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[Samira Kernher]

It might be convention, but it's nowhere in the rules. They say, "This is a place for roleplay", not, "This is an in-universe forum".

Returning to this.

http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/capsuleer-idolatry-on-the-rise-1/

http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/sansha-kuvakeis-resurrection-truth-or-trickery-1/

"Most notable was the rise in popularity of the GalNet forum, a podium venue for the capsuleer community to bring to light issues of concern to them and their associates. Originally intended as a pure communications vehicle for pod pilots, GalNet has, in the course of the last year, become something more."

"However, the appearance of a man identifying himself as "Master Kuvakei" on the Intergalactic Summit has whipped up a frenzy of speculation."

IC news posts that directly reference the IGS as an in-universe forum.

Everything you write on the IGS is your character ICly writing it. By lore, what you write on that forum is actually viewed by not just capsuleers but also by hundreds of thousands of baseliners. Posting on that forum is your character sitting at a computer (or connected via their Neocom), staring at their screen, writing a message on an in-universe message board. In many instances, things posted on the IGS have been referenced as official statements by capsuleers and capsuleer organizations by in-universe news organizations.

Ergo, if you were to, for example, start an [Open Roleplay] thread, it would be viewed as Gwen, the character, ICly starting a roleplaying thread. Roleplayception.

[Gwen Ikiryo]

That's lore, though, not the rules. The person who wrote that probably wasn't operating on any kind of grander understanding of what the IGS as a roleplaying forum is or should be, they likely just thought it was a cute idea at the time. It's distinct from CCP's actually dictated policy.

In any case, though, like I said, I'll make the thread on EVE Fiction and no where else and see if it gets moved, since people are getting kind of upset about this. If the moderators decide - Which I think they might - that roleplay belongs literally on the IGS and no where else under any circumstances, they'll be no choice but to broaden it's use.

And if they don't, well, we'll see what happens.

[Samira Kernher]

That's lore, though, not the rules. The person who wrote that probably wasn't operating on any kind of grander understanding of what the IGS as a roleplaying forum is or should be, they likely just thought it was a cute idea at the time. It's distinct from CCP's actually dictated policy.

And yet they do the exact same thing with their own NPC actors. They post, in-character, on the in-character Intergalactic Summit. They make announcements, statements, and have even engaged in back-and-forth bickering.

If the moderators decide - Which I think they might - that roleplay belongs literally on the IGS and no where else under any circumstances, they'll be no choice but to broaden it's use.

No, you'll just get IC trolled on your IC roleplay thread.

[Gwen Ikiryo]

If people choose to troll me ICly on a thread I explicitly make on another forum entirely under the assumption that you are right, and that the IGS is only supposed to function as a IC forum, that then gets moved to the IGS in direct contradiction to that assumption, I won't know what to say. It'd be rather unfair to attack someone for putting something in the wrong place, when they, well, didn't put it there.

On top of that, it wouldn't make any sense. It'd be like ICly calling Gwen obsessed with tabletop games because I made a thread on the off topic boards about Warhammer Fantasy or something that then got moved. The only people to point the finger at will be CCP, or, if they don't accept that finger-pointing, the understanding of the forum itself as it exists.

[Esna Pitoojee]

I think I've figured a bit more of it out.

It's the nonconsentuality of EVE.

EVE is of course built on the idea that other people can and will do their best to mess up your day. Traditional forum roleplay is, for the most part, built on the idea of a few mutually-agreed-on base rules among the players, to avoid fights on who can do what and that sort of thing. EVE's 'win at all costs' mentality doesn't cross over well; being ganked in EVE is a thing you accept by playing the game, but is no fun in forum RP.

The two simply don't mix well, unless you can have moderator control over the thread in question - which, of course, CCP does not provide to us or have the time to do on their own.

Hence, no forum roleplay.

It was different back in the beta-era of EVE when forum RP was more common, because back then that was all you had. Everyone there was betaing the game, and had a vested interest in making the game, community, and interactions work: Making a stink there was like pissing in your own drinking water.

