Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Seriphyn on 14 Jun 2011, 20:20
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A minor topic, really, but I'm noticing the vast amount of Gallente characters that have "Caille, Gallente Prime" listed as their place of birth. Why is that? Why GP, and why not Hueromont or some fictional made up place?
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Once you complete the infodump, I imagine we'll see more diversification. GP is an easy planet to claim to be from and requires very little research.
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Once you complete the infodump, I imagine we'll see more diversification. GP is an easy planet to claim to be from and requires very little research.
It's also a planet with several billion people of vastly different origins, beign the captital world for the Federation, evne if no actualy nation-wide governemnt body resides there IIRC. Ergo, it's almost never going to be opposed that you hail from the planet, while 'I was born on X planet in X system' can lead to 'nu-huh, I've BEEN there' etc.
I'll go with 'did little research' myself though.
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Hey, not everyone. Some of us blurted 'Villore' when we were asked ICly where our characters came from. (The Mies stuff came later, when I rationalized that a substantial number of folks who live in Villore might just have moved there because of their work with the government.)
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Yeah, well, Mammal's from Renyn.
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Can't blame people for playing it safe with stuff, IMO. Caille is probably one of about maybe six places in the cluster that is at least 95% certain to not be handwaved out of existence or otherwise modified due to:
The graphics team that decide to make a planet's texture representative of a gas giant when it was previously skinned as something else on a whim.
A list of habitable planets is leaked and guess what? That homeworld you picked, isn't one of them.
TonyG's latest deus ex machina plot device.
"We need something awesome to make this next expansion sound awesome. Let's crash a titan into a planet!" "Awesome!"
The Enheduanni did it.
:P
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That would actually be kinda cool. Imagine playing a character that picked Seyllin (sp) as his/her/its home planet prior to it getting roached. Oops, CCP accidentally my entire family, dammit.
On the other hand, if you're looking to avoid such potential drama, then yeah, stick to homeworlds. Vicky was born and raised on Athra, which makes for some fun given that she's something of a murderer and terrorist and such like. Makes visits home challenging.
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Nikita's home planet was technically a homeworld at one point. Was. 8)
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Yeah, totally stick to core PF worlds. Like Matar, they won't screw that up.
/me looks at the IG texture after Tyrannis.
Dammit.
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Personally I chose Caille, Gal Prime to keep my character as close to PF as possible but more so because I was trying to create a true Hedonistic Gallentean (or at least one with a past as that), and what better place for one of them to come from than Gal Prime?
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See, this is exactly why you Fed types shoulda had your kids born in tubes on moons. Then you don't need a healthy planet.
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See, this is exactly why you Fed types shoulda had your kids born in tubes on moons. Then you don't need a healthy planet.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/38/Cubert_Farnsworth.JPG)
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Basically, but you don't let their faces get pressed up against the glass. :/
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As all my planetary pictures are on my laptop which is in extended repair, I might as well post what I have done so far (can't take new pictures as the light layers are broken on planets)...
Here you go. Pick one! (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Populous_Temperate_Worlds_in_the_Gallente_Federation)
And don't edit it without talking to me first, please ._.
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And don't edit it without talking to me first, please ._.
Not to get too far off topic, but that's not how player-created pages on EVElopedia work.
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Andreus comes from a Gallente-style metropolis on Intaki Prime whose name I pinched from d20 Dark*Matter (Calluya). He has very little connection to the place because his father is a jerk. If it gets blown up he won't care all that much about the city, just about the principle of someone attacking his homeworld.
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I agree with Mammal that once more information is out there, you'll see people come up with some different ideas. Amongst the Intaki RPers that I interact with, we saw something similar when we released our sketches of the Intaki colonies — i.e. people started having their characters be from Sajha and Ud'har.
Another thing to consider: MANY people tell me they are afraid to get creative with their back stories because of negative reactions from the bittervets.
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Another thing to consider: MANY people tell me they are afraid to get creative with their back stories because of negative reactions from the bittervets.
