Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Jakiin on 01 Mar 2012, 16:57
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We in the RP community have, as a necessity, rarely shirked from using headcanon. There are many examples of this, such as Caldari honorific -Haani: Entirely unsupported by PF, it is still accepted as part of the State's culture by most and used by a sizable portion of Caldari RPers. Ideas such as these, if accepted by the community at large, do an excellent job of increasing the depth and thus immersion of New Eden's 'backstory'. But not all such ideas, such claims, are used for benign purposes.
It isn't at all uncommon on the IGS, or indeed any In Character forum for any MMO, for someone to start a thread claiming X, Y, or Z about some faction's alleged misconduct without any evidence. Similar threads in this vein include topics that attribute certain attributes to certain in-game races or cultures based on 'empirical evidence' that is never presented because it of course does not exist, and furthermore has no canon backing.
The difference between these two sorts of claims is more than just politeness, it's effect. If you as a Caldari want to say that popped collars are all the rage in State fashion, then the only kind of people who will care are other Caldari RPers. They will consider your claim, and make the decision based on whether they think the Caldari liking popped collars would be interesting. However, if you as a Caldari want to claim that the Gallente like to sodomize chipmunks, then it becomes political.
Politics is a huge part of EVE, it is in fact the game's primary draw: Sure other games might have more involved combat or more varied environments, but in EVE more than perhaps any other MMORPG you can build an empire. Or, if you so choose, support one. And an unfortunate inevitability of politics is a very Us vs. Them mindset. This mindset means that when you say the Gallente like to sodomize chipmunks, it won't just be the Gallente RPers with an interest in it: It will be the Caldari and Amarr who have a vested interest in tarnishing the Gallente reputation, it will be the Minmatar who have a vested interest in defending their allies (And making the Amarr look stupid). What results is not a suggestion on how to expand the Gallente background, but an attack from one side to another.
But is this necessarily a bad thing? As I said, politics and factionalism in general is one of the game's core attractions. You could certainly argue that mudslinging for the sake of mudslinging is a part of the community's culture, and that there is no practical difference between using fiction made by CCP and fiction made by the players.
Personally, I'm against making things up to serve a purpose, particularly when there's already so many 'true' things to rant on about. I am also as a general rule against mudslinging, seeing as two sides repeating their incompatible dogma over and over again loses its appeal quickly. But I'm curious if there's anyone who would agree with the above argument, or who would have other arguments in favour of these politically motivated claims.
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If some players want their characters bigoted in a way it just ends up in basic mudslinging, I make sure that my character takes them as they are : stupid bigots (vs clever bigots, who are not the same at all). I just consider them part of the universe as much as anyone else.
Which annoys me is not IC stupidity or bigotry, its OOC shit sugarcoated with IC stuff.
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There's very little in Eve RP that necessitates any kind of Fiction Invention that affects anyone but your own character. PF deals with the big stuff, setting up the generalized ideas and impressions of the various nations, factions and so on. We get to invent shit on a personal or at least local level where others of the same faction (or enemies of the faction) gets to invent their own shit on their own local level. "My town were fifty percent slaves." said by a Gallente is actually plausible since there's bound to be backwater planets where they've abandoned all 'standard' Federation politics and laws, but no one can sit down and make a sweeping statement about an entire faction unless it's already laid out in PF.
I do like that popped collars and sodomized chipmunks get a fairly equal place in the argument though. I've often felt that popped collars get too much of a bad rap, y'see.
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Headcanon is not the only areas where a 'thing' about a race or faction or anything becomes popular, regardless of how 'true' or 'accurate' it is; this happen in established fiction as well, especially established fiction that is not quite as established, or clear.
I will leave you all with a great example; The so-called Caldari Prime "genocide". Pretty much my number one biggest pet-peeve next after IC-piracy, so I'm sure I've beaten the topic to death elsewhere then ripped of a limb and beaten the corpse a bit more for the hell of it. You all likely know what I'm talking about so I'll leave this here for now.
