@egg said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:
but having to work to play is exactly why I made this post...
Maybe as Fara said, this is the major difference. For me, figuring out what I wanna do with somebody -- not the whole scene, mind you, just the idea, the scenario -- isn't work, it's actually part of the fun. I get to come up with a situation, any situation, within the limits of my imagination (and the theme), and find out what happens if characters get thrown into it. If it's something we're both excited to explore, that excitement totally carries over into the RP.
For me, 'what if...our characters, two people with conflicting agendas who don't know each other at all, randomly met on a riverboat that had a poker tournament on it and tried to work those angles?' -- isn't work, that's like 'holy shit yes, let's go do that right now.' (Spoilers: the riverboat broke in half and sank, on fire. True story.)
We didn't plan what would happen, and I didn't know what their character's agenda was. They didn't know what mine was. We just knew they were the type to be Up To Something, and glorious mayhem unfolded.
On a game with supernatural elements, I was like, 'let's do a fucking ghost ship,' so we did. It wound up having time loops where nobody could die, while our characters tried to figure out how to put the ghost ship to rest. We didn't know that would happen, either. It totally happened IC. But, 'ghost ship' was my 'fuck yeah!' starting point. It doesn't have to be work! It can be fun. ^.^