This is very true. Every time somebody tries something different and gets the IC reaction of "you're lying and this is all a sham", they have a high probability of shrugging and walking away. If instead the OOC reaction consists of "that's an interesting approach, and you might consider these other PF factors", then they'll feel much more encouraged and we'll have more interesting stuff to play with.
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Borza is the secret lovechild of Jamyl and a Rogue Drone meatpuppet via timetravel. But was born on Caille.
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As all my planetary pictures are on my laptop which is in extended repair, I might as well post what I have done so far (can't take new pictures as the light layers are broken on planets)...
Here you go. Pick one! (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Populous_Temperate_Worlds_in_the_Gallente_Federation)
And don't edit it without talking to me first, please ._.
Dude, what? Did I scar you for life when I edited the Mies entry?
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Another thing to consider: MANY people tell me they are afraid to get creative with their back stories because of negative reactions from the bittervets.
This is partially why I stayed the heck away from Intaki or Amarr vs. Republic story spaces once I started RPing in game. Partially. I wasn't afraid to get creative with my back story. I'd just didn't want to put a foot wrong in someone else's sandcastle.
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I just picked my fav system with my fave lvl1 thukker agent from when I started. It was originally Leurtmar IX but that became a gas planet, so now it's Leurtmar III ^_^
Was tempted to chose Mabnen I tho haha
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Borza is the secret lovechild of Jamyl and a Rogue Drone meatpuppet via timetravel. But was born on Caille.
Now THAT is a Gallentean backstory.
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Another thing to consider: MANY people tell me they are afraid to get creative with their back stories because of negative reactions from the bittervets.
Case in point. (http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1494777) He knew from the start he would have many enemies but was met with such OOC negativity (which can be communicated IC, i.e. "you're a liar") that he felt it wasn't worthwhile to proceed, which I think is a damn shame. I would really like to see more diversity like this but apparently it harms some peoples' view of a wholesome New Eden.
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Crucifire, I agree completely with you on this point. Some IC reactions appear as obvious covers for OOC reactions, and this just discourages people.
So in the case of the OP here: what's the problem if a lot of pilots come from Caille? Maybe roll with that IC: "something about the culture there encourages people to do this" or "perhaps environmental factors have led to a high concentration of people with the appropriate genes", or something.
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As was discussed briefly in-game, actually, most Achur come from Saisio, lots of Amarr from Amarr...
There is no accessible locales in EVE beyond the homeworlds. Listing off the top of my head we've got...Caille, Hueromont, Lenoika, Dam-Torsad...er...that's the only cities available.
Yeah, if I was completely new to EVE, I wouldn't dare make up my own place either.
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"perhaps environmental factors have led to a high concentration of people with the appropriate genes"
A Jovian did it.
We once had a corpie who was found in a cardboard box under a pool table in a mining colony's pub. I laughed.
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It seems easier to just do what Casi suggested and go "huh, strange; must be the high populations and / or cultural and environmental impacts". It's hardly as if a bias towards the home worlds of various characters affects much -- especially when I've not found said bias to be particularly strong. There are a few more, but that's all I've seen, admittedly just from the folks I've noticed who have it public.
As for why, then in my particular case the thought process for having Kyber originate from Dam-Torsad boiled down to not wanting to fiddle about too much with a universe I was largely unfamiliar with; three decades gives plenty of room to fiddle about with further detail, other locations he may have spent time, and so on, when I'd gotten the general feel of the game, and frankly I just wanted to get started and see what it was like. No point getting bogged down in backstory when simple, feasible solutions exist, IMO.
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So in the case of the OP here: what's the problem if a lot of pilots come from Caille? Maybe roll with that IC: "something about the culture there encourages people to do this"
I'd say this is more likely, perhaps cultural or educational factors making pod pilots from Caille less likely to suffer from capsuleer dementia.
"perhaps environmental factors have led to a high concentration of people with the appropriate genes", or something.
No reason to think that. Where RPers' characters are from isn't a representative sample of where capsuleers are from.
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I was born in a station, does that count?
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The elephant in the room here is that after eight years, dozens of chronicles and short stories, novellas, and a couple of novels, we still only seem to know about a handful of cities on handful of planets.