[Xiaohui]

Well we've solved the mystery then: katbutt.

[Havohej]

The thing with roleplay is that it's an interactive story. IGS is really nothing more than an IC chat, where you chat in character, apparently. Although this isn't expressly written by anyone, and there's little rules regarding it - in fact the forum description says "roleplay" and "in character". To me, as someone who has roleplayed in this manner for over a decade, this involves describing your character's thoughts, feelings, motivations, as well as their actions and dialogue. What's considered IC and OOC on the IGS is indeed weird. Posting what your character is thinking/doing in their captain's quarters while conversing with other capsuleers is somehow "OOC".

Posting on the IGS is inviting character interaction. Posting on EVE Fiction invites player discussion.

If you go into IGS trying to interactive story - like you would in every. other. roleplay/IC. forum. ever. - you're gonna have a bad time, as I learned the hard way. It was actually rather insulting, after I spent all this work designing my character in the client, creating a unique backstory for her, a set of motivations and character flaws to explore, and then posted what my character was doing, thinking, and the message (scientific article) she opened for discussion with other characters - to have it moved to "fiction" and told that I wasn't roleplaying my character... it's like they were saying "everything you wrote is fake and invalid and doesn't actually exist." And then to be told that I wasn't actually roleplaying, and to read some IGS threads with their half-trolly antagonism and not-quite-complete-paragraphs, was really grating. Thus, my slightly less-than-polite posts to users who responded to my thread.

Elitism, a "cool kids" clique, the idea of "the right way" and "the wrong way", and resistance to change are prevalent in any RP culture. Without the mods stepping in and policing it with a clear concept of what RP, or at least what EVE RP is, the culture will remain as it is and stubbornly resistant to change and improvement.

I'm not suggesting that it should or does need to be changed. But it would be interesting, after all, to start a play-by-post, traditional RP, and get some quick replies/interactions with other characters in the same fashion, and see if CCP moves it or locks it.

I'm not suggesting that it should or does need to be changed.

You just did both of those things, very explicitly, just as you did in the thread (after it was moved out of the IGS into the correct forum) by asserting that everyone on the IGS is doing it wrong and only you were there to try and do it right before being oh so wrongfully moved out of the IGS.

Well then they should elaborate "This is not for actual roleplay. This is just for IC chatting."

Because I went in there actually roleplaying.

The thing that you need to understand, and internalize, as someone who apparently has so many years of RP experience (based on this comment where you by implication call the IGS's form of IC interaction childish and/or juvenile:)

Wow, I haven't RP'd like that since I was 13.

Is that New Eden as a campaign setting (is that a veteran enough RP term?  I'm not always sure) is set something like 25-30 thousand years in the future, it has an IC internet ("GalNet") and the IGS is a forum on that IC "GalNet," and posts are structured as such.

What this means is that, just like in channel RP, or text-based MU* roleplaying games (yes, I still occasionally fire up SimpleMu and see what my old mates are doing), nobody wants to read a narrative full of internal monologues and backstory their character would know nothing about (and thus, not be able to engage with at all).  That's what Eve Fiction (both in the Eve-O forums and here on Backstage) is for.

You've registered to post, so I have to assume that you've already seen the Eve Fiction section and the Character Development section - both of these are full of interesting things involving and/or about our characters, and we all read these things if/when we are interested in these things.  The IGS is not the place where we look for things that our characters couldn't interact with even if they wanted to.

PS: I reported the post when it was on the IGS.  No telling if I was the only one to do so, but for as quickly as it was moved, it's hard to imagine that I was the only one.

Welcome to Rome, learn to speak Latin.  Which is to say, coming here with your ass up on your shoulders and pointing the finger at the entire Backstage community (lol @ Elite cool kids clique, most of us don't even like each other) about how all our current IGS interactions are just trolling and how resistant to change we are, for not having embraced a post in which there was literally nothing for our characters to interact with (bolding the same words you bolded in your post, you see that?)... isn't going to gain much traction.

