PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Zan on June 09, 2005, 03:44:55 pm
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I don\'t mean to step on anyone\'s toes here and even though I am aware that this thread is most likely going to end in flaming and fighting before it is locked, I still would like to express my concerns.
First of all I would like to say that I am all for roleplaying and definitely encourage it. However lately I \'ve come into contact with \'uber\' roleplayers, people who in my humble opinion push roleplaying a bit further than comfortable. This is no personal attack to anyone, just my feelings and opinion towards this level of roleplaying.
More precisely the level where one is in character all the time and can\'t have an out of character conversation at all. They do not mention anything that doesn\'t exist in PS, including common terms from real life or fantasy related terms that aren\'t included in the game.
Now while there is in essence nothing wrong with such extreme roleplaying I personally find it without any entertaining values. I find it tiresome and draining to be in character all the time and always be careful about what I say because I can\'t say anything that doesn\'t fit in the PS world.
Rping is supposed to be fun and PS is still a game but I am not my character nor am I trying to escape reality so I don\'t RP 100%. Simply because it is too much of an effort and takes all the fun out of it.
Sure I try to roleplay and get in my character as much as possible when a good situation arises. But at other times when we \'re all just standing there not saying a thing because we don\'t know what to say I won\'t hesitate to talk about thing out of character or make jokes that wouldn\'t fit in an RPing environment. Even when I am RPing I probably slip up regularly and mention things that I shouldn\'t know about in character. I think it should be fine though and not made into a big deal.
For example yesterday I mentioned a fishy deodorant after someone was decorating the entire tavern with carp fish. Of course one guy immediately blinked and asked me what this deodorant thing was. Which I could have covered up by pulling out a story from Alchemists from the desert whom extract odors from certain items and capture them in a bottle .. but in the circumstances I didn\'t quite feel like doing that since I sensed a bit of \'hostility\' towards my loose roleplaying. So instead I just went out and walked around a bit.
Another thing I have noticed are the names over our heads and the /tell commands. Some people dislike it when a stranger already knows their name even though it is floating over their heads as a big neon sign, quite literally. :P My personal solution for that is that I believe the inhabitants of Yliakum to be born with certain telepathic powers which allows them to extract names from the energetic signature in faces or words. Basically allowing you to know a person\'s name by either seeing that person or hearing that person speak. A second elaboration on that telepathy is that we can communicate over a great distance with individuals we know the name or energy signature of.
That way I don\'t have to worry about only using the names whom have been told to me by the person self and I can RP even with /tell messages. The less I have to worry about and be careful not to mess up the more relaxed I am and more fun I can have.
To conclude this little \'rant\' I think RPing is definitely good but it should be in moderation and not strictly RPing to keep it fun. I hope you can accept my view or either respectfully disagree, just don\'t flame me for not being a 100% RPer.
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That name thing bothers me a lot, and I don\'t quite agree with your \"solutions\" for it. There is no excuse, really, for anyone\'s character to know any stranger\'s name, unless he or she (the character) is truly telepathic, and the player behind the character roleplays a telepath the great majority of the time. And, in that case, the character whose name was \"fished out\" has every right to probe for more details to test the telepath\'s ability ;) (Of course at this point the telepath can send an OOC /tell asking for a tidbit to give back IC, and thus a fun RP session ensues). However, to give -all- Yliaki this ability is nonsense. First of all, not all characters come from Yliakum itself, as some have been transported by means of magic from elsewhere. Also, not all characters are able (or willing) to hold or use magic, my own included. And I don\'t think all characters -should- be able or willing to use magic.
As for communicating over great distances, Kariloy formed a nice solution in-game and IC once, for me - gave me an enchanted \"stone\" that would allow us to hear each other over a certain distance. [ Of course the stone \"hiccuped\" if someone was in the DR ;) ].
But my character will always frown and always be wary of those who know names when they haven\'t been given any. Nilrem knows. *grins*
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What drew me to planeshift was the rp and I find it extremely annoying when OOC talk isn\'t differentiated from IC. (I do alot of text/paragraph rp)
It\'s simple. Just use parentheses for OOC! Or if you\'re too lazy to type them simply state you are OOC when someone IC comes along. /me is OOC . Tada, problem solved :)
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Originally posted by Karyuu
Nilrem knows. *grins*
Yes ladies and gentleman, i\'m always remembered because of good things. lol
Concentrating on the post, I mostly agree with Zan; at least with the essence of what he\'s telling us. Flexibility.