Elite had stuff like this:
http://www.wischik.com/lu/travel/elite/elite.html?p=7
However limited Elite was, it still managed to achieve a sense of being a living place because of the little details like this. By comparison, 'show info' in Eve has always been worthless. The frustration is that it would probably have been trivially easy to populate the planetary data with some fluff, or to simply publish some of the raw data that content teams have instead of dropping in a tiny factoid into every 3,000 words of Abraxas' fiction.
In many ways, Eve has failed to live up to its influences, and I have always thought that it's a shame that opportunities to enrich in small ways have been missed in favour of adding a bunch more ships (using old models :/) to distract the whiny ADD crowd.
I think that the consequence of the direction that CCP have taken with Eve's setting is that it's actually quite hard for a newcomer to jump right in. It's hard to become immersed in the game. I think I'd feel daunted by it in a way that I wasn't in '04...and the learning curve then was almost vertical.
I know that many people view this sort of stuff as trivia for a tiny minority of RP weirdos, but I also think that, in reality, an awful lot of people that would never self-describe as RPers lap up the gameworld details if they are there to be discovered. Behind much of the fake Internet Hardman posturing there's a lot of people that pay attention to the details outside of min-maxing Internet Spaceships.
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I wonder if Mass Effect Online would continue their tradition of more or less "doinitrite" in this vein. Every single planet had at least some flavor text, and I really enjoyed exploration just to read the stuff.
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Another thing to consider: MANY people tell me they are afraid to get creative with their back stories because of negative reactions from the bittervets.
Case in point. (http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1494777) He knew from the start he would have many enemies but was met with such OOC negativity (which can be communicated IC, i.e. "you're a liar") that he felt it wasn't worthwhile to proceed, which I think is a damn shame. I would really like to see more diversity like this but apparently it harms some peoples' view of a wholesome New Eden.
This was not really the problem. The problem in this case was making a totally PF contradicting statement by claiming that the Federation would allow a whole planet filled with millions of slaves, to go on undisturbed in their own space. Granted, he did claim, iirc, that the planet was independent of the Fed - that is, NOT an independent world with Federation membership - like all the other planets in their space...
People did not go 'your lying' because he wanted to say he was from planet XYZ in XYZ system, they freaked out over his extremely liberal and PF-breaking ideas about what this planet does.
Honestly I think if he simply described a more 'normalized' Federation world (any planet that is actually part of, and obey Federation laws in, their own space) people would not have issues with this at all.
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As was discussed briefly in-game, actually, most Achur come from Saisio, lots of Amarr from Amarr...
There is no accessible locales in EVE beyond the homeworlds. Listing off the top of my head we've got...Caille, Hueromont, Lenoika, Dam-Torsad...er...that's the only cities available.
Yeah, if I was completely new to EVE, I wouldn't dare make up my own place either.
As the one who instigated said discussion, I'll post now like I said I would:
I was just starting out with RP in EVE when I created Morwen at the release of Empyrean Age, and had been intending on having her be from Caldari Prime as an instigation for her to eventually join the FDU. That plan got scrapped when I decided I was having enough fun doing regular missions in highsec, and after spending some time looking at PF, I realized I couldn't really find a lot of stuff about life planetside on Caldari Prime, so I switched her birthplace to Gallente Prime before it ever became a conversation point and I had to stick with it.
As for going with Caille in particular, that was mostly out of the convenience of there being some PF to work from, as well as not being able to remember the existence of Hueromont when I got around to specifying where Morwen grew up (:oops:). I selected a district on the outskirts of Caille as an "it's a big cluster" and "yes, and..." measure. If there had been more PF about other planetside locations within the Federation at the time I was fleshing out some of these details, I'd probably have gone with something else.
As Seri said above, I pointed out that while a lot of Gallente RPers come from GP (or CP), and often Caille on top of that, it's the same with some of the other races (Amarrian RPers often come from Athra or Oris, many Khanid do Kihtaled/KP, a large number of Caldari RPers come from NCP or CP, and the majority of Achurans I've seen who make a point of noting their birthplace come from Saisio. I don't see it as often with Minmatar, but that may be attributable to the fact that Minmatar have a lot more "obvious" or PF-rich options available to them on top of the standard "born in the Republic" or "freed/escaped slave", including the Ammatar and to some extent, the Thukker.
