Thanks for the welcome!
I have a question: do EVE RPers generally find The Empyrean Age and The Burning Life novels to be good reads? I'm thinking of buying one or both.
I recommend TBL if you have an interest in the shady shenanigans of pirate organizations.
I do not generally recommend TEA unless you really want to dig around for 'official' bits and pieces like what kind of clothing Royal Amarr wear.
I have some questions about RP:
1. Where is RP normally conducted? By this I mean in local chat, private chat, a public chat channel, etc., or is it mostly on the forums?
2. How is skill training handled ICly?
3. Are there some public "tavern" RP channels? It's not the ideal type of RP I'm looking for but it is a start.
RP is conducted essentially everywhere, the degree to which it is done depends on the group or persons you are looking at. TS-F and most other RP corps I know of, for instance, have all official CCP channels 'in character' and host both in character and out of character public channels. Then there are bar channels, etc...
Skill training is vaguely defined but generally understood as the following: Neurological mapping from a skill package conditions the brain with the knowledge of the package. The brain has knowledge basically downloaded into it at variable rates - how fast it can be done depends on how suitable the brain's characteristics are to the knowledge. Someone with high charisma has an easier time learning social shenanigans than an someone without it. How the process goes exactly seems to vary slightly between RPers.
Some would say an excessive amount of them. There's a list of channels in this thread somewhere already, I think.
