I have encountered a lot of troubles regarding IC Consequences", as observer or as someone involved. A number of the troubles involving them seems to come from a lack of tolerance, a desire to force one's own view of what consequences should be taken on others by mixing IC and OOC, and a lack of flexibility.
In many cases I wonder why people get so hung up on consequences. Say some pirate attacks a freighter convoy and in the following battle 2 escorting fighters and one pirate YT-1300 are blown up, with the freighter arriving safely at the destination.
Now, what IC consequences should there be? My answer is: The main IC consequence already happened: Pirates got beaten, freighter delivered cargo. That's it, as far as I am concerned. Anything else - how to deal with the destruction and such - is not as much the concern of the one who dealt the damage, but mainly that of the one who took damage. This is where tolerance comes in.
Why should I care about how the pirates or escorts repair/replace their ships? That's none of my business. People have different preferences (and in some cases ooc obligations), different playing times and schedules, and different views of what's fun to roleplay out.
If the pirates jury-rig their ship, barely make it back to their base on Lok, and then RP out repairing their ship for an hour, that's fine and dandy. If they skip roleplaying that out, and are (from an ooc POV) instantly ready for their raid on a cruise ship, that's ok too. If they spend a real time week travelling through the jungles of Yavin IV, trying to make it to an outpost on foot, then spend 1 real time month stealing and outfitting a new ship - if it's fun for them, where is the bloody problem?
Just because the pirates take one hour to recover doesn't mean the escorts have to do the same. One escort can take 1 minute to repair, and the other escort one week to slowly drink himself into a stupor over the permaloss of his fighter, and all ways work out just fine. Given different playing times and schedules two pilots could each spend 3 hours dealing with the loss of a ship, and for me it might appear as if one instarepaired (because I was logged out during that time) while the other took ages (because I was waiting for him to fly me back IC).
There is no standard period one has to spend "without a ship" in game after getting blown up in space. And there should not be. Not everyone likes to roleplay repairing a ship out. Some like to skip that, some like to detail gathering parts, some like to spend 1 hour moping in a bar while NPCs repair their ship.
But the important part is: The IC consequence happened IC. They lost a battle, they took damage, they had to repair it or find a new ship. The character did suffer IC consequences. Whether or not those IC consequences were played out in game, and how, doesn't matter IC - or should not, unless you're mixing OOC and IC.
If you expect a player to spend an hour in game, emoting how he has his ship repaired, or consider him to avoid ic consequences, then you are mixing ic and ooc - you are, in short, metagaming. And you'll be hard pressed to explain how you are perfectly fine with your character being alive despite not playing out toilet visits regularily in game, but refuse to let others have things happen "off screen".
Because no matter how logical you may think your own personal "minimum period of recovery after loss" is, you can bet that somewhere someone is feeling that anything less than her own "minimum period of recover after a loss", which is ten times yours, is "stupid god-modding to avoid IC consequences".
Of course there's the potential for abuse. If someone loses a ship, then the next day has some new bio entry about having stolen a brand-new freighter, that may be questionable for some people - but then, would it be any better if that theft was acted out in game in a short scripted plot, with a few NPCs and a "guest corpse" played by a friend? Same effect.
Some flexibility helps a lot here - as long as you desire to roleplay with someone, and not consider his or her character a mere prop for yourself. If you beat one thug within an inch of his life in a fight, then decided to indulge yourself and carved your initials in his back, then that doesn't mean you get to control the player's reaction to that, and force him or her to rp with a crooked "A" on the character's back for any length of time. If the player decides that he got the back fully repaired with bacta, nanobots, force healing, or cosmetic surgery, that's his right. As is your right to state "If you don't remain scarred I won't rp with you", but that's seriously at the very least straying into bullying.
Of course you're not required to go along with everything either, or go along with everything right now. If you've sent someone to the bacta tanks and 5 seconds later the character returns to take revenge, you're perfectly right to refuse RP. But if the character returns "after spending an hour getting patched up, since I have this meeting today and have to log soon", and doesn't engage you in rp, but simply rps with someone else, then show some tolerance and don't start the usual OOC bitchfest about how bad a roleplayer he is for not waiting an actual hour doing nothing in a med center.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Thursday, September 17, 2009
… minimizing OOC trouble
You cannot please everyone. Almost everyone knows this. But when dealing with roleplayers, many sooner or later find out that it is really easy to make everyone spitting (or rather, forum flaming) mad at you. Now making everyone mad at you at once, with one action – that’s difficult, especially when a number of roleplayers will suddenly become your best friend as soon as another group of roleplayers is mad at you, and usually requires a deliberate effort, and not many actually plan or even do this. But not so few might end up alienating a large number of roleplayers without meaning to – one roleplayer a time, or rather, one clique a time.
Why does that happen? There are a few reasons.
Every roleplayer has some rules and expectations which, if broken or violated, cause him or her to react oocly – usually by either stopping roleplay with said person, starting an ooc discussion or rant in game or on the forums, /addignore, blacklist, or – not too uncommon – start letting an OOC dislike influence IC decisions without saying anything. Often there’s a combination of a few of those reactions, and as often they are just a tiny bit less restrained and collected than a rabid wolverine’s reaction to someone kicking it in its side.
The real trouble, of course, is that those rules and expectations are never as universally shared as most roleplayers delude themselves or wish them to be - “common sense” when raised in this context usually means “in my opinion”. And given how opinionated roleplayers are – especially on the forums – a few of those “lines you shalt not cross” are placed awfully far out there. Sure, there are a few rules almost everyone shares, like “don’t post pictures involving farm animals and illegal sexual acts on roleplay forums”, and “SOE can’t do anything right!” (I say “almost” because some people think it’s ok to not consider SWG a complete failure no sane person would waste their time on, I think those people might still be playing SWG instead of roleplaying on the forums), but most “universal” rules are only universal in that the average roleplayer thinks the universe should revolve around himself.
So, what actions are likely to make a roleplayer spitting mad at you? Let’s make a list!
Emote fighting. That’s a big no-no, only evil godmodders and douchebags too lazy to actually play the game and level up a toon do that sort of stuff! It breaks immersion if a slap to the face doesn’t have some flashy special effect or if you try to use an emoted “presses her hand on her wound” instead of dropping a bacta bomb followed by a cloud of poison gas at your feet when someone is launching rockets from 1 meter away. Really! If you emote then that means you are some lazy CL1 noob and want to godmode yourself into the second Palpatine! Besides everyone knows that emote comes from emo, and is just an excuse for people to spam spatial with lines stolen from Dragonball Z and Twilight fanfiction! Real men, I mean, real roleplayers use /duel! Now come and /duel my buffed armored mandalorian, you trader pussy! And no, I don’t care ythat you’re not actually fighting me, but your friend – the very act of emoting is ruining my fun!
