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[Valdezi]

I have wanted to discuss this for a while. It seems that some of you are against a single player role-playing several distinct characters all at once. One often has to deal with accusations of creating shills or whatever in arguments. But this can be taken too far.

Managing a number of distinct personalities can be fun. Sometimes your characters will agree with each other, and there isn't any harm in saying so, if that's what they would do. Other times, they will disagree, and that can be fun, too.

For example, Mammal and Valdezi have differing views on religion and (as they know each other) might discuss it in private. (They would never publicly contradict one another). However, they have similar views on Intaki and might say so publically (on IGS). It might look like using sock puppets when it is in fact roleplaying two distinct personalities, who happen to agree.

I also have other characters who have different views on separatism to the two above and that is an opporunity to create disagreement and cool RP. I don't see what's wrong with this among mature players.

Discuss.

[Mizhara]

Oh, I have plenty of characters. Most of them agree with each other on some points, other points not so much. However, it's fairly simple to avoid issues. Don't involve multiple characters in the same issues. On the Intaki stuff, Derena does her thing and voices her opinion and Miz/Gher stay the fuck out of the issue even if they mostly agree. Miz does her thing about the slavers and Empire, and the other characters I have stay the hell out of the way. This principle has served me well overall, since it completely removes the 'sockpuppet' and clonejack issues.

They're distinct characters with distinct differences and views, but there's no escaping that they're all played by the same player and thus it's fairly masturbatory to start having them reinforce each other's public RP on the IGS and other places.

It's kind of metagaming to OoC decide to have only one of my characters directly involved with any issue at any given moment, but it's the benevolent kind that avoids the problem of just piling alts onto opponents until they give, or the sockpuppet accusations and unsporting RP.

Want to have alts RP'd and so on? Sure, go right ahead. I don't mind. Want them to be 'untainted' by being directly associated with the main? Don't involve them in the same affairs.

Hell, I consciously make most of my alts directly associated with my mains in order to make sure conflicts of interest doesn't happen, and more importantly that anyone accusing me of metagaming or so on, sockpuppets, whatever... Well, I can just point at the -obvious- connection and leave it at that.

[Kaleigh Doyle]

I ran into a rather difficult situation when the Sansha events started happening, where one character was helping the Nation while the other was opposing it. I had to clarify with some people, when they started trying to feed me information on one character and expected me to use it with the other, that I wouldn't do something like that. The Nation supporters respected the boundary and didn't give me any grief, although that was probably because Lillith was vouching for me oocly at the time. The other side, however, were not too tolerant of the idea and booted her out of the defense channels.

Now granted, I wasn't particularly pleased with the decisions made, but I reacted in-character as best as I could to the situation. I think if the characters are developed well enough with their own personalities, then, and its fairly proven that you're not interested in 'winning at all costs', then some people will respect that, and others will never trust you.

I like having multiple characters for the variety.

[Casiella]

In EVE, all sorts of issues arise that may not present the same level of challenge in other games. Let's not forget that people may not trust players whom they know to control different characters with opposing motivations.

[Ken]

In the sense of playing more than one distinct character at the same time, yes, I think it is absolutely feasible, but success (and legitimacy) requires that you not have a vested interest in the success of one particular character's agenda, don't use alternate personas as straw men or sycophants for your main, and are playing multiple conflicting/complimentary roles for fun rather than profit or any other sort of material advantage.

[Casiella]

I suppose that depends on your definition of success, Ken... 

[Ken]

yarrRP?

[Cmdr Baxter]

I only have the one character (Commander Baxter). At this point the character is developed and I feel that I have a solid basis to work from in how I present him in RP. Starting a new character - for me - would just be reinventing the wheel and starting from scratch when I have "richer" and more well-defined material (Baxter's history stretching back over the last five years) to work with. If you don't believe me look at my EVElopedia page: with the exception of the Wiyrkomi section everything else took place at one point or another.

That being said, however, I don't object to people having multiple characters. My opinion is "whatever floats your boat," and if you want multiple characters then good for you. But Kayleigh brings up a good point in how her characters are split 50/50 on Sansha's Nation: there's always going to be concerns of misuse of information, in that sort of situation.

[Lyn Farel]

I play 2 other characters very rarely, but they are not real main characters, just alts with the only purpose is to add some relief and depth to my main (i use them mostly like NPCs on RP channels, but very very rarely).

Anyway, we have a player in corp that is also playing a VETO character aside, and we have not had any metagaming issue yet. Always depends if the player is serious or not, and has a minimum of ethics.

[Orthic]

I was definitely guilty of metagaming a bit when I was a noob, although it doesn't happen much anymore. the three to six (depending on how you count them) RP characters that I have a distinct, complete characters that generally have nothing to do with each other. Being able to run them keeps my ADD happy, else I'd have one toon trying to do too many different things.

So yeah, I'd say it's possible to successfully run multiple RP toons. Just keep them from having anything to do with each other and life is good.

I will say this though, as food for thought - on a couple of them, I've made a point of not letting everyone know it's an alt of mine, and it has been interesting to see how differently people respond to and interact with me OOC based on my behavior IC.

[Saede Riordan]

Avoiding metaing is difficult, but definitely doable. The thing that makes it difficult, is funnily enough, not that I have trouble keeping the information separate, its the expectation that I'm going to meta. People on both sides almost try to force you to do it, while at the same to decrying it. Its just plain strange.

All my characters are vaguely intertwined with each other, because I enjoy their RP interactions. (It just gets freaky when those interactions bleed out of character and my alts start claiming to be their own people >_> ) I still have issues with sockpuppet alts that I've mostly stopped at this point, and am staying away from as much as I can in the future. And I like to think all my characters are fairly distinct personalities.

[Bataav]

It's something I was conscious of when I finally got an alt, and as Bataav and Teutonii are actually related, with similar political views (one activist one retired-activist).

It gives me an opportunity to explore the same subject from slightly different angles and even introduce some interesting interaction between the two, although I'm yet to take advantage of the potential.

In truth I may have strayed a little too close to sock puppetry at times as they are largely in agreement when making their case on IGS, for example. It's something I consciously try to avoid so it's unlikely going forward they would both appear in the same thread.

I tend to keep Bataav more diplomatic (as fits his role) whereas Teutonii can afford to say what he thinks and I've found in practice Bataav is probably a more honest reflection of me as a player (less shouty confrontation and more calm debate). It's why I'm more comfortable with him and so he's the more vocal of the two.

That said, Bataav and Teutonii are not my only characters. While I don't RP with the others (it could still happen on at least one of them) they are providing me with the opportunity to explore other character types without affecting my main and ...other main 

[Bureeiku]

For me it comes down to the choice of how much you want to play with other people and how much you want to play with yourself.

*drags everybody's minds back out of the gutter... poor word choice.

Where was I? Right, so if you're using alts to set your main up for bi-winning, I'd say you are either (a) more interested in what ideas you can drum up on your own, or (b) crafty like a great author who reveals his opus through multiple characters.

Could be neato, could be lousy, it happens.

[Casiella]

You suggest that chessmasters may do this; I suggest that "that's EVE".

[Invelious]

In such a meta filled game, so much backstabbing and espionage, you cannot look suprised when people have massive doubts about others who are "RP'ing" characters aligned with different factions.