I always have this question in my mind:
What\'s more worth it, say a non_roleplaying_line and save a player or keep your role_playing and allow one player to be lost?
In my opinion, what makes a game are players. They need to be respected, and attended, so, if you\'ve to stop your roleplay to simply explain more deeply a thing, just do it.
Use /tell, brakets or whatever you want, but do it.
Human beings are able to realise, let\'s don\'t act as an NPC and, if anyone of you really wants more people roleplaying, then tell the newcomers about it, make them feel comfortable and maybe you\'d gain some more components to the \"roleplayers\".
But, as for i\'ve seen, the community tends to stay in a too easy position, that is, now that there\'s a core of roleplayers formed, it\'s so high the scare of loosing any of their members, that it\'s almost impossible for others to even try to get close to that core.
This only leads to form subgroups that act as satelites around the core, often those satelites are only formed by new players, and thus, can be considered a dust satelites that can be left to their own luck.
I understand that there\'s a core of people that knows each other for many time, but i think that indeed more flexibility should be showed with the newcomers.
Believe me when I say they aren\'t here to brake anything.
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I agree with Karyuu and NeferuraBastite on this. If you must talk OOC, then clearly designate it as such. There are some things that might be IC or OOC, and this confusion can lead to quite bad things. Yes, I most definitely am not always IC. But if I am OOC, I speak and act in parenthesis, even in /tell.
The telepathic idea is an easy cop-out IMO.
As for the RPers driving players away by being IC: with a clear and consistent designation of OOC there could never be any doubt whether one is IC or OOC, therefore a player can be sure that chars are talking and being talked to. In an RP game, it is expected to have people RPing, so if in doubt, it is RP, at least for me. This is exactly what I meant by \"leading to bad things\".
However, when it becomes obvious that someone is undesignatedly OOC, I quit RPing with them, because he obviously is not interested in RPing. Maybe I switch to OOC mode, maybe I just leave. Trying to force RP on others isn\'t going to work, so why bother?
Also, it is my impression that it is quite easy to get accepted by me if you are trying to RP well. And I know for a fact that I\'m not the only one like this.
There seems to be a certain elitist mindset with some older members, but this stems more from having been here for longer or postcount than from quality of RP, or RP at all. I don\'t agree with that. However, I rarely see these ingame, anyway, so there is little danger to encounter them AFAICS.
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Originally posted by Nilrem
But, as for i\'ve seen, the community tends to stay in a too easy position, that is, now that there\'s a core of roleplayers formed, it\'s so high the scare of loosing any of their members, that it\'s almost impossible for others to even try to get close to that core.
This only leads to form subgroups that act as satelites around the core, often those satelites are only formed by new players, and thus, can be considered a dust satelites that can be left to their own luck.
I understand that there\'s a core of people that knows each other for many time, but i think that indeed more flexibility should be showed with the newcomers.
Well I highly disagree with this. Of course, there is a group of people who are frequently around and usually RP. And of course they know each other. But if you wish, you can be part of that group in a week or so. Really. If you are a good roleplayer you\'ll be welcomed with open arms. (Or even if you\'re not, but willing, like I am ;))
Originally posted by Seytra
There seems to be a certain elitist mindset with some older members, but this stems more from having been here for longer or postcount than from quality of RP, or RP at all. I don\'t agree with that. However, I rarely see these ingame, anyway, so there is little danger to encounter them AFAICS.
Indeed, nothing to be affraid of.
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I agree with what Zan is saying, but then it makes sense as well to do \"uber roleplaying.\" Personally I try to use brackets or ooc if there is something that is not in character and definitely when it has nothing to do with planeshift.
The name\'s thing is a bit irritating, yes it is useful to just have the name floating above the persons head, but it\'s just entirely unrealistic. I have thought of a solution for the devs to implement to fix this problem, go to the wishlist forum to see it as it truely belongs there.
http://www.planeshift3d.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=17102&boardid=11&styleid=3&sid=00eec9c3a24ca7fec7dabbc966752674&page=1#1
But yeah, I think everybody needs to keep in mind the enjoying of planeshift more than uber-roleplaying. Also Zan, isn\'t it possible that the roleplayer who didn\'t know what deodorant was seriously didn\'t know what deodorant was? Hehehe, they do exist, generally 7th graders. Hehehe, just kidding.
