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[Mathra Hiede]

Please dont take anything posted here personally, and as a minor disclaimer this is my own thoughts and doesn't nescesarily reflect the truth of events.

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After reading The Burning Life, and musing a bit about how in the CCP fiction the typical Capsuleer is portrayed I started to think about how the characters we RP as actually relate to EVE Fiction.

In my mind, the form of a capsuleer that has been active for longer than a year or so would start to "suffer" from the things you see in alot of the fiction (or at least what I have read) where the Capsuleer grows apart from his/her humanity to a point where being out of the pod is an annoying need, where we become flimsy and breakable beings as opposed to gods of the sky.

The dominance of the Capsuleers is also what seems to be a large part in their development of a "god complex" or at least a complete disregard for anything that isn't of their kind.
Warping their behaviours untill they seem less like humans and more like a species of demi-gods that only share a physical similarity to their human cousins.

Thus - I ask, are we RPing our characters as TOO Human?
Alot of the people I see value the lives of their Non-Capsule capable men and women, yet will quite happily go out and blow a few hundred thousand out of the sky in a belt/mission/other ships.

Does this show the character to be very narrow minded or a seperation from the truth of the issue, which is that most capsuleers really don't give a flying F*** as to whatever happens to the normal humans in any given circumstance.

I know my character, personally, doesn't care too much if people die, he sees it as something that just "is" in New Eden, Capsuleers kill and other people die.

The other thing is we all seem to be very human and normal in our responses and actions, ie. we all care, believe, fear, hope and are generally affected largely by the goings on around us.

Would a Capsuleer be truly like this? Would they still feel emotions the same, and if so are they triggered the same way?

Do we feel and care more for the ships we fly than the simple human forms we know as other people?

Feel free to discuss this at length, correct me and tear my ideas down but I thought I would just post this as a thought provoker on the issue.

[Mithfindel]

One thing that would matter would likely be amount of combat and casualties the capsuleer has. And of course, the amount of time the capsuleer spends in a pod. For example, I'm a casual player, so I assume that my characters are rather much doing other things in flesh and jump in the capsule when it benefits them, not the other way of staying in the capsule until leaving cannot be avoided.

[Merdaneth]

Personally, I don't agree with much of this God complex at all.

Why are capsuleers in-game (and not in novels etc.) losing their humanity?

- It is a game, most people know it and don't give a rat's ass about NPCs, but can go all dramatic over one little podding. The fiction tries to represent the uncaring attitude about NPC as detachment/inhumanity. Has nothing to do with being a pod-pilot.
- Your traditional senses don't see anything associated with dying people. Nobody is bothered by seeing neatly packaged meat in the supermarket, but many people today have difficulty watching an animal get slaughtered. It is the detachment of button-push wars. Has nothing to do with being a pod-pilot.
- There simply aren't any non-capsuleers to interact with. Obviously if the only living beings you meet and can interact with are capsuleers, it would be only a matter of time before you start to consider others as meaningless and not worthy of empathy.
- Being able to use clones to avoid some deaths. This would have some God complex effect, but since everyone around you also has the same thing, it would certainly do much to humble you.

As said, I consider the God-complex and dehumanizing effect in fiction to be largely an effort to retrofit the peculiarities of the game-enviroment into it together with some real effects (button push detachment) that are not exclusive to the pod.

If I disregard the dehumanizing effects of the game-mechanics, I don't see a lot of particular factors that would contribute more to a God-complex and dehumanization other than being able to have clones.

[Havohej]

After reading The Burning Life, and musing a bit about how in the CCP fiction the typical Capsuleer is portrayed I started to think about how the characters we RP as actually relate to EVE Fiction.

In my mind, the form of a capsuleer that has been active for longer than a year or so would start to "suffer" from the things you see in alot of the fiction (or at least what I have read) where the Capsuleer grows apart from his/her humanity to a point where being out of the pod is an annoying need, where we become flimsy and breakable beings as opposed to gods of the sky.

