...ordinary characters and game mechanics

What exactly is ordinary, or rather, what exactly is normal, for SWG player characters, and how can that be represented best in Star Wars galaxies?

Some may now say "ordinary people, not supersoldiers", and mean low-level characters, but I think that's short-sighted. Heroes also can be – and often are – ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Some players may define normal as anything their characters can beat by the dozen (and often lament the fact that there are not so many of those around to be beaten by their own character). Butt his is not so much about character background, but about looking what is ordinary, average or normal for the game mechanics.

If one takes a look at non-combat professions such as traders and entertainers as an example for ordinary people, then one notices quickly that just about every trader/entertainer is a master, and every master trader/entertainer is cl90. Of course, the first, knee-jerk-reaction for many roleplayers is to scoff at this, state that not every ordinary character is a master at his/her profession, and condemn game mechanics such as CLs as stupid and immersion breaking.

However, let’s skip this bias for a minute, and take a closer look at a „master trader“ or „master entertainer“. Are they really masters?

Anyone who has a bit of experience in game will tell you that it takes a lot more to become a master at crafting than getting the level. It takes good ressources, not insignificant experience in assembling the items and allocating experimentation, both for subcomponents as well as the final product. It takes an eye for business as well, pricing products, advertising, choosing locations for vendors and dealing with competition and re-sellers as well as securing supplies from ressource dealers and hunters – unlesss one does that oneself. In short, getting the „master trader“ title is not much more than the first step to actually master your craft, and in itself, it’s more like finishing your apprenticeship.

For entertainers, it seems more simple: Get master entertainer, and you can do all the fine dances and songs, just as everyone else. Again, while they are not as pronounced as with crafters, there are significant differences between „master entertainers“ too. From securing (IC) jobs to getting a reputation, from joining a band and learning dance routines and scenes to running a cantina, simply mastering doesn’t mean much other than one has all the standard dances and songs.

So, a master trader/master entertainer is actually a very good representation for „Joe/Jane Average“ – a character that has finished their apprenticeship, and learned a profession, but may or may not have (yet) excelled at it.

Now that we have a baseline, where does that put the rest of the characters, mainly the combat characters?

Let’s start with the „ordinary combat trained character“ – your basic cop or security guard. A master entertainer ooc profession represents those very well – unarmed training to subdue people, average fitness (cl90), and carrying enough gear to make a difference (armor, weapons) compared to civilians, but in trouble if dealing with people with better training. If combat-specced entertainer, then those „cops“ can handle just about every trader or entertainer. If geared up and prepared, and with some pvp experience, they can even handle unarmored combat characters.

Now let’s take a look at the combat trained characters – soldiers, criminals, thugs, bounty hunters, smugglers, hunters and so on – in short, the majority of the roleplayer characters in Star Wars Galaxies. We’re leaving the often very exotic in character backgrounds of many characters, such as clones, last jedi master, clones of a jedi master, hybrid and droids out for now, again focussing on mechanics.

Those characters are (usually) better trained for combat than civilians, and a cl90 combat profession represents this well, being stronger than a trader or entertainer. This difference is even bigger when the combat profession uses armor and weapons, and skill and planning. However, the difference is not that big that, if faced with prepared ordinary characters, a combat character can just walk all over a town – like in the classic western, if the townspeople mass for a posse, even gunslingers fare not very well.

Does that mean that every combat character at cl90 is a superduper mando commando? No. A cl90 smuggler with a DL-44 is what today would probably be a former national guard member who goes to the range every month. Or a regular soldier.

But what about the superduper mandocommandohunters and the ubersithjedimasterlords? What if one’s character concept requires the power to lay waste to armies of lesser characters? Well, superheroes would not die out with this system (also known as „game mechanics“). With the right mix of profession expertise, gear and tactics, at least „batman“ level heroes are not too hard to acquire. Of course, getting that right mix takes time and effort – and practise, both to learn the ropes, and to keep in shape. Using game mechanics, one will not be able to have one’s character become and remain such a „Batman Level“ supersoldier without spending a lot of time on combat. Indirectly it leads to characters that are strong in combat not being as strong in other fields since they lack the time for such pursuits.

So, the system in place actually delivers a rather balanced, and immersive mechanic. Surprise, surprise!

Incidentally, accepting cl90 as the baseline turns the game closer to Pre-CU as well, since back then, everyone had the same base HAM, and combat characters were tougher due to specials, weapon certs, and defense mods. Having both traders and combat characters have the same base health again may be a welcome touch of realism and immersion for some players, since there will be far less animals and other PvE enemies that are instadeath for some characters, and cakewalks for others.

Of course, the idea of considering cl90 as average and ordinary is not to everyone’s taste. Those who want to play superheros may not like it at all, preferring much bigger differences between „heroes and zeros“. And those who want to play average or supersoldiers without grinding up to cl90 may not be in favor of this idea either – even or especially if they go on about how winning matters not anyway.

Using game mechanics for combat turns the superduper mandocommandos and the forcelords into not so quite supermen - in order to be a supersoldier, one would have to go a bit farther than just writing stuff in one’s bio and quoting obscure EU bits and pieces. At the same time, average soldiers need some effort to level up as well, if one cares about winning a fight, and while reaching level 90 can be - and was – done in 10 days, not everyone is willing to spend so much time on building up a character, not if that time can be used on „pwning“ people in emote fights already or playing one’s master trader/master dancer/master slicer/master mando jedi.

For those that do not think one should start out a master though, and are not adversial to require people to back up what they claim with their characters, defining cl90 as ordinary and using game mechanics may be a way to find a common ground with a number of roleplayers, and something worth looking into – especially if they are sick of having to deal with half a dozen different rulessets and emote combat systems just to handle something – combat – that the game mechanics can handle as well or better, and without the „made this system so I win“ bias.

...Integrity

At its core, integrity just means that one acts according to internally consistent principles. More bluntly put, it means one does not preach water and drink wine. As is to be expected from our experiences in real life, integrity is a not that common quality in roleplaying communities as well.

At first sight, it looks like it would be easy to act with full integrity. After all, a lot of roleplayers (me included) post their own rules and views quite often. Just the threat of being exposed as having double standards should be enough to keep people honest – or so one would think.

However, a few factors make it very easy for many roleplayers to act without integrity without suffering many if any consequences. Let’s take a look at the most common characteristics of such hypocrites:


„I am the best roleplayer there is!“
Most hypocrites among the roleplayers are legends in their own minds. They spend a lot of time styling themselves as the most mature, most experienced, most anything roleplayers there is – often by painting others as immature, unexperienced or even non-roleplayers – and then present their own rules and principles as the pinnacle of roleplaying. That alone is not a case of hypocrisy – after all, we all know that each of us knows best what’s best for us and everyone else is really, really wrong, unless they agree with us - the hypocrisy actually starts as soon as one mocks others for claiming such lofty titles while doing the same, but we won’t be splitting words – there’s enough hypocrisy around to describe without going into fine print.


„I am right, you are wrong, unless you are my friend“
Judging people is fun for the whole family – provided it’s done over the internet, and there are no consequences to be afraid of. It allows oneself to feel superiour, justified, and even morally conscious. So, it comes as no surprise that most roleplayers do judge others, all the time under those circumstances. The hypocrites can be spotted not by who they judge, but by who they do not judge – themselves, and their friends. No surprise, really, since judging your friends has consequences, especially if those friends are not as mature as they claim, or can’t handle being wrong. And while the resulting change of status from friend to no-friend might make it easier to keep judging them, not many hypocrites want to lose friends – after all, the less such friends one has, the less one hears how great one is.
So, any kind of rule gets bent by hypocrites for friends. Stuff some people get banned for is excused, or it suddenly is „too hard“ to judge people. Or it did not happen in their town or on their forum – and as you all know, if your friend acts like a rabid wombat somewhere else, he or she still is the best roleplayer ever, no matter if you just kicked someone out of your town or forum for acting the same way there. After all, the main thing is not to be a good, decent person, but to be a good friend, right? Right! Now go and write some more how much of a roleplay god I am, I’ll return the favor.