I have a couple more things about Morwen's backstory that I'd like to flesh out at some point, but I've been a little too busy lately to get around to actually doing it. :bash:
EDIT: Also, kinda in retrospect, Caille being a cultural center for the Federation fits very well with Morwen's interest in fine/performing arts. ;)
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Another thing to consider: MANY people tell me they are afraid to get creative with their back stories because of negative reactions from the bittervets.
I actually have never had this issue. Its something that totally could be contested, but it really never has been.
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I actually left Esna's homeworld unsaid for a long, long time for one simple reason: I wanted to be able to dictate Esna's direction in RP, and I was afraid the would suddenly get asploded in PF, or even worse I'd have to get into an arguement with sa player who had gone "nya, nya, I just bombed/enslaved/messily killed everyone in your home planet/city/station, all your family is dead/my slave/a mutated freak now!" I felt like either of these situations, should they have occured, would demand Esna respond by throwing himself at the person/cause/whatever, and I didn't want to have to drop a storyline I was interested in to pursue a random vendetta.
So, anyway, it got left unstated for the first couple years of my play, and only recently did I commit to a system (though Esna's only told a handful of people he trusts closely). Covered my back a bit by having his family not be there anymore; he moved them on as soon as he got wealthy enough as a capsuleer.
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Personally I feel that no capsuleer has any need to give out any background details at any point of their career to anyone.
Even descriptions beyond of what is seen in the neocomm is pushing it, in my book.
What I find curious is that for some reason some roleplayers subscribe to this strange social contract where they create insane amounts of background information that is connected to their characters and for some reason they believe that for a fulfilling roleplaying experience you need to read half a novel of minute details of someones hairdo.
I don't.
It's the interactions in-game that dictate how my character responds to other characters.
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Oh noes im not from one of those /o\
Carirgnottin VII <-- 8)
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Personally I feel that no capsuleer has any need to give out any background details at any point of their career to anyone.
Even descriptions beyond of what is seen in the neocomm is pushing it, in my book.
What I find curious is that for some reason some roleplayers subscribe to this strange social contract where they create insane amounts of background information that is connected to their characters and for some reason they believe that for a fulfilling roleplaying experience you need to read half a novel of minute details of someones hairdo.
I don't.
It's the interactions in-game that dictate how my character responds to other characters.
THIS +1
Not saying it's ur doing it wrong to do it that way, but it is something to consider especially given CCP's handling of the setting.
Also, sometimes I wonder why people role-play in Eve. Is it to meaningfully interact with other players (ie. MMORPG)?
If it is to come up with pages of text on imaginary locations and facts in the Eve universe, I question whether it would be better for them to write their own setting, book or whatever. CCP inserts the setting details here and we play within their framework. That's not to say never come up with anything, which is absurd, but there is a difference between filling in the necessary details and being a rogue co-creator of the setting (also there's a way to create on top of CCP's pile rather than over it).
Why is this important? In a different setting (for example table-top) I would heartily advocate such collaborative creation, but this is an MMO where we should cleave to established canon to avoid conflicts and discrepancies which will cause problems. It could be two (groups of) players disagreeing on interpretation or it could CCP running roughshod over your creation... and in both instances, it really is your own fault for getting into.
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When I first started Nikita, I leaned heavily on her backstory for characterisation, until I got my feet wet in the RP as it were. Since then, her backstory has backed off in importance more and more to get me to where she is now, which is largely based on interactions with others. However, I can understand how difficult it is for some to stop leaning on that crutch of their character history. It took me a solid year of roleplay to get there.