I haven't read TBL, so I may be misunderstanding but you seem to be describing a capsuleer as becoming physically weaker over time spent in the same clone.  If that's so, I'd assume the reason is muscular atrophy due to spending the bulk of one's time suspended in pod fluid and not using the body's muscles (nor needing them).  For this reason, I always get kinda annoyed at the prevalence of uber out-of-pod fighting machines... genetically enhanced martial space-arts masters, crackshot super marksmen with twenty blaster rifles slung across their back and thermonuclear hand-grenades, I've seen people pose all sorts of shit in their RP.  I'm rather fond of saying "CCP left physical attributes off of our character sheets for a reason...", but they're having fun so whatever.  I just let the supersoldier RPers play supersoldier with each other and try to stay as far away from it as I can because to my understanding capsuleers are gods of the sky.  Keywords: of the sky.

Thus - I ask, are we RPing our characters as TOO Human?

I think yes and no.  I play Havo as being pretty insane, based somewhat off of my understanding/interpretation of "Capsuleer Dementia" as described in by the character Aria Jenneth, who incidentally influenced part of his outlook quite directly.  One day, I'll draw him up using Hamish's template - I think a lot of people would be quite surprised by what it would reveal about my character.  Anyway, he places no value on human life at all, except in the sense that it can be used in any number of ways as a means to any number of ends.  But he didn't become that way as soon as he became a capsuleer.  He became that way after blowing up so many ships and losing so many ships he lost count of the bodies.  Some time after he lost count, he stopped feeling guilty about losing count.  Some time after that, he stopped feeling guilty about the killing.  Then he stopped feeling the same way he used to feel altogether.  He still feels, but he feels from a much different perspective and mindset, now; more instinctive and predatory.  If not for all the killing, I don't think his mindset would've changed so much; if he were primarily a miner, he would probably still be quite human in his outlook.

I should note, though, that I've seen non-combat characters played as having rather non-human outlooks.  A pragmatic market alt I know that's played as a full-on character values ISK and efficiency of profit above all, I bet she'd sign off on some wholesale murder if it would be net a profit - reminds me of Mordin Solus from Mass Effect 2, only with money instead of science.  So I'm not saying only combat pilots would lose their connection with their pre-capsule humanity, just that I think it would be the most likely reason a pilot would.

Now, it could be like Merdaneth suggests with his first two points:

- It is a game, most people know it and don't give a rat's ass about NPCs, but can go all dramatic over one little podding. The fiction tries to represent the uncaring attitude about NPC as detachment/inhumanity. Has nothing to do with being a pod-pilot.
- Your traditional senses don't see anything associated with dying people. Nobody is bothered by seeing neatly packaged meat in the supermarket, but many people today have difficulty watching an animal get slaughtered. It is the detachment of button-push wars. Has nothing to do with being a pod-pilot.

..except that I think both of those have everything to do with being a pod pilot.  Only a pod pilot can wade into an NPC Battleship fleet plus support with just his/her own battleship and a few drones and completely annihilate them.  Only a capsuleer can "push butan kill 5 thousand people".  Yes, five thousand people die when an NPC BS kills an NPC BS, but it wasn't just "push butan" for them, it was an epic battle.  Yes, a single high ranking politician can order a planetary bombardment and kill millions, but look at how high ranking politicians in EVE are portrayed in the PF.. not many shining beacons of humanity among them, and several actually are capsuleers themselves.

I think one of the reasons a lot of peoples' characters harp on the "all those innocent people!" bit is that some folks like to play the good guy.  If you're trying to be the good guy, disregard for human life probably doesn't mesh well with that.  It doesn't look/sound very heroic.  Of course, there are exceptions.  She may post here herself, but I'll use my corpmate Zuzanna Alondra as an example; she's having fun with Du'uma Fiisi's whole bad guy evil terrorist thing, but her character ICly clings to good guy ideals even as time and the series of cruel and inexcusable acts she participates in as a director of the corporation grows longer and slowly erodes her morality.  Of course, Havohej encourages her and it's pretty fun OOC to watch her character struggle to find rationalizations so that she can swallow what the corp does herself.  Outwardly, she appears to be clinging to a 'human' mentality, but it's not actually the player trying to play a 'human' combat-focused capsuleer.

