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.
Showing posts with label Starsider. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Starsider. Show all posts
Thursday, September 17, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
... Jedi
Yes, I said Jedi. The single most controversial thing in Star Wars Galaxies. Idolized by fanboys as gods and blamed by players for every bad thing that ever happened to the game, including hurricanes in the mexican gulf and the loss of the noobie melon.
The veteran players saw the game without jedi, with the first jedi, then lived through the hologrind, when dedicated role- and powergamers who wanted the power err... roleplaying challenge of a jedi were rapidly going through such in-character professions as chef, musician, image designer, architect and droid engineer (hey! Anakin was a droid engineer! It’s in character!) in order to unlock jedi, in the process wrecking the game for entertainers and crafters alike. It’s not surprising that this created a lot of resentment towards every jedi.
Then we saw the village come, and suck away most of the players who wanted to play a jedi but didn’t want to hologrind, or had joined too late for that, or wanted their original character to be a jedi. Once they unlocked, they were sucked even further away to actually grind up their jedi skills – alone, since any PC or NPC seeing a saber got a jedi on the bounty hunter terminals. The CU, and the respecs it allowed sped up unlocking, since many jedi found out that one could trade in cheap lower tier skill boxes for expensive higher tier boxes every 12 hours. So, after about 2 years, jedi were, to quote a signature from the SOE boards, “as common as Starbucks Cafes, and about as cool”.
And then came the NGE, and jedi were suddenly a class like every other class (with the difference of having a history of grievances and troubles, and the unique “feature” of having one half of the players hating the other half in the Elder/Respec wars.)
It’s not as if the NGE was not the logical progression of the jedi profession in game – anyone with half a brain could have seen that jedi, who started out as “gods” – a game designer was cited as a jedi master being able to take on 20 other professions – but kept in check by permadeath grew more and more “normal” with each patch, first losing permadeath and power, then losing visibility and more power (“1.5 the power of a non-jedi character!”) as more and more players unlocked jedi.
So, one would have thought that once jedi was just another profession to pick in the game, the whole “only powergamers play jedi” “roleplayers should be the only one to play jedi, they know how to” and “jedi shouldn’t even be in game, they unbalance it” would die out.
Should, but did not, for see – roleplayers covetted jedi for a big part, and resented them at the same time. For many, the ideal jedi system was simple: They would be the only jedi on the server, maybe allowing a friend to be their padawan. Anything else would ruin canon and immersion.
So, naturally, having everyone, even the unwashed masses who did not study canon at the holy G’s feet, being able to put on a robe and use a saber was impossible to endure for those roleplayers. It was kind of hard for those who defined their characters as unique special snowflakes by the simple virtue of being force sensitives to cope with the fact that everyone else was force sensitive too.
However, permadeath was gone, even the skill loss through bounty hunting was gone, so how could one make sure those evil jedi did not ruin the immersion of all the other, canon-bible following roleplayers with their hybrid bothan/wookiee mandalorian characters wearing saber proof armor donated by Boba Fett and being genetically enhanced as well as sporting cybernetic parts that made them a six-billion-credit man?
Peer pressure, that was the answer. Also known as mobbing. Jedi would not be allowed to play like everyone else with a potentionally deadly secret (meaning, flaunt it whenever they choose to), they would have to effectively vanish so as not to hurt the immersion (and fragile ego) of those players who wanted to keep the illusion that they themselves were the only jedi in game worth interating with. Almost everyone was allowed to go crazy with canon (usually called “original concept” and “roleplayed well”), but jedi? No, sir! Kill’em all, sir! Don’t care how good they roleplay!
Where criminals could “quietly” discuss their latest heist, kidnapping or planned murder, where smugglers could openly boast of a run through Kessel, where characters wanted for an assassination attempt on the Queen of Naboo could remain safe by wearing a fake mustache, where people could wear rebel armor “with the insignia filed off” and no one bat an eye, wearing a robe became something to trigger hostility on a scale to rival the jedi forums themselves, and flashing a saber turned hardcore rebels and gutterpunk criminals into upstanding citizens willing to enforce order 66 with emoted headshots.