Duelling. That’s a big no-no, only evil non-roleplayers who can neither type nor read and always want to win do that stuff. It breaks immersion if you actually see blaster bolts flying, and people dropping during a fight without giving a 2 minutes farewell speech, and enough internal monologue in spatial to put half a kindergarden to sleep, and it’s especially damaging to immersion if a fight consisting of three expert fighters shooting each other at point blank range is over in less than an hour real time! Really! Only people too lazy to actually roleplay, and who spend their time getting all the best gear to win every fight duel! Besides, everyone knows that the game mechanics are not good enough to handle my character’s power, which should guarantee me winning... err, I mean, are not good enough to handle roleplay fights. And no, I don’t care that you’re fighting not me, but your friend, the very act of you using the combat system from the game is ruining my fun!
Dicing. That’s a big no-no. A fight should be decided by skill, not chance. The better fighter – read the better emoter / No! The better pvper / No, emoter! – should win. If you use dice in combat then you are too lazy to learn how to roleplay! Now learn how to fight in roleplay!
Requiring OOC consent. That’s metagaming! IC actions have IC consequences! If you won’t go along with my spontaneous but utterly great and funny “Let’s permakill the next human I see ‘cause I am bored... I mean, because my character is an evil criminal” idea, then you’re an evil metagamer who wants to weasel out of the consequences of her actions, which were being the first human I saw! It does not matter if your character is on the way to her wedding, which you have been planning for five months, if you do not accept permadeath you’re a griefer! Think of the roleplay experience, think of the fun spontanity creates!
Freeform Roleplay. You bloody griefer! Why do you think you should be able to attack my character just because you’re a criminal and my rich noble insulted you when she saw you in this side alley in the worst slum of this hive of scum and villainy, all alone, just herself, and her 150K ballgown, and her choice vocabulary of “peasant” “servant” and “unwashed cretin”, when she walked in on you while you were in a meeting with your goons and told you to leave so you’d not stink up her air? If you don’t ask for OOC consent, and then fill out this form for “spontanenous interactions of other than worshipping nature”, complete with a list of acceptable consequences – if you ask nicely I may let you glare at my character after she kicks you in your groin – and then wait until I am ready to play this scene – I think next saturday would work well, enough time to plan it out some – you’re ruining my fun!
Playing an exotic character. That’s breaking immersion! We’re playing Star Wars, not Star Wars Galaxies, or whatever you think you are playing! If you’re playing an imperial then you have to be male, human, and evil! Anything else is not Star Wars anymore! You’re ruining my immersion if your character is supposed to be a droid, but actually is a twi’lek using the droid costume 24/7! Play what the game offers – but only if it conforms to canon, no male twi’leks that do not look like Bib Fortuna, or else! And clean your bio up, your sad attempt to make yourself uber-special by claiming your imperial stormtrooper actually has a family that was killed by rebels is ruining my immersion! Rebels are the good guys, and would never do that, not even when they help slavers or pirates!
Playing a standard character. That’s stupid and boring! Why would you want to play a cliche like a twi’lek dancer, or a non-force sensitive character, or a species that we can actually pick from the game menu? Be creative, be original! Play a sentient mutated giant mynock the size of a house! That’s a challenge to roleplay properly, starting with making sure every player actually reads your bio first, and does not assume you’re a fat mon calamari just because you picked that race! And don’t forget to relish in the anguish your emoted special mutant power “Drain energy from anyone, droids and people alike” causes your character to feel when you’re using it to win a fight against the imperial fleet! And spice up your bio! True roleplayers know that the more creative the bio is, the better a roleplayer you are! Make sure to mention you’re actually a reincarnated jedi master’s mentor from the great hyperspace war, who was forced into a clone body by Palpatine himself during the clone wars before breaking away by taking over a mynock's body and had visions of the future crimson empire, and not just some boring smuggler or mercenary!
Playing a Jedi. BOOOO! Heathen! Immature powergamer! There are no jedi in this time period! I do not care that your character is actually a force user following another tradition and never uses a saber IC, his character sheet says “Jedi”, so he is a jedi, and Darth Vader killed all jedi! You should accept the consequences of your actions and permadeath this abomination. What? My character? Hey, I wrote in my bio on the forums that she was rescued and trained by Yoda, and given special powers to hide from the Empire, but there can only be one with that bio and power, so you can’t be a force user too! Oh my god, you’re using a lightsaber? I want the saber tef back! Order 66! Order 66! All unite to kill the jedi and save the game! And the robe hidden by the appearance tab screams jedi!
Cybering. WTF? That’s disgusting! You actually kissed that character? Like, on the mouth? Eeeew, you damn sicko, you sexual deviant! I don’t care you did it in the privacy of your home, such icky stuff has no place in SWG! Your characters are probably not even married to each other! Get away from me, you freak! I need to concentrate on detailing in the cantina how I am ripping out this character’s liver while she is still alive, then feed half of it to my pet while forcing the other half down her throat, healing her with the force to keep her alive so she can taste it, before I skin her and wear the skin as a trophy! And then the real torture can begin! What, you’re still here? Get away before you ruin the game for everyone, there are minors playing this game as well, you know!
Talking OOC in spatial without using parentheses. ((You stupid non-roleplayer, you answered that new player’s question how to open her inventory without using parentheses! You broke my immersion! I almost missed your line in between the ((LOL)) and ((/hug)) spam from my friends, but that’s no excuse! Go learn how to roleplay, you’re setting a bad example for new players!))
Talking OOC, period. True roleplayers are IC 24/7. Only losers lower themselves to talk out of character. The biggest and most fun roleplay experience is to handle all things, even a server crash, IC! If my superb roleplay plots cause drama, then that’s because the idiots cannot handle real roleplay, and try to turn it into ooc drama to escape the IC consequences of their actions! Now stop being a dick and stay IC while I curbstomp your character – she brought it on herself when she did not answer my question five minutes ago, when you were linkdead!
Telling people to take it to tells. What are you smoking, how dare you to tell me to take my OOC discussion to tells! The whole cantina, the whole server has to know what an ass this player here is being, for not going along with my “Silence, I kill you” idea! I do not care that I am spamming shouts and drowning out your stupid roleplay scene, this is more important! Everyone blacklist this idiot! It’s hard enough trying to put the idiot in his place whithout losing track of my friends’ ooc discussion in spatial about the merits of Coke Zero.