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There's very little in Eve RP that necessitates any kind of Fiction Invention that affects anyone but your own character. PF deals with the big stuff, setting up the generalized ideas and impressions of the various nations, factions and so on. We get to invent shit on a personal or at least local level where others of the same faction (or enemies of the faction) gets to invent their own shit on their own local level. "My town were fifty percent slaves." said by a Gallente is actually plausible since there's bound to be backwater planets where they've abandoned all 'standard' Federation politics and laws, but no one can sit down and make a sweeping statement about an entire faction unless it's already laid out in PF.
I do like that popped collars and sodomized chipmunks get a fairly equal place in the argument though. I've often felt that popped collars get too much of a bad rap, y'see.
While there is some limited plausibility in unverified claims at a local level, I think that extreme claims tend to be a bit less valid. A perfect example would be the hypothetical you provided: Lowsec or not, slaves are still illegal Federation-wide, which means that abandoning that 'standard value' would be going against federal law. It is, in fact, about as plausible as Puerto Rico getting away with legalizing slavery or denying women the right to vote because it is a 'backwater' part of the United States.
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Highly unlikely and not something I'd acknowledge IC, yes... but still a possibility. Since it's just a 'local' thing, I can just wave it away as irrelevant, non-existent or otherwise not part of my Eve experience. People do these things all the time, with Rogue Drones as one example. It's much easier to just go "yeah, whatever... you are a) crazy b) some insane statistical outlier c) no matter what, you're NOT representative of your faction" than trying to argue the stuff IC.
My main point is that you just can't invent something affecting an entire faction, because inevitably that means you're trampling roughshod over someone else's RP without anything to back it up.
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Highly unlikely and not something I'd acknowledge IC, yes... but still a possibility. Since it's just a 'local' thing, I can just wave it away as irrelevant, non-existent or otherwise not part of my Eve experience. People do these things all the time, with Rogue Drones as one example. It's much easier to just go "yeah, whatever... you are a) crazy b) some insane statistical outlier c) no matter what, you're NOT representative of your faction" than trying to argue the stuff IC.
My main point is that you just can't invent something affecting an entire faction, because inevitably that means you're trampling roughshod over someone else's RP without anything to back it up.
Fair and true, respectively.
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Making events / characters / ideas up to serve a purpose is something I hate to see; it's been incredibly rare, in my experience, that it amounts to anything beyond "oh, I dislike the faction, let's generate the most suitable strawman". It interferes with the RP of others, often without the input of anyone else, without drawing from existing PF -- if there is good PF evidence for the events being constructed, however, it changes the situation a bit. I dislike people making characters who are incapable of seeing good sides to their IC enemies (it's boring to watch the "no u" that ensues all too often) but at the very least it has some substance in canon.
Fortunately, EVE offers an excellent opportunity to ignore the worst of these inventions as the ravings of a madman.
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I will leave you all with a great example; The so-called Caldari Prime "genocide". Pretty much my number one biggest pet-peeve next after IC-piracy, so I'm sure I've beaten the topic to death elsewhere then ripped of a limb and beaten the corpse a bit more for the hell of it. You all likely know what I'm talking about so I'll leave this here for now.
That actually is fairly well-supported by canon. It's probably not at Final Solution levels, but it's frequently referenced and a Chronicle (The Science of Never Again) is actually devoted in part to it. In that Chronicle, it references the orbital bombardment of civilian cities. In The Early Days, it reveals that the Caldari who survived did so by hiding in cities and forests. Now - and I hate to use a real-world analogy here, but one has to at some point - let us take the example of the Khmer Rouge. What they did - destroying urban populations and driving the survivors out into the countryside - is commonly considered a genocide. However, their program of agrarian communism was less destructive to native populations (they did desire that some would survive, after all) than orbital bombardment of civilian populations would be.
