested. If you have infinite lives and lose nothing when you die the game becomes less fun because you can just rush headlong in without needing to think or plan.
Knowing that death doesn’t matter or that you are not going to die unless you choose to means you will invest less energy and effort into your character. It’s less challenging if you aren’t afraid of death.
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@RedRocket said in The 3-Month Players:
@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:
te core players)There are plenty of successful TV shows that avoid the Game of Thrones style of knocking off main characters left and right.
There is no one-size-fits-all game.
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.
It’s like playing a video game where you only get one life and then you have to start all over. You will be very careful in that video game to try to stay alive with your one life but if you have three lives he will be less careful and less invested. If you have infinite lives and lose nothing when you die the game becomes less fun because you can just rush headlong in without needing to think or plan.
Knowing that death doesn’t matter or that you are not going to die unless you choose to means you will invest less energy and effort into your character. It’s less challenging if you aren’t afraid of death.
Game of Thrones’ willingness to kill its characters helps to set the overall tone of the piece, but people don’t watch a show just because they’re scared of characters dying; they watch a show because the show is interesting and engaging to them on some level. There are plenty of hugely successful pieces of media that had little to no threat of repeated character death.
Playing video games is also an entirely different experience from watching film or roleplaying a game. These are simply not the same things.
Some people will be more engaged in a MU* where the threat of character death is prominent. Others will hate it. It’s a really weird generality to try and make universal. For many people, knowing that your character could die at any moment will mean they’ll invest less in their character; after all, what’s the point if they can lose all that effort in a moment’s whim?
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@Roz said in The 3-Month Players:
For many people, knowing that your character could die at any moment will mean they’ll invest less in their character; after all, what’s the point if they can lose all that effort in a moment’s whim?
That’s why every DM faction had a safe zone. You could log in every day and play all day long in the forest or the reclaimed suburban sprawl next to Forest and never leave the protection of the werewolf zone.
If you wanted to be a boring person who stays home and does laundry while occasionally banging your werewolf boyfriend in his crinos form you were able to do that.
That’s why I’m saying Dark Metal was a very well designed game. It had something for every kind of player. Modern games lack that variety. The range of danger that you could be in at any moment is much more limited and more vaguely defined.
Most games don’t have a safe zone for their factions that is larger than one building or a few rooms deep in an isolated location.
One of the things that Dark Metal did properly was creating an entire distinct environment for each faction that you could play in and never run out of things to do ICly.
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@Pavel said in The 3-Month Players:
@KarmaBum The same thing we RP every night! Sex and bar-related things!
The kind of people who log in to a world of darkness game just to sit in a bar and make small talk are baffling to me.
Just go join a discord or a forum.
The same thing is true of people who hang out in bars just to hook up for TS. Why are you on a roleplay game with a complicated combat and stat system when you could just go to one of many games where you can literally be anything and bang anything you can imagine.
Both of these kinds of players seem to be achieving their goal only with many extra steps getting in the way.
I can’t imagine it’s very satisfying having to work for hours to set up a happy conclusion to your encounters because of the fact you’re playing the roleplay game instead of a game or chat room that is intended for the exact goal you are striving for and allows you to get directly to the point.
I think my question would be, why are you making it harder on yourself when there are much better options?
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@RedRocket said in The 3-Month Players:
@Roz said in The 3-Month Players:
For many people, knowing that your character could die at any moment will mean they’ll invest less in their character; after all, what’s the point if they can lose all that effort in a moment’s whim?
That’s why every DM faction had a safe zone. You could log in every day and play all day long in the forest or the reclaimed suburban sprawl next to Forest and never leave the protection of the werewolf zone.
If you wanted to be a boring person who stays home and does laundry while occasionally banging your werewolf boyfriend in his crinos form you were able to do that.
That’s why I’m saying Dark Metal was a very well designed game. It had something for every kind of player. Modern games lack that variety. The range of danger that you could be in at any moment is much more limited and more vaguely defined.
Most games don’t have a safe zone for their factions that is larger than one building or a few rooms deep in an isolated location.
