Asking for RP
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@bear_necessities yeah my dudes I will offer on chan a lot (not just a rp chan but smaller group ones like org/family/faction) or if it is a game with a grid hang out in public. Once I scene with people a few times and they seem to dig it I will page. On my female pcs I will page and channel without much thought! It is interesting to think about.
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And now I am just boggled realizing that apparently I do actually care about whether people perceive my reaching out on a male pc to be TS hounding despite that most of my male pcs are unlikely to be in those situations either (they trend towards monogamous personally even if their partner is not). Whereas my female pcs who are much more likely to engage in that play and ICly happy to get into pants or skirts or overalls without much restriction like I don’t even think about that perception when asking. WTF is that even.
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@mietze I really do think it’s internal perception because we’ve probably both been there getting dudes paging you trying to get in your pants and regardless of whether or not that’s your purpose for paging you don’t want to be perceived that way???
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@mietze said in Asking for RP:
WTF is that even.
This thread is FULL of the self-conscious nuttiness we invent in our heads. This is just one more.
If it matters… I’ve been sex-pested way more while playing guys than girls over the years. I’m more likely to look sideways at a random page from a female PC to my male PC than from a male PC to my female PC.
This is probably a product of playing Pern, where finding an unclaimed dong on the grid was like finding a gd leprechaun.
On Dragon Wings · https://pern.gaslightswitch.com · pern.gaslightswitch.com port 4201
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I almost exclusively play female characters (because I don’t think I’m good at writing men), and I’m never worried that male PCs that are reaching out for RP are TS-hounding.
Unless that person has been inappropriate in public or to me before, that has not once been a concern of mine.
There are so many horror stories of men behaving badly in MU*ing but I really believe those are noisy outliers. Most of the male PCs and male players I play with or have played with are amazing dudes, 10/10.
But when the sexpests show up, boy, I am ready with that smoke.
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@KarmaBum said in Asking for RP:
This is probably a product of playing Pern, where finding an unclaimed dong on the grid was like finding a gd leprechaun.
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There’s also a difference between:
“we should rp sometimes”
“hey, i’d really like to rp with you!”
“we should totally rp!”
“let’s rp some time!”
… and …
“Hey. Would you like a scene right now?”
“Are you up for RP about [topic]?”
“We have this thing to talk about, I’ll start a scene!”
These are two fundamentally different ways of asking for RP. I am MUCH MORE LIKELY to register the former from friends I am close to than from strangers, whereas the latter always catches my attention, regardless of who says it, because it’s precise and promises an actual outcome.
I don’t count “we should RP sometime” from strangers as ‘asking me for RP’, because it’s not asking me for RP, it’s stating a nebulous desire.
Mind you, I do this too, I am 100% guilty of paging someone with “we should totally scene”, but I don’t expect anything from them based on that, and I usually follow it up with an actual request.
Sometimes I don’t because I get distracted or forget, but that’s not the point; the point is what do we actually consider as ‘asking for RP’?
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@Coin said in Asking for RP:
Sometimes I don’t because I get distracted or forget, but that’s not the point; the point is what do we actually consider as ‘asking for RP’?
This is probably going to be massively subjective. I don’t consider me paging someone else to say “we should RP” to be asking for RP, because I’m a much more direct person and will usually say “are you free now/[at X time] to [play thing]?”
But when someone else sends me that request, I do generally read it as an RP request unless they tell me otherwise. My response to “we should RP” is usually “I agree! I’m busy right this second, but are you free on Saturday?” Because, as evidenced in this thread, most MUSHers are terrified of rejection so we should RP is as much as they’re willing to risk, so - if they went to all the trouble to page me - I can at least meet them halfway.
I do really appreciate when people bring their ideas. I’d much rather get a “we should RP about thing X” than “we should RP” request, but one thing at a time.
On Dragon Wings · https://pern.gaslightswitch.com · pern.gaslightswitch.com port 4201
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I almost always say right after we should RP, do you have some good day this week or next week" and arrange it. Just because I know unless I schedule it and literally I have to write things down it will not happen. Plus I’m often in a slightly minority timezone so if I want to catch people during the week I have to plan for it.