Again, this isn't to say that a fictional universe is in any way comparable to the suffering of real persons. But if you want to portray, in art, certain events, one must compare the created to the known at some point.
As for the original point, I'm very political IC, and I don't think its possible to be truly unbiased OOC. Nonetheless, I think that what we RP should be either obtained directly from canon, or inferred from it. I'm not fond of the concept of a character flying without a capsule, for example, or being a telepath (at least until TEA - darn you to heck, TonyG :P ). Within those bounds, however, anything goes. Heck, I've often said that I wouldn't be unhappy if the Federation was removed as an RP entity from the game.
Eve, in my opinion, would lose its zest, its flavor, if it were to lose that edge of nastiness and cruel competition that has characterized it for so long.
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The thing is, these claims invariably make the person doing the claiming look good.
Now, in some games that might not be a problem, but Eve is a game where reputation matters and I for one happen to think that reputation should only count when its been earned and not made up.
So if you go around telling people that you're the head of the Federal Navy, or on the board of one of the PF Caldari megacorps, or the leader of one of the PF Amarrian families, you should have something to back that claim up with.
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Is someone here saying that our characters shouldn't be lying or making up false claims? Does PF indicate somewhere that this perfectly normal mode of human behaviour is missing from New Eden?
I mean, there exists people in RL who do this a lot, we have to deal with it and it adds a certain edge to the character of the person making the claims. It's not like we have to believe everything someone says, but we can, if we think that for some particular reason our characters would be inclined to believe in the claim.
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My problem with the Caldari Prime bombardment is not it's documentation, but somewhat lack of it. This is likely intentional to create argument, but no-one seem interested in arguing anything. Instead, pro-Caldari sources claim the Fed wanted to exterminate the Caldari entirely (it fits with their anti-fed agenda) while the counter-arguments, if they can be called that, devolve into excuses for the deed. The PF info given to us give no clear answer anywhere to what exactly the over-arching goal of the Fed was at the time - at least two scenarios can be argued with equally little evidence to back them up, but only one is ever argued and defended against by any opposition.
This has created the PLAYER CREATED fiction of Caldari Prime as an intentional genocide attempt, and that is not accurate. PF states the Fed set invasion forces down on the planet, that the orbital bombardment was systematic (They aimed at specific areas, this could be anything), that Caldari resistance was waning rapidly and that it would only be a matter of time before the Fed had complete CONTROL of the planet. The chronicle you mention even gave a number of fatalities to the bombings - I did not recall that there ever were a number mentioned - "hundreds of thousands". I was under the impression they lost millions out of who knows how many billions in the bombings. It also claims that the blockade/bombings went on for "far to long" - while this statement don't offer an accurate or specific period, they apparently had the time to bomb the world for a long time. Either their aim was sloppy or they never tried to hit as many people as possible to begin with, or they may even have tried to avoid hitting their own troops on the ground.
In short, there is plenty of "evidence" to support the argument that the only thing the fed wanted was control of the planet, bombing away any resistance, but this practically never happen; by now the repeated argument that a mass-extermination of the Caldari was the only goal has been repeated so many times whenever it is bough up, that people seem to take it as fact, even if the "evidence" can point either way.
Another interesting, minor point, is the casualties mentioned in the relevant chronicles; if the State lost hundreds of thousands of civilians, then they lost anything between 200 k to 900 k in the bombardment. That's pretty bad, but in the terrorist hit on Nouvelle Rouvenor it's said they lost over half a million. That's 500 001 to anything under a million people dead, already rivaling the Caldari Prime bombings. Add to that the carrier insertion by Tovil Toba and the "roughly 2 million" he killed and the civilian losses is anything from 200 k to 900 k for the State vs roughly 2.5 million for the Fed. If players were to bitch IC abut who killed the most civilians or who were the nastiest mass-murderers, Federals would have a grimmer number to fall back to.