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Leaning on a crutch to explain character flaws and deficiences is, for some reason, frowned upon. A character that behaves neurotically or aggressively that, in his backstory, says that his parents had the usual thing of being killed by pirates, or he was raped 50 bajillion times by ebil, ebil Amarrians (a common one), then for some reason people react negatively or reject such an explanation. For example, Seriphyn has had a poor upbringing with oft-absent parents in a working class environment with some alcoholic (also oft-absent) uncle. He got dragged into the Marines at 16, has made some otherwise terribly poor life decisions and so on. But relying on this backstory to explain his behaviour, people don't like...I guess we should all play mentally-balanced versions of ourselves?
Anyway, then CCP came along, and canonized his fiancee and baby being Sanshafied, and suddenly, all of Seriphyn's emotionally imbalanced behaviour became justified.
:unsurprisedface:
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I handled the backstory very differently, I think. In the case of most, if not all, of my characters, the backstory really never mattered. I played the character I wanted to play, and only started coming up with explanations for why they are the way they are as needed.
On top of that, none of them (even now that they have very thoroughly fleshed out stories) are in any hurry to talk about them, either because they'd rather forget, or because they are highly distrustful, or some such.
Admittedly, none of my characters garner quite the same reactions that Seri does, and therefore are rarely required to justify their behavior.
But yeah, I never really wrote out backstories for any of the characters until the characters had already developed on their own and I found myself wondering how they might have ended up the way they did.
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As much fun as I have sometimes designing characters, I end up enjoying them much more when I take Victoria's approach (more or less).
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I played the character I wanted to play, and only started coming up with explanations for why they are the way they are as needed.
I did that with Cia. I wanted to be able to talk to as wide as possible a range of characters when I first started Eve, so I made her very naive and trusting and not very assertive, which then necessitated family dynamics to explain that; I gave her a basic backstory of a missing father which was intended to be the never-solved white whale but which, due to the efforts of other players' characters, rapidly became an actual arc.
Some of the other characters emerged from their presence in her life - Camille and Fisk are two examples - and then took on a life of their own. Others I've designed, although with the exception of my rarely-played Blooder alt, they've all changed somewhat through their interactions with other player's characters and the events that have occurred.
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I place extreme attention to my characters backgrounds, always. A good structured and rich background is what makes a character be... a character. You can't interact with anyone if your character has no past, because its his/her memories that make what he/she is, and how he/she behaves, imo.
That said, even if I did a wiki like page for mine on the evelopedia, I would never, never put something that is part of her private life, or unknown to the public eyes on it, it would be absurd.
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Asteroid, here o/
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As was discussed briefly in-game, actually, most Achur come from Saisio, lots of Amarr from Amarr...
There is no accessible locales in EVE beyond the homeworlds. Listing off the top of my head we've got...Caille, Hueromont, Lenoika, Dam-Torsad...er...that's the only cities available.
Yeah, if I was completely new to EVE, I wouldn't dare make up my own place either.
Ammentio was from Caille, because Hueromont is associated with Mssr. Toba's kamikaze attack and I hadn't planned to make him war-crazed when I wrote his background. In hindsight, it might not have been a bad choice at all.
In line with Lyn Farel's comment, it might be useful if your background story offered other characters some ideas on what to expect from you, and if it possibly contained some starting points for a discussion.
Coming up with your own city is kind of tedious, because no one else knows anything about it and one should be prepared to answer tons of questions. Admittedly, world-building can be fun but if your intention is to do something else, it will steal away time from your primary objectives. Furthermore, the effort will be wasted if no one is interested, like Lallara Zhuul and others suggest, or if the outcome attracts only negative response.
Not saying it's ur doing it wrong to do it that way, but it is something to consider especially given CCP's handling of the setting.
I don't understand. They have left lots of details open to allow players to use their imagination. Why does it follow that there is something wrong with the creative efforts of the players? It should be easy to skim over a description of a hairdo if someone doesn't like it.
Also, sometimes I wonder why people role-play in Eve. Is it to meaningfully interact with other players (ie. MMORPG)?
When a character is not an established "bittervet", it is quite hard to find meaningful IC interactions, and the backstory and your other own creations are basically everything you have. You just have to hope that they lead to something more meaningful.
If it is to come up with pages of text on imaginary locations and facts in the Eve universe, I question whether it would be better for them to write their own setting, book or whatever.