[Mizhara]

The thing with roleplay is that it's an interactive story. IGS is really nothing more than an IC chat, where you chat in character, apparently. Although this isn't expressly written by anyone, and there's little rules regarding it - in fact the forum description says "roleplay" and "in character". To me, as someone who has roleplayed in this manner for over a decade, this involves describing your character's thoughts, feelings, motivations, as well as their actions and dialogue. What's considered IC and OOC on the IGS is indeed weird. Posting what your character is thinking/doing in their captain's quarters while conversing with other capsuleers is somehow "OOC".

Because what your character is thinking is OOC knowledge. Our characters don't know what your character is thinking and we aren't telepaths. Want your character to run a video feed from the CQ, go for it. To many of us that does tend to look rather silly on the IGS as it has usually gone hand in hand with rather derpy characters and overly dramatic bores, but go ahead. You might be the exception. Video still doesn't transmit thoughts, feelings or motivations. It just transmits what is visible to other characters. The IGS is IC in that both the writer and the viewer are IC. I can read a book and know the thoughts and motivations of the character, but I can't talk to another person and know their thoughts and motivations. That would be out of character information that should be implied rather than forced onto the participants.

If you go into IGS trying to interactive story - like you would in every. other. roleplay/IC. forum. ever. - you're gonna have a bad time, as I learned the hard way. It was actually rather insulting, after I spent all this work designing my character in the client, creating a unique backstory for her, a set of motivations and character flaws to explore, and then posted what my character was doing, thinking, and the message (scientific article) she opened for discussion with other characters - to have it moved to "fiction" and told that I wasn't roleplaying my character... it's like they were saying "everything you wrote is fake and invalid and doesn't actually exist." And then to be told that I wasn't actually roleplaying, and to read some IGS threads with their half-trolly antagonism and not-quite-complete-paragraphs, was really grating. Thus, my slightly less-than-polite posts to users who responded to my thread.

Everything you wrote was fake and didn't actually exist. Like all RP, ever. If you mean it didn't happen IC, well... that'd depend entirely on you. What happens in my character fiction certainly happened and exists IC, like most fiction written involving the characters. It's just not presented IC to other IC characters, because no other IC characters would know the things fiction presents, like the inner thoughts, motivations, and so on. What you see on the IGS is exactly what you get when capsuleers post to a shared forum, in character. It's helluvalot more immersive than suddenly having to break off and be the player reading a lot of internal slurry only available OOC, then switch back IC and back OOC and then IC within the same sentence. That's not roleplay, that's fiction.

Elitism, a "cool kids" clique, the idea of "the right way" and "the wrong way", and resistance to change are prevalent in any RP culture. Without the mods stepping in and policing it with a clear concept of what RP, or at least what EVE RP is, the culture will remain as it is and stubbornly resistant to change and improvement.

I'm not suggesting that it should or does need to be changed. But it would be interesting, after all, to start a play-by-post, traditional RP, and get some quick replies/interactions with other characters in the same fashion, and see if CCP moves it or locks it.

Relying on CCP to be the arbitrators of the RP community would be a monumentally terrible idea. They're frankly not involved in it. They don't even moderate the IGS by their own rules. It's entirely moderated in a "Sheesh, the reports are piling up. Let's see, IC or OOC? Fine, we'll move this and hope no one bothers us again this month." way.

You seem to be experiencing a culture shock. Yes, there are other RP forums elsewhere that does things differently. This does not mean better by any stretch of the word. It simply means different. Eve lends itself to a uniquely immersive RP style in that damn near everything is IC no matter how you swing it. You undock and zoom around space, it's IC, particularly when someone else comes and RPs a volley of Republic Fleet EMP M into your hull and you return the favor. You fit a ship, it's IC as your character gives another character ISK in return for T2 modules that they had earlier in-character gathered materials for and hauled to a POS for manufacture and back to the trading station. You die and lo and  behold, it's IC as you activate a new clone and grumble as you go ahead and replace your lost implants and the other guy is linking your shiny pod in every brag channel he has.

