MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't)
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@arkandel said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
Just to clarify an earlier post of mine, when I said I didn't like "bar RP" I probably didn't qualify it enough with the important clause that it's when it's the grand majority of what RP in general consists of.
Social RP, either to develop characters or to allow the aftermath of PrPs to branch off and develop 'off screen' is perfectly fine. I've no issues with it, especially since in fact those kinds of scenes can directly become lead-ins for more plot.I think you're golden. I can say alternatively even on big places such as Arx, when I played my primary vehicle for RP is social. As a long time daytime player, I was never around for plots (US evening, this doesn't change ever). I made my own fun. There are sandbox/social places that have lasted years at a time. Its not everyone's preference but its not some small majority of people either.
The difference for me is, we're voicing opinions and they are all valid. Just the near absolute of all modern games suck and everyone hates social is a bit extreme. I'm not arguing that folks should enjoy mostly social RP, even if I know I can have fun doing social to social scene and making problems as I go along to get folks involved in problem solving that doesn't involve dice dueling or a broader plot.
I'm just a surge protector doing my job, sir.
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@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
The difference for me is, we're voicing opinions and they are all valid. Just the near absolute of all modern games suck and everyone hates social is a bit extreme.
The way I read this is that it's commonplace in people extrapolating from their own current experiences. As you start to burn out everything looks shitty and it's easy to lose touch with the fact not everyone feels the same way as you do, and may be having fun with the stuff that still feels repetitive, stagnant, unfair, imbalanced, etc especially since you may still feel compelled to convince others. Why can't they see it?
It happens all the time with MMOs for example. "This game has turned to shit!" is a real cliche since players literally pay money to log on week after week, month after month, to tell everyone in public channels how little fun this all is.
I think the core of the matter is gaming isn't supposed to be life fulfilling. Hobbies aren't. Setting expectations that high for something you invest very large chunks of your time to is a very human, very flawed thing to do.
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@carma said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
I feel like this could be branched into its own topic. "How do you make social RP enjoyable and unique?"
I think this is less to do with the setting of the RP and more to do with the character you are RPing with.
I've had lots of RP in a diner. Some of it was excruciating. Some of it was wonderful. It depends on the actual content of the conversation. If we're discussing how work is going and otherwise just being the same kind of drones we're forced to be iRL, I will likely find it excruciating. If I'm building piles of hash browns and gravy to represent the different layers of reality and why Paradox likes to screw with you by throwing in some hot sauce, it's probably gonna go better.
It all depends on the personality of the partner. Not the setting or whatever. A good talk can be more intense than a good fight.
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@carma said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
"How do you make social RP enjoyable and unique?"
Be enjoyable to RP with.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@ganymede said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
@carma said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
"How do you make social RP enjoyable and unique?"
Be enjoyable to RP with.
An old post, @faraday saved it and has kept it.
I'm just a surge protector doing my job, sir.
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@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
@ganymede said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
@carma said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
"How do you make social RP enjoyable and unique?"
Be enjoyable to RP with.
An old post, @faraday saved it and has kept it.
bookmarks this
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@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
I wanted to RP with others at a bowling alley, and that created the entire personality for my PC on Requiem for Kingsmouth.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@ganymede said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
I wanted to RP with others at a bowling alley, and that created the entire personality for my PC on Requiem for Kingsmouth.
This makes me curious, not about all the dark things and secrets that transpired on RoK, but about this PC and their personality. Oddly I want to RP in a bowling now too.
I'm just a surge protector doing my job, sir.
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@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
This makes me curious, not about all the dark things and secrets that transpired on RoK, but about this PC and their personality.
He was one of the Fisher Kings. Over his two hundred years, all he wanted was a family to raise; first, as a mortal, then as an immortal. But, as with all Fisher Kings, those loyal to him turned on him. He became depressed, and ended up coming to Kingsmouth to serve a friend of his from the Anglo-Indian Wars.
Along the way, he fed on a wayward orphan. Feeling responsible for her, he "adopted" her and brought her overseas. In his new home, he had no money and no job, so he started to do contracting work at night. During the day, he had a minion make sure his "daughter" went to high school; at night, he worked, he fed, and he kept up with the undead world.
But his "daughter" was as all teenagers: she wanted to go out, meet other teenagers, and do teenager things. She could do that at the local bowling alley, while he watched over her from the lanes. And that's what he was doing there: pretending to play while watching his ward, and making sure that any teenager who tried to "prey" on her did otherwise.
He was a lot of fun. He could go anywhere because "someone" called for a plumber or some other repair dude. He was a handyman, a single dad, just tryin' to make it in a vampire's world.
And then there was "the Great Turtle," but that's another story.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@ganymede See, bowling alley isn't boring mundane RP. I like that story.
I'm just a surge protector doing my job, sir.
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@lotherio
The point I take and I try to do is you can make bowling alley RP non-boring (mundane's probably arguable) by interacting with the setting, maybe posing some silly NPCs like fellow bowlers, or just having a character who has SOME opinions about bowling, whether they like it or hate it.Or you can be a block of cardboard who barely reacts to stuff and just says hi and sips their drink, which is certainly the worst of bar RP, but the flaw isn't in the bar but in ourselves, Horatio.
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@three-eyed-crow said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
The point I take and I try to do is you can make bowling alley RP non-boring (mundane's probably arguable) by interacting with the setting, maybe posing some silly NPCs like fellow bowlers, or just having a character who has SOME opinions about bowling, whether they like it or hate it.