Anyhow, in short; My point is, while it's not an entirely "unbacked claim" that the Fed tried to commit genocide on the Caldari, it's only one of at least 2 different explanations, but due to popular repeat it's argued as solid fact and treated as such by allot of players. This shoe-horning of PF to fit one group's agenda has by now been treated as canonized fact and become acceptable player fiction.
And that makes me somewhat unhappy because the chance for debate or argument on the topic is nearly removed in favor of either bitching about the past evils of the fed, or trying to play it down as a form of damage control or out-right agreement that it happened.
As for Bastian's "why can't people lie about it?" - Well they can, and they do. My problem is the lack of counter arguments in this case. One side lies or makes a claim - the other buys it, agrees with it, or just treats the opposing opinion as indisputable fact.
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Is someone here saying that our characters shouldn't be lying or making up false claims? Does PF indicate somewhere that this perfectly normal mode of human behaviour is missing from New Eden?
I mean, there exists people in RL who do this a lot, we have to deal with it and it adds a certain edge to the character of the person making the claims. It's not like we have to believe everything someone says, but we can, if we think that for some particular reason our characters would be inclined to believe in the claim.
Oh no, characters can lie and spread delusions: I don't think (And I certainly hope against) any Amarrian RPers see their characters' view on slavery as anything more sympathetic than 'well intentioned but misguided' at best. And of course as anyone who has been the public face of a corporation will tell you, bare-faced lies come with the job.
But I doubt that when Hilato Talkori's player was writing about provist crimes he was thinking "Oh Hilato, you devious little liar you!" And why should I give him that benefit of the doubt? He never presented it other than a straight accusation, without any OOC wink-and-nudge that he is IC lying. The reality is that without any indication otherwise, without any OOC declarations we know of, and without any precedence of this being a known but repeated lie/delusion amongst certain factions, there is no reason to think that his thread is anything but yet another attempt to make the 'other side' worse. And to the surprise of no one, we have several characters (Some of whom are, and are played by, intelligent, respectable people) stepping in and throwing their support behind this man and his campaign against the provists, not because his campaign is based on anything so irrelevant as evidence, but because they are also enemies with the provists. So more mud is thrown, the lines in the sand that have long since been dug to the depth of ditches get a little closer to their dream of being full-fledged canyons, and I can't help but wonder what vote I missed where we all decided this was fun.
Stuff
Also, this. As someone who's only ever RP's on the Caldari/Amarr side of the line, I never read the Caldari Prime bombing as anything more than a heavy-handed attempt at regaining control by systematically destroying the Caldari infrastructure. If some others read it as being an attempt at genocide, then that's also fine, but universal acceptance of this theory seems a bit off...
Except of course for the fact that it, like the "We're doing it for their souls!" excuse of the Amarr, is one of the few things they have to make CCP's claim of this being a 'no good guys, no bad guys' universe slightly less laughable. But that's for another thread.
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[....] I can't help but wonder what vote I missed where we all decided this was fun.
In general, I avoid IGS because I find it neither fun nor useful. People play EVE differently, though, and for some IGS seems to be worthwhile or even "the place where you do RP".
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Is someone here saying that our characters shouldn't be lying or making up false claims? Does PF indicate somewhere that this perfectly normal mode of human behaviour is missing from New Eden?
I mean, there exists people in RL who do this a lot, we have to deal with it and it adds a certain edge to the character of the person making the claims. It's not like we have to believe everything someone says, but we can, if we think that for some particular reason our characters would be inclined to believe in the claim.
This.
People confuse too much IC with OOC sometimes.
Which brings me to :
Making events / characters / ideas up to serve a purpose is something I hate to see; it's been incredibly rare, in my experience, that it amounts to anything beyond "oh, I dislike the faction, let's generate the most suitable strawman". It interferes with the RP of others, often without the input of anyone else, without drawing from existing PF -- if there is good PF evidence for the events being constructed, however, it changes the situation a bit. I dislike people making characters who are incapable of seeing good sides to their IC enemies (it's boring to watch the "no u" that ensues all too often) but at the very least it has some substance in canon.