„If I am wrong it’s not the same“
If one does happen to catch a superb roleplayer violating his or her own rules, what happens? Usually one would expect of mature roleplayers that they admit to having made a mistake, and apologise if needed, and don’t do it again. However, that’s only the case if people do have integrity. Alas, many roleplayers have egos so big they tend to influence the solar system’s movement, and so will do anything but admit a mistake. Either the thing done is not actually the same as what one banned or dissed people last week – because, you know, if done to pvpers, it does not count, those subhumans have no rights to be treated with respect, so flame away! – or the rules get relaxed suddenly - staying all the time IC doesn’t apply to Restuss, or the rule of „100% canon, DIE JEDI DIE“ doesn’t apply when it gets in the way of THEIR fun. After all, why should one follow canon and like, treat tusken on Lok like one treats jedi? Everyone knows jedi (other than those played by oneself and one’s friends) are evil immersion breaking powergamers while tusken on Lok are 100% canon with just a touch of originality!


„If I am wrong you deserved it“
„He asked for it!“ is one of the most often heard justifications for breaking one’s own rules. No matter what rule is concerned – no flaming, no corpse camping, no load killing, no scamming – once such an action is aimed at a „rulebreaker“ it suddenly is ok in the eyes of many.
While some of this stems from the already mentioned desire to judge others, growing into the desire to punish others, more often it seems that for many, behaving correctly and in a civilised, mature manner is too much, and they need an excuse to flame, grief, curse and corpse camp at will. That they mainly lower themselves down to the level of those they portray as scum of the earth, or at least SWG escapes those people.
Of course, this being the internet, it’s very very easy to claim all sorts of nasty stuff about others to justify one’s own actions. Just say „you insult/flame/grief me, now you will get the same in return!“ and you can dish out nastiness at will and still look like the noble victim. And if that should fail (which only happens if one has friends who actually think for themselves, and may go to the length of actually spending 5 minutes to check wild claims) one can count on the good old „I was provoked“ defense – usually, at this point, the water has been muddled so much, just about every spectator has no clear picture anymore, and will settle for it. Which is what’s many want, actually, since if no one started to „flame/grief back“, then their own immature behaviour would be easier to spot even for the sort of blind people they are friends with, and they might be called out for their own deeds.



„My friend, right or wr... right!“
This is the number one reason hypocrisy is so wide-spread among roleplayers: As much as many roleplayer style themselves as mature people (and look down on „leet kiddie pvpers“, as they usually call people who like to pvp), many of those roleplayers show attitudes one would usually expect in juvenile cliques. While people are all too ready to bitch about others’ faults, they clam up and close ranks whenever their friends are at fault, with no concern for their own integrity. „My friend can do no wrong!“ is the motto of many a PA, either openly, or covered up by „We’ll handle this internally“ or „this is not the place for it“ smoke screens.
Whatever excuses can be thought of, hypocrites can count on their friends to pull them out or make them up.
Of course, given the general attitude on the internet, this turns just about every problem into a „us against them“ conflict, where attacking the enemy is much more important than staying honest, integer and decent, but then, that’s exactly what many want – by escalating the issue it turns from one player doing something wrong into a conflict between two sides – or in other words, into a political issue where right and wrong behaviour just become tools.



Now, what can be done to promote more integrity among roleplayers? The solution is easy to find, but hard to implement, since it requires self-control, maturity, and the backbone to not just judge your enemies, but even more your friends and yourself.

It means not staying silent or even joining in when a friend of yours is doing something wrong, but standing up, and telling him or her to stop.

It means not flaming or grieving even if you’re hurt.

It means behaving and treating others how you want to be treated.

It means listening to your friends if they tell you to stop.

It means using the same standard for judging yourself and your friends as you use for judging others.

Hard? Yes. You'll also fail often. But no one ever said growing up and becoming mature was easy.

... Canon

Canon. The big C-Word. Worshipped by Star Wars fans all over the place. And the most used argument by roleplayers in forum discussions. And, like cannons, often seems to be mainly used to destroy someone’s concept, character or idea while defending one’s own.

But what exactly is canon? Well, according to the most accepted definition, there’s G-canon (The movies, screenplay and radio shows, and to a slightly lesser extent, the novelisations of the movies) and then there’s the rest of the published stuff that sports the Star Wars Logo as approved by Lucasarts, also called canon, but not as canon as Georg Lucas’ personal work.

How does canon work in roleplay? Well, theoretically, canon is the base of the background all roleplayers in SWG share, a common ground and a way to separate Star Wars from Star Trek or Conan. In practice, its most important role is to support out of character arguments, as in „this is not canon, and therefore wrong!“ The reasons for that are numerous.

The first reason is simple, yet overlooked by many of the canon fanatics: There is simply too much „canon“. If we would just be sticking to the movies, the thing might be manageable, but alas – few are the players and star wars fans who have the maturity and wisdom to stick to the movies when dealing with canon. Most fixate on the Expanded Universe as the paradise for Star Wars roleplaying. And the expanded universe is huge. Really huge. Hundreds of novels, comic books, games and game source books, multiple tv series and countless stuff fanboys wish were canon so hard they are trying to pass it off as canon. So, the whole EU canon is too vast to know in its entirety, defeating the very idea to use it as a common ground for roleplayers in Star Wars Galaxies. Odds are, the average Star Wars Galaxies roleplayer will not even know that she just ruined a fanatic’s immersion by playing a green-eyed Corellian, since everyone who ever read the appendix notes to the 1985-era novel „From Corellia with love“ should know that no Corellian has green eyes. Not that this will stop the fanatics from expecting everyone to know exactly what they know (and heaven help anyone who claims to know differently...), and blame SOE for not following canon.

The second reason why expanded universe canon does not work as the foundation for the roleplaying in SWG is that much of the canon is either silly, stupid, outright trash, or contradicts each other. The Carebears... err, Ewoks TV series? Combat droids jousting clone troopers with lances? The Emperor coming back from the dead twice? Clichees such as „the new alien/imperial menace to the galaxy from outer space, dealt in a single novel by a handful of rebels and then forgotten“? All examples of stuff many roleplayers want to forget, and even hardcore canon fanatics try to pretend never happened. Not that this will prevent the canon fanatics from claiming canon has to be followed in game though – hypocrisy has always been a strong trait of true believers.

And the third reason for the lack of canon in star wars roleplaying is that star wars canon does not make for a good massive multiplayer roleplaying game. Star Wars, and many fanatics conveniently forget or neglect this, was first and foremost made as a movie, not as a game universe, or even a logical, consistent universe. Its canon reflects this. If something looked cool, it got into the movie – without much care, if any, for the conclusions and extrapolations some fanatics would draw from a single scene. And novels are even worse. „Cool super power to deal with clichee menace“ here, „original cool idea for a novel“ there, mixed in with „and the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance in this novel too, since I need this to add suspense“ plots. That may work for a single-player game, where the player can play the central hero character, but trying to change this into something adaptable for a massive multiplayer roleplaying game is all but impossible. Of course, that does not stop people from trying anyway, with predictable results. Even SOE tried that approach, with the NGE, and failed, because the „single hero saves the galaxy“ theme does not work in MMOGs.

