Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Esna Pitoojee on 09 Jan 2012, 18:32
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Alright, so...
Here's the deal - recently I have ended up dealing with, on repeated occasions, a character who does not fit in the PF of the EVE universe.
This is not a "hey, I'm an escaped Jovian prince" kind of silliness, or "hey, I'm a talking furrier that's the result of a genetics experiment", nor is it a greyer "this is my interpretation, this is yours" kind of situation. It's a more subtle, yet definitely contradictory situation - something more along the lines of someone claiming to be a citizen of the State and wields influence with the various megacorps - all the various megacorps, even ones that hate each others' guts - or claiming to be a known Blood Raider in a position of high power in the Empire, with the whole heretic thing being excused because of their supposed skill at doing whatever. (Note that both these examples are unrelated to the actual situation; they're just examples.)
To the newer player, however, it may not be apparent how contradictory this is; they see it as a reasonable combination of positions. To me, however, this contradiction is very jarring, and I have a great deal of trouble interacting with this character while their character does not fit into the universe like this.
At the same time, however, it's neither desirable nor easy to simply laugh and brush them off as we do when (for example) yet another "cryogenically frozen terran" posts on IGS, especially since a lot of people may not realise the inherent contradictions in the situation.
My question is, how do I proceed from here? Given that this has been their position for some time, I highly doubt it'll be as simple as just convoing them and trying to sit them down to explain how their position contradicts the PF...
Addendum: I fully realise how close this is skirting to "urdoinitwrong". As a situation involving direct PF contradictions and not personal interpretations of stuff, I believe it is worth discussing. Moreover, I've also done everything I can to keep the topic abstracted and not pointing at people, and even went and asked a backstage mod if they felt this was a reasonable thread before I posted.
With that said, please for the love of Chribba keep it reasonable - if things go downhill I will petition for this thread to be locked, much as I would actually like to have this discussion.
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Ultimately, none of those institutions will ever coroborate their story or actively assist this individual's adventures in space, so the question is, what's the harm in just letting the nutcase run along with their delusions?
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Ultimately, none of those institutions will ever coroborate their story or actively assist this individual's adventures in space, so the question is, what's the harm in just letting the nutcase run along with their delusions?
Alright, so I totally forgot to put this part of it in the OP, so thank you for pointing out my fail. >.< (No, I'm not being sarcastic, I actually forgot to put this in.)
The issue is that Esna cannot ignore this person because of their IC positions. His character (perhaps unfortunately) has him proactively attempting to engage interact with situations in this specific realm of happenings (again, I'm having to be really, really vague here), and to ignore them would leave him with IC issues AND frustates me to some degree. When I try to engage, however, more often than not I'm rapidly stopped in my tracks by the issues in the OP.
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It's really hard to give advise without the specifics,
I think so long as you keep it constructive it would probably help to just lay out the situation so we can think on it!
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Two paths I see,
deal with it™ : You're basically in a situation that means, unless the other party is noticeably changing, you can't do anything but wait to get out of it. If the RP you're trying to engage in is so truly stressful and otherwise difficult to deal with, I can only recommend to just leave it. The end results are either you're not having fun, or you have a temporary whiplash in your roleplay that can be written off easily.
will it blend™ : Have a meeting of the minds with the player out of character and try to establish common ground. "This is my RP, this is yours. This is where yours conflicts with mine, can we work it out?". If you can't work it out with the person, I question their value for being a person to roleplay with, basically.
This is presumptuous of me, but you seem intent on being true to following your character logically. A good policy, but I must point out that situations arise where there is no good outcome. You're either bending your back so much you're snapping in half like a lawn chair, or your banging your RP to shake it up and get out of a bad fix. Would I be right?
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Reminds me one dude called Stalingrad he was trying to RP, people reacted to that not the way as he thought, then he :ragequit:
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You can always throw your toys out of the pram.
Frankly my dear, the process of becoming capsuleer and the day to day life of a capsuleer seems to drive most of the sanity out of the people.
The person you are interacting with is delusional and insane, treat him/her as such.
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Does anyone else remember those BSG RPers a few years back?
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I'd say treat their character's claims as just that. They could be trying to impress someone or simply lying. Given your example, it's very possible for someone to run missions for all of the megacorps. They may look at their standings, the sweet talk from their agents, the LP rewards, and think they're the most influential thing since a Jovian used pod salesman let some Caldari take a test drive. There's nothing saying they can't think that. There's likewise nothing saying other characters can't disbelieve them.
