@Tapewyrm said in The 3-Month Players:
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?
Meaning.
If the RP means something to one of the characters or the plot, then it is Social RP rather than just BarRP. And what is BarRP to you might be Social RP for another player, or even Plot RP and you might not even know it.
But you don’t always know the difference because 1) you aren’t in control of all the players so you don’t know what has meaning/value and what doesn’t and 2) you don’t always know what will come next for any of the characters. All you know (usually) is what it means to you and the enjoyment you get from it.
Just shooting the shit with someone in a bar because you’re filling time and waiting for plot or more meaningful RP can sometimes turn into something that creates meaning for your character or between the characters. This ‘nothing’ scene could actually be the very important meeting of two characters that end up saving the world! Now more often than not, this doesn’t happen, but sometimes it does turn out to be more important than it seemed at first, especially with follow up - which usually requires intent and interest on both sides to do so, which is why most times that doesn’t happen AND why BarRP doesn’t sustain a MU*. If the RP happening on a game doesn’t spur interest and/or intent, its doomed to fail.
Which, IMHO, is why Social RP can sustain a game, but BarRP can’t, even though they can seem very similar a lot.