On top of that, even among the EU, not every canon is equal in the eyes of the fanatics. Computer and Video Games, even though wide spread and well known among players, and therefore probably one of the most common ground outside the movies, are rated less than the most obscure novels (unless a fanatic is a fan of something from a video game, in which case it’ll be elevated to G-Canon in his ramblings). Roleplaying sourcebooks, even though made for roleplaying games, are given less weight by fanboys than some deus ex machina gimmick used in a trashy novel – probably exactly because the game mechanics from the sourcebooks are balanced, and not as lopsided as the novel stuff, since we all know how fond fanboys are of stuff like „X is the most uber ever, you cannot beat it!!!“.
And, even more strangely, the game itself, which IS a common ground, is ignored completely. I can’t fathom why so many canon fanatics ignore Star Wars Galaxies in favor of novels and other games that are of far worse quality and internal consistency, but it may be a mixture of an inability to handle game mechanics well enough to „pwn“ others in game, unwillingness to adapt to another universe than the fanatic’s personal, tailor-made „canon“ fandreamland cobbled together from bits and pieces and omissions all over the EU, and plain SOE hate.

In an interesting twist, many fanboys even hate or ignore true George Lucas canon – not stuff „approved by GL“ that he probably never saw or read, but actual, hand-written movie canon, including entire movies. While it is always refreshing to see when people start to think for themselves instead of blindly following the great leader, it raises a question too: Why would they claim to follow something they hate part of the core of, and try to force it on others though?

Because „it’s/it’s not canon“ sounds nicer than „I hate to lose“ „I don’t want to roleplay with you because I don’t like you“, „you are having badwrongfun, you deviant!“ or „I don’t like your idea because it comes from you!“. „It’s canon“ sounds more noble than „I want to play exactly like that, and you should too because I say so!“. Of course, the whole posturing is about as honest as a politician.

That said, it would be easy to have a common ground in Star Wars Galaxies. Take the movies as a base, and then go by the game world. Even immersion would be better too - since there would be less clashes between RP backgrounds of all kinds and with game reality. Of course, right now the fanboys are crying out in terror about how stupid SWG is, how un-canon, and how much of a pain it is to play in the game – as opposed to watch Carebear... I mean Ewoks, I assume. Then comes the mechanics bashing, usually filled with inaccuracies and bias, the usual jedi hate and exceptions for friends. Followed by the fervent belief that all would be right if only we’d follow canon – or what the specific true believer has formed into canon.

But, if seen from an unbiased point of view, SWG is actually a very flexible world. It has a place for nightsisters that escaped from Dathomir, Mandalorians from the marvel comics, daring rebel heroes doing the right thing against impossible odds as well as organised rebel forces actually winning a battle, good cops and corrupt cops and inept cops, all in the same organisation, sneaky pirates, evil criminals, hybrid species and clones and genetic research subjects that escaped, cyborgs, force users of all kind, and all the great scenes and fights we know and love from the movies.
It would even have a place for canon fanatics, or, to be more precise, fanboys who picked their own version what they consider absolute canon – if only they’d not expect everyone to follow their vision, and had a smidgen of flexibility instead of the usual „this would not be possible according to canon“ fire and brimstone they sling at anything that they dislike in the slightest way.

Not that many of the average roleplayers actually want to play with such fanboys, especially those fanboys who ignore canon whenever a friend or crony may be concerned, yet bring it up at every other occasion.

... Law Enforcement

Law enforcement roleplay in Star Wars Galaxies on the Starsider server has one constant: Whoever, whatever PA tries it sooner or later gives up. At first sight, this seems strange, since whenever a new law enforcement PA gets founded every player with a criminal character jumps up and down with glee, and recites the old mantra of „Great! Without law enforcement there can be no crime, since there is no risk! Welcome, welcome, welcome!“ So, one would assume, if not familiar with the server or how ritual sacrifices were fawned over in past cultures prior to the actual act, that law enforcement was a rewarding role, and filled with joyful experiences.

Of course, that’s not the case. For several reasons.

First, there are tons of criminal characters. And most of them are just waiting for some fresh meat in cop uniform so they can test their latest criminal scheme - especially after the resident stormtrooper PAs got smart and stopped bothering with crimes that are not related to the rebellion, therefore saving themselves a boatload of trouble, and being able to focus on actual military roleplay instead of speeding swoops. That means that at first, any new law enforcement PA is swamped with roleplay options and proposals. After months of going cold turkey, a fresh dose of „cop presence“ stirs just about everyone who roleplays a criminal into action.
And it starts out great. The novelty of seeing cops walking around, writing parking tickets, maybe even making an arrest after a barfight or spice consumption is usually enough for most criminals to let themselves get ordered around a bit, and behave – wouldn’t want to scare the new playmates away, after all, and one needs those cops to feel like a true criminal mastermind for dodging their attempts to bring one to justice. And any roleplay scene that goes sour is soon replaced with a new encounter/plot with new people.
However, sooner or later, the sheer number of criminal characters starts to take their toll – especially if it comes to fights. When more than every second citizen a cop encounters is a criminal, things start to look strange. When just about every victim of a crime is a criminal (who usually will get his/her own revenge if the cops don’t track and kill the perp in 1.5 hours, and may have shot at the cops a week ago), the urge to serve and protect starts to lessen. When one starts to expect odds of three or more criminals to one cop in every fight, one starts to grow weary. When a cop feels not like the protector of a community of law-abiding citizens, defending them against criminals, but the bogeyman/whipping boy of a society composed almost entirely of criminals of all sorts or their faithful fans and friends, immersion starts to suffer.

Which brings us to the second reason law enforcement ends up going bad: Compared to criminals, cops operate with very limited options and a lot of restrictions. Cops need evidence to make an arrest/sentence people. They have regulations to follow, often restrictions for gear, and have to obey the law while upholding it. Criminals on the other hand have not many restrictions, but a lot of options. They do not need to have evidence, but can act on suspicion alone – or on a whim. They can usually plan where, when and who to strike, having the initiative. They can use any weapon or armor they want if they mask their faces or at least write that into their bio. They can bribe, threaten and blackmail people, such as a law enforcement officer’s superiour. They can even use the law enforcement officers themselves, siccing them on rival criminals with some leaked information or evidence, or just the right spin on an incident.
Not to mention that criminals, unlike cops, also can simply take a break and do no crime for a while, working on perfecting their PvP suit for example. A law enforcement character though is usually swamped with work – reports of crimes, small to large grievances from criminals and law-abiding characters alike. If they do take a break, people will berate them for not being there when needed – like we complain about cops being there when we speed, but not when someone breaks into our car. (Of course, in SWG, the complaints often sound more like „You arrested my character last week just because she was carrying enough ordance into the local high-class restaurant to blow up Alderaan twice, now arrest that criminal that leered at my leotard-and-composite-fashion statement! The three officers that my characters sent to the bacta tanks during the aforementioned arrest should be out by now, and back on duty too, so no excuses!“)
So, being a cop 24/7 ends up being work, not fun, especially if one has extensive in character rules and regulations to follow, and reports to write about every crime every roleplayer wants one to investigate while 90% of the other players simply have to type „/duel“ or „/emote mugs the target“.

But what happens if a law enforcement character actually manages to do everything right, dot all the is and cross all the ts, and gets the evidence for an arrest and trial? We get to see the third reason law enforcement roleplayers tend to burn out: They simply can’t win. With the rare exception of NPC-Alts or permadead characters, criminals, even killers, will return. The hitman one busted one’s back to arrest will be frolicking around with the rest of the criminal population one week later, with a more or less believable ic explanation ranging from having served their sentence fully (after all, if SWG-pregnancies can go from conception to birth in two days, and kids from toddler to teenager in a few days more, a week is enough to serve a life sentence) to getting a deal with the Empire – if they don’t just wreck the trial, or break the accused out of jail.
Not that this is a bad thing, actually, since spending time in prison IC is only fun in the rarest cases, and we play this game for fun – at least the smarter ones among us do. But it has the consequence that the law enforcement officer ends up meeting every crook he or she busted back on the streets the very next day – something that is not good for morale.
Wait wait, you say: Actions have consequences, so criminals should suffer more! They should not return to the very streets they were arrested in!
Yeah, sure. As pointed out, a large part of the characters of the average roleplay town are criminals. Drive them out, and you end up with a ghost town. And no one wants that. So, law enforcement really cannot win against crime, not without defeating themselves.