The other thing is we all seem to be very human and normal in our responses and actions, ie. we all care, believe, fear, hope and are generally affected largely by the goings on around us.

Would a Capsuleer be truly like this? Would they still feel emotions the same, and if so are they triggered the same way?

Do we feel and care more for the ships we fly than the simple human forms we know as other people?

I think the more 'slippage' (to borrow from Stephen King) toward dementia a capsuleer has had, the more different the triggers for the emotions would become, but all the same emotions would be there.  If the capsuleer's personality leans toward the predatory end of the spectrum, I think some emotions would even be more intense.

Specifically as regards the "God Complex" idea, when I hear god complex, I think "This guy things he's omnipotent/all-knowing.  I don't see that as a likely common trait among capsuleers, but I do believe it's reasonable that there would be a healthy amount of arrogance, maybe a bit of recklessness and empowerment (in space, not out-of-pod).  I believe it likely that there would be a sense of entitlement due to being part of the capsuleer class and arrogance toward the lesser class (humans) and other capsuleers seen to be less skilled with only grudging respect for fellow capsuleers seen to be more talented (because of course this means they're more dangerous).

Feel free to discuss this at length, correct me and tear my ideas down

Tearing ideas down isn't our thing here at Backstage

[Merdaneth]

..except that I think both of those have everything to do with being a pod pilot.  Only a pod pilot can wade into an NPC Battleship fleet plus support with just his/her own battleship and a few drones and completely annihilate them.  Only a capsuleer can "push butan kill 5 thousand people".  Yes, five thousand people die when an NPC BS kills an NPC BS, but it wasn't just "push butan" for them, it was an epic battle.  Yes, a single high ranking politician can order a planetary bombardment and kill millions, but look at how high ranking politicians in EVE are portrayed in the PF.. not many shining beacons of humanity among them, and several actually are capsuleers themselves.

I'm honestly considering to have my character assume that there is practically no crew on EvE ships, NPC and player ships. There is no verifiable evidence that there is crew, and a lot of evidence that there isn't any crew. Packaging and moving ships for example, apparently the crew is magically added again when you activate the ship. Never any crew salary that needs to be paid, I have unused all around New Eden, some even in-space, for years on end. Whenever I board them, they are all fully crewed, never have to pay anything.

Let's not even talk about the huge amount of NPC ships destroyed. If a NPC non-capsuleer battleship requires even more crew that a capsuleer ship, we are talking about millions upon millions of deaths each day. I can imagine use factories pumping out battleships by the dozen, but you can't manufacture crew that easily. It makes a lot more sense to me for ships to hardly have any crew than a lot of crew.

[Laerise [PIE]]

I agree wholeheartedly with you in regards to the disassociation of capsuleers towards the consequences of their actions. It's a very human flaw and actually evident in our RL's as well, we don't see those people who are slaves in anything but name who produce our cheap consumer products, or who mine minerals for our hightech gadgets. Denial or plain lack of care are self preserving instincts that help us stay sane.


On another note I'm not sure that I'd agree that Laerise, or most of the characters I know of, are really insane in the sense of the word. Yes, they have different values and differing world views, but clinically insane... I don't know, Scagga can tell us more about that stuff for sure, at least he's more of an expert in that field than I will ever be.

What stands out to me though is that there are two distinct groups of (RP'd) capsuleers.

As one extreme we have the true megalomaniacs who gets themselves completely lost in their role as pod pilots, who enjoy to openly show their power and influence for both self gratification as well as intimidation of others. They like to gloat about their deeds in public and are generally very fond of pointing out how little they still have in common with the dirtside plebs of the common people.
A, to me, very stringent theme in this group is transhumanism and a tendency to view or express comments towards the gameworld through glasses that are very much tinted in the pitch black of early 90s cyberpunk.

The other extreme I ran into is the apologetic philantropist who seeks to reconcile himself with his plebejan origins in an attempt to maintain the facade of a 'normal' life, whatever that means.
It is this group that goes to quite an extent to make sure that loss of life (especially on 'their' side) is kept to a minimum, or at least not made public in the same negative way the megalomaniac faction preferrs to do it. These pilots usually have some pet project or ideological niche they stick to, their own little perfect world that allows them to write off the atrocities they cause as either insignificant, accidental or balanced out by 'the good' they do.

