I'm very much a narrative-based roleplayer. Slice-of-life has its place in deepening character relationships and lending itself to character depth and development, but unless there's a plot to challenge those relationships and provide contextual meaning to that depth, I typically lose interest very quickly.
That said, conflict and plot isn't completely necessary to make a session dramatic or intriguing. Plot is a tool, like any other literary device. It's important to remember that at its heart, roleplaying is improvisational writing.
EDIT: To expand on my point (seeing as how I apparently hit the nail on the head for a few people), I do not find slice-of-life inherently boring. Rather, slice-of-life is very useful to develop parts of your character. How do they react around racism, how do they deal with being startled, how strongly do they feel about their beliefs, etc. However, simply establishing these traits is not enough, and your typical slice-of-life scenarios usually do not force a utilization of them in the same way a plot does.
To put it into a simplistic analogy, slice-of-life roleplay is gathering all of the ingredients to a cake. Writing the premise to a plot is putting the ingredients together and baking the cake, and plot roleplay is eating that cake. In regards to how I make my characters interact with other player characters, I feel that it is wasteful for me to gather the ingredients and not use any of them in a cake.
And like any sweet treat, eating too much cake is unhealthy, and using the same ingredients makes the act of eating cake boring. Contrast is an important element in both writing and food.
That said, conflict and plot isn't completely necessary to make a session dramatic or intriguing. Plot is a tool, like any other literary device. It's important to remember that at its heart, roleplaying is improvisational writing.
EDIT: To expand on my point (seeing as how I apparently hit the nail on the head for a few people), I do not find slice-of-life inherently boring. Rather, slice-of-life is very useful to develop parts of your character. How do they react around racism, how do they deal with being startled, how strongly do they feel about their beliefs, etc. However, simply establishing these traits is not enough, and your typical slice-of-life scenarios usually do not force a utilization of them in the same way a plot does.
To put it into a simplistic analogy, slice-of-life roleplay is gathering all of the ingredients to a cake. Writing the premise to a plot is putting the ingredients together and baking the cake, and plot roleplay is eating that cake. In regards to how I make my characters interact with other player characters, I feel that it is wasteful for me to gather the ingredients and not use any of them in a cake.
And like any sweet treat, eating too much cake is unhealthy, and using the same ingredients makes the act of eating cake boring. Contrast is an important element in both writing and food.