Not wearing a “roleplayer” tag. If you do not wear the roleplayer tag you are a griefer! I don’t care that you’ve been in character way before the tag was available, if you’re not showing the tag you’re no roleplayer! Everyone, addignore him!
Most readers will have noticed a trend by now – that those things one should not do are so numerous that you cannot do anything without pissing someone off oocly. Not even doing nothing helps, since that usually makes your player association mad. So, whatever you do or do not, someone likely will take offense oocly. The only one sharing all of your preferences perfectly is likely to be the girl or guy you see each morning in the mirror. And playing with others is more fun than playing with yourself, in SWG too.
So, what can you do to at least minimize OOC trouble? There are a few things.
The most important one is to not try too much with one character. Most people won’t stop roleplaying just because of a single thing you do they dislike. But the more you load up on controversional subjects – and as you saw, almost everything is controversional – the more likely you are to overload the “I can only take so much of this” meter of others.
Playing a Falleen will likely be ok for many, especially if you do not overdo the pheromones. Adding Dark Jedi to the mix will put more people off. Adding cybering to it even more (though both might also attract more people as well). Slaving is controversional by itself, doubly so when in conjunction with cybering. A Falleen/Twi'lek genetically engineered hybrid dark jedi using force powers and pheromones to turn other player characters into pleasure slaves without regard for OOC consent while using poweremoting, and with a bio that makes him Darth Vader’s special apprentice, able to drop ISDs from orbit by his force power, as well as the heir to the Black Sun, will likely cause some of the more excitable roleplayers to try to track you down in real life for some hands-on discussion about canon, immersion, and the practical uses of various blunt instruments.
Generally, the more controversional an action or plot is – and most conflict falls under this – the less it should be done to or with people you don’t know well. It’s not as if even your serial killer has to kill everyone you see, for example. Dexter doesn’t do that either. Generally, the less violent a roleplay scene is, the easier it is to play it out. Contrary to some people’s opinion, not every player has no fun unless she is attacked and mutilated. And if you have no fun unless you're mutilating someone... well, the pool of players you will be able to have fun with will be very small.
Try to find out potential pitfalls before stepping in them - if halfway into an attack you discover that the other side expects /duels and not emotes then something went wrong far before that.
Limiting exposure helps a lot too. I know, many have an exhibitionist streak, but not rubbing the noses of everyone within 65 meters into the fact that your character is a hidden sithlord plotting the downfall of everyone he sees helps a lot with avoiding OOC trouble. So, shelve that internal monologue detailing your character’s powers, views and past. If you really feel like exposing all that, use a journal. You’ll have a much, much easier time avoiding metagaming too, since people who do not know you’re actually a sithlord won’t suddenly “discover” that you’re a sithlord by your smell. And maybe by the time they do find out IC you’ve been roleplaying together for some time, and they’ve noticed you’re not actually a bad person for playing a sithlord.
And of course, develop some tolerance. If you freak out – in spatial or on the forums – each time someone roleplays in a way you’d not, then you can’t really expect others to cut you some slack when you roleplay something they’d not do. Despite of what you may think, your way is not the only correct way to have fun in roleplay, and preaching to others – in spatial even – won’t actually make them grateful for having been taught their errors, and their place by a roleplay master.
Lastly, accept that no matter what you do, even if you have the best intentions, someone is going to get mad at you. Don’t try to roleplay with everyone, find out who is comfortable with your playstyle and shares many of your preferences, and limit your most controversional scenes to them while playing it safe with the rest. You might discover that even though the guy at the bar is a douchebag emote fighter or an immature pvper wanting to /duel, as long as you don’t actually fight each other you can have a lot of fun roleplaying with each other.
And you might even pave the way for some more controversional roleplay later on.
Why does that happen? There are a few reasons.
Every roleplayer has some rules and expectations which, if broken or violated, cause him or her to react oocly – usually by either stopping roleplay with said person, starting an ooc discussion or rant in game or on the forums, /addignore, blacklist, or – not too uncommon – start letting an OOC dislike influence IC decisions without saying anything. Often there’s a combination of a few of those reactions, and as often they are just a tiny bit less restrained and collected than a rabid wolverine’s reaction to someone kicking it in its side.
The real trouble, of course, is that those rules and expectations are never as universally shared as most roleplayers delude themselves or wish them to be - “common sense” when raised in this context usually means “in my opinion”. And given how opinionated roleplayers are – especially on the forums – a few of those “lines you shalt not cross” are placed awfully far out there. Sure, there are a few rules almost everyone shares, like “don’t post pictures involving farm animals and illegal sexual acts on roleplay forums”, and “SOE can’t do anything right!” (I say “almost” because some people think it’s ok to not consider SWG a complete failure no sane person would waste their time on, I think those people might still be playing SWG instead of roleplaying on the forums), but most “universal” rules are only universal in that the average roleplayer thinks the universe should revolve around himself.
So, what actions are likely to make a roleplayer spitting mad at you? Let’s make a list!
Emote fighting. That’s a big no-no, only evil godmodders and douchebags too lazy to actually play the game and level up a toon do that sort of stuff! It breaks immersion if a slap to the face doesn’t have some flashy special effect or if you try to use an emoted “presses her hand on her wound” instead of dropping a bacta bomb followed by a cloud of poison gas at your feet when someone is launching rockets from 1 meter away. Really! If you emote then that means you are some lazy CL1 noob and want to godmode yourself into the second Palpatine! Besides everyone knows that emote comes from emo, and is just an excuse for people to spam spatial with lines stolen from Dragonball Z and Twilight fanfiction! Real men, I mean, real roleplayers use /duel! Now come and /duel my buffed armored mandalorian, you trader pussy! And no, I don’t care ythat you’re not actually fighting me, but your friend – the very act of emoting is ruining my fun!
Duelling. That’s a big no-no, only evil non-roleplayers who can neither type nor read and always want to win do that stuff. It breaks immersion if you actually see blaster bolts flying, and people dropping during a fight without giving a 2 minutes farewell speech, and enough internal monologue in spatial to put half a kindergarden to sleep, and it’s especially damaging to immersion if a fight consisting of three expert fighters shooting each other at point blank range is over in less than an hour real time! Really! Only people too lazy to actually roleplay, and who spend their time getting all the best gear to win every fight duel! Besides, everyone knows that the game mechanics are not good enough to handle my character’s power, which should guarantee me winning... err, I mean, are not good enough to handle roleplay fights. And no, I don’t care that you’re fighting not me, but your friend, the very act of you using the combat system from the game is ruining my fun!
