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[Saede Riordan]

I'm going to bring up something that a lot of people seem to be up in arms about. That is the idea of character's having power beyond what they can project using game mechanics.

Example: I have an alt character who I use for occasional scouting an intel work, but is basically just an RP alt. I've never really trained this character up or mission ground with her. She's a hacker ICly, and I want her to be able to hack the database and find out where someone is, thus necessitating asking for a locator OOCly. When I did this, I had quite a few people telling me she shouldn't be able to do that at all, since she can't do it ingame.

Frankly I find this stupid. It means we can't RP out interesting things, like attacking colonies with troops, and, well, a large manner of things that I do think we should be able to do and that people frequently RP doing. I fully understand the whole "put up or shut up" mentality, and I try really hard to make sure my character don't overstep the abilities of what they would really be able to do, which I do think is something important, because otherwise it just turns into "who can godmode harder" but RP has always stretched outside game mechanics, why is this so strange?

Was it just the way I phrased or went about it, or do people really have issue with this?

[Casiella]

[mod]We welcome open debate here, but everyone responding should of course keep the FAQ in mind when exchanging views. This sort of discussion can prove very useful and informative as long as participants follow the general guidelines in doing so.TL;DR: Everybody be polite, please. [/mod]

[Silas Vitalia]

I think that's a fantastic/creative way to RP the 'agent locator' game mechanic.  Makes sense and I don't think harms anyone.  

Also the information you get from agents is a bit limited so probably not pushing too many buttons. I even have a 'hack' link in my bio to direct people to a longer bio page.  


As far as invading planets, etc, that's a bit tougher.  There's not much of a consensus.

I generally defer to 'in game' power with these sorts of things.  

My personal POV:

1. A new character with an ibis is not leading any planetary invasions. I'd make a direct correlation between in-game military power and RP 'sway' on those kinds of things.

2. No one is leading any such thing in high sec, and our ability to shape planetary matters (an general illegal things) is probably severely hampered in high sec space.

3.  Low sec is probably much more 'wild west' and I think there's an amazing amount of ground to explore with the outer regions and low sec systems.  Minimal government presence, dicey stability, etc.  KPV used to do a lot of RP where we were trying to pacify small low-sec colonies, providing troops, supporting local governments, etc.  Long as we weren't stepping on other people's RP toes we played it pretty loose in low sec.

4. Null sec I think is much more 'anything goes.'  As far as I'm concerned, if your name is on the system sovereignty, it's yours to RP with as you please.  I worked my ass off for months to claim 7 or 8 systems and that is directly reflected in our RP regarding the area. We've been downright terrorizing the locals, subjugating the local populations, and converting by the sword so to speak, in proper Reclaiming fashion.  


I think it's just important to see who else's RP you'd be messing with and what seems believable given your character's history, etc.

[Seriphyn]

4. Null sec I think is much more 'anything goes.'  As far as I'm concerned, if your name is on the system sovereignty, it's yours to RP with as you please.  I worked my ass off for months to claim 7 or 8 systems and that is directly reflected in our RP regarding the area. We've been downright terrorizing the locals, subjugating the local populations, and converting by the sword so to speak, in proper Reclaiming fashion.

I support this. It's not taken into consideration since we don't have many sov-holding RP alliances, but if people really want total legitimacy in everything that the OP brought up, then nullsec is the way to go. There is absolutely no way to decry this; what's yours is yours in nullsec.

In terms of "troops attacking colonies"...I'd stay off planets, but deadspace? Think of a standard mission, which has you go into a deadspace colony. If you can shoot it up with your guns, what's to say you can't deploy marines* instead and take prisoners, and then blow it up? Or taking a Caldari Navy FW plex...shoot up the ships, take POWs, capture the site, and whatever.

*In terms of marines, where do people RP them from? It's easy to pull marines if you're militia (say they are from the 24th or FDU etc.), but if you're just a freelancer, who are they going to be? Mercenaries?

[Silas Vitalia]

Good point on deadspace, I'd consider it a mini-pocket of 0.0 for people to RP around.

"Marines" I think would also be commensurate with the ship-class and size of your corp.

If you can afford to fly a BS with several thousand crew, it's extremely credible you'd have quite a few armed troops as part of the ship, for whatever purposes you'd need.

Maybe a frigate,etc would hold a small "SWAT" type of team as well, might make for a great story!