Of course, it was just an in character reaction – after all, no good roleplayer would ever act on ooc motives, no sir! It was just good roleplaying to plot against the Empire in the corner wearing “I hate Palp” T-Shirts, yet consider the couple in the other corner discussing the force untolerable.
OOC Consent, the holy grail for every player town unwilling to be facing invaders, and for every criminal unwilling to go to jail, was either ignored or explained away as “jedi players have to face their ic consequences”, despite dozens of examples of how much worse stuff than being FS was revealed, acted out, and then glossed over so people could still hang out in the main cantina. Jedi players had no right to require consent.
And why? To protect canon and the immersion of people – often people playing with so many mods and “unique original concepts” that they would have made George himself ask the next bystander if he happened upon the Firefly or Farscape universe. To keep people from realising that they were about as unique as a drop of water in an ocean.
And, of course, to keep jedi special, and powerful. For, as long as one made sure every other jedi was mobbed into hiding, one could demand greater (emote) powers in compensation for being hunted. Of course, getting more powers for playing like you wanted to play – feeling special and hunted, hiding yet known to every friend, and protected by ooc consent yourself, since no one ever could find out you were a FS or reveal it – looks a bit unfair to outsiders, but who cares about them?
Because, as we all know by now, there’s only one true way to play a jedi for everyone but a select few, and that’s not to play a jedi. At least that is what they want us to think.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
… the Great Roleplaying Community Unification Theory
One complaint one often hears when talking with roleplayers on the Starsider server of Star Wars Galaxies is that the roleplayer community is divided. Often, this is blamed for everything that irks people. According to this stance, everything would be fine if the roleplayers were just united.
I don’t really understand this theory, to be honest. Even if we just take a look at the cousin of MMOG roleplaying, pen and paper roleplaying, it does not work that way. Playstyles are different from group to group, from the “Me kick in the door, slay monster, grab loot” hack and slash fests to “Woe is me, I am immortal yet doomed to drink the blood of mortals” goth meetings. Anyone trying to tell those people that they would have more fun if they were one big group playing together would, in all likelyhood, get asked what he or she was smoking. Now take a look at other hobbies, and the “Unite and we all are better for it” theory fails again. Combine hunting and bird watching? “ohh… look, a specked treesi… BOOOM!” Football and Basketball? Reading and athletics?
But, wait, wait – it’s roleplaying in Star Wars Galaxies, so it’s all the same, so united we stand, dividied we fall and all that!
Yeah, right. This is a game, not a labor union. Anyone who plays the game – heck, anyone who reads the forums – knows that playstyles in Star Wars Galaxies vary as much as the players vary.
We have people with various background knowledge, from “I saw spaceballs once” to “This is not true, George, you meant something else, since in graphic novel 2 from 1981, which you clearly authorised or it would not have been published, there’s a panel on page 3 that shows a TIE Variant in the left corner, therefore…” experts.
We have players with various playstyles, from “I am IC when I am roleplaying, ooc if I do PvE” to “I am always IC. In fact, I am so IC, I don’t play the game!”. We have emote fighters and duellers, we have roleplayers who pvp, RPvPers, and people who hate PvP. We have people who think Star Wars is about the Force and lightsabers and the dark side, others who think Star Wars is just space, people who consider anything but gritty criminal Roleplay boring, and those who just want to play heroes facing evil stormtrooper NPCs.
We have roleplayers who want epic plots, others who want comedy, people who would feel at home in telenovelas, and those who want to feel the bleak drama of life’s suffering hit their characters over and over again until Hiob looks like the luckiest guy on earth in comparision.
Now, why would anyone try to unite all those? Leaving masochism aside, there’s one reason, and it does get back to the labor union thing: United, we would be stronger – when dealing with Devs and non-roleplayers, that is, and asking for more stuff we can use in game.
However, try to unite us in game, and you are not just asking for trouble, you are dragging trouble there, kicking and screaming, and then forcefeed it until it grows exponentially to the point its mass will cause it to collapse in itself, forming a black hole of trouble that sucks up any fun you may have in game.