One of the things that Dark Metal did properly was creating an entire distinct environment for each faction that you could play in and never run out of things to do ICly.
Lol these goalposts are moving like crazy. I wasn’t commenting on Dark Metal, which I have zero knowledge of. I was commenting on the broad generalizations of “every RPer responds to this situation in the exact same way and values the exact same things” that were in the specific post I responded to.
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@RedRocket said in The 3-Month Players:
The kind of people who log in to a world of darkness game just to sit in a bar and make small talk are baffling to me.
Just go join a discord or a forum.
The same thing is true of people who hang out in bars just to hook up for TS. Why are you on a roleplay game with a complicated combat and stat system when you could just go to one of many games where you can literally be anything and bang anything you can imagine.
If they’re having fun and not harming anyone, is that a problem?
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@Jumpscare
Yes, they are kind of a problem. It’s like if everybody gathered for a soccer game but several other players decided that instead of playing soccer they were going to fly kites.Sure, they aren’t actively hurting anything by standing in the middle of the field flying kites while people try to play soccer around them but it’s very rude and a waste of everyone’s time who came to see a soccer match.
It goes back to the idea that actions should have consequences and events should have a lingering effect on the story. If you’re just there to sit in a bar and chat like a chat bot with no intentions of ever become involved in anything deeper or more complicated than smacking your imaginary meat bits together, you are purposefully wasting people’s time and offering nothing in return.
Limiting your RP to pointless bar chatter or one-night stands for your own gratification is selfish and bad for the life of the game.
I thank you it’s a matter of playing a game to build a story with someone else versus being in a game for other people to entertain you.
If your RP is so limited that you won’t leave the bar or engage in anything deeper than a vagina, then you’re not there to forge a cooperative story. You are there to have people cater to your desires until you get your fix of attention and log off. It’s practically narcissistic.
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@Tapewyrm said in The 3-Month Players:
Serious question, not just trying to contradict you.
I mean, you’re not contradicting me because you’re not commenting on my actual point. Ignore the metaphor and focus on the actual point I said:
@Pavel said in The 3-Month Players:
So the social RP isn’t just acceptable, it’s required to make the plot RP have any kind of investment.
There needs to be both.
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.
Event RP tells you how characters are, social RP gives a chance to explain why.
ETA: Ultimately, there’s no one size fits all approach to this. I certainly don’t want to play on any game that @RedRocket is describing, nor do I want to play on Cosy Safe Friends Time MU. So what I believe to be important isn’t going to be a perfect fit for what anyone else is going to believe.
That’s why we had games like Dark Metal, but also games like Shang, or games like Firan, or games like What We Do In The Shadows of Vienna By Night, or whatever the heck else.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
I would argue that games need “stakes” for investment, and a game that doesn’t have a way to keep tension and suspense is at risk for stagnation.
However, character death and the risk thereof is only one kind of stake. One that will appeal to a specific subset of the gaming population but not everyone. More, I suspect it’s a stake that has fallen out of style for a reason. What was appealing when the playerbase was largely teen and twenties students who could be on a lot, at weird hours, and whip up three characters like they were nothing may not have the same appeal to 40+ players who are trying to fit in a couple of hours for a scene a couple of times a week between a full time job, full time family, and other friends and hobbies. For a lot more of us, “I could die at any moment” is just less of an enticement at this stage. Maybe because we’re starting to worry about that in our real life!
But I definitely recommend that anyone who thinks there still IS an audience for the hardcore PvP-style of MU* go ahead and make one! More games are good, and having choice helps keep people engaged. Going back to the idea of the three-month player, I think having a wide variety of games in different genres (and subgenres) helps keep the overwhelming surge of people desperate for SOME game down a bit.
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the accepted wisdom used to be that you had to have a decent population of the nightclub people to attract the Serious Stuff people but there are like 10 MUers left so idk if that still holds true
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LOL so do the kind of players who only stick around for 3 months think social RP is evil or want social RP and are these at all the same thing or two totally unrelated questions?
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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.