Dicing. That’s a big no-no. A fight should be decided by skill, not chance. The better fighter – read the better emoter / No! The better pvper / No, emoter! – should win. If you use dice in combat then you are too lazy to learn how to roleplay! Now learn how to fight in roleplay!
Requiring OOC consent. That’s metagaming! IC actions have IC consequences! If you won’t go along with my spontaneous but utterly great and funny “Let’s permakill the next human I see ‘cause I am bored... I mean, because my character is an evil criminal” idea, then you’re an evil metagamer who wants to weasel out of the consequences of her actions, which were being the first human I saw! It does not matter if your character is on the way to her wedding, which you have been planning for five months, if you do not accept permadeath you’re a griefer! Think of the roleplay experience, think of the fun spontanity creates!
Freeform Roleplay. You bloody griefer! Why do you think you should be able to attack my character just because you’re a criminal and my rich noble insulted you when she saw you in this side alley in the worst slum of this hive of scum and villainy, all alone, just herself, and her 150K ballgown, and her choice vocabulary of “peasant” “servant” and “unwashed cretin”, when she walked in on you while you were in a meeting with your goons and told you to leave so you’d not stink up her air? If you don’t ask for OOC consent, and then fill out this form for “spontanenous interactions of other than worshipping nature”, complete with a list of acceptable consequences – if you ask nicely I may let you glare at my character after she kicks you in your groin – and then wait until I am ready to play this scene – I think next saturday would work well, enough time to plan it out some – you’re ruining my fun!
Playing an exotic character. That’s breaking immersion! We’re playing Star Wars, not Star Wars Galaxies, or whatever you think you are playing! If you’re playing an imperial then you have to be male, human, and evil! Anything else is not Star Wars anymore! You’re ruining my immersion if your character is supposed to be a droid, but actually is a twi’lek using the droid costume 24/7! Play what the game offers – but only if it conforms to canon, no male twi’leks that do not look like Bib Fortuna, or else! And clean your bio up, your sad attempt to make yourself uber-special by claiming your imperial stormtrooper actually has a family that was killed by rebels is ruining my immersion! Rebels are the good guys, and would never do that, not even when they help slavers or pirates!
Playing a standard character. That’s stupid and boring! Why would you want to play a cliche like a twi’lek dancer, or a non-force sensitive character, or a species that we can actually pick from the game menu? Be creative, be original! Play a sentient mutated giant mynock the size of a house! That’s a challenge to roleplay properly, starting with making sure every player actually reads your bio first, and does not assume you’re a fat mon calamari just because you picked that race! And don’t forget to relish in the anguish your emoted special mutant power “Drain energy from anyone, droids and people alike” causes your character to feel when you’re using it to win a fight against the imperial fleet! And spice up your bio! True roleplayers know that the more creative the bio is, the better a roleplayer you are! Make sure to mention you’re actually a reincarnated jedi master’s mentor from the great hyperspace war, who was forced into a clone body by Palpatine himself during the clone wars before breaking away by taking over a mynock's body and had visions of the future crimson empire, and not just some boring smuggler or mercenary!
Playing a Jedi. BOOOO! Heathen! Immature powergamer! There are no jedi in this time period! I do not care that your character is actually a force user following another tradition and never uses a saber IC, his character sheet says “Jedi”, so he is a jedi, and Darth Vader killed all jedi! You should accept the consequences of your actions and permadeath this abomination. What? My character? Hey, I wrote in my bio on the forums that she was rescued and trained by Yoda, and given special powers to hide from the Empire, but there can only be one with that bio and power, so you can’t be a force user too! Oh my god, you’re using a lightsaber? I want the saber tef back! Order 66! Order 66! All unite to kill the jedi and save the game! And the robe hidden by the appearance tab screams jedi!
Cybering. WTF? That’s disgusting! You actually kissed that character? Like, on the mouth? Eeeew, you damn sicko, you sexual deviant! I don’t care you did it in the privacy of your home, such icky stuff has no place in SWG! Your characters are probably not even married to each other! Get away from me, you freak! I need to concentrate on detailing in the cantina how I am ripping out this character’s liver while she is still alive, then feed half of it to my pet while forcing the other half down her throat, healing her with the force to keep her alive so she can taste it, before I skin her and wear the skin as a trophy! And then the real torture can begin! What, you’re still here? Get away before you ruin the game for everyone, there are minors playing this game as well, you know!
Talking OOC in spatial without using parentheses. ((You stupid non-roleplayer, you answered that new player’s question how to open her inventory without using parentheses! You broke my immersion! I almost missed your line in between the ((LOL)) and ((/hug)) spam from my friends, but that’s no excuse! Go learn how to roleplay, you’re setting a bad example for new players!))
Talking OOC, period. True roleplayers are IC 24/7. Only losers lower themselves to talk out of character. The biggest and most fun roleplay experience is to handle all things, even a server crash, IC! If my superb roleplay plots cause drama, then that’s because the idiots cannot handle real roleplay, and try to turn it into ooc drama to escape the IC consequences of their actions! Now stop being a dick and stay IC while I curbstomp your character – she brought it on herself when she did not answer my question five minutes ago, when you were linkdead!
Telling people to take it to tells. What are you smoking, how dare you to tell me to take my OOC discussion to tells! The whole cantina, the whole server has to know what an ass this player here is being, for not going along with my “Silence, I kill you” idea! I do not care that I am spamming shouts and drowning out your stupid roleplay scene, this is more important! Everyone blacklist this idiot! It’s hard enough trying to put the idiot in his place whithout losing track of my friends’ ooc discussion in spatial about the merits of Coke Zero.
Not wearing a “roleplayer” tag. If you do not wear the roleplayer tag you are a griefer! I don’t care that you’ve been in character way before the tag was available, if you’re not showing the tag you’re no roleplayer! Everyone, addignore him!
Most readers will have noticed a trend by now – that those things one should not do are so numerous that you cannot do anything without pissing someone off oocly. Not even doing nothing helps, since that usually makes your player association mad. So, whatever you do or do not, someone likely will take offense oocly. The only one sharing all of your preferences perfectly is likely to be the girl or guy you see each morning in the mirror. And playing with others is more fun than playing with yourself, in SWG too.
So, what can you do to at least minimize OOC trouble? There are a few things.
The most important one is to not try too much with one character. Most people won’t stop roleplaying just because of a single thing you do they dislike. But the more you load up on controversional subjects – and as you saw, almost everything is controversional – the more likely you are to overload the “I can only take so much of this” meter of others.
