I don't think it's the first time the, "proof or stfu" argument has ruined some RP, Lyn, and I don't think it will be last.
Yes, but that's not so much "proof or stfu" that ruins RP here, it is the deliberate decision to resort to the unprovable, or, said less nicely, pulling things up one's ass that are not described in PF, and thus, appropriating the PF to win said RP. Saying that one has the whole documentation at hand is kindof abusing relationship where you completely force the hand of the other players into a PF game about who has the bigger and can pull up the biggest lie since nobody obviously has the documentation available, OOCly, to begin with.
It's rather inelegant and poor form, and by experience tends to oneshot interesting RP scenes like this one.
To be clearer, one can certainly say that since they hold sovereignty in space through FW game mechanisms (can't be denied, and that's backing one's word with ingame actions, the holy grail), and thus can invade the planet(s) as they see fit, through districts and DUST for ingame actions, or through pure world building like we have seen already in chronicles where planets are invaded and transferred under the control of the enemy. Of course, world building can be seen as pulling things up one's ass, but that's fine if you can have an OOC agreement with the other side like in any world building coop stuff. In that vein, that thread was extremely intriguing and rather awesome as it involved a strong discussion on who has the right to do what in that silly intricacies of intergalactic treaties and jurisdictions in the frame of the proxy war. Which means, as it is often best (and worse) in RP in Eve, the more vague and grey it is, the more it offers opportunities for each side and does not offer a clear cut unilateral consequence.
But one has to be careful when threading with so called documents supposedly available to everyone ICly. You can make up stuff without contacting the other parties to see if that's fine with them, but that's a bet in itself since if they do not agree at all with your interpretation, that's suddenly drama on the table, and like Gwen says, putting a Schrodinger cat in a box. Here it's exactly like making up scriptures to prove one's point. The other side has the remaining options to :
- Withdraw / stfu.
- Counter argue and say that you are quoting bullshit.
Which gets everyone absolutely nowhere.
So, all in all, I perfectly expect that from the random guy on the IGS, but I was a little disenchanted to see that was actually us.
That said that's the only issue I had with that awesome event, and double awesome by the fact that Laurentis tried to set up something for one, and then actually get people involved and interested to the point that military escalation was almost going to happen, like a few crisis during the cold war, ready to detonate.