Because the community that reads those is even smaller than the RP community, and the authors may be hoping that their creations will lead to character interactions.
CCP inserts the setting details here and we play within their framework. That's not to say never come up with anything, which is absurd, but there is a difference between filling in the necessary details and being a rogue co-creator of the setting (also there's a way to create on top of CCP's pile rather than over it).
Well quite a few details of the EVE world have been left open, in my opinion deliberately, and since the new content will now be released as part of the events, expansions etc. it's likely that the situation won't change any time soon. I think it would be impractical to avoid or delay role-playing because more details might be released in the future. There have been discussions (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=1107.0) on which kind of made-up "facts" are acceptable, and I fully agree that there's a limit to what a single player should do.
Why is this important? In a different setting (for example table-top) I would heartily advocate such collaborative creation, but this is an MMO where we should cleave to established canon to avoid conflicts and discrepancies which will cause problems.
I agree that we should avoid conflicts and discrepancies with PF, but that's about it. We should be able to handle it. It does not follow that collaborative creation should be suppressed in MMO's.
It could be two (groups of) players disagreeing on interpretation or it could CCP running roughshod over your creation... and in both instances, it really is your own fault for getting into.
Whenever there exists two or more differing interpretations of the canon, I would consider that to be a great source of role-play and character interaction, and it wouldn't make any sense for CCP to stop it by settling the issue with a line of PF (just think about the midi-chlorians). On the other hand, if they did happen to release something that contradicts with your own stuff, that'd be a great opportunity for some hand-waving and fishy-explanation fun. Everyone's aware of this risk, and I guess most people take it into account when they put forward claims not backed up by the known facts.
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First I need to address one apparent misconception about what I wrote. I didn't (and I don't think Lallara did either, but not sure so he can speak for himself) speak against having any backstory at all. Indeed, it makes sense to understand where a character is coming from. I was just saying you don't need to come up with a lot of weird and made-up details concerning the Eve universe to do it. There is a big difference. Less is more.
Also, sometimes I wonder why people role-play in Eve. Is it to meaningfully interact with other players (ie. MMORPG)?
When a character is not an established "bittervet", it is quite hard to find meaningful IC interactions, and the backstory and your other own creations are basically everything you have. You just have to hope that they lead to something more meaningful.
Well, every bitter vet started somewhere.
If it is to come up with pages of text on imaginary locations and facts in the Eve universe, I question whether it would be better for them to write their own setting, book or whatever.
Because the community that reads those is even smaller than the RP community, and the authors may be hoping that their creations will lead to character interactions.
Less amateur writing, more role-play. But again, I don't think there is anything horribly wrong about writing stories about your character, etc. Some of it might even be quite readable! I'm on about the made up facts about the universe... and the exercise in extended setting creation. Also, how for some it seems that the writing and coming up of stuff is more of a purpose in itself than any role-playing which seems very misplaced to me.
Ahh, having a hard time explaining myself without a huge wall of text and because it basically amounts to talking somewhat badly about a large sub-set of role-players I think I'll just pass on trying to get my point across. "If you don't have something positive to say..." and all.
So, I'll just repeat and bold what I said earlier as I take my exit out of this discussion.
That's not to say never come up with anything, which is absurd, but there is a difference between filling in the necessary details and being a rogue co-creator of the setting (also there's a way to create on top of CCP's pile rather than over it).
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Speaking personally, for any character that I write (and by extension, any character I make for a game) I will want to have some answers to basic questions to get a sense of character. I might never have to actually refer to some of the details at all, but I still want to know them, even for a minor character. I think in terms of some common everyday scenarios, like introducing yourself on the first day of a course, or chatting to a stranger at some social event, and the very basic personal info that everyone can provide without a second's thought. What's your name? How old are you? Where are you from? Where did you go to school? Did you go to uni? What do you do for a living? What did you used to do before this? Do you have any brothers and sisters? Are you married/single/co-habiting?
I think that place is really important. You don't have to have some strong sense of national identity or anything like that, but the town you grew up in and the schools you went to play a massive part in shaping who you are and how people can perceive you. These things are tricky to establish in Eve.