Fortunately, EVE offers an excellent opportunity to ignore the worst of these inventions as the ravings of a madman.
I think it would be more accurate to say that "I dislike players who are incapable of seeing good sides to their IC enemies and then creating characters". Or at least, that is what I do think myself. Take Rodj for example, tell me if I am wrong but I highly doubt that he believes the exact same thing than his character, and still, his character is kindof a bigoted Amarrian. It is pleasant to play with him because of this. If the player is conscious of that difference, it gives depth to the character himself. When I read some other people it just sounds like that is just the player that is talking. The character is paperthin and almost non existing (and looking like a ludicrous cliché). Of course I am not going to point fingers at anyone (be them there or not) as I do not want to tell a few people that they are doing it wrong imo, but I can tell Rodj that he is doing it right, right.. ? :P
It becomes even more annoying when these people start to really care about their personal political views on the eve world so much that it is damn easy to tell when it is the player that is speaking, and more, that it gets quite obvious that the player himself is implying to you, the other player, and not even your character, that you are doing it wrong and that your understanding of the PF is just shit.
OOC bigotry sugarcoated with IC, as I said above.
Edit : this also goes pair with so called RPers RPing not for the sake of RPing, but to win the argument. A lot of people are just there (especially on the IGS) in the same kind of testosterone contest that is so ingrained in Eve everywhere where people think they are proving something - or I don't know what exactly - by winning the argument by whatever mean necessary. Who cares after all ? That is the character that may be losing the argument, not the player, so who the hell cares ? It might actually bring interesting cases where a character might change his/her mind or suddenly have a lot of doubts, or whatever.
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It becomes even more annoying when these people start to really care about their personal political views on the eve world so much that it is damn easy to tell when it is the player that is speaking, and more, that it gets quite obvious that the player himself is implying to you, the other player, and not even your character, that you are doing it wrong and that your understanding of the PF is just shit.
OOC bigotry sugarcoated with IC, as I said above.
Edit : this also goes pair with so called RPers RPing not for the sake of RPing, but to win the argument. A lot of people are just there (especially on the IGS) in the same kind of testosterone contest that is so ingrained in Eve everywhere where people think they are proving something - or I don't know what exactly - by winning the argument by whatever mean necessary. Who cares after all ? That is the character that may be losing the argument, not the player, so who the hell cares ? It might actually bring interesting cases where a character might change his/her mind or suddenly have a lot of doubts, or whatever.
Incidentally, I should be perfectly clear: I hold virtually no viewpoints in common with my character save an appreciation for capitalism. :P
Anyway, I think that a character who changes his mind - or, perhaps, doesn't know it - can be interesting and fun, but changing views is something you want to use sparingly in your character's story. If you don't deeply invest in one position or another, and discover reasons for holding that position, then a change of mind isn't really noteworthy, and you actually end up devaluing any position you (your character, rather) does hold. Why is this position better than the last?
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Oh yes of course, not to say that one has to change his/her mind everytime either. It was just an example.
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The Federal Defense Union (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Federal_Defense_Union_Ranks) and State Protectorate (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/State_Protectorate_(NPC_corporation)) ranks at least provide political rhetoric from the opening of the Gallente-Caldari War. To me, they indicate the new Gallente President at the time's intent was to wipe out the Caldari. Maybe that isn't what happened, but the rhetoric puts it in that light.
But I have to ask, why shouldn't Caldari characters portray the exodus and bombardment as a horrible thing as something approaching genocide? The event happened hundreds of years in the past and is what created the modern State - why wouldn't the Caldari continue to portray the Gallente as oppressive, murders?
Is someone here saying that our characters shouldn't be lying or making up false claims? Does PF indicate somewhere that this perfectly normal mode of human behaviour is missing from New Eden?
