Soap: Characters personalities are in conflict. Social occasions, conversations, interactions and gossip are the major battlegrounds and weapons, escalating into assassinations in space, wars and exploding things.
I can enjoy these things. I very much like Revan's social events when the mood takes me, I like to portray the human side of Jade there with dancing, nightclub singing general chitchat and interactions and its something I find quite disappointing now that this form of roleplay in general has become quite remote from things in space on all sides. I'd love there to be less general narkiness in the RP community and have people more comfortable sharing each other's social events and flowing more naturally to consequences in space as a result.
Back in the grand old days of the server in the first couple of years we had far fewer established nightclubs/bars/social points but more active RP'ers frequenting them and the atmosphere was better.
Ideology: Characters ideas are in conflict. Forum debates, news articles, are the initial sources of disagreement, escalating into wars and shooting.
This can be heinously boring where the characters are a stuck record and just keep endlessly repeating the same stuff for years and years. I like to see characters evolving and changing and reacting to new situations and I'd far rather interact with somebody capable of showing human emotions than with an endless array of sterotypes mouthing PF propaganda. I try to encourage the stuff I like by being supportive and respectful of characters who can change and react in a natural manner while being generally curt and dismissive with those that just keep the same monotone.
But on the plus point - a couple of interesting characters with a fresh ideology and ability to react and change to external stimulus can make the game very good indeed.
Power: Characters economic, military or other material goals are in conflict. Parking your tanks on someone else's lawn is the start of things. Wars and explosions soon follow.
Its good but there are some ways if can become boring too (in RP terms). For example, I love talking over the ideology of conflict, the psychology of warfare - the reasons for fighting, I love dramatising (mythologizing) conflict and playing the role of the "warrior-bard" who fights and tells the tale to help those not on the field to relive the conflict anew. But I just yawn when people start doing the nit-picking about efficiency, k/d ratio, analytics on multiple corp success ratios against x,y,z targets. That stuff is terrible. Also NBSI corps claiming they are elite because they have 100x the kills of NRDS corps - bah tbh.
I guess my take is its great when it feeds creativity and narative and allows expression of in-game ideologies and helps suspend disbelief and progress the storyline of our lets believe conflicts. But its terrible when it turns into some wierd stats-based baseball comparison with maths geeks twisting figures to produce some kind of technical win. Its why I prefer to summarise the outcomes of our wars with something like "we killed 3 ships for everyone one we lost and we blew up their tower!" rather than posting 10 pages of killboard links with infinitely detailed statistical analysis.
I would say that mostly, it is the ideology that I like more, when there is enough PF to make it interesting. E.g. the difference of opinion with the Sani-sabik space nuns that led to the Doll Wars, and the interpreting of Scripture that I engage in with some of the more traditional Amarr characters. I also like a bit of soap from time to time, depending on the characters involved, e.g. when I took various people shopping for things for a social function. What do you prefer doing?
My perfect RP day would probably be:
An interesting discussion on IGS on freespace ideology vs criminal cartels with some characters that had moved close to us in-game and wanted to know our position on various kinds of engagement possibilities and had the genuine possibility of making allies, making enemies, making profit for in-game effect.
A nice military engagement against ideological foes that ended with discussion of corporate outlooks and guerilla tactics in local / long range assassination mission in Fedakyin bombers against a key target where I get to roleplay on Voice coms telling my fleet to "run silent, activate sublight drives and clear torpedo tubes for firing" before the attack begins.
Some relaxation in La Maison or one of Revan's nightclubs with a little music, in-character discussion and probably Jade singing something by kirsty maccoll on stage in a little black dress.
Bonus points if is followed by a conversation with a younger character wanting to know about the role of the revolutionary in new eden while we drink shots at the bar.
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Topic: What kind of Rp do you like doing the most/least ? (Read 9536 times)