Which is actually a good thing, for criminals rarely can allow themselves to lose. I pointed out in another entry why roleplayers generally have to win, so this is no news, but it too can influence the law enforcement game experience negatively. If we’re dealing with players who are big into ic consequences that last, like permadeath or perma-exile, then we’re faced with out of character motivations that differ a lot between cops and criminals. If the cop loses and doesn’t get an arrest or sentence for a criminal, nothing changes for the player, things continue as usual. If the cop wins – one less criminal, which means one less citizen in the town.
If the consequences-criminal loses and gets arrested, tried and sentenced, we’re talking permadeath or perma-exile, given the average crime committed by the average criminal in SWG. If the criminal wins and avoids justice, well, nothing changes, things go on. That’s a rather big incentive for the criminal’s player to do his/her best to avoid a loss – and given the amount of options criminals have (from bribes and violence to out-there stuff like mindwipes of witnesses), odds are they will win if trying seriously.
And to quote a forum post: If one side loses all the time, it’s no fun. And if something is no fun, people tend to stop doing it.

Now, let’s assume some player of a law enforcement character suffers through all the stuff mentioned above, yet does not give up. What happens then, other than getting a job offer for a less stressful task, like mediating peace in the middle east? We often see law enforcement characters start to get corrupt. The temptation to fight fire with fire grows with each defeat at the hands of criminals. Why should one stick to all those pesky regulations when it would be so easy to teach those criminals a lesson by bending the law just a little?
And so corruption steps in, little by little. Some officers may simply look away when two criminals or gangs fight each other. Others may actively instigate such conflicts by various means. Some may even work with criminals to defeat „the bigger evil“, becoming little more than tools of the local gang. Others yet might break the law, fake evidence, or torture confessions out of accuseds. Or start to enforce the law selectively, giving criminals who supported them in the past more leeway than others. Or simply pay bounty hunters and hitmen for acting out vigilante justice. And sooner or later, we’re not talking about law enforcement anymore, but enforcers of a gang in uniform. And that means, they get treated, ic and ooc, as just another gang.

But let’s assume, hypothetically, that a player weathers all of this, and keeps the character on the right side of the law. Doesn’t associate with criminals, doesn’t make deals, remains impartial, and protects their reputation by not sharing drinks or body fluids with the local mafia. Does that save them?
If the prozac bills don’t make them unable to pay for SWG’s subscription, out of character stuff usually does them in anyway. The emote/duel disputes alone can drive players away. Canon fanatics and fanboys arguing about why this or that NPC organisation should reign supreme „since it states so right in the EU!!!!“, usually followed with „your character therefore would not do this!“ mop up the survivors from the emote/duel wars.
„Just /addignore them“ you say? Well... contrary to most other character concepts, addignoring characters does not work that well for law enforcement. If after the latest „my Sith-Mandalorian-Black Hutt-hybrid syndicate should be untouchable by ouny cops like you“ ooc flame war said organisation gets addignored, people not familiar with the incident and reaction might perceive this as corrupt cops turning a blind eye.
This problem is compounded when players try to solve ooc issues with ic means. It is really tempting to simply recruit/hire/deptutize criminals so that no matter what a particular crime PA one is facing off against demands to settle the outcome of a fight - emotes, duels, sheer numbers, canon-quotes about manpower – one can match them and beat them. However, in the long run, it only leads to more trouble, since people react to seeing cops and criminals fight side by side. And having to explain after each battle „please, do not consider this too ic, the criminals on this side were just helping us out for ooc reasons“ gets tiring too.

So, what exactly can one do to avoid all this trouble when playing law enforcement characters?

Honestly, I don’t know for sure. Players could play more law-abiding citizens, or at least characters that are not hard-boiled criminals with a rap sheet longer than the casualty list of the Death Star. Characters that shun criminals, and provide the cops with a society to protect, where criminals are outsiders. However, that’s illusiory. People want to interact with criminals, for various reasons, and people want to play criminals more than joe averages, if only for the freedom it offers.

Law enforcement could avoid some pitfalls, stick to player cities and the rules there, augment their forces with storyteller tools, or stick to specific crimes (playing a sort of FBI), picking and choosing their ic antagonists and avoiding getting rushed/dragged into every crime scene as well as avoiding close association with various crime gangs. And, of course, not to try too much at once.

Criminals could use alts for plots, to allow permadead criminals, or use alts in law enforcement PAs. Alternatively, or in addition to this, criminals could try to depend less on law enforcement for their roleplay. One can roleplay a criminal in places like Lok or Tatooine, with corrupt cops (if any), and get the risk of failure not by competing with the four law enforcement officers still active on the server, but by matching wits and forces with the dozens of other crime gangs. Criminals could behave when interacting with cops, and – novel idea! – try to avoid committing crimes in the jurisdiction of said four cops.

And maybe once we do not feel anymore like we need law enforcement so desperately, law enforcement, freed of the pressures and demands from all players of criminal characters, can actually become a lasting part of the Starsider roleplay scenes, not just a prop for crime plots.

Maybe it’ll even be fun for all involved.

... Winning.

Winning a fight. One of the most important things for the majority of roleplayers.

What? It’s not about winning, it’s about having fun? Who said that? Most roleplayers? Oh, right. And you believe that? Could I interest you in some farmland in the Everglades? No? Dang.

But at least let me dispell this myth that roleplayers do not care if they win or lose a fight. They do care, usually more than most pvpers. For several reasons.

First, roleplayers have egos that rival any pvper’s. They also tend to exagerate. So, if they win a fight in character, odds are, they will draw it out. Where in a pvp fight, people get dbed, clone, and return in a minute or two, (or respawn at the space station), in a roleplay fight, the winner usually does some fun stuff to the loser – no, not teabagging, please! Roleplayers are mature! They don’t do such stuff!

Instead they do stuff like cutting their name, symbol or room number into the enemy’s back. Or cut off a limb or two. Or set them afire. Or blind them. Or scar them. Or do any other disgusting thing you can think of, since it’s in character, and their character is usually a badass nasty criminal with a cruel side.

Of course, that alone would hurt someone’s ego plenty, but then, we’re roleplaying here, so that sort of stuff is supposed to have consequences – if someone cuts their name into your back, you are supposed to write it into your bio. Needless to say, such are the things that make winning very important for many roleplayers.

Speaking of consequences, the holy grail for many, those too add a great incentive to win a fight – for if you lose, you might have to leave the planet, the galaxy, permadeath, or – even worse! - admit your character is weaker than the other.

Finally, in character background itself „forces“ many players to win every fight – after all, if you are badass mando jedi emperor’s hand sith lord master chef, you’re not supposed to lose a duel with some gutterpunk spicehead. That does not really look nice in your bio. If you are Han’s big brother, force-sensitive god’s gift to all things piloting, then losing out to some dinky TIE pilot in your uber freighter (modded to look like a mon calamari cruiser) simply can’t happen, since it would break character. If you’re the most evil and powerful crime syndicate, controlling entire planets and stormtrooper legions as well as the rebel alliance’s finest, getting wiped by a bunch of pirates is unacceptable.

See? It’s not just the player’s ego that forces them to win, it’s roleplay continuity itself. The gutterpunk that just knocked your sithlord out, and the TIE pilot that shot down your supership are just bad roleplayers if they don’t lose to your uber-power.

But but but... one cannot win everytime! Right! So, what do roleplayers do when they lose?