I mean, there exists people in RL who do this a lot, we have to deal with it and it adds a certain edge to the character of the person making the claims. It's not like we have to believe everything someone says, but we can, if we think that for some particular reason our characters would be inclined to believe in the claim.
Oh no, characters can lie and spread delusions: I don't think (And I certainly hope against) any Amarrian RPers see their characters' view on slavery as anything more sympathetic than 'well intentioned but misguided' at best. And of course as anyone who has been the public face of a corporation will tell you, bare-faced lies come with the job.
But I doubt that when Hilato Talkori's player was writing about provist crimes he was thinking "Oh Hilato, you devious little liar you!" And why should I give him that benefit of the doubt? He never presented it other than a straight accusation, without any OOC wink-and-nudge that he is IC lying. The reality is that without any indication otherwise, without any OOC declarations we know of, and without any precedence of this being a known but repeated lie/delusion amongst certain factions, there is no reason to think that his thread is anything but yet another attempt to make the 'other side' worse. And to the surprise of no one, we have several characters (Some of whom are, and are played by, intelligent, respectable people) stepping in and throwing their support behind this man and his campaign against the provists, not because his campaign is based on anything so irrelevant as evidence, but because they are also enemies with the provists. So more mud is thrown, the lines in the sand that have long since been dug to the depth of ditches get a little closer to their dream of being full-fledged canyons, and I can't help but wonder what vote I missed where we all decided this was fun.
Don't leave holes in accusations and make them seem plausible. Claiming that thousands of CreoDron employees have died in a freak drone accident in Placid sounds all well and good until someone asks you want system and you realize CreoDron does not have any PC accessible stations in Placid. Suddenly the author and those interacting are scrabbling to figure out where and why CreoDron was even in Placid.
When someone steps up to provide a "news item" or starting point for RP, they are GMing in a world filled with information written by others. Not only that, but our words will be the basis for others RP/stories and we will lose control of them. I was recently pointed to an example of this (http://rocwieler.com/2010/05/18/tyrannis-chances/), involving LDIS. I do not remember ever talking to Roc about it or saying "ya, LDIS would build "Infinity Cities" on tons of planets."
So, can we lie? Sure, but be good at it! Create well thought out lies/stories, the part where we scratch our heads and go "I dunno" should be a small part of the story.
If I am want to talk about a growing NPC presence in 4TH's space, I am actually going to talk about NPC's setting up liaison offices in stations or forward teams looking at at possible revenue streams. I am not going to talk about them building a station in I-MGAB.
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That's just the thing - Caldari characters invested in the situation can definitely claim the whole event was an attempt to remove the Caldari people from the face of the cluster, and nearly always when they get the chance, they do. That's to be expected, and I do expect them to do that based on their agendas and viewpoints.
The problem I'm annoyed with is that when they go "herpa, you tried to kill us all, derpa" the counter-argument seem to have died off completely in favor of "yeah we did, I'm sorry" (sad face). There is no arguing anymore. Just a claim by X that's not verified by PF, that automatically seem to be agreed on by Y, Z and all others with no opposition, even if there is fully legit opposition and debate to be had. A PF-fueled argument of unclear events has turned into a IC jab that none care to argue against.
As for the militia rank quotes, that's another annoyance I've got. Besides the whole fact that the statements of those ranks don't have to reflect what was actually done - the president quote is from the super-national fascist president, who most definitely had wet dreams of killing all Caldari - it's down-right INSULTING to me as a player that the Amarr get IC faith-based quotes and sayings, the Minmatar get inspirational, defiant sayings and remarks, the Caldari get defiant, 'we won't give in ever' statements, and the Fed gets that sad collection of super-national shit from an era of government that's considered the lowest point in the Fed's history by most PF sources and players supporting the Fed.