Of course a variety of other stereotypes exists, the two above are just, in my experience, the most prevalent, and neither the former nor the latter is 'better' in any way, they are just two completely different sets of mind.
What interrests me the most is how a character progresses from one end of the spectrum and back again, how their attitudes change over time when they are confronted with the results of their actions, both positive and negative.

To answer the OP though, I guess it's really up to the individual spectator to decide if the more human side of capsuleerdom portrayed by many in RP is correct or not.
TBL certainly showed a good example of how a character of a player not concerned with the moralities of the RP-scene would react to outside influence. He simply forgot about all those insignificant, distant people who man his ships, crowd the stations of his alliance and generally keep things running for him. His main focus is his own, ghettoed society of capsuleers and, like so many people in RL, he couldn't care less for those who don't concern him personally.

[Laerise [PIE]]

..except that I think both of those have everything to do with being a pod pilot.  Only a pod pilot can wade into an NPC Battleship fleet plus support with just his/her own battleship and a few drones and completely annihilate them.  Only a capsuleer can "push butan kill 5 thousand people".  Yes, five thousand people die when an NPC BS kills an NPC BS, but it wasn't just "push butan" for them, it was an epic battle.  Yes, a single high ranking politician can order a planetary bombardment and kill millions, but look at how high ranking politicians in EVE are portrayed in the PF.. not many shining beacons of humanity among them, and several actually are capsuleers themselves.

I'm honestly considering to have my character assume that there is practically no crew on EvE ships, NPC and player ships. There is no verifiable evidence that there is crew, and a lot of evidence that there isn't any crew. Packaging and moving ships for example, apparently the crew is magically added again when you activate the ship. Never any crew salary that needs to be paid, I have unused all around New Eden, some even in-space, for years on end. Whenever I board them, they are all fully crewed, never have to pay anything.

Let's not even talk about the huge amount of NPC ships destroyed. If a NPC non-capsuleer battleship requires even more crew that a capsuleer ship, we are talking about millions upon millions of deaths each day. I can imagine use factories pumping out battleships by the dozen, but you can't manufacture crew that easily. It makes a lot more sense to me for ships to hardly have any crew than a lot of crew.

Reading TBL will help you a lot in that regard Merd, I'll permit myself to bring out a minor spoiler by saying that most ship crew are in stasis in rescue pods for the most part of the journey and only woken up when they are actually needed for something.

I can well imagine that quite a few people are willing to sign up for contracts for capsuleer ships. Considering that there will be quite a lot of standardisation in ship design ( redundancy and interchangability being the most valid reasons for this), I am sure that almost every major station (each housing millions of inhabitants) can very well supply the crews for your ships and modules by simply storing them in stasis until needed.
Imagine you could sign a two year contract as capsuleer ship crewman, lets say you have a degree as an engineer in electronics, and that this contract would make you enough money to live a life in luxury for at least the next couple of decades. Sure, you might be unfortunate enough to be shipped off to god-knows-where in 0.0 and killed, but then you might as well be transferred to some missioning raven / mining barge that will never see any action - meaning you will spend those two years mostly in stasis - literally making money while you sleep !

[Seriphyn]

TBL's portrayal of capsuleers is taking into account the 95% of non-RPers in EVE which, for all intents and purposes, seem to be quite accurately portrayed in the book. True to the capsuleers in TBL, they don't see the consequences of their actions because they don't give a rat's ass about PF!

They did mention a "precious few" have contact to the outside world...well, I suppose that can mean us, the roleplayers? Hell, Seriphyn knows the nature of himself, he knows he is a capsuleer and he is thus an egomaniac (and as mentioned people have a problem with this IC/OOC/whatever). However, pay attention to the capsuleer in "Her Painted Selves".

This capsuleer is portrayed as quite human, not sociopathic, but otherwise having a very broad and wide view of the world, but most importantly he is portrayed as a Federation loyalist. In this instance, he doesn't care about just himself, he fights for the Federation, but he's not an idealist. He seems to be aware of the consequences of his actions, and has come to terms with it, hence his demeanour.