Almost no other game in MMO history manages this. They fully require you to mix and mash IC and OOC at the very same time, with no clear boundaries and having to ignore half of what happens on the screen. This does lend itself to a different forum posting environment (again, partially because of the setting where forums don't even exist in the gameworld so it's by necessity a completely different narrative tool than the actual In Character Forum that the IGS is), one that doesn't actually work here in Eve because here the forum exists on a very different IC level than in damn near every other RP setting out there.

I understand it might be alien to you, but it is how it is for a reason. It's immersion on a completely different level. It actually exists IC and is engaged with entirely IC. Mixing in halfway OOC stuff there simply doesn't fit. It's an easy mistake to make if all your experience has been with the "lesser" settings that is OOC more than IC but give it a real try before you dismiss it. It's a quite a bit purer and more immersive roleplaying experience if you try.

[Lyn Farel]

Yeah, and every people speaking about Earth merry xmas and Pacific timezones or whatever, are also perfectly IC. There is a limit, even for Eve ingame, as to how completely IC it is. Not even speaking about the sheer lore pve inconsistencies we were speaking about in that other thread. If everything is IC, ohmy, I killed billions of battleships and all /o\

Or is it IC only when it suits people ?

Collaborative RP is completely IC to me, the only thing that makes you groan when someone tries this on the IGS is the unofficial status the IGS has become over the years, and it's mostly about tradition and unwillingness to accept the narrative parts for what they are : narrative, and not the character speaking. I think that dissing on collaborative play by post RP equates dissing on ingame channel RP, since it's exactly the same damn thing.

However I can see what disturbs people, which is all the omniscient narrative stuff like thoughts, and everything that is explained from a narrative pow, versus everything that merely describes what the character does (which still is totally frown upon on the IGS no matter what anyway). I already faced the same issue on other MMOs with more standard RP venues, and was part of the people a bit annoyed with other people describing thoughts, explaining everything in chat bubbles instead of just describing what the character looked like and was doing. It only becomes interesting when you start writing pages of collaborative RP on a novel format, but not for ingame channels or basic/standard play by step RP.

I think I've figured a bit more of it out.

It's the nonconsentuality of EVE.

EVE is of course built on the idea that other people can and will do their best to mess up your day. Traditional forum roleplay is, for the most part, built on the idea of a few mutually-agreed-on base rules among the players, to avoid fights on who can do what and that sort of thing. EVE's 'win at all costs' mentality doesn't cross over well; being ganked in EVE is a thing you accept by playing the game, but is no fun in forum RP.

The two simply don't mix well, unless you can have moderator control over the thread in question - which, of course, CCP does not provide to us or have the time to do on their own.

Hence, no forum roleplay.

It was different back in the beta-era of EVE when forum RP was more common, because back then that was all you had. Everyone there was betaing the game, and had a vested interest in making the game, community, and interactions work: Making a stink there was like pissing in your own drinking water.

That sounds rather insightful, I think I agree.

[Xiaohui]

@Havohej - You provided a perfect example of the elitist RPers I was referring to in my post, thank you. Also, I never said the people on IGS were roleplaying wrong, you've got the situation reversed there. I just disagreed with the assertion that I was roleplaying wrong, and traded a little tit for tat on that point (and it seems you don't like the shoe being on that other foot!) And you know what - it seems there's people on EVE-O and on this forum who agree with me on this point. Also I never said this forum was full of the elitists cool kids, so there's no need to be defensive on that point. If you think there was nothing for you to interact with in my post, maybe that's because you lack imagination or didn't understand the post. Other people found a way to interact with it, in a seemingly IC fashion, when I originally misposted it to EVE fiction, here: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=393494&find=unread