Playing a Falleen will likely be ok for many, especially if you do not overdo the pheromones. Adding Dark Jedi to the mix will put more people off. Adding cybering to it even more (though both might also attract more people as well). Slaving is controversional by itself, doubly so when in conjunction with cybering. A Falleen/Twi'lek genetically engineered hybrid dark jedi using force powers and pheromones to turn other player characters into pleasure slaves without regard for OOC consent while using poweremoting, and with a bio that makes him Darth Vader’s special apprentice, able to drop ISDs from orbit by his force power, as well as the heir to the Black Sun, will likely cause some of the more excitable roleplayers to try to track you down in real life for some hands-on discussion about canon, immersion, and the practical uses of various blunt instruments.
Generally, the more controversional an action or plot is – and most conflict falls under this – the less it should be done to or with people you don’t know well. It’s not as if even your serial killer has to kill everyone you see, for example. Dexter doesn’t do that either. Generally, the less violent a roleplay scene is, the easier it is to play it out. Contrary to some people’s opinion, not every player has no fun unless she is attacked and mutilated. And if you have no fun unless you're mutilating someone... well, the pool of players you will be able to have fun with will be very small.
Try to find out potential pitfalls before stepping in them - if halfway into an attack you discover that the other side expects /duels and not emotes then something went wrong far before that.
Limiting exposure helps a lot too. I know, many have an exhibitionist streak, but not rubbing the noses of everyone within 65 meters into the fact that your character is a hidden sithlord plotting the downfall of everyone he sees helps a lot with avoiding OOC trouble. So, shelve that internal monologue detailing your character’s powers, views and past. If you really feel like exposing all that, use a journal. You’ll have a much, much easier time avoiding metagaming too, since people who do not know you’re actually a sithlord won’t suddenly “discover” that you’re a sithlord by your smell. And maybe by the time they do find out IC you’ve been roleplaying together for some time, and they’ve noticed you’re not actually a bad person for playing a sithlord.
And of course, develop some tolerance. If you freak out – in spatial or on the forums – each time someone roleplays in a way you’d not, then you can’t really expect others to cut you some slack when you roleplay something they’d not do. Despite of what you may think, your way is not the only correct way to have fun in roleplay, and preaching to others – in spatial even – won’t actually make them grateful for having been taught their errors, and their place by a roleplay master.
Lastly, accept that no matter what you do, even if you have the best intentions, someone is going to get mad at you. Don’t try to roleplay with everyone, find out who is comfortable with your playstyle and shares many of your preferences, and limit your most controversional scenes to them while playing it safe with the rest. You might discover that even though the guy at the bar is a douchebag emote fighter or an immature pvper wanting to /duel, as long as you don’t actually fight each other you can have a lot of fun roleplaying with each other.
And you might even pave the way for some more controversional roleplay later on.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
... KOTOR MMOG
A KOTOR MMOG. The holy grail of Star Wars roleplayers. Touted as the SWG-Killer since years. Usually, but not exclusively by jedi fans. Recently the rumor got another boost after the layoffs at Lucas Arts caused some ex-employees to post more rumors.
I doubt the game will kill SWG, even if it gets made. And not because I think KOTOR was a bad game - on the contrary. but a good single game doesn't make for a good MMOG. Part of the problem is the "chosen syndrome" - in KOTOR, and most single-person games, you're the hero. You're the focus of the galaxy, the most important person in the story. Everything revolves around you.
That's not a feeling you can transport over to an MMOG. Being the chosen one loses it's glitter really fast once one realises that everyone else is the chosen one too. At least some of those lauding KOTOR Online as the SWG killer may be players who were disappointed when they discovered that jedi were a dime a dozen in SWG, and remember the glory that was KOTOR. However, in a KOTOR MMOG, jedi will again be a dime a dozen. That's the nature of an MMOG - class alone won't make anyone special, it takes personality and effort to become more than a faceless clone - and I am not talking about getting items and levels.
If a KOTOR MMOG is launched, I bet a lot of people will be disappointed because it won't, and can't serve the KOTOR feeling of being the hero.
But even then, to kill SWG, they would have to make a lot of changes to the KOTOR system. They'd have to make KOTOR a lot more diverse to kill SWG. There would have to be a solid crafting system (not the usual "tacked on" idiocy), a solid space system (aka "Twitch", from X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter), and multiple professions. And unlike KOTOR, you would have to be able to play a non-force sensitive.
And to make it a good game to roleplay in, to draw in and keep roleplayers, they'd have to make even more changes. All those superb quests and storylines? Those harm MMORPGs, at least for roleplayers. "Saving the galaxy twice a week" gets damn old damn fast no matter how nice the story is the first time. Usually, the quests are only doable IC with a small set of characters, or by ignoring the story altogether and replacing it with something else - you can't really use your original questline for interacting with other player characters if they just saved the galaxy from the same menace as well, without you.
Also, the more PvE you have to do, the less rp there is. People will pick the path of least resistance, so why roleplay if you can do quests? Why run events and storylines if you can run a raid? The achievers will be busy leveling anyway, and then item hunting, and then raiding.
A good MMORPG (as in "good for roleplaying") would have to drop all the quest stuff, all the "You are the chosen" ego-boosting quests, all the "we've ripped this off the latest movie/novel" NPC dialogue, and just provide a world. Get some places, some monsters, some NPCs, and fill the rest of the game with tools. Storyteller tools, housing, crafting. Then watch people either PvP, or roleplay, and watch their creative energy turn to interact with each other, not with NPCs. This would be a perfect spot for roleplay because it would be a world, not a game. And it would be a world exactly because it lacks all the stuff people like from KOTOR - mainly, good quests and storyline.
Unfortunately, that's just about pre-CU SWG combined with story teller tools. And as we found our, such a game would be perfect for roleplayers, but not exactly a big draw with the players, especially the non-roleplaying players. So the odds I give of KOTOR Online killing SWG are slim to none - LA wants to serve the gamers, not just the roleplayers.
I doubt the game will kill SWG, even if it gets made. And not because I think KOTOR was a bad game - on the contrary. but a good single game doesn't make for a good MMOG. Part of the problem is the "chosen syndrome" - in KOTOR, and most single-person games, you're the hero. You're the focus of the galaxy, the most important person in the story. Everything revolves around you.
That's not a feeling you can transport over to an MMOG. Being the chosen one loses it's glitter really fast once one realises that everyone else is the chosen one too. At least some of those lauding KOTOR Online as the SWG killer may be players who were disappointed when they discovered that jedi were a dime a dozen in SWG, and remember the glory that was KOTOR. However, in a KOTOR MMOG, jedi will again be a dime a dozen. That's the nature of an MMOG - class alone won't make anyone special, it takes personality and effort to become more than a faceless clone - and I am not talking about getting items and levels.