I would like to think that if there was a "correct" way to RP a capsuleer, it would be like the one in that chron. Also, skin patch over capsuleer socket! Why's that? We don't have to stick to our parts of the station at all. Slap on a skin patch, and we can be anywhere we want, and not be basked in the limelight of being a capsuleer amongst the general public.

[Syylara/Yaansu]

I've been intrigued by the physical and psychological side-effects understood to be common (i.e. not unheard of, but not inevitable) and wondered what possibilities I might pursue in those regards.  Considering their path to pod life was as instruments of the State bureaucracy and the Caldari have had the most opportunity to study these conditions, a number of programs and safeguards would have been put in place for them.  For the sake of sparking new ideas and spinoffs, I'll share a few ideas surrounding side effects of informorphs as it were that I'm toying with integrating into the backstory.

Flight time regulations, fairly self explanatory and addresses both physical atrophy and extended mental stresses.

Frequent psychological testing and performance monitoring, this may only seem plausible to those who portray close association with major factions.

Physical sensory activity, this requires a lot of personalization.  I started with the idea of what it must be like to "sense" through the ship's equipment.  For Yaan, especially, this is a central aspect of character.  Her functions were to take readings, listen to broadcasts, etc and report directly on them.  

Instruments capable of detailing vast surroundings down to the molecular composition and precisely indicate the distance of objects entire AUs away down to the nanometer, sensing a massive range of transmissions across entire bands of organization and filtering every one as a separate and distinct signal (clean, cluttered, or entirely random), feeling the amperage and voltage vary as power flows through your hull (skin?), etc.

To counterbalance this certainly self-perception-bending time in the pod, the capsuleer program Syyl and Yaan completed highly encouraged as much sensory stimuli as possible while not on duty.  This serves as segue to some completely non-relevant character bits like Yaan's culinary skills and Syyl's green thumb, their love of Intaki symphony.  The last actually has a lot of meat to it, affluence that rubbed off from their proximity to political power and high society, interest in their ethnic heritage, and orchestras I think might be the most analogous to the celestial experience (2001/Blue Danube if I must be cliche' :9).  As I said, takes a lot of personalizing.

Exercise and mediation, focusing mostly on cardiovascular health (heart attack from stressful encounter not a good use of State assets).  A decent length cardio routine, minimum of light resistance work-out, and for them I'm pondering something similar to Tai-Chi as a throw to the Achura side of their heritage.

What does your capsuleer do to stay sane? :9

[Casiella]

Casiella spends a lot of her time doing things other than flying. Not just as a way to explain my limited play time, but also because a great deal of my game activity revolves around trade, research, and manufacturing. I remain unclear on how much of this requires use of the pod (given that we train skills the "capsuleer way"), but definitely this results in much less loss of life.

Now, she's odd and quirky and 'insane' by some lights anyway, but those don't necessarily stem from spending hours trucking goods around the Republic.

[Havohej]

I'm honestly considering to have my character assume that there is practically no crew on EvE ships, NPC and player ships. There is no verifiable evidence that there is crew, and a lot of evidence that there isn't any crew.

The Chrons "Hands of a Killer" and "All These Lives are Fit to Ruin" explicitly state capsuleer ships are crewed, or the short story thing that explains how the capule eliminates the need for bridge/command crew on a ship which strongly implies non-capsuleer ships are fully crewed.  I don't think a lack of an in-game mechanic for crew micromanagement is any reason to deny the existence of crew as a player.. it's like how some people use a lack of game mechanic to support RP that doesn't happen in space (i.e.: RP that isn't PvP) to ignore/invalidate/urdoinitrong other peoples' RP.  It's just another one of those things where PF contradicts the game world (i.e.: PF clearly depicts capsuleers being out of their pods and doing things in the world, but there's currently no game mechanic for that) and we have to decide how much of the contradiction to ignore for the sake of our RP.  Everybody draws that line where they're most comfortable and they're entitled to their opinion just as you are to yours, but I wouldn't go that far myself.

