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[Vieve]

Tricky one. I believe the usual approach is to say "CONCORD allocated me to the Ministry of War; it's a purely administrative thing; and I'll get out of here just as soon as I can find a new corp...".

Gallente have it so much easier when it comes to that.  It's simple enough to say "The Scope granted me temporary press credentials."

odd i always thought i became a temporary employee of Scope to go "check on things", not really like a reporter, just someone who went visiting the locations the scope wanted to check out at first glance....not sure what would the title of that be.

"Technical advisor",  "area specialist", "expert resource"?

[Vieve]

Then we ended up having to sideways consider the confiscation of the illicit gains part of cannon as well - which in RP turns still allows Goons to screw over the Republic into near bankruptcy then get magically saved again by Concord.

"Some rogue elements within CONCORD contracted with null-sec interests in order to punish the Republic for the Elder attack on Yulai. The conspiracy was uncovered and corrective measures taken."?

[Mizhara]

See how easy it is to incorporate the game reality with RP? Where there's a will there's a way. I'll grant you that some of the shit CCP does can be hard to grapple into submission but what players do? You actually have to work to make it -not- fit RP.

[Jade Constantine]

See how easy it is to incorporate the game reality with RP? Where there's a will there's a way. I'll grant you that some of the shit CCP does can be hard to grapple into submission but what players do? You actually have to work to make it -not- fit RP.

Right then, lets see that piece in the news

(I like it)

[Louella Dougans]

Hi Jade

one of your posts in the IGS made me think of something, it was to do with events in the books which are largely OOC material, with hardly any of it appearing in-game.

I forget which one of the threads it was, it related to the Tribal Liberation force though, I think you mentioned something about the TLF Minmatar being free individuals, and not pawns/tools of the republic. And how they'd determine the future of their people.

Anyway, it was a good comment, and would be the sort of thing that Minmatar people would see themselves as, except... some of the stuff in The Empyrean Age and Templar One, paints the Minmatar in the playable game space (Republic space, the TLF, Thukker tribe space), as being little more than a shield to protect the Elder's hidden spaces where they will determine the future of the entire Minmatar people. Not the Republic or anything that would be accessible to player characters, those don't get to determine anything of the "Minmatar Future", it's all the Elders. Who cannot be interacted with in-game.

It made me and I'm not sure what to think now.

[Matariki Rain]

Anyway, it was a good comment, and would be the sort of thing that Minmatar people would see themselves as, except... some of the stuff in The Empyrean Age and Templar One, paints the Minmatar in the playable game space (Republic space, the TLF, Thukker tribe space), as being little more than a shield to protect the Elder's hidden spaces where they will determine the future of the entire Minmatar people. Not the Republic or anything that would be accessible to player characters, those don't get to determine anything of the "Minmatar Future", it's all the Elders. Who cannot be interacted with in-game.

It made me and I'm not sure what to think now.

Lou, my take on that is that it doesn't matter. The Elders have collected their set of tribal genes and are now buggering off. They don't care about the very real, living, breathing people of the tribes who they leave, and we're frankly better off without them. Let them go do their schemes, which they seem to think are important: we have people, tribes, and a tribal homeland to look after.

Some of our gods have left us: it's up to us to grow up and look after ourselves.

But yeah: I hate the whole Elders thing. My response has been to classify them as the out-of-touch Minmatar 1%, and say "Good riddance" now they've got what they want and gone away.

[Makkal]

Well Makkal, if that discussion really happened like that in the Summit, it seems obviously to me that this guy was just trying to piss in your cheerios for the sake of it.

Possibly, but it's hard to connect a character's word and action to the player unless you've known both for some time. I'm not comfortable making that leap for this specific interaction. 

[Matariki Rain]

Well Makkal, if that discussion really happened like that in the Summit, it seems obviously to me that this guy was just trying to piss in your cheerios for the sake of it.

Possibly, but it's hard to connect a character's word and action to the player unless you've known both for some time. I'm not comfortable making that leap for this specific interaction. 

My initial reading would be that they were calling you on fantasy roleplay, and giving you the option of joining the community norms.