If a KOTOR MMOG is launched, I bet a lot of people will be disappointed because it won't, and can't serve the KOTOR feeling of being the hero.
But even then, to kill SWG, they would have to make a lot of changes to the KOTOR system. They'd have to make KOTOR a lot more diverse to kill SWG. There would have to be a solid crafting system (not the usual "tacked on" idiocy), a solid space system (aka "Twitch", from X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter), and multiple professions. And unlike KOTOR, you would have to be able to play a non-force sensitive.
And to make it a good game to roleplay in, to draw in and keep roleplayers, they'd have to make even more changes. All those superb quests and storylines? Those harm MMORPGs, at least for roleplayers. "Saving the galaxy twice a week" gets damn old damn fast no matter how nice the story is the first time. Usually, the quests are only doable IC with a small set of characters, or by ignoring the story altogether and replacing it with something else - you can't really use your original questline for interacting with other player characters if they just saved the galaxy from the same menace as well, without you.
Also, the more PvE you have to do, the less rp there is. People will pick the path of least resistance, so why roleplay if you can do quests? Why run events and storylines if you can run a raid? The achievers will be busy leveling anyway, and then item hunting, and then raiding.
A good MMORPG (as in "good for roleplaying") would have to drop all the quest stuff, all the "You are the chosen" ego-boosting quests, all the "we've ripped this off the latest movie/novel" NPC dialogue, and just provide a world. Get some places, some monsters, some NPCs, and fill the rest of the game with tools. Storyteller tools, housing, crafting. Then watch people either PvP, or roleplay, and watch their creative energy turn to interact with each other, not with NPCs. This would be a perfect spot for roleplay because it would be a world, not a game. And it would be a world exactly because it lacks all the stuff people like from KOTOR - mainly, good quests and storyline.
Unfortunately, that's just about pre-CU SWG combined with story teller tools. And as we found our, such a game would be perfect for roleplayers, but not exactly a big draw with the players, especially the non-roleplaying players. So the odds I give of KOTOR Online killing SWG are slim to none - LA wants to serve the gamers, not just the roleplayers.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
… Player Associations and their effects on roleplaying
The topic is Player Associations (PAs, also known as guilds in other games) and their effects on roleplaying. First, I'd like to talk about the reasons people found a PA, then why people join them, then about the effects of PAs on the game, and lastly about the effects on roleplaying.
Why do people found a PA?
I think there are mainly two reasons people found a PA for, and usually both are present when a PA gets founded:
1. They have a goal that they think they can only or best achieve through a PA. It could be a roleplaying concept, like a business corporation, a crew for a ship, a band or a crime gang, or a game goal like building a PvP Squad/platoon/company, or a mix between. Important is that the founders think they might need a PA for this – that’s not neccessiarly true.
2. They want to start or lead a group of players. This is often the main impetus behind a PA’s birth – someone wants to run the show as he or she thinks it should be run. In short, it’s a grab for power – people want to lead, and have others follow. As many as possible.
Apart from those few individuals who honestly care more about the others than their own egos, and apart from those who even fool themselves, and not only their fellow players into beleiving they are all about the “community” (those who honestly believe that what is fun for them is fun for all others, if only they’d do it), most are motivated by a desire for power – visible power in game. The more people show one’s tag, the more one is seen as some powerful, wise and influential player, or so the theory goes.
Of course, anything built up with the desire for power in mind is bound to run into a number of problems – especially, if the old “bigger is better” and “quantity before quality” mottos are followed too, which is very often the case, especially if people say thy are not. But more about that later.
Why do people join a PA?
At first view, there's a mix of ic and ooc reasons.
IC, the character may want to join a group, like a military unit, a squadron, a crime gang, a band. OOCly, most want to be part of a group of players that support each other and make playing the game easier as well as are fun to hang out. Or, from another point of view, they want to belong to a club/circle of friends. Guildchat and Teamspeak serve as a big draw here.
However, it is important to note that there are no compelling IC reasons to join a PA and show the tag. Since roleplayers do not see tags, you can be part of a group without being mechanically a member of a PA. Even guildchat (in the case that it is even IC) can be replaced by private chat channels, and TS doesn’t care what tag you wear at all.
So, in my conclusion, if someone joins a PA, it is for OOC reasons.
What are the effects of PAs?
The effects of PAs are mostly felt oocly as well.
First, PA members tend to develop OOC friendships. They stick together, ic and ooc, do quests together, help each other out with advice and credits, and generally chat about anything in guildchat. This has several important effects.
First, people involved in a PA generally stay around longer in game. The more friends you have in game, the more reasons you have to log on, and it is easier to keep track of PA members than non-PA members. And, by the very nature of PAs, one usually grows closer to the members of ones PA, generating friendships.
While they do not drop non-PA member friends, PA members generally tend to check with their PA first when they need something – be it a crafter’s services, or help. Depending on at which point a player joins a PA, a player’s “network” in game can be heavily skewed toward PA members – new players who join a PA soon after starting often, in the case of larger PAs, discover a network that covers all their needs.
While this is a positive effect, it also has a negative effect – the more self-sufficient a PA is, the more prone to isolationism it is as well, since there is no need to seek out others but for recruiting. Things tend to be done “in house” mostly. As a side-effect, a well-oiled PA support system can breed dependent players – they get everything done for them.
And, in larger PAs, there is a – although not that big – possibility that new members who want to craft feel discouraged from “competing” with established crafters in their PA. More common though seems cooperation, the younger crafter becoming a partner of an established one, and able to use resources.
The support system of a PA also often allows members to get things for free, be they resources or rare loot. This has an effect on the economy, though not a big one.
The closeness inside a PA also makes it easy for ooc conflicts to spread and escalate. Due to friendship, loyality and dependency inside a PA, a conflict between two individuals can often escalate into a conflict between two entire PAs, once they close ranks – you rarely hear “I am staying out of this” from your PA leader or fellow PA member if you ask for help.
At the same time, a PA can breed nepotism and favouritism. Problem players who take care to play nice with their PA members and friends can count on support no matter what they do, thanks to friendship, loyality and in some cases dependencies developed inside a PA. It is hard to take a stand against someone who helped you as a new player, spent hours last week helping you get this last quest done, and has been joking with you for hours in guildchat or team speak. So, often a problem player will get away with a lot, thanks to his PA working for him.
