Thanks for the replies, and I hope I can clarify some misconceptions here:
Kayleigh, could you please summarise what you'd like to see? I think I'm misreading your original post.
Sorry I hate to harp on this, but there's no "Y" there in my name. It's Kaleigh, with a soft
a.
It seems to me that you're advocating forming gaming groups with players you like playing with (all good so far) and then having the existing characters of those players interact with each other regardless of their factional or other loyalties.
This is where I think I'm misunderstanding, because that sounds to me like allowing OOC motivations to drive IC actions in ways which go against established and internally-consistent IC motivations. This is generally considered a Bad Thing in the circles I RP with, so I'm curious about whether I've misunderstood, whether you think it's not a Bad Thing, or whether you'd get the troupe to develop truly plausible IC reasons why they might interact despite other history, loyalty and character.
I think you've mistaken 'interact' with 'work together in-character'. and 'regardless' with 'in addition to' their faction and loyalties. In other words, the PLAYERS cooperate to create a great story while maintaining their affiliations and loyalties. This means that the PLAYERS take an active effort in creating situations and stories that involve these characters (those that choose to take part in them) in the troupe. This doesn't mean Sansha and Cartel lovers need to work together, or perhaps a story requires them to begrudgingly work together for a common goal. That's
the entire point. The players work together
pro-actively to make events happen rather than simply
reacting to events around them in channels and their wanderings through space.
By being a member of a
troupe, it's implied that you
want to participate in the shinnanegans of the group and that you would like your character to be involved with them in a realistic and
plausible IC manner. It's an acknowledgement that, yes, you as a player want some fun too and you don't want to have to wait for it to happen in a room full of people who may or may not share your style or interests. This isn't to imply that exclusivity is a necessity, or that somehow the loyalties of the character will not involve a larger stage of characters, but the primary characters that initially fuel the endeavor will be participants in the troupe. In other words,
interest is infectious, and getting the large audience involved takes a group effort, and there is no control over this story once it takes a life of its own.
I'll give you a good example. I ran an event five years ago in the summit channel called
"Drifting", about a young black-sheep Vherokior woman trying to escape an arranged marriage dictated by her tribal elder. She was introduced to the channel as a soft spoken and questionable character who was constantly on the run. Later a second character was introduced, a man (played by a friend) she was destined to marry, who introduced himself as an investigator trying to locate this girl. The man enlisted several individuals in the channel to try to befriend her and gain her whereabouts under the pretense that she is actually wanted for murder. Some individuals in the channel expressed empathy for the girl and didn't believe his accusations or his background and others were more than happy to comply. Lillith Blackheart, of all people, was one of the individuals that befriended the girl and genuinely wanted to help her. The story itself pitted players against one another, and as the story unfolded we found cartel types and mercenaries pitted against sansha and anti-slaver types. The point was, that when faced with a larger overarching goal the pilots had to contend with working for or against what would be logically perceived as traditional foes to achieve their goals. It's an opportunity to add some depth to characters and challenge our character's position in situations.
I ran this event and had no idea how it would unfold, but as things took off I knew it was going to be great. My perspective is, why not pursue this actively with others and try to make something like this happen
more often?
I'm kind of surprised to hear that this is not how is has been working, as having taste for similar RP sounds like a sensible starting point for collaboration.
Anyhow, this kind of project would be likely to be charged with the following accusations:
a) The faction loyalties and RP troupe connections are conflicting with each other.
b) The troupe is accused of elitism.
Thanks for the reply Tamur. Like I said before, I think this often happens naturally in sub-communities already, but my point is to make it a conscious effort and an opportunity to actively build something cooperatively. I also think that the term
elitism, especially among rp circles, gets bandied about all too often as an excuse to be critical of groups that set standards for the quality
and type of play they desire from their roleplay experience. Consider that RP channels and corporations set standards and pre-requisites for play; where do you set the line for whom is elitist and what
is personal preference? And it's not as if exclusion from this troupe would somehow limit their involvement in an event- they will still have an opportunity to interact if they take the time to find out what's going on from the participants.
One way to counter these would be to keep the existence of the group unrevealed. In addition, the troupe would have to face the usual challenges:
c) If there were more than 4-5 members in the troupe, the risk of clique formation would rapidly increase as a consequence of group differentition.
d) In a few weeks there would be an OOC conflict, which would either split or disband the troupe, or lead to stable operation.
e) If the troupe became tightly-knit, adding more members to it would be increasingly difficult.
To my knowledge, these can be beaten only with an administrative structure, or by keeping the group very small. Maybe one of these phenomena a)-e) is the cause why we haven't seen any troupes around, unless they have been operating in the shadows.
Well, that's up to the individual groups. I'm not trying to dictate their structure, simply to present it as another alternative to limiting interaction to factions and channel relationships.
This is the very reason I wound up with so damn many alts.
It's unfortunate how alt paranoia affects this option 
I think that's just the reality of the situation in New Eden. Anytime you trust someone, you take the risk of them being a spy or a thief intent on harm.
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Topic: RP Societies (Read 5837 times)