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Esna, forgive me for doing this, but I'm having a hard time figuritn this out. So I'll lay out an example like one of the ones you gave, with what I think is the problem, and go from there. Please let me know if I got this completely wrong.
So this guy, call him A, is, for example, saying that he is high up in all of the caldari mega corps, to the point that he RPs that he can order them around to some extent. In your dealings with A, situations come up where A uses that suposed connection to solve some RP point, aka, he says, "Oh you need some research, no problem, I'll get my guys in the mega corps to deal with that for you." And then he produces something from this. Or something to that effect. If that's the case, I suppose you just have to either deal with him, talk tot he player, or get away from him. If you can't get away from him and he won't change his ways, well only other thing I can think of is try to minimize his impact, though that is entering rat bastard territory. By which I mean, if he hands you the research int he last example, say, "But this isn't from the mega corps, its in crayon on toilet paper." But like I said, that's getting into it a bit.
On the other hand, if he doesn't actually produce anything from his "connections" feel free to call him insane and a guy who can't be trusted whenever he says I've got somethign fromt he mega corps for that.
Sorry if that doesn't help.
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My question is, how do I proceed from here? Given that this has been their position for some time, I highly doubt it'll be as simple as just convoing them and trying to sit them down to explain how their position contradicts the PF...
I would actually suggest sending out an evemail to the person or convo as the absolute first thing that should have been done. Nothing can be lost from this, and you have everything to gain. Even an IC nudge can sometimes avert RP disasters, though for a situation like yours I would avoid doing so IC. If they are in any OOC channels that you are also in, you could possibly bring it up there, in a non-threatening way. Sometimes interventions are necessary, and having more than one person pointing out the issue may assist in averting a potentially catastrophic breakdown of communication. Communication is very necessary in any RP environment.
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Contact OOC and talk it out.
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Contact and non-confrontational discussion can be a good thing. Keep in mind that PF in EVE has long been a vague, nebulous thing. A lot of people simply dont know there is contradictory PF out there, or where to find it. Its possible they might actually be thankful for the subtle nudge toward the PF in question.
Failing that, just throw them in the Esnarem.
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Contact OOC and talk it out.
This. Might be a simple adjustment and a small retcon and you're back to happily RPing.
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Sorry for off topic, but why does Esnarem sound so evil?
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Does anyone else remember those BSG RPers a few years back?
Yes! And the response was fun, although some people disagreed. :D
(http://www.wanoah.co.uk/Sigs/Cylonz.gif)
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I had a chat with Esna last night and I also know the other party OOC. I think the issues are absolutely navigable and need not ruin anybody's day with a bit of common ground and minor detail changes.
Basically one person is basing a lot of their current character relationships on some potentially dicey propositions that we'd have to find out more about.
I think this would actually be a super thread to have a nice, RATIONAL, discussion about the specific issues but I'm not going to out anyone, if Esna wants I can speak to them and see if they wanna hash it out via our nerd court of public opinion?
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Sorry for off topic, but why does Esnarem sound so evil?
Because it is.
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I talked to both sides, seems like some mixups of IC and OOC.
Without getting into specifics it seems it would be far, far easier to just let it go, Esna. Let them have their end of the pool, you stay on your end, and that might just work best.
I think some of the claims you are making about their actions aren't quite supported, and the person you are concerned with has pretty decent IC explinations for some of the things you are taking issue with, at least enough that it might be best to just leave it be? This seems certainly NOT a case of 'someone who doesn't fit in the eve universe" after speaking with them about the things you are concerned with.
Also they are stating you've done some not-fun things on your side as well.
I'm not taking sides but I don't see any benefit to continuing for you all to interact.
I don't see their claims as being particularly game-breaking or strange at all, although this is only from speaking with them for about 15 minutes on the topic. They had decent answers for most everything I brought up from the devil's advocate point of view.
My 2 cents, and I'm happy to elaborate as Esna would like here or privately.
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[mod]I'd like to make a bit of a clarification here: It's perfectly fine to discuss and request advice for a non-specific scenario: 'I sometimes run into x and how would you handle it?' This is not the place for people with a dispute to publicly hash out their differences - that is something generally better handled in private unless there is a very compelling reason to drag it out into the public realm (and showing everyone how the other person is terrible is not a compelling reason).I've had an eye on this thread, because I'm aware that scenario 1 can easily be trolling disguised as a request for advice, but from what I've seen a useful discussion has been had for the most part. If anyone feels differently, they can follow the proper channels and use the report button, and explain why they feel differently. Please note that that won't guarantee action, but we do review every report.[/mod]