If Merdaneth were to start completely ignoring the existence of crew IC, it's obviously your choice in how you play your character and I personally think it would be quite interesting to see a presumably faithful Amarr loyalist take that position - especially in public! - but I'm sure you know he'd be called all sorts of insane.

EDIT: Also, Good to have you at Backstage, Merd

[Saxon Hawke]

Like several other RP characters, Saxon spends little time in his pod. He is a husband, father, philosopher, political lobbyist and (sometimes) writer who takes to space occasionally. The vast majority of his time is spent interacting with people in a real and personal way.

For him, being suspended in a pod remains artificial and somewhat uncomfortable.

And, I've often thought that assembling a ship should impose a fee and that all assembled ships should have a residual maintenance cost, like office rent, to cover things like crew salaries and fuel cell replacement/recharging. A repackaged ship, "mothballed" as it were, wouldn't have the fee.


"Wake up guys, the captain wants to duel!"

[lallara zhuul]

If your character has a Mission, or has Faith in anything larger than themselves, then he/she can quite efficiently, through natural human mechanisms, avoid turning into a psychopath monster.

Throughout human history people with Right on their side has been able to do all kinds of atrocities without least bit of psychological effect on their sanity.

That is one of the reasons that Lall is an Amarrian with strong religious beliefs.

About muscles atrophying in the pod, don't be silly.
They use electronic shocks on the muscles of coma patients to keep the muscle tone of their limbs adequate so that their circulation does not get impeded.
If you have direct route to the limbic system through the pod pilot implants you could enter the pod as a twig and come out as a body builder after a few weeks.

Dehumanization as a psychological tool has been around since forever and it enables people to do all kinds of things, it does not turn you into someone that feels that all human life is meaningless, it just means that Their lives are meaningless, whomever They are is defined by your beliefs and world view.

Simple example of dehumanization is whenever You think that They are no good/worth it.
Concentration camps, slavery and wars are just another end of the spectrum.

[Casiella]

If your character has a Mission, or has Faith in anything larger than themselves, then he/she can quite efficiently, through natural human mechanisms, avoid turning into a psychopath monster.

Throughout human history people with Right on their side has been able to do all kinds of atrocities without least bit of psychological effect on their sanity.

I'd suggest that that works both ways.

[Havohej]

Throughout human history people with Right on their side has been able to do all kinds of atrocities without least bit of psychological effect on their sanity.

I think saying "It's okay to do this atrocity because my cause is righteous!" is insanity in itself.  That's one of the key ideas behind the way I portray Havohej, in fact

don't be silly.

Not really necessary, just saying.

They use electronic shocks on the muscles of coma patients to keep the muscle tone of their limbs adequate so that their circulation does not get impeded.
If you have direct route to the limbic system through the pod pilot implants you could enter the pod as a twig and come out as a body builder after a few weeks.

I don't think that if a bodybuilder fell into a coma the minor electronic shocks used to keep their muscles adequate for circulation would have them still able to bench press a Buick after a year.  I'm not suggesting that capsuleers would become wheelchair-bound invalids for time in the pod, I'm suggesting that when you suddenly spent more of your time suspended than walking/running/lifting/generally being an active human being like you used to, you'd lose a bit of your oomph in those areas after a while (depending on how much time is actually spent IN pod; Havo's one of those "usually in the pod" sort of Capsuleers as opposed to Saxon's example of only being in the pod when necessary.

Dehumanization as a psychological tool has been around since forever and it enables people to do all kinds of things, it does not turn you into someone that feels that all human life is meaningless, it just means that Their lives are meaningless, whomever They are is defined by your beliefs and world view.

Simple example of dehumanization is whenever You think that They are no good/worth it.
Concentration camps, slavery and wars are just another end of the spectrum.

Yeah, such as "Those nasty Minmatars" or "Those evil slavers", followed by "but we're still good people!"  I suppose a lot of characters would adopt views like that rather than dive straight into inhumanity/dementia/whatever you wanna call it.  Probably even more people, if you accept the assumption that most people generally do want to be/see themselves as/be seen as 'the good guy'.  I don't think the average person 'wants' to be bad (though they may like indulging those dark urges through roleplaying a villain in a game :p)