Easy, they whine. First, anyone who beat a roleplayer that plays an uberwarrior is obviously not a roleplayer but a pvper. So the roleplayer did not really lose, you see? For, the pvper spent all the time pvping, and got all that nice gear, which he should not have anyway, seeing as he did not write the background for it!. On the other hand, the roleplayer’s super uber ultra powered laser and lightsaber resistant armor (vulnerable to a spoon made from mud from a secret place on Tralus – after all, every good character has a weakness!) taken from the EU simply cannot be equalled in game. So, the fight was unfair to begin with!
Same for space – even when we’re talking two identical ships, identical parts, it’s still not fair and not in character, for, you see, if you actually spend time flying, and fighting in your ship then you are not roleplaying! It’s just logical that such evil people who actually spend time in space in character should lose to the dedicated roleplayers who write stories how they spend time in space and outrun ISDs, in between running a criminal empire and pursuing the ways of the force. Really!

What’s that? Unfair? Yes, I said so, it’s completely unfair that anyone who flies a lot and spends a lot of time on his or her ship should dare to beat someone who does not but roleplays a pilot much better, running a criminal Empire on the ground and pursuing the ways of the force in his spare time, and... huh? You mean it’s unfair that some roleplayer actually expect that people lose to them just because they say so? The nerve! Would you really have someone with the finest background, who wrote in his history and diary that he ist he best pilot, lose to some fresh faced TIE pilot just because the TIE Pilot actually flies better and the self-styled ace never learned the difference between a starter ship and a heavy starter ship? That TIE Pilot did not even write „best pilot ever“ in his bio, so how can he be better???!

But anyway, to avoid losing – and as was demonstrated, losing would be breaking character for our uber character, so to save roleplay immersion we need to win – there are several ways.

What? Learning how to play? Heathen! Go away! Crawl under a rock and die! No roleplayer ever has to learn anything but to write! Piloting, fighting, planning – all is optional, all is less than the one true sign of a great roleplayer, writing!

The first way to win all the time is simple: Never fight. Tell people who want to attack your character for insulting them and killing their pet nuna that their character would not dare attack a powerful sithjedimandalorian with half the galaxy at his back, and ignore them. Bonus points if you can get them labelled as ooc grievers and banned from your hang out.

The second way to always win is to refuse duels, and emote. Make sure you are smart enough to not simply avoid all hits and attacks – even if your character should actually avoid all attacks, since that’s what his bio states – but take hits and wounds, emote out how your character suffers – simply never get really beaten, always keep „barely“ fighting until the enemy finally realises it can’t beat you, or your friends arrive, and you can use the common sense tactic to win.

The common sense tactic is the third way to always win. Persuade the enemy that due to numbers, skills, force sensitivity, raw power or experience they simply have to lose or they’d be powergaming.

If this does not work – say, if your character is alone, and the stormtroopers refuse to acknowledge that your sithlord would simply think them dead – guilt them into losing. Make them understand that a loss would be a small thing for them, but a big thing, a game quitter, a catastrophe for you! Show them the amount of history your character has, and make them understand that you’d have to permadeath if you lose. If they still refuse they are no roleplayers, for no real roleplayer would ever force someone into permadeath! Besides, if they are roleplayers, they’d not care about winning!

If all does not work, break the scene up, walk away, and remain unbeaten.

If you actually, by some mistake, get into a fight and end up beaten, blame lag, jedi, George Bush, game mechanics, the other for exploiting, SOE, Star Wars, whatever works, as long as you can claim that „if it had been a real star warsy fight, my character would have won“.

For that’s what counts for a great lot of roleplayers – winning.

... Forums

Forums. Refuge for roleplayers stuck at work, shining pillar of hope for roleplayers lost in the dark of the question whether a DL-44 weighs 1.3 or 1.4 kg. Battleground for epic conflicts between the fearless warriors of all things duel and the fanatic zealots of the holy emote. Generating enough heat from flames that, if it could be harnessed, it might almost make up for the amount of work hours lost on them by less than diligent office workers. In short, part of the core of our roleplay experience - in many cases even coming before the game itself.

That said, I am always surprised by the differences between roleplaying forums. On one side, we have SWG/Starsider roleplaying forums – often full of flames, smoldering hatred, and burning crusades (no, not of the WoW style, of the „anyone who does not play like I do is having bad wrong fun and should quit!!!“ variety). On the other hand, we have forums like EN World, about, hm... 10 to 100 times as big (at least) as the usual SWG server roleplay forums (while I am writing this, SSG has 9 people online, EN World has 1300 people online), and having about, uh... 1% of the flames and hostility.

Why is that? If I knew for sure, I’d probably be able to solve the middle east conflict as well, and get the nobel prize, if I could bottle the secret and sell it to parents of teenagers and disfunctional families I’d be a billionaire. But I can at least try to guess the reasons why a forum with so many more people has much less drama than say Starsider’s roleplaying forums.

First, the similarities. Both SWG and EN World deal with roleplaying. Both have a mixture of nostalgics and new players, SWG just has fewer editions to be nostalgic about – they got Pre-CU, which grows bigger and better every year seen through the rose-colored glasses of the veterans (who conveniently forget the flames and drama on the forums back then, and all the complaining). The CU (less fans, but less drama), and the current game version, the NGE (also known as „Biggest blunder of SOE“ in some circles, and „pretty decent“ in other circles, but mostly known as „the thing that makes me roleplay, since there’s nothing else to do“ – according to roleplay forums, that is. Someone forgot to tell the players in game that they have nothing to do, so the poor ignorant players are stuck doing nothing, and can’t even complain since they do not know they have nothing to do. Any good samaritan should talk to them, and fill them in what they are doing wrong, having fun and all, so they too can join the league of dispossessed pre-cu fans).
That sounds pretty complex, all in all, but EN World has SWG beat by a wide margin. Where people that started to play SWG 4 years ago are considered veterans (and therefore often think they have the „right“ to look down upon NGE „Noobs“), EN World dealing with a game that is over 30 years old, has grognards that started playing in the 1970s, when the first edition came out (and still play it!). 1e is actually a misnomer, there’s OD&D, red box, some may even count chainmail. Then there’s AD&D 1E, AD&D 2E, Skills & Power 2E, and then there’s 3E, 3.5E, and the recently announced 4E. Add d20, various other system based upon d20, among them the Star Wars d20 and the Star Wars Saga Edition (Hey! It has Star Wars too!), and off-shots of those and you end up with more game systems than SWG has had patches. And just about every system mentioned has fervent adherants who consider it the one true way of D&D/Roleplaying.

So, any SWG roleplayer with a smidgen of forum experience has already taken cover in a nuclear shelter, expecting EN World to explode with flames that rival a supernova daily, able to burn posters to ashes through flatscreens and fiberoptic cables - yet it doesn’t.

Why is that? Are EN World posters more mature? Can’t be! Everyone on SWG knows that SWG roleplayers are the most mature roleplayers of all!

Do EN World posters have less of an ego? Not at all, as anyone listening to the tales of character death and DM stupidity can attest to, the ego of some posters is just as big as anyone else’s. In some cases, like industry professionals, it may even be justified.

Aha! As many of our gods of roleplay can affirm, it must bet hat the posters of EN World are simply more lovable, and won’t be as nasty as disagreeing with a poster, or asking for references for cited rules, since everyone knows, discussions are flames, and disagreements will ruin roleplay!
Uh... sorry to say, but people disagree a lot on EN World. They also discuss a lot. They even use the dreaded „Quote“ function to not just quote whole posts (and spam pictures!), but to quote point after point of a post, with tailored refutes or questions in between. Yet it rarely if ever degenerates into flames. Why is that so?

Maybe EN world, dealing mostly with pen and paper roleplaying, is less anonymous, and all the thousands of posters know and respect each other, unlike on SWG, where the internet makes them scoff common courtesy? Again, wrong. Most of the posters may not have seen each other even once, ,much less played together. Compared to SWG, where many players encounter each other in game and therefore may be more courteous, that sounds like a recipe for disaster.