[Ken]

RPing things that exist outside of the bounds of the game mechanics but are also quite reasonably possible within the limits of the fictional setting requires that all parties involved abide by a "gentlemen's agreement" (pardon the gender-specific term) as to what resources and abilities can be used and how things are resolved.  This veers into the collaborative storytelling side of roleplay where, if we were sitting around a table, very few if any dice would be rolled and sourcebooks rarely referenced in favor of fashioning a more interesting and fast-moving narrative.

The problem is that EVE exists not around a table with a GM to oversee and supervise, but on a vast stage with no one really in charge.  People will get offended if, via the client, you start playing around in EVE-the-fictional-universe in ways that stray outside the rules and limitations of EVE-the-computer-game.  Personally, I try to be very tolerant of the sort of improv you're talking about Nikita.  After all, it's something that I've done to a considerable degree with various levels of success.  I have found, however, that when other players have been willing to meet me around that metaphorical table, we have created some of the most enjoyable RP interactions I've had in EVE.

Edit: A follow up specifically addressing "marines" and other such face-to-face combat things.  I've always been wary of this primarily because of how little small unit combat figures into my appreciation of the setting.  Infiltration, espionage, sabotage (hacking, sure, of course), and propaganda seem to fit New Eden better than battalions of soldiers and heavy artillery.  Naturally, that will change soon with Dust and has been less and less the case since TEA anyway.  Like everything else, however, this can be done well and it can be done poorly.  As an example of the former I think of Saxon Hawke's abduction or even the kidnapping tit-for-tat storylines RIA ran with Seri (let's discount the less than cordial afterglow from that).  Hell, even Seri staging a trial and hanging traitors to the Fed was an interesting, if dark, angle to take.  Done poorly, I think of Ber Kan and all the mucking about on IGS about this-and-that regiment of Caldari light infantry.

[lallara zhuul]

The short of it.

There is none.

The long of it, there is plenty of old PF which quite clearly puts out the view that the GUI that the players have is the GUI that the characters have. It would also insinuate that the power of the pod pilots is exactly what they can affect in game terms. Their ships are heavily restricted in what they can perceive of the universe just to keep them from doing something like attacking a populated planet with the firepower at their disposal.

You can play around with the assets that you have actual access to, market items, quest items, but real power.

Characters have none.

[Saede Riordan]

The short of it.

There is none.

The long of it, there is plenty of old PF which quite clearly puts out the view that the GUI that the players have is the GUI that the characters have. It would also insinuate that the power of the pod pilots is exactly what they can affect in game terms. Their ships are heavily restricted in what they can perceive of the universe just to keep them from doing something like attacking a populated planet with the firepower at their disposal.

You can play around with the assets that you have actual access to, market items, quest items, but real power.

Characters have none.

I Object

[Casiella]

Characters also don't have access to walnut-paneled clubs for discussions of politics and business, but many of us RP that we meet in such places.

To limit ourselves simply to the UI and IG items seems unnecessarily restrictive, though of course the line between reasonable and unreasonable will vary somewhat.

I personally like to use IG props where possible. So in recent IC discussions about on-the-ground security, Iurnan felt that he needed some troops. I put up some buy orders and now I feel like it's not ridiculous for him to claim that he's got a battalion of marines at his disposal (since he's got >1k in his hangar).

Still thinking about the issues related to what Ken describes as "infiltration, espionage, sabotage (hacking, sure, of course), and propaganda," because I want to direct my RP back in that direction as well.

[lallara zhuul]

It is quite of a different scale of changing that paradigm by playing pretend with like minded players than stating that one has for example destroyed a planet, taken over a colony, made a colony or anything of the scale that would affect a big chunk of the in game reality that other people would have to validate by constantly reacting to it.

Same goes for all self generated content which has solely been created to make your character appear more powerful in comparison to others.

[Silas Vitalia]

Same goes for all self generated content which has solely been created to make your character appear more powerful in comparison to others.

There are plenty of in-game mechanics for us to easily make a determination of who is 'more powerful' than whom within reason.

Wealth, influence over other capsuleers, total assets, experience, combat prowess, I use these things to validate whom I give credit to on many RP topics that involve such things.

[Graanvlokkie]

Roleplaying has rules and mechanics, storytelling does not.

You cant kill that dragon while playing with others unless the mechanic says your charater can.

[Invelious]

I think its time for CCP to put out a table top RPG of this game. Imagine using the character sheets and mechanics of the table top version to influence our "face to face" outcomes in game. We set up a random dice generator to use and can be view by multiple parties as proof of the roll. Wishful thinking I suppose.

[Casiella]

They started and then cancelled that exact projection, Invelious.

[Invelious]

They started and then cancelled that exact projection, Invelious.

   someone call whitewolf. I love the D10 dot system.