I mean WTF CCP? Do you honestly have so little info on one of your own fictional in-game groups you had to resort to this sad tripe for their ranks? During 100 years of war, no-one made any statements that were somewhat heroic, defensive in nature, or at least not an agressive call for mass-murder? A Caldari, Amarr or Minmatar player gets a new rank and goes "yay inspiration", a Fed player gets one and - with the sole exception of number 1 and 2 - its more "kill them all rawrrawrrawrrawr". Again, fuck you. You could have done so much better.
The ranks don't prove anything conclusive either way. The president wanted them dead, that's old news. The rest are aggressive or pathetic statements from individuals and indicate the attitude of most of the idiots in power at the time. None of them, besides the count-down timer for the bombings, indicate any actions made - ergo what was done according to the 3 war chronicles counts, the ranks give an indication for what they wanted to do.
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Couple of completely unsupported guesses I'll throw out:
1, CCP was sourcing a bunch of quotes from the earliest starts of respective conflicts. The genocidal Federation government was the government in power at that point, so they got sourced.
2, CCP may have felt that while the darker aspects of some other factions are self-evident, the Federation's shadier portions were not so evident, and needed to be highlighted in a location easily accessible to the FWers.
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Couple of completely unsupported guesses I'll throw out:
1, CCP was sourcing a bunch of quotes from the earliest starts of respective conflicts. The genocidal Federation government was the government in power at that point, so they got sourced.
2, CCP may have felt that while the darker aspects of some other factions are self-evident, the Federation's shadier portions were not so evident, and needed to be highlighted in a location easily accessible to the FWers.
There's also the fact that Eve is supposed to be a somewhat dystopian, gritty world. But, honestly, besides the actions of the Federation towards the Caldari, are there any major instances of the Gallente being unsavory? Not many, if any.
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There are some instances - the Gal epic arc, for instance, points toward both slave trade with the Amarr and the darker side of the Gallente hyper-hedonism, while there's also the whole thing about how the Gallente exiled the Intaki for showing any sympathy for the Caldari).
But, honestly, these are more obscure bits of lore to the non-RP community, and I think CCP was really looking to try to give the FWers an idea of what the war was about.
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There are some instances - the Gal epic arc, for instance, points toward both slave trade with the Amarr and the darker side of the Gallente hyper-hedonism, while there's also the whole thing about how the Gallente exiled the Intaki for showing any sympathy for the Caldari).
But, honestly, these are more obscure bits of lore to the non-RP community, and I think CCP was really looking to try to give the FWers an idea of what the war was about.
I will respectfully ask that this line of discussion end. Not because I dislike it (I find it very interesting) and not because I'm worried about it derailing the thread (That topic seems to be done anyway), but because unless someone else beats me to it I plan on making an entire thread dedicated to this subject within the next 48 hours, and dammit don't say all the interesting things before then! :mad:
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Bwahahaha, fair enough Jak. My apologies. :P
(Just an FYI - if you can find a mod who's willing, threads can actually be literally split/posts moved, so if you want to have a section moved to the new thread...)
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Just another note on the Caldari-Gallente quotes... They seem, for a large part, to be a back and forth with each other, where the rank descriptions are mostly responses to one another.
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The Federal Defense Union (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Federal_Defense_Union_Ranks) and State Protectorate (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/State_Protectorate_(NPC_corporation)) ranks at least provide political rhetoric from the opening of the Gallente-Caldari War. To me, they indicate the new Gallente President at the time's intent was to wipe out the Caldari. Maybe that isn't what happened, but the rhetoric puts it in that light.
But I have to ask, why shouldn't Caldari characters portray the exodus and bombardment as a horrible thing as something approaching genocide? The event happened hundreds of years in the past and is what created the modern State - why wouldn't the Caldari continue to portray the Gallente as oppressive, murders?
I think this line of rhetoric makes perfect sense for Caldari characters. Federation loyalists certainly have counter arguments for these accusations, and any revelation of an OOC truth would kill all the RP which spins from this source. Hopefully no one will ever get the idea to publish a book which reveals how things "really" are.
