Social/Bar RP

[Snackness]

@KarmaBum Yeah, you said it so well in that post but I was too lazy to link it.

[Polk]

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.

[icanbeyourmuse]

@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.

[Polk]

@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.

[Roadspike]

@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.

[SpaceKhomeini]

I guess part of what’s left me cold about it nowadays is like – I just have a hard time getting chunks of plot or really anything to latch onto that doesn’t just fall under the social umbrella.

I don’t know, I’m just not super-feeling it these days. If I had a good reason for this I’d explain it better. Just when someone is like, “want to go hang out and do laundry IC” or something of that sort I think about it.

And then I’m like. Nah. Problem’s probably me.

[icanbeyourmuse]

@SpaceKhomeini said in Social/Bar RP:

I guess part of what’s left me cold about it nowadays is like – I just have a hard time getting chunks of plot or really anything to latch onto that doesn’t just fall under the social umbrella.

I don’t know, I’m just not super-feeling it these days. If I had a good reason for this I’d explain it better. Just when someone is like, “want to go hang out and do laundry IC” or something of that sort I think about it.

And then I’m like. Nah. Problem’s probably me.

I try to drop at least plot details in social when I GM on Atharia. Whether I’m on my NPCs or PCs. LEss so on my PCs, since they are PCs. I /think/ my players know that if I’m on an NPC I will give something related to the plots going on. Or that the social scene will lead to plot things.

Because my brain didn’t get all the thoughts out and thought it did but didn’t: I mentioned this because I am aware some people want something out of social scenes. I let players decide if they want an NPC or PC. NPC plot (be it details or something that moves the story forward) is likely to come, PC it can be hit or miss to whether plot is involved or not.

So, I’m for checking if someone is looking to get anything from the scene for plot or if they are just out and about seeking RP or whatever.

[Gashlycrumb]

@SpaceKhomeini Oh, I’d guess you have an excellent, even nigh irresistible reason – that’s just how behavior works. Social RP is supposed (to you, anyway, and me too) to lead to the plottier stuff you like. At some point this stopped happening for you. If social RP was fun to you at one time there was probably a period when it stopped being fun but you kept trying, tried it a lot and tried hard to make it interesting and got a little weird and wound up about it – an “extinction burst.”

[TooManyCharacter]

Experiences vary, but for me BarRP has always been more recycled small talk and less “I’m funny, how?”, “Jabba put a price on your head…”, or “How do you like them apples?”.

I have had great scenes where the set was in a bar. I just had one not long ago. In my experience though, it’s best to facilitate what both characters can get out of the interaction. Something beyond what I’ve done a few hundred times before. I have limited time and if I’m logged into an MU I don’t want to feel like I’m going through the motions. It’s the difference between BarRP and RP in a bar.

[Jennkryst]

It’s been said before, but it deserves repeating. Bar RP for the sake of ‘I walk in and drink and just talk to anyone who shows up’… I hate it.

Bar RP where it’s ‘I came here with my friend and we are hanging out and doing stuff, and maybe interact with someone else’? That works for me.

… but also, the ‘hang out and doing stuff’ has to be more than just that, right? Like it depends on what. Are we networking with NPCs? Do we have a nefarious plot to use some subterfuge on a PC to convince them of something?

Otherwise, if nothing is happening, it can not happen off-screen. Like Sleeping. I don’t pose once an hour, every night, ‘:snores’. Cause shit is boring.

[Aria]

@SpaceKhomeini said in Social/Bar RP:

I guess part of what’s left me cold about it nowadays is like – I just have a hard time getting chunks of plot or really anything to latch onto that doesn’t just fall under the social umbrella.

I don’t know, I’m just not super-feeling it these days. If I had a good reason for this I’d explain it better. Just when someone is like, “want to go hang out and do laundry IC” or something of that sort I think about it.

And then I’m like. Nah. Problem’s probably me.

I feel this and I feel this hard, but it’s also because of one simple truth - I fucking hate small talk IRL, too.

While I can natter away non-stop either out of nerves or because I finally found someone I’m comfortable with, when it comes to small talk, I’m introverted enough and neurodivergent enough that I don’t care. I find endless hours of attempting to be witty and keep up a mask exhausting. Profoundly exhausting. Excruciating, even.

That doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to people. I do!

But I want to talk about the weird, strange, hilarious stories of your life. I want your take on death and religion. I want your anxieties about your kid and if you’re raising them right. I want the poetry that smacked you right in the soul when you were sixteen that you still carry around in the back of your brain.

That… that I can RP about, or talk about IRL, for hours. But the minutiae of your day, and your job, and your sports team, and “How’s your mom an’ them?” is mind-numbing.

No. Please no. Do not.

[Adora]

@Solstice said in Social/Bar RP:

And Paul Hollywood doesn’t understand

tacos and tortillas.

[SpaceKhomeini]

I have an addendum to this after an experience I had yesterday.

I like social RP when somebody blows up the building while the scene is going on.

[Ashkuri]

I feel like the gist here is “Social rp is fine if it doesn’t suck” which… I mean yeah, that’s true of any form of rp, isn’t it?

[SpaceKhomeini]

@imstillhere Yeah the better question is probably, “How can one make this engaging?” Etc, etc. There’s a lot of good ground that’s been covered, here.

[DrQuinn]

I love bar RP if only because I think it’s an easy entry for people who are anxious or unsure of how to otherwise get involved or meet people on a game. I’ve had very few scenes where it has been boring, but I love meeting new people so that might just be me.

In recent history I have rarely been involved in “Plot” on big games and social RP was pretty much the only thing I ever did. Mostly it was trying to get to know the other person and maybe pointing them towards other people that I thought they might have fun with/have good hooks to.

Like I never quite understood the plot of Gray Harbor enough to really get into it (not through lack of trying on @KarmaBum and @bear_necessities part!), it just never clicked for some reason, but I’d start up an open scene every day in the coffee shop just so people could get to know each other and have somewhere to go if they were anxiously looking at all the private scenes on the Ares list and wondering how to break into that.

[kalakh]

I think for me that bar RP is just fine in small to medium doses so long as I…have something to consider about my character other than the small talk. Which is to say, it’s alright if I’ve got non-bar RP that has happened recently enough that it’s influencing, if only just in my character’s head, something in the scene. Have they been in a fight, did they recently have something great/awful happen to them, are they worried about something, are they particularly happy about something, etc etc. I am not someone who does small talk well at all, I need a topic, and it bleeds a lot into RP preferences and activities.

[bear_necessities]

@SpaceKhomeini said in Social/Bar RP:

I have an addendum to this after an experience I had yesterday.

I like social RP when somebody blows up the building while the scene is going on.

VERY MUCH THIS! More explosions please.

[KarmaBum]

@SpaceKhomeini said in Social/Bar RP:

I like social RP when somebody blows up the building while the scene is going on.

I paged @bear_necessities at one point last night during that scene just SOCIAL RP with this thread in mind.

[Third Eye]

NGL a big event scene where a GM blows up a building does not seem like social RP to me.

I mean that scene sounds great and made me very interested in what LA 2043 is doing, but that shit as described and as I read it later clearly took a lot of effort and idk equating it with bar RP is weird to me.

ETA: This is the scene in question so I’m not just totally talking about something out of context: https://la2043.aresmush.com/scene/419 I know it’s tagged as social but this is an almost 20-person event that obviously required a lot of work to pull off.