But hold! you say. That must be it – in SWG, posters usually know each other, therefore they are more prone to flame each other! That might be true, even i fit completely ruins the whole „we need to mingle and get to know each other oocly so we can play together“ idea many players cite as the reason for spamming their in-jokes all over the forums.

But is it true? Upon closer examination, it may play a part. When browsing EN World, one hardly if ever encounters the oh so funny „look at what stupid spam I found“ posts, the „original“ inside jokes, the emote spam chain quotes or the lovable „thread hijacking to keep it funny and flame free“ antics of vigilante wanna-be mods. The whole EN World forum feels less cliquish too. That may be the size alone, but I doubt it. It’s simply the absence of inside jokes and „special exceptions“ and „meant as a joke“ posts that require people to spend half a week just reading posts until they know who is serious when talking to whom and who is not.

I do think, after reflecting upon it, that it comes down to two reasons.

First, EN World, contrary to almost every SWG forum I saw, is first and foremost seen as a forum to exchange and discuss ideas and information about roleplaying, not a stage to draw attention to oneself, or hang out and spam each other. They also draw a sharp line between opinions and people.

Second, EN World has a team of moderators who actually moderate. They don’t cut anyone slack. They don’t let people act as vigilante moderators, they don’t let others define what goes and what goes not. They don’t evade decisions, they go and draw the line between personal attacks and rebuttals of opinions.
They are dedicated to preserve the forums as a place to exchange ideas, discuss opinions, and to get advice and help for roleplaying.

Together, EN World comes off as a place where new players feel much more accepted than any SWG Forum I ever saw, and where the signal to noise ratio is much much better as well.

Is it as handy to hang out, joke, and generally chat with your buddies and best friends? Of course not. But, it seems EN World posters usually do that at the gaming table, not in forums meant to help roleplay.

Of course, since SWG players lack that table, we’re stuck with having to turn our central rp forums into spam hubs that rival Mos Eisley Starport on dev vacation days – I mean, it’s not as if we could joke with our guildies on our private forums, in chat rooms, or in special threads in a special forum, we have to spam all over the place, right? I mean, that would be intolerable! An outrage! Free Speech violated! We do have to let everyone read how cool and chummy we are, the better to show them they are not part of our clique!

And we could not complain about those very forums going down the pits due to flames and spam. But it’s not our fault, no sir! It’s uh... the fault of those who don’t laugh at our jokes, who don’t ask for permission to discuss stuff, who actually come to a forum to discuss roleplay, not read about panda spam. Don’t those outsiders know that just because we joke and spam that it does not mean they are allowed to „break the rules“ and post stuff we do not agree with?

Who let them on the forums anyway? What? Us, cliquish? Who said that? We are friendly, mature and welcoming, helpful, paragons of humanity! Anyone who disagrees is a troublemaker! Ban that heathen!

... Jedi

Yes, I said Jedi. The single most controversial thing in Star Wars Galaxies. Idolized by fanboys as gods and blamed by players for every bad thing that ever happened to the game, including hurricanes in the mexican gulf and the loss of the noobie melon.

The veteran players saw the game without jedi, with the first jedi, then lived through the hologrind, when dedicated role- and powergamers who wanted the power err... roleplaying challenge of a jedi were rapidly going through such in-character professions as chef, musician, image designer, architect and droid engineer (hey! Anakin was a droid engineer! It’s in character!) in order to unlock jedi, in the process wrecking the game for entertainers and crafters alike. It’s not surprising that this created a lot of resentment towards every jedi.

Then we saw the village come, and suck away most of the players who wanted to play a jedi but didn’t want to hologrind, or had joined too late for that, or wanted their original character to be a jedi. Once they unlocked, they were sucked even further away to actually grind up their jedi skills – alone, since any PC or NPC seeing a saber got a jedi on the bounty hunter terminals. The CU, and the respecs it allowed sped up unlocking, since many jedi found out that one could trade in cheap lower tier skill boxes for expensive higher tier boxes every 12 hours. So, after about 2 years, jedi were, to quote a signature from the SOE boards, “as common as Starbucks Cafes, and about as cool”.

And then came the NGE, and jedi were suddenly a class like every other class (with the difference of having a history of grievances and troubles, and the unique “feature” of having one half of the players hating the other half in the Elder/Respec wars.)

It’s not as if the NGE was not the logical progression of the jedi profession in game – anyone with half a brain could have seen that jedi, who started out as “gods” – a game designer was cited as a jedi master being able to take on 20 other professions – but kept in check by permadeath grew more and more “normal” with each patch, first losing permadeath and power, then losing visibility and more power (“1.5 the power of a non-jedi character!”) as more and more players unlocked jedi.

So, one would have thought that once jedi was just another profession to pick in the game, the whole “only powergamers play jedi” “roleplayers should be the only one to play jedi, they know how to” and “jedi shouldn’t even be in game, they unbalance it” would die out.

Should, but did not, for see – roleplayers covetted jedi for a big part, and resented them at the same time. For many, the ideal jedi system was simple: They would be the only jedi on the server, maybe allowing a friend to be their padawan. Anything else would ruin canon and immersion.

So, naturally, having everyone, even the unwashed masses who did not study canon at the holy G’s feet, being able to put on a robe and use a saber was impossible to endure for those roleplayers. It was kind of hard for those who defined their characters as unique special snowflakes by the simple virtue of being force sensitives to cope with the fact that everyone else was force sensitive too.

However, permadeath was gone, even the skill loss through bounty hunting was gone, so how could one make sure those evil jedi did not ruin the immersion of all the other, canon-bible following roleplayers with their hybrid bothan/wookiee mandalorian characters wearing saber proof armor donated by Boba Fett and being genetically enhanced as well as sporting cybernetic parts that made them a six-billion-credit man?

Peer pressure, that was the answer. Also known as mobbing. Jedi would not be allowed to play like everyone else with a potentionally deadly secret (meaning, flaunt it whenever they choose to), they would have to effectively vanish so as not to hurt the immersion (and fragile ego) of those players who wanted to keep the illusion that they themselves were the only jedi in game worth interating with. Almost everyone was allowed to go crazy with canon (usually called “original concept” and “roleplayed well”), but jedi? No, sir! Kill’em all, sir! Don’t care how good they roleplay!

Where criminals could “quietly” discuss their latest heist, kidnapping or planned murder, where smugglers could openly boast of a run through Kessel, where characters wanted for an assassination attempt on the Queen of Naboo could remain safe by wearing a fake mustache, where people could wear rebel armor “with the insignia filed off” and no one bat an eye, wearing a robe became something to trigger hostility on a scale to rival the jedi forums themselves, and flashing a saber turned hardcore rebels and gutterpunk criminals into upstanding citizens willing to enforce order 66 with emoted headshots.

Of course, it was just an in character reaction – after all, no good roleplayer would ever act on ooc motives, no sir! It was just good roleplaying to plot against the Empire in the corner wearing “I hate Palp” T-Shirts, yet consider the couple in the other corner discussing the force untolerable.

OOC Consent, the holy grail for every player town unwilling to be facing invaders, and for every criminal unwilling to go to jail, was either ignored or explained away as “jedi players have to face their ic consequences”, despite dozens of examples of how much worse stuff than being FS was revealed, acted out, and then glossed over so people could still hang out in the main cantina. Jedi players had no right to require consent.

And why? To protect canon and the immersion of people – often people playing with so many mods and “unique original concepts” that they would have made George himself ask the next bystander if he happened upon the Firefly or Farscape universe. To keep people from realising that they were about as unique as a drop of water in an ocean.