[Makkal]

I think it's bad form to IC 'call' someone on their role-playing, especially when the community standard is rather flexible.

For example, Khross recently told Makkal about an attack on a Khanid planet where he'd seen Blood Raiders and the Nation grab a planet, build a defensive outpost, and start converting the populous. I flew out there and, unsurprisingly, the system was as it's always been. I could have had Makkal appear in the summit, denounce Khross as a liar, and demand to know why he'd play with her mind so, but instead Makkal talked about working with local authorities to secure the systems adjacent to it.

I see RPing as a cooperative venture, and unless something is rather disruptive to the setting, I’d rather work someone than spend my time ICly or OOCly telling them they’re doing it wrong.

[Ghost Hunter]

...

I see RPing as a cooperative venture, and unless something is rather disruptive to the setting, I’d rather work someone than spend my time ICly or OOCly telling them they’re doing it wrong.

I am curious to your thoughts on this position : All roleplay is by its nature consensual, and non-consensual actions / disruptive interventions can be ignored entirely.

[Mizhara]

I think it's bad form to IC 'call' someone on their role-playing, especially when the community standard is rather flexible.

For example, Khross recently told Makkal about an attack on a Khanid planet where he'd seen Blood Raiders and the Nation grab a planet, build a defensive outpost, and start converting the populous. I flew out there and, unsurprisingly, the system was as it's always been.

I could have had Makkal appear in the summit, denounce Khross as a liar, and demand to know why he'd play with her mind so, but instead Makkal talked about working with local authorities to secure the systems adjacent to it.

I see RPing as a cooperative venture, and unless something is rather disruptive to the setting, I’d rather work someone than spend my time ICly or OOCly telling them they’re doing it wrong.

And when Ms X lays down claims about Sansha/Amarrian/Gallofreyan invasions of Caldari Prime or some other equally dim choice? It's all well and good to tout the 'cooperative' flag and speak inspirationally about worldcrafting and so on, but the truth remains. When you create a fictional castle out of the gossamer and toothpics of wild imagination there'll likely be someone who's not particularly fond of either castles or your choice of location or even the shape of the toothpicks. The end result, given the ease with which such castles can be toppled, is rarely nice. Especially in Eve where stomping with both feet on the sandcastles anyone outside of your sphere of blues builds is the national sport.

Listen, I do understand your viewpoint and I'd even agree with them in games where they fit in. In Eve though... they just don't. You won't get any kind of unilateral agreement on the kind of "play nice now!" rules required for that to be sustainable without conflict. Not to mention how it completely neglects the true beauty of Eve. The real reason Eve RP is even today superior to any other MMO:

What you do in the game is what your character does. The game mechanics (for the very most part) coincide with IC actions. You can actually do the things a character would. Want to create your own little Empire? If you got the balls, skills and charisma to herd cats then you can. Want to be a selfless hero or a despicable evil wastrel? You can... and you'll make -money- of it! This game has that extremely rare quality that you damn near can't find even in Singleplayer RPGs: Consistency between Character and Gameplay Reality.

That's something to treasure and work with as far as I'm concerned.

Edit: Ghost posted.

Not all roleplay is consensual. In Eve it's RP to go out and roflstomp the fleets and ships of your enemies. Maybe they consented when they undocked, but I've gotten more than one river of tears my way for taking RP out into space.

[Syylara/Yaansu]

My initial reading would be that they were calling you on fantasy roleplay, and giving you the option of joining the community norms.

Norms...in this community?

Syyl'ara, for example, was never for one moment a Federal Citizen.  She grew up in Syndicate space and eventually migrated to join relatives in the State.  By virtue of selecting Intaki as her ethnicity, I was given no option to choose a school to graduate from which would reflect this.  In my view, database entries indicating otherwise are erroneous.

Narrative vs. mechanics inconsistencies like this are abound.  While there are a few times when discussing them can produce some interesting exchanges, it has been my experience that doing so usually seems to be used as conversation enders, trump cards and distractions from the actual point being discussed.  I find that to be more immersion breaking than respecting a bit of creative license.  Limiting ourselves to the strictly defined options of character creation and other "clunky" aspects of gameplay can lead to canned back-stories and restrict creativity.