A PA is also the perfect breeding ground for preconceptions and worse – and no one is immune to this. People in a group tend to reinforce their own beliefs to keep the group cohesive, and bashing outsiders is a common approach. Guildchat, due to its privacy, is prone for that sort of stuff. It can start as a simple joke, and develop in a policy by coincidence or accident, just a few people bringing up the same stuff regularily until everyone totes the party line, or shuts up for fear of starting “internal trouble”. New PA members, who trust their new friends, often can get preconceptions in that sort of environment who poison their or other’s playing experience later on.
But even if a PA handles all those pitfalls, and not just by having good PR, there’s still one very important consequence:
A PA, especially a large PA, takes a lot of work and time to run. Any PA leader can confirm that. Not only are there internal politics and strife to deal with, but also external politics and conflicts to handle – OOCly. And any time spent on trouble shooting oocly is less time spent IC, roleplaying, or questing. And while generally, running a PA has its rewards, and justifies the time spent running it, the stress can take its toll, and PA leaders and officers can burn out if things get too stressful for too long.
So, while a PA can offer an active player a lot of possibilities to build something up, be it as leader or officer, the political baggage that a PA also often brings with it can counter this, or even end up in a net loss of productive activity – especially if there are problem cases in the PA; or if the leader is more concerned with personal power and influence than enjoyment of the game.
What are the effects on roleplaying?
The effects are manifold. Roleplaying depends on a big part on trust between players. If a PA is too isolated, there won’t be much trust towards other PAs or players. And, due to the inevitable subcultures and unwritten rules within a PA, “cultural” differences can develop – if your PA has a strict “NO DB IN RP” policy, you are prone to consider someone who DBs a non-rper.
People also – and rightly – judge others by whom they associate with. A single bad player can tarnish a whole PA’s reputation, making it hard to roleplay with them. On the other hand, it can help you identify players or roleplay styles you want to avoid, before you discover it the hard way, and usually people trust members of a PA they have had good experiences with in the past more easily than unknowns.
With regards to roleplay plots and events, PAs offer possibilities due to their resources single players may not have. Their members generally oocly trust each other to a strong degree and are familiar with each other, which makes running some plots much easier. But there is a danger some PAs have already encountered – you can grow too big for conflict RP. If your crime PA is made up of 50 active members, and the other gangs are struggling with half a dozen members each, you will find it hard to get anyone to enter a gang war plot with you.
However, due to the ooc nature of PAs, it is often much harder to stay in character in a PA. Due to the perceived need to grow in numbers, most PAs do lack an IC focus – “We have a place for every class and character” is often heard – and what started as a crime PA with a strong anti-imperial bias made up of hardened ex-soldiers ends up a big bunch of mostly ooc friends including the TIE pilot alt of an officer, the dark jedi main of a good ooc friend of the leader, and a couple of afk dancers in the cantina who liked the 50K bonus for moving to the PA town.
Which brings us to another point: A PA often, at least once it reaches a certain size, feels the need to have its own town. It usually ends up a ghost town, after a flurry of activity for a few weeks, but hurts general roleplaying by adding geographical isolationism to ooc isolationism – anyone who spends hours in the PA town so people who visit can find someone to talk to is one less participant in the spontaneous rp plot at the next starport.
And lastly, metagaming runs rampant when it comes to PAs. The – obviously true – view that one can’t see PA tags IC leads often to the – as obviously mistaken – belief that this means one cannot know, suspect or guess that said character is in that group the PA represents, no matter what he does, or one is metagaming. This often poisons RP from the start.
Conclusions:
I would say that most negative effects PAs have on roleplay can be avoided with a bit of work. A PA that promotes staying in character (in guildchat too), and policies its members oocly to curb problem behaviour and takes care to keep in contact with other PAs and individuals is a boon to the general RP scene like not much else.
However, for some concepts, a PA is not the ideal way to achieve it. If you flip out each time someone considers you a PA member IC, since “no one can know this”, better don’t make a PA, but create an IC group. That way, your roleplay will not be poisoned by your suspicions of the other side metagaming.
Also, for PA leaders, sometimes less is more. If you stick to a focussed group as members in your PA you may have less trouble over all, and more roleplay. Your ship’s crew, as an example, may get more interaction if they do not have every crafter as an alt in the PA, but have to contact those ic.
However, most PAs one will encounter are plagued with all the problems mentioned above – power-grabbing leaders, cliquish internal tendencies, and about as much tolerance and open mindedness for others like the average religious fanatic.
In short, some high schoolers will feel right at home.
Why do people found a PA?
I think there are mainly two reasons people found a PA for, and usually both are present when a PA gets founded:
1. They have a goal that they think they can only or best achieve through a PA. It could be a roleplaying concept, like a business corporation, a crew for a ship, a band or a crime gang, or a game goal like building a PvP Squad/platoon/company, or a mix between. Important is that the founders think they might need a PA for this – that’s not neccessiarly true.
2. They want to start or lead a group of players. This is often the main impetus behind a PA’s birth – someone wants to run the show as he or she thinks it should be run. In short, it’s a grab for power – people want to lead, and have others follow. As many as possible.
Apart from those few individuals who honestly care more about the others than their own egos, and apart from those who even fool themselves, and not only their fellow players into beleiving they are all about the “community” (those who honestly believe that what is fun for them is fun for all others, if only they’d do it), most are motivated by a desire for power – visible power in game. The more people show one’s tag, the more one is seen as some powerful, wise and influential player, or so the theory goes.
Of course, anything built up with the desire for power in mind is bound to run into a number of problems – especially, if the old “bigger is better” and “quantity before quality” mottos are followed too, which is very often the case, especially if people say thy are not. But more about that later.
Why do people join a PA?
At first view, there's a mix of ic and ooc reasons.
IC, the character may want to join a group, like a military unit, a squadron, a crime gang, a band. OOCly, most want to be part of a group of players that support each other and make playing the game easier as well as are fun to hang out. Or, from another point of view, they want to belong to a club/circle of friends. Guildchat and Teamspeak serve as a big draw here.
However, it is important to note that there are no compelling IC reasons to join a PA and show the tag. Since roleplayers do not see tags, you can be part of a group without being mechanically a member of a PA. Even guildchat (in the case that it is even IC) can be replaced by private chat channels, and TS doesn’t care what tag you wear at all.
So, in my conclusion, if someone joins a PA, it is for OOC reasons.
What are the effects of PAs?
The effects of PAs are mostly felt oocly as well.
First, PA members tend to develop OOC friendships. They stick together, ic and ooc, do quests together, help each other out with advice and credits, and generally chat about anything in guildchat. This has several important effects.