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@KarmaBum said in Asking for RP:
if they went to all the trouble to page me - I can at least meet them halfway.
Bless you for this. That is all.
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I definitely feel like I ask for RP more than I get asked, but I think I’ve decided that’s not so big a deal, for me, anymore. I’m not sure. I’ve written before about struggles paging people, and I know that feeling of asking on public channels and getting no replies, but I’m trying to just work on things and get more comfortable with the paging and what not.
I’ve definitely done the whole ‘we should rp!’ thing in the past as a way of asking ‘lets play right now’ though.
There was a time once where a similar topic came up about the difficulties of finding RP back on MSB I think, and some of the reponses were along the lines of:
‘vague rp requests don’t interest me, people need to come up with something to do, so if I see ‘who wants to play’ I won’t respond but if someone says ‘i’ll be at <location> doing <thing> if anyone wants to come along!’ then I might’
I always felt this was a bit odd personally because I’d rather see who’s around for RP and then figure out what to do – if I’m the one asking for RP I’m generally always willing to figure out the what, the where, and even do the set, but I like to know who is gonna be involved before figuring out the details.
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@Livia said in Asking for RP:
‘vague rp requests don’t interest me, people need to come up with something to do, so if I see ‘who wants to play’ I won’t respond but if someone says ‘i’ll be at <location> doing <thing> if anyone wants to come along!’ then I might’
For me it’s not so much the vague requests but the expectation that I come to the table with something if that makes sense? I’ll absolutely volunteer to rp if I’m available but I don’t want to have to come up with the location, set, etc. every single time.
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@bear_necessities said in Asking for RP:
I don’t want to have to come up with the location, set, etc. every single time.
“How often do you [feel like you] do the heavy lifting in a scene” is probably a whole other poll.
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@bear_necessities Absolutely! I get that, and one thing that does make me frown is something that happened just recently. When someone asked me for RP (heh!) and I said sure, then they needed me to come up with the place, the reason, the setting, everything. It’s not that big a deal really, but it did make me frown a little.
But assuming a request of ‘who would like to RP?’ means that the other people need to come up with the details feels like an incorrect expectation to me. I’m more than willing to come up with the scene, I just want to know who’s in so I can work with the available character hooks etc before I plan out what’s going down.
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I sort of wish we could somehow separate ‘scene heavy lifting’ and ‘asking for RP’, in that I know personally I have zero problems coming up with something to do on the fly in like 99% of the situations – it is a Skill, but it is also a skill I know not everyone has. Culturally, we discourage people from paging for RP if they don’t have that ability in a moment, but damn, I have WAY WAY WAY more of a problem asking to RP at all than I do with coming up with scenes/getting things set and moving.
It would be nice of could like normalize “hey I’m happy to RP but I don’t quite have the oomph to set scene today” without it coming across as passive aggressive as it does. Or, sulky, or whatever it is. Because I bet there are people that would ask to RP, and people that would be happy to set if they were asked, and right now there’s no good way to introduce those two groups.
the entity previously known as Sunny
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I’m a lazy fucking coward who only ever asks most people once and is constantly hyper-aware that I may be pulled away by any number of real life landmines.
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I am shy about asking for rp unless I have a concrete reason to do so, in which case i have zero shame. I think it also depends on game culture for me; on Ares, no problem asking on rp requests, while on some other games you have to pm anyone you want a scene with, and that’s kind of nerve-wracking if it’s just a random approach. Still, I’ve pretty much gotten over the anxiety of it and tend to just go for it with varying levels of success. It’s harder on games that have been around a while, because typically, people have long-term rp circles there and I find those are the ones who usually don’t respond.
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I’m not always great at coming up with things to do myself, but I can find a spot and set something ‘generic’ easily enough. I probably came across a bit harsher on ‘not coming up with things’ than intended in my previous example, it was just one particular recent occurance that stuck with me.