Ultimately, if someone's character wants to believe the "CONCORD Pilot Database" entries, that's fine I have no say in it.  Likewise, they have no say in whether those entries are the reality of my character's life and activities.  There were several months of time I played this game before starting to RP, I have no interest in worrying about it, not sure why other people would, either.  If you and another player/character can't come to a common ground on issues like these, the best option is probably just to avoid each other and move on.  In my opinion, at least, public arguments about these kinds of things are a much bigger immersion-breaker as they constantly remind us we are playing an imperfect game with demands that require us to either endure frustrating hardships in the name of consistency or accept some (ultimately trivial, imo) inconsistencies in order to enjoy our time spent.

Should I never do missions and piddle around broke as a joke all the time because my character is largely non-partisan?  Should I have tried to survive in NPC 0.0 to do Mordu's missions when only a few months into my character?  I play this game for entertainment, I'm hardly going to impose enjoyment-killing restrictions on myself to conform to someone else's definition of the "community norms."

Chances are, if I ask 10 other people what the "community norm" is, I'll get at least 12 opinions :9.

[Matariki Rain]

I see RPing as a cooperative venture, and unless something is rather disruptive to the setting, I’d rather work someone than spend my time ICly or OOCly telling them they’re doing it wrong.

Agreed on the cooperative venture. Agreed on preferring "Yes, and..." responses over blocking.

When you roleplay with a small group you can do entirely improv narrative play where you make up your reality as you go along. It's the way my latest face-to-face game works, incidentally, and it's hugely fun.

When you roleplay in a persistent world with players joining and leaving over time, and where there are public data points and facts about the game world, it's a really good idea to use those data points and facts as the common ground you share with other players. You might extend that--we do that any time we create something that isn't mentioned in canon but is plausibly consistent with canon--but doing, or claiming to do, things that are inconsistent with canon and the public commons suggests you're either not playing the same game, or you're playing a character who is mistaken, confused, unreliable, deluded, or dingbats. We have characters like that, so that's fine. The main way we can tell that a character is an unreliable narrator is that they make claims that are inconsistent with the in-game reality.

It's normal in EVE to check employment, past employment, sec status, bio, and, if there's time, offline killboards and forums for people you come across. Those things are on the record, and they contribute to the assessment of your capabilities, tendencies and "character", particularly when assessing your likely level of threat. That applies in EVE roleplay just as much as it does in EVE scouting.

[Ulphus]

My initial reading would be that they were calling you on fantasy roleplay, and giving you the option of joining the community norms.

Norms...in this community?

Yeah.

If Makkal wanted the Ministry of war not to appear on their corp history, then maybe they should have found another corp to join instead of just resigning from the one they were in. Or maybe Makkal could have said it was a CONCORD screwup when entering the data, but saying that what the Eve client tells me is in the CONCORD databases is not what it is actually there is against some of our norms.

[lallara zhuul]

Thats one of the strange mindsets I have come across in EVE.

The restrictions of the game mechanics are not seen as a challenge, instead they are seen as something that would 'limit the story' hence conveniently as something that you can ignore whenever the hell you feel like it.

Colouring inside the lines is much harder than ignoring them.

Using the limitations of the mechanics and the game world will make for much more interesting story, to me, than going off a tangent just because you have to be 'creative'.

Actually going off a tangent and being 'creative' is completely the opposite in a RP setting when you want to have a co-operative narrative with other people.

It is actually destructive.

Destructive in the sense that the other people that you are interacting with have no way of doing so without being destructive towards the sandbox defined by the mechanics and the game world shared by all.

Mainly because if a person goes off on a tangent with your story, away from the game world and the mechanics that everyone shares, it is very hard to get back in there.

Especially in a game like EVE, a place where conflict is the driving force behind pretty much everything, where your every mistake, every lapse, every fit, every drunken tirade, is used against you the more you do.

I'm not saying that it is forbidden to colour outside the lines, it's just that only you will know what the hell you are trying to portray.