Just the “Jedi are the best, you are just jealous cause you ain’t a jedi” players and the “Jedi are what ruined the game, they should be extinct” players will guarantee that you’ll see epic conflicts daily – but not in game, and not in character, but on the forums. Add emote fighters vs. duellers, “I follow game reality” vs. “Canon dictates that this should not happen”, “Let me play my character” vs. “You should play this right!”, and the whole united roleplaying community starts to make Somalia look like a peaceful place to take a vacation in – that is if the nice men at the asylum think your medication is working, and let you leave.
In short, roleplayers in Star Wars Galaxies should be separated into smaller, more homogenous communities for their own good. We simply can’t live and let live if we’re playing in the same place.
So, why do people ask to unite the roleplaying community? There are a few possible explanations.
Bigger is better!
Those are people who honestly believe that the bigger the community, the better it is. I don’t really get that – it usually runs counter to “quality before quantity”, and all I experienced was that the bigger the crowd, the bigger the trouble between people, but at least those people mean well. Maybe they dream of big epic battles and plots, who somehow would not turn into petty feuds over whether or not that last move/power/emote was canon/legal/fair or not, started by two people, and rapidly pulling in their entire PAs and allies. I usually get nightmares right after "Epic" is mentioned.
Look at ME!
Those are the players who simply want an audience. Those attention-seeking players are usually convinced that whatever they are doing is the epitome of good roleplaying, and that everyone should see it, and be at awe of such roleplaying. The more people who watch (watch, mind you, don’t take part and mess it up! That’s why we are whispering, so it will fill your spatial chatbox, but you can’t, without evl metagaming, react to it! Just sit back and watch!), the better, so the roleplayers should unite into one big audience!
A variant of that player is the one who can’t stand to miss out on roleplay. Whatever it is – dark side drama, GCW, criminal plots, comedy, soap opera – they need to be involved, and it’s easier to have that if all roleplayers are united, best if concentrated at one point in game. Those people also often play the “jedi/sith/master smuggler/ISB agent/rebel operative/master cook/master dancer/master spy/crimelord all-in-one” characters.
I found the one true way to have fun in roleplaying!
The Messiah. Those people believe that whatever is most fun for them is most fun for everyone – be it PvP, PvE, canon, force roleplay, or dramatic torture. Uniting the roleplayers means converting them too, for those, so naturally they want as many people doing stuff their way as possible – best we can say for them is that they too mean well, misguided as they are.
One player to rule them all!
Those are the power-hungry players. They want to unite the roleplaying community under their guidance, leadership, etc. The more people following their rules the happier they are. Sometimes this is just out of a fear to lose control, and getting forced to bend their own rules, sometimes it is a sincere wish to build a roleplaying community that provides the perfect way to roleplay just like they want, but often, it is a pure conscious or subconscious craving for power. If the roleplaying community is unified, then such leaders gain a lot more leverage. From powerplays using the unity as leverage – “do you want to rip us apart? Destroy what we worked for? No? Then don’t do this, or I’ll have to leave!” – to simple “play with me, by my rules, or you won’t get any roleplay at all” blackmail.
Those people want to unite roleplayers so they themselves have more power, and removing alternatives is a key to this.
I don’t want to do anything!
The lazy ones. They do not want to do anything to get roleplay, preferring to let roleplay fall in their laps. If all roleplayers are united, then the odds of them getting that without making contacts and being active increase – especially if concentrated at one hub- and so they are generally for any unification. After all, the more people, the bigger the chance someone will roleplay with them – or so they think.
I want those people gone!
Those people have issues with other players, and can’t stand them. They are not happy having fun themselves, they want the other players gone. Uniting all roleplayers they see as a way to remove those “Non-roleplayers” through peer pressure or mobbing. One can easily spot those sad if sick people by listening to them bitching about others in ooc chat channels, and generally trying to slander other roleplayers.
Faced with all those, I honestly prefer the roleplaying community as it is: divided into niches, where many playstyles can flourish. For me, personally, I simply want to have fun in game. And I do not subscribe to the Great Roleplaying Community Unification Theory.
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