And, of course, to keep jedi special, and powerful. For, as long as one made sure every other jedi was mobbed into hiding, one could demand greater (emote) powers in compensation for being hunted. Of course, getting more powers for playing like you wanted to play – feeling special and hunted, hiding yet known to every friend, and protected by ooc consent yourself, since no one ever could find out you were a FS or reveal it – looks a bit unfair to outsiders, but who cares about them?

Because, as we all know by now, there’s only one true way to play a jedi for everyone but a select few, and that’s not to play a jedi. At least that is what they want us to think.

… the Great Roleplaying Community Unification Theory

One complaint one often hears when talking with roleplayers on the Starsider server of Star Wars Galaxies is that the roleplayer community is divided. Often, this is blamed for everything that irks people. According to this stance, everything would be fine if the roleplayers were just united.

I don’t really understand this theory, to be honest. Even if we just take a look at the cousin of MMOG roleplaying, pen and paper roleplaying, it does not work that way. Playstyles are different from group to group, from the “Me kick in the door, slay monster, grab loot” hack and slash fests to “Woe is me, I am immortal yet doomed to drink the blood of mortals” goth meetings. Anyone trying to tell those people that they would have more fun if they were one big group playing together would, in all likelyhood, get asked what he or she was smoking. Now take a look at other hobbies, and the “Unite and we all are better for it” theory fails again. Combine hunting and bird watching? “ohh… look, a specked treesi… BOOOM!” Football and Basketball? Reading and athletics?

But, wait, wait – it’s roleplaying in Star Wars Galaxies, so it’s all the same, so united we stand, dividied we fall and all that!

Yeah, right. This is a game, not a labor union. Anyone who plays the game – heck, anyone who reads the forums – knows that playstyles in Star Wars Galaxies vary as much as the players vary.

We have people with various background knowledge, from “I saw spaceballs once” to “This is not true, George, you meant something else, since in graphic novel 2 from 1981, which you clearly authorised or it would not have been published, there’s a panel on page 3 that shows a TIE Variant in the left corner, therefore…” experts.

We have players with various playstyles, from “I am IC when I am roleplaying, ooc if I do PvE” to “I am always IC. In fact, I am so IC, I don’t play the game!”. We have emote fighters and duellers, we have roleplayers who pvp, RPvPers, and people who hate PvP. We have people who think Star Wars is about the Force and lightsabers and the dark side, others who think Star Wars is just space, people who consider anything but gritty criminal Roleplay boring, and those who just want to play heroes facing evil stormtrooper NPCs.

We have roleplayers who want epic plots, others who want comedy, people who would feel at home in telenovelas, and those who want to feel the bleak drama of life’s suffering hit their characters over and over again until Hiob looks like the luckiest guy on earth in comparision.

Now, why would anyone try to unite all those? Leaving masochism aside, there’s one reason, and it does get back to the labor union thing: United, we would be stronger – when dealing with Devs and non-roleplayers, that is, and asking for more stuff we can use in game.

However, try to unite us in game, and you are not just asking for trouble, you are dragging trouble there, kicking and screaming, and then forcefeed it until it grows exponentially to the point its mass will cause it to collapse in itself, forming a black hole of trouble that sucks up any fun you may have in game.

Just the “Jedi are the best, you are just jealous cause you ain’t a jedi” players and the “Jedi are what ruined the game, they should be extinct” players will guarantee that you’ll see epic conflicts daily – but not in game, and not in character, but on the forums. Add emote fighters vs. duellers, “I follow game reality” vs. “Canon dictates that this should not happen”, “Let me play my character” vs. “You should play this right!”, and the whole united roleplaying community starts to make Somalia look like a peaceful place to take a vacation in – that is if the nice men at the asylum think your medication is working, and let you leave.

In short, roleplayers in Star Wars Galaxies should be separated into smaller, more homogenous communities for their own good. We simply can’t live and let live if we’re playing in the same place.

So, why do people ask to unite the roleplaying community? There are a few possible explanations.

Bigger is better!

Those are people who honestly believe that the bigger the community, the better it is. I don’t really get that – it usually runs counter to “quality before quantity”, and all I experienced was that the bigger the crowd, the bigger the trouble between people, but at least those people mean well. Maybe they dream of big epic battles and plots, who somehow would not turn into petty feuds over whether or not that last move/power/emote was canon/legal/fair or not, started by two people, and rapidly pulling in their entire PAs and allies. I usually get nightmares right after "Epic" is mentioned.

Look at ME!

Those are the players who simply want an audience. Those attention-seeking players are usually convinced that whatever they are doing is the epitome of good roleplaying, and that everyone should see it, and be at awe of such roleplaying. The more people who watch (watch, mind you, don’t take part and mess it up! That’s why we are whispering, so it will fill your spatial chatbox, but you can’t, without evl metagaming, react to it! Just sit back and watch!), the better, so the roleplayers should unite into one big audience!

A variant of that player is the one who can’t stand to miss out on roleplay. Whatever it is – dark side drama, GCW, criminal plots, comedy, soap opera – they need to be involved, and it’s easier to have that if all roleplayers are united, best if concentrated at one point in game. Those people also often play the “jedi/sith/master smuggler/ISB agent/rebel operative/master cook/master dancer/master spy/crimelord all-in-one” characters.

I found the one true way to have fun in roleplaying!

The Messiah. Those people believe that whatever is most fun for them is most fun for everyone – be it PvP, PvE, canon, force roleplay, or dramatic torture. Uniting the roleplayers means converting them too, for those, so naturally they want as many people doing stuff their way as possible – best we can say for them is that they too mean well, misguided as they are.

One player to rule them all!

Those are the power-hungry players. They want to unite the roleplaying community under their guidance, leadership, etc. The more people following their rules the happier they are. Sometimes this is just out of a fear to lose control, and getting forced to bend their own rules, sometimes it is a sincere wish to build a roleplaying community that provides the perfect way to roleplay just like they want, but often, it is a pure conscious or subconscious craving for power. If the roleplaying community is unified, then such leaders gain a lot more leverage. From powerplays using the unity as leverage – “do you want to rip us apart? Destroy what we worked for? No? Then don’t do this, or I’ll have to leave!” – to simple “play with me, by my rules, or you won’t get any roleplay at all” blackmail.

Those people want to unite roleplayers so they themselves have more power, and removing alternatives is a key to this.

I don’t want to do anything!

The lazy ones. They do not want to do anything to get roleplay, preferring to let roleplay fall in their laps. If all roleplayers are united, then the odds of them getting that without making contacts and being active increase – especially if concentrated at one hub- and so they are generally for any unification. After all, the more people, the bigger the chance someone will roleplay with them – or so they think.

I want those people gone!

Those people have issues with other players, and can’t stand them. They are not happy having fun themselves, they want the other players gone. Uniting all roleplayers they see as a way to remove those “Non-roleplayers” through peer pressure or mobbing. One can easily spot those sad if sick people by listening to them bitching about others in ooc chat channels, and generally trying to slander other roleplayers.

Faced with all those, I honestly prefer the roleplaying community as it is: divided into niches, where many playstyles can flourish. For me, personally, I simply want to have fun in game. And I do not subscribe to the Great Roleplaying Community Unification Theory.

...Mos Eisley

Starsider's Mos Eisley – the bad, the ugly and the good

If one mentions Mos Eisley to a group of roleplayers in Star Wars Galaxies, one can be sure to hear a lot of interesting and at times new curse words.

„Spam Central“ and „Mos Lagly“ are usually the first. Understandable, since Mos Eisley is one of the busiest spots on the server, and attracts a lot of credit spammers – to the Starport, to be precise.

AFKtainers are next, especially if one is speaking to a veteran, who remembers Mos Eisley’s past (but often hasn’t been there in months). They are often covered by complaints about spam.