First, people involved in a PA generally stay around longer in game. The more friends you have in game, the more reasons you have to log on, and it is easier to keep track of PA members than non-PA members. And, by the very nature of PAs, one usually grows closer to the members of ones PA, generating friendships.
While they do not drop non-PA member friends, PA members generally tend to check with their PA first when they need something – be it a crafter’s services, or help. Depending on at which point a player joins a PA, a player’s “network” in game can be heavily skewed toward PA members – new players who join a PA soon after starting often, in the case of larger PAs, discover a network that covers all their needs.
While this is a positive effect, it also has a negative effect – the more self-sufficient a PA is, the more prone to isolationism it is as well, since there is no need to seek out others but for recruiting. Things tend to be done “in house” mostly. As a side-effect, a well-oiled PA support system can breed dependent players – they get everything done for them.
And, in larger PAs, there is a – although not that big – possibility that new members who want to craft feel discouraged from “competing” with established crafters in their PA. More common though seems cooperation, the younger crafter becoming a partner of an established one, and able to use resources.
The support system of a PA also often allows members to get things for free, be they resources or rare loot. This has an effect on the economy, though not a big one.
The closeness inside a PA also makes it easy for ooc conflicts to spread and escalate. Due to friendship, loyality and dependency inside a PA, a conflict between two individuals can often escalate into a conflict between two entire PAs, once they close ranks – you rarely hear “I am staying out of this” from your PA leader or fellow PA member if you ask for help.
At the same time, a PA can breed nepotism and favouritism. Problem players who take care to play nice with their PA members and friends can count on support no matter what they do, thanks to friendship, loyality and in some cases dependencies developed inside a PA. It is hard to take a stand against someone who helped you as a new player, spent hours last week helping you get this last quest done, and has been joking with you for hours in guildchat or team speak. So, often a problem player will get away with a lot, thanks to his PA working for him.
A PA is also the perfect breeding ground for preconceptions and worse – and no one is immune to this. People in a group tend to reinforce their own beliefs to keep the group cohesive, and bashing outsiders is a common approach. Guildchat, due to its privacy, is prone for that sort of stuff. It can start as a simple joke, and develop in a policy by coincidence or accident, just a few people bringing up the same stuff regularily until everyone totes the party line, or shuts up for fear of starting “internal trouble”. New PA members, who trust their new friends, often can get preconceptions in that sort of environment who poison their or other’s playing experience later on.
But even if a PA handles all those pitfalls, and not just by having good PR, there’s still one very important consequence:
A PA, especially a large PA, takes a lot of work and time to run. Any PA leader can confirm that. Not only are there internal politics and strife to deal with, but also external politics and conflicts to handle – OOCly. And any time spent on trouble shooting oocly is less time spent IC, roleplaying, or questing. And while generally, running a PA has its rewards, and justifies the time spent running it, the stress can take its toll, and PA leaders and officers can burn out if things get too stressful for too long.
So, while a PA can offer an active player a lot of possibilities to build something up, be it as leader or officer, the political baggage that a PA also often brings with it can counter this, or even end up in a net loss of productive activity – especially if there are problem cases in the PA; or if the leader is more concerned with personal power and influence than enjoyment of the game.
What are the effects on roleplaying?
The effects are manifold. Roleplaying depends on a big part on trust between players. If a PA is too isolated, there won’t be much trust towards other PAs or players. And, due to the inevitable subcultures and unwritten rules within a PA, “cultural” differences can develop – if your PA has a strict “NO DB IN RP” policy, you are prone to consider someone who DBs a non-rper.
People also – and rightly – judge others by whom they associate with. A single bad player can tarnish a whole PA’s reputation, making it hard to roleplay with them. On the other hand, it can help you identify players or roleplay styles you want to avoid, before you discover it the hard way, and usually people trust members of a PA they have had good experiences with in the past more easily than unknowns.
With regards to roleplay plots and events, PAs offer possibilities due to their resources single players may not have. Their members generally oocly trust each other to a strong degree and are familiar with each other, which makes running some plots much easier. But there is a danger some PAs have already encountered – you can grow too big for conflict RP. If your crime PA is made up of 50 active members, and the other gangs are struggling with half a dozen members each, you will find it hard to get anyone to enter a gang war plot with you.
However, due to the ooc nature of PAs, it is often much harder to stay in character in a PA. Due to the perceived need to grow in numbers, most PAs do lack an IC focus – “We have a place for every class and character” is often heard – and what started as a crime PA with a strong anti-imperial bias made up of hardened ex-soldiers ends up a big bunch of mostly ooc friends including the TIE pilot alt of an officer, the dark jedi main of a good ooc friend of the leader, and a couple of afk dancers in the cantina who liked the 50K bonus for moving to the PA town.
Which brings us to another point: A PA often, at least once it reaches a certain size, feels the need to have its own town. It usually ends up a ghost town, after a flurry of activity for a few weeks, but hurts general roleplaying by adding geographical isolationism to ooc isolationism – anyone who spends hours in the PA town so people who visit can find someone to talk to is one less participant in the spontaneous rp plot at the next starport.
And lastly, metagaming runs rampant when it comes to PAs. The – obviously true – view that one can’t see PA tags IC leads often to the – as obviously mistaken – belief that this means one cannot know, suspect or guess that said character is in that group the PA represents, no matter what he does, or one is metagaming. This often poisons RP from the start.
Conclusions:
I would say that most negative effects PAs have on roleplay can be avoided with a bit of work. A PA that promotes staying in character (in guildchat too), and policies its members oocly to curb problem behaviour and takes care to keep in contact with other PAs and individuals is a boon to the general RP scene like not much else.
However, for some concepts, a PA is not the ideal way to achieve it. If you flip out each time someone considers you a PA member IC, since “no one can know this”, better don’t make a PA, but create an IC group. That way, your roleplay will not be poisoned by your suspicions of the other side metagaming.
Also, for PA leaders, sometimes less is more. If you stick to a focussed group as members in your PA you may have less trouble over all, and more roleplay. Your ship’s crew, as an example, may get more interaction if they do not have every crafter as an alt in the PA, but have to contact those ic.
However, most PAs one will encounter are plagued with all the problems mentioned above – power-grabbing leaders, cliquish internal tendencies, and about as much tolerance and open mindedness for others like the average religious fanatic.
In short, some high schoolers will feel right at home.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
...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.
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.
Monday, October 22, 2007
...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.
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.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
... 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.
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.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
... 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.
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.
Monday, September 10, 2007
... 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.
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.
Monday, September 3, 2007
... 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!
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!
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