Don't leave holes in accusations and make them seem plausible. Claiming that thousands of CreoDron employees have died in a freak drone accident in Placid sounds all well and good until someone asks you want system and you realize CreoDron does not have any PC accessible stations in Placid. Suddenly the author and those interacting are scrabbling to figure out where and why CreoDron was even in Placid.
When someone steps up to provide a "news item" or starting point for RP, they are GMing in a world filled with information written by others. Not only that, but our words will be the basis for others RP/stories and we will lose control of them. I was recently pointed to an example of this (http://rocwieler.com/2010/05/18/tyrannis-chances/), involving LDIS. I do not remember ever talking to Roc about it or saying "ya, LDIS would build "Infinity Cities" on tons of planets."
So, can we lie? Sure, but be good at it! Create well thought out lies/stories, the part where we scratch our heads and go "I dunno" should be a small part of the story.
If I am want to talk about a growing NPC presence in 4TH's space, I am actually going to talk about NPC's setting up liaison offices in stations or forward teams looking at at possible revenue streams. I am not going to talk about them building a station in I-MGAB.
I personally prefer made-up claims which are difficult or impossible to fact-check. Examples include things like conspiracies, sensational news, opinion polls and shifts in opinion landscape, failed projects, psychological claims, religious revelations, predictions, expert views, or something a crazy person might cook up. As long as nothing prevents the claims to be half-truths or completely fabricated, the opposition will have a lot of freedom in formulating a counter argument, and I don't see why there would be a reason for complaints.
Regardless of how many stations CreoDron has in Placid, a claim like "thousands of CreoDron employees have died in an accident" would not be in the news in real-life if it wasn't fact-checked, and it might also hurt the views of CreoDron loyalists on their favourite company. In this case, one could say that we are god-modding a bit here, but then again these kind of accidents are bound to happen sometimes and we'd need a damn good explanation if they were completely non-existent. So, since it's plausible and doesn't seem to have any far-reaching consequences, I would probably still keep playing along.
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I really don't think CCP have enough political scientists in their ranks to realistically portray this sort of thing in three dimensions. There isn't even any details about how the U-Nats got into power anyway. From the quotes, it looks like they switched Presidents in a day. Doesn't look like the fascists were popularly elected at all.
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I really don't think CCP have enough political scientists in their ranks to realistically portray this sort of thing in three dimensions. There isn't even any details about how the U-Nats got into power anyway. From the quotes, it looks like they switched Presidents in a day. Doesn't look like the fascists were popularly elected at all.
They had one in form of TonyG; but I dont know what his specialisation was. I think, he was closer to sociology I would guess, he makes in the fanfest vids on youtube allot of Macro-Macro statements. But if CCP needs one... in my Corp is one friend with the specialisation in international relations and his name is Neo-Realism.^^ (no joke) Im more the NPÖ-guy (Public choice). Even if is isnt my domain, maybe I can help... Is the question: "How can I portray a right wing shift in the Fed?" I would say that is a hard one because the old schoolers like: Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba The Civic Culture wouldnt work, because I think, the Fed had during this time most likely a good mix out of the three (parochial, subject, participant).
And Lepsts Political Man the sociology of politics and his theory "the more developed a country is, the more likely it is that a democracy develops." doesnt really help. So-... how we stand in the old school stuff?... I would most likely go with Walt Rostow.... he his more open, which means in his modell is it like in Almond/Verbas the cc possible that even I high develop state can become a dictatorship. He has just small examples in his modell were he just describe how can a nation derail... like Algeria or Afghanistan (in the 50s and 60s), In his modell is that the case: If for a long time the economic growth is below the population growth (it is simplified version form me, more precisly he has actually a function with some more economic variables.... but just to give an idea.... you can take his model and add it to Gunnar Heinsohns model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnar_Heinsohn#Youth_bulge). So that you have Rostow plus Hainsohn.. which gives a possible and rational anwser, why can even a develop nation become not a democracy.