After that, one usually gets the complaints about „noobs“, „teenage sith lords“, „afk dancers“, „Non-roleplayers“ „duellers“ „pvpers“ „griefers“, delivered with varying eloquency, but always with such heartfelt passion that one can almost feel the spittle from the foaming mouth hit one’s face.

The general consensus often is that no one but the aforementioned groups – spammers, griefers, noobs, pvpers and other „undesirable people“ will go to Mos Eisley while the more sophisticated and mature roleplayer will head to (insert your choice of player city), where only excellent people gather whose presence is a privilege for anyone else.

The reality is, of course, as far from those rants as it usually is from any prejudices.


The bad


Is Mos Eisley laggy? Of course it is. Any location with so many people is laggy, if your machine can’t handle it. However, once one is past the starport, one may lag a bit entering the cantina, but in all other areas, the town is usually no more laggy than any other location on the server.

Is it spammy? Again, it is – at the Starport. Real spammy, to the point that some may even crash, according to what one hears. Mostly due to credit farmers. Does it justify the loud and fervent complaints and declarations that one cannot set foot in it?

Not really. Most complainers seem to not know that we can filter out any chat from someone who shows the afk tag. In other „communities“ than the roleplaying one, we’d call someone who loudly whines about something he or she could have solved for a big part by simply checking the game options or asking a question a „noob“. But we’re among roleplayers, who consider themselves above such base creatures as pvpers or webcomic creators, so we will simply point them at those options in the game, and hope they won’t drill out a page long explanation why it was impossible, even unthinkable for them to check such, and why their whining was still entirely ok, and even mandated by their duty to the greater cause of bashing Mos Eisley.

Now, even with afk turned off we are left with half a dozen spammers at the starport – credit farmers, and the occasional player merchant. Now, I don’t have afk spam filtered off, and I still manage to addignore all spammers in about a minute, less than what I usually spend checking my mails when logging on, so I’d say, it’s not as bad a problem as people say.
For those who cannot bear this, there’s a spam-free shuttleport, and travelling from there to either of the two cantinas will be spam free as well.


The ugly (roleplayer)


With lag and spam mostly dealt with, that leaves us to the true source of why many of the roleplayers’ creme de la creme hate Mos Eisley: It’s full of people playing the game differently than they do.

People not familiar with roleplayers might think that means non-roleplayers, but they are wrong. The worst enemy of the elite roleplayer is not the non-roleplayer, but the roleplayer who is not as elite as themselves – the sub-roleplayer.

Picture the elite roleplayer in Mos Eisley: He or she braves the spam (1 minute of /addignore, every day! I could use this time to write another page for my bio!), braves the lag (I lagged 5 seconds entering the cantina, 5 seconds of my immersion being broken and 5 seconds of me being kept from roleplay against my will!), and then suddenly is face to face with people who are as ignorant as not to know that the god of roleplaying just entered.

It is hell on earth! There are non-roleplayers asking for a buff! In spatial!!! Why, that’s so out of character, it hurts my immersion. In between discussing the latest movie in guildchat, joking about SOE in group chat and dissing other players in the ooc chat channel, it hits me right where it hurts, and prevents me from spending 100% of my attention on roleplay! I cannot overlook it, I cannot ignore it, I have to get angry about it!
Of course, there is actually very little of ooc chat in spatial in Mos Eisley, and a lot of it is coming in ((brackets )), therefore from other roleplayers sharing their in jokes with everyone else, but that doesn’t change anything! ANY ooc chat in spatial is bad, bad and bad!

After the poor victim has not addignored the non-roleplayers – after all, how could you get angry about someone’s ooc chat and vent in guildchat if you addignored the character – and got almost killed by the sight of two duelling characters – imagine, people fighting in a hive of scum and villainy! Don’t they know that only Han Solo and Obi-Wan are allowed to fight here? - there comes the real killer: Non-elite roleplayers!

Why, imagine the torture an elite roleplayer goes through, faced with non-elites. They talk about the force in spatial! They mention sith! They have no idea at all that only force sensitive roleplayers using one’s own house rules, and whose bio has been approved by the council of best jedi roleplayers ever have the right to even know about sith and the force! And yet they toss out names like “Dark Side“ and „Sith“ as if they were privy to what those stand for! Blasphemy, mockery of all things jedi! And they have fun! The nerve!

After recovering from this, a new shock awaits. The dreaded clichee! Oh my god, there are escaped twi’lek slave dancers among us. Don’t those people know that there are already too many such characters, and only those who roleplay it right are allowed to play one? Our quota is full, can’t those noobs read our bios, in our player city, and understand that they should play something else? Something more original than an escaped twi’lek slave dancer? The nerve!

But even turning away – again, not /addignoring the offending piece of sub-roleplayer - and venting in guildchat there is no respite. Now come the exotics! How can anyone sane play a character that is a hybrid of two species? Or a race that’s not in the rules? Or coming from a forbidden planet, such as Dathomir, who should not even be in game? Gasp! There is a Sith Lord over there, blasphemy! Only esteemed elite roleplayers such as my mutant bothan-wookiee friend who roleplayed being force sensitive for 3 years before even hearing of the force while on a trip to Dagoba are allowed to claim the title of Sith Lord! And those people have fun! The nerve! Don’t they know that they are not allowed to play special characters?

Now a nervous wreck, the elite roleplayer staggers to the bar, and meets the last menace to the spirit of true roleplaying: The cantina rat. Imagine the horror, there are actually players whose character hang out in bars, dance, drink, and chat, and flirt! Where is the drama? Where is the darkness? Where is the big emotional impact that everyone knows is roleplaying? They are actually hanging out in character! Sharing jokes! Don’t they know that such should only be done out of character, preferabily on forums in threads people ask questions in? Or in ooc channels? This is worse than non-roleplaying, this is... this is... words fail the elite roleplayer at this point. Having fun without big dramatic plots and trauma is not allowed in roleplaying!

Such hurt to the core, and deeply traumatised, the elite roleplayer flees the scene, clearing spam and lag in record time, whining about the sub-roleplayers in Mos Eisley, who are without a doubt cybering right now as well, and doesn’t calm down until long after it has reached home base again, where only true roleplaying is allowed. And after much bitching about noobs, players who call it an elitist and anyone else currently not online, settles down to having fun itself. Those noobs and other sub-roleplayers in Mos Eisley won’t be graced with the presence of the elite roleplayer, that will show them!

Not that anyone there will miss it.


The good


Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While Mos Eisley may be ugly for some roleplayers, it offers a lot for other roleplayers.

First, It is a location with a lot of presence in the movies. It has a lot of background, a clear theme everyone knows, scum and villainy, and it offers a lot of various buildings usable for roleplay, from the two cantinas, to street cafes, slum houses, middle-class buildings and mansions. Many are extensively decorated inside as well.

Second, it is a meeting spot, People go there, new players always end up there. Different people, with different playstyles, so odds are, one will find someone with a similar playstyle there.

Third, Mos Eisley is tolerant. No one will be able to city ban you there, even though you carry a weapon openly in a dangerous town. With the possible exception of elite roleplayers, no one will start a shitstorm about you roleplaying a jedi that wears a robe.

Is it for everyone? No. The theme is Scum and Villainy, so people wanting to roleplay members of the nabooian court won’t feel at home there. Nothing wrong with that. There are a number of great places where people have fun, and no one expects people to head to Eisley if they have fun elsewhere. No one would expect people to rant about Mos Eisley in a thread about Theed, duels and emote fighting, or the weather in Greenland either, but some can't help themselves.

However, Mos Eisley is it for some people. We have fun there, the occasional non-roleplayer and ooc chat included. While we might not want to jump into the battle between the sith lord and the jedi master, we don’t freak out that people have fun in ways that others do not.

Is it perfect? Surely not. But it does not deserve the scorn and hate it often gets.