@Mizhara - You keep saying this phrase "OOC knowledge". OOC means out of character. So "OOC knowledge" is knowledge that exists out of character. "Humans definitely come from Earth, and Earth is definitely on the other side of the EVE Gate" is OOC knowledge. What my character had for breakfast that day, or how she's feeling, is IC. The thing you fail in here is that if my character knows it, then it is in fact not OOC knowledge. My character's background? Yeah that's IC too. Your character might not know it, but mine does. I get it - IGS is just an IC message board. Point taken. But all this other arguing over what is RP and what isn't RP doesn't accomplish anything, and you're in fact being elitist by saying that my roleplay style wasn't real, and coming up with these, frankly, strange definitions of IC and OOC.

There's really no need for this particular debate to continue, as we're just going in circles at this point repeating the same assertions, and I've already adapted my style accordingly, so I'm going to end it here. You're both free to make whatever parting points you want though I'm sure it won't be something you haven't already said.

[Mizhara]

It is out of character knowledge to our characters, who are the ones reading the post. It is knowledge they can't have, unless your character specifically come out and say or emote it. It can't be known or engaged with, which makes it fiction. It's reading a book versus playing a role. What your character had for breakfast or is feeling that day is only IC knowledge if it's told or emoted IC, which internal monologue or thought is not.

To reiterate, neither I nor my characters are telepaths. It'd be rather ridiculous to have all this forced on the audience when it's not actually available nor engageable information.

@Lyn: Yeah, let's take it to ridiculous extremes, shall we? That'll certainly change the fact that Eve is and remains the only MMO with this level of IC immersion and correlation between gameplay and roleplay.

[Tamiroth]

Tbh, CCP's moderation of IGS about IC/OOC stuff is not very consistent. Santa lolthreads, for example, stay, while Xiaohui's post got moved. Also,  my thread of marysue stories never got moved, even if I fully expected it to be dumped in Eve Fiction (for the whole two and a half people to read).

Depends on the moderator I guess.

As for the nature of IGS, I think Esna is right. In EVE, everything that happens ingame is IC material; this can hardly happen in any other MMO (perhaps, except Elite: Dangerous, but E:D isn't really an MMO in a classic sense, and it has a really limited gameplay compared to EVE, even if much more immersive.) That approach spread to IGS and became a semi-official policy. The community sustains it and also weeds out everything that breaches the norm much more effectively than any CCP moderator.

[Lyn Farel]

Yes, I agree, it's the only MMO with this level of IC immersion and correlation between gameplay and roleplay... Or is it ? I am not sure. I personally think gameplay and RP in that game like in most MMO are pretty much disjointed, just not on the same issues and the same way. I do not consider particularly extremes the silliness of the factional war, the pve missions, the universe stagnating, and all the other lore plotholes that we all know about. And well maybe you don't consider it that way, but I think those are very important and core part of the game itself. In other MMOs, you have issues about the relevance to what happens ingame, the fact that everyone killed Illidan in a raid, or people that you just can't attack when there is no guard nearby. In Eve, the issues are different, but they are here imo.

@Xiao : a lot of people like to assume that they hold the only right view on how things should be done and that you are in fact wrong, especially when you are a novice. I have seen it countless times when they hasten to come tell how the novice is wrong to do this or that because it doesn't fit to their conception of traditional eve RP. Its very eve-ish and stems from its very spirit. And the tactic used most of the time is often "You are the only one to do it the way you do, that's silly". Since the novice can't know much about that yet, then the novice feels bad and stops.

[Saede Riordan]

Ergo, if you were to, for example, start an [Open Roleplay] thread, it would be viewed as Gwen, the character, ICly starting a roleplaying thread. Roleplayception.

Brb starting an in character fantasy roleplay thread/

[Havohej]

@Havohej - You provided a perfect example of the elitist RPers I was referring to in my post, thank you. Also, I never said the people on IGS were roleplaying wrong, you've got the situation reversed there.

No, you literally explicitly said exactly that - I quoted two of the several instances of it in my reply to you above.

vOv