I completely agree. Its not the social situation that makes it boring, its what we as a player bring to the table. If I don't like sipping tea, I can make it so a few guys a couple lanes down are plotting to mug someone in the alley after, so we can decide to we go out to help random stranger or call the cops or ignore for our own safety. Making it about choices and drama and decisions without it having to be lets reveal our secret (which if I'm playing mundane modern, there is no secret but I suppose if I'm a blood sucker or something, I can pick them as some target to get my fill at some point later in the evening).
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I'm not saying that I don't like social RP. I'm saying that many games make social RP difficult by creating themes in which no meaningful interaction can happen because the day-to-day life of your character is just a meaningless mask they wear to relax when not out being a more awesome person.
Take super-heroes for example. Clark Kent only ever talks to people he works with because he has ZERO in common with other people. He has family and 2 groups of work-friends. The JL and the Daily Planet. If he meets some random stranger in the coffee shop there is zero reason to engage with them because they will have no understanding of the two major aspects of his life, one of which is a secret.
Batman is the same. He's got Bat-friends/family and he's got a lose group of practical strangers that like to be seen with the elusive Bruce Wayne in public.
Non-Elite strangers need not apply.World of Darkness is even worse because you are literally trained ICly to see everyone as a potential enemy who isn't in your click.
Battlestar and Star Trek give you more opportunities for social RP because you forced to be work-friends, like it or not. There are no strangers in those games. There are only people from your job you haven't met yet.
All these setting create systemic isolation. That's what I'm saying. Game designers and people who run games need to be aware of this if they want to address it.
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@de-villefort said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
World of Darkness is even worse because you are literally trained ICly to see everyone as a potential enemy who isn't in your click.
I mean, that's only half true. You're also trained to see them as a potential valuable resource and a way to get a leg up on things for a nominal price, so it actually does foster social RP. Just -- people never do it.
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@de-villefort said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
World of Darkness is even worse because you are literally trained ICly to see everyone as a potential enemy who isn't in your click.
Yeah, I think this is at best half-true, and inapplicable depending on how you read the books.
I prefer to think of most WoD games as being a clowder of cats.
Kitties are pretty; kitties are cute; but put enough of them in a room and the cuddling gets overwhelmed by the fighting and the stench. Staff, basically end up like this:
But people still like cats.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@de-villefort said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
World of Darkness is even worse because you are literally trained ICly to see everyone as a potential enemy who isn't in your click.
This is so crazily shortsighted to me. Just because there's a masque doesn't mean there isn't ample opportunity to navigate that; the tension and release, the ways character's can skirt the issue or function and negotiate if it collapses -- and, beyond the masque, the possibility that the essential issues that plague PCs - the alienation, the will to survive, the love and confusion and hatred and brief shreds of humanity they struggle with accepting/rejecting - are still available for play.
God. Fixating on the Enemy / Ally dichotomy is just so ... dry. Dull? Besides the point. A well rounded character is beyond just their allegiances or splat description - it's a matter of being creatively flexible enough to know what their motives, desires, fears and fixations are -- then taking time within a new scene, even a casual social scene, to discover 'okay, so what can happen here?'.
Giving authority to some nameless game designer / game runner to address that ... such an abdication of personal power. There's so much one can do themselves to combat character 'isolation', if they experiment.
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@de-villefort said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
All these setting create systemic isolation. That's what I'm saying. Game designers and people who run games need to be aware of this if they want to address it.
I agree and this is fair, its not most MU's in my experience. I don't see it in most games I play on and games I run do not enforce some masque or other reason for players not to social RP together. The more they know of each other the easier it is to plot some PrP or get in Staff Plot as a group versus random strangers.
As a player I have been to WoD places that were huge on mask, I know what you're referring too its just not that prevalent as seems implied. I recall one time on one place I had a shifter who met some offshoot changeling being who presented as a tree or some nature thing and talked about Gaia or something and my PC admitted enough to let them know he wasn't wholly human and the next day staff NPC/alt/whatever reamed him a new one. I was still able to make and find meaningful social RP at that place.
I don't think its all games though.
As important to staff and game design though, I include at least half responsibility on players to make the effort. Taking for granted the fewer places where someone might think you need to die for breaking the silence/revealing the secret (or more so in the 90s maybe), in the end folks can still find ways to plot and play together. Literally on that same place, when that same char would meet people, I'd ooc talk first about what was okay to 'let out' or find ways to 'reveal' things such that they could work together more (or in opposition if they wanted).
Or like supers, like 2-3 scenes or 1/3 of the comics I read is combat (give or take), the rest is social. If Bruce doesn't let Clark Kent to the gala, that's on the players. Clark could be journaling the event while secretly maybe they both expect some Luthor attack on them or something. They can find a reason.
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Can confirm. It has been exactly like that in my experience, too.
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I realize Clark Kent could go to some random gala as a reporter and Bruce Wayne could show up at a random bowling alley in Gotham to hang out with the plebeians... but why...? Why would you want to role play that?
The person you are presenting yourself as is a lie. The person the other players characters are presenting themselves as is also a lie.
You both ends up talking about meaningless stuff with people you know you're never going to have any real connection too because you're lying to their face and all you can hope to get out of it is a chance to arrange to meet them again to talk about more meaningless stuff while you continue to lie to each other.
Why bother?