Right, yeah... roleplaying is good but should be done with a grain of salt so the saying goes...
Xirius
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i think that roleplaying should be held up as much as possible in game. if you need to be ooc, it\'s not that hard, press three, just 3! keys on your keyboard-
O-O-C. not that hard.
i have a problem when people try to roleplay in the forums and expect others to rp in the forums when they are not in the roleplaying forum.
for example,
a month or two ago, in the newbie help forum, (i don\'t remember the thread now and can\'t find it using search. oh well, that\'s not the point.) a noob was asking if planeshift was fun. he used a few \"non-rp\'ing\" terms like omg and lol and stuff like that. then a whole bunch of people came in (veteran players from what i could tell... very high post counts) and flamed him and told him not to play the game and that the game wasn\'t any fun (trying to keep him from playing the game) because people who can\'t roleplay are not excepted! that was very rude i thought, he was in the noob forum! you don\'t roleplay in the noob forum! from what i could tell, he left the game and decided not to play... we lost a potential new player all because of some over-controlling jerks got upset because he didn\'t roleplay in the noob forums!... so much for planeshift\'s amazing community...
and another thing, if someone talks OOC in game, don\'t be a whiny baby and complain about them being OOC... just use your imagination and stay IC. if someone says something ooc that your ic character wouldn\'t understand, act like you don\'t understand! not that difficult...
however, overall, i disagree with zan concerning rp\'ing in game... it is not really that hard to stay ic, and if you can\'t, just hit 3 keys!
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Role Playing. I like to roleplay now and then I certainly like adding in character comments, but do I want to talk with people all the time in character?
In my opinion with all the bugs and all the things effecting the game OOC it\'s almost impossible to have a long meaningfull conversation most of the time IC. I mean ofcourse you can always work around it with lines like \"the powers that be\" and stuff but then your out of character just by having to think up the stuff and the rest might not even get what you are saying.
As for expectations. Can you expect someone who joins PS at this stage to want to roleplay? In MB there was only the crystal hunt and RP so RP was a bigger element of the game. Now with CB there are only few skills but those are almost all fighting skills. Quests aren\'t working so the new players don\'t get into the RP that way.
Also a point already made is that a some of the \"uberroleplayers\" are getting plain rude when they think you stepped OOC and the rest is hard to reach if you have no idea of the stories between them. This will discourage most roleplayers and leave the \"levelers\"who come for the game and not the roleplayers.
This I must add is one of the reasons I don\'t like \"roleplayers\" complaining about new people who don\'t roleplay well becuase few of them exually make an effort to get RP into PS and some even plainly kill any attempt to come into a group by being way to harsh with mistakes in my opinion.
To conclude I just want to say I know there are good roleplayers out there and I know there are several out there that are patient with new players and that I admire.
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i agree with you for the most part pestilence, but i think roleplaying is more important than you make it out to be at this stage of the game, because it is pretty much the only thing to do in game. ooc talk should be kept to a minimum except for /tell, because that doesn\'t affect anyone else\'s roleplay (except the person you are telling, and they can /ignore you if they wish) and guild chat if your guild isn\'t into roleplaying.
however, for the agreeing part, i agree that many people take the roleplaying way to far, and veterans are usually rude to new players, which discourages ne players from wanting to roleplay, leaving the \"levelers\", like you said. i also agree that veterans hardly ever make any attempt at trying to help new people learn to roleplay and explain the importance of it to them. they just expect everyone to automatically know how to roleplay and if they don\'t then they shouldn\'t be allowed to play the game, which is stupid, because people can learn.
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I have a thought about the name thing.
It is, actually, somewhat realistic to see someone\'s name floating above their head, even if you\'ve never met them. It is a substitute for a recognizeable facial feature. That way If you see someone you\'ve met before, but whos name you don\'t know, you can ask something like, \"Excuse me, have we met somewhere before?\" The player sees the name so that the character sees the face. Now ideally the character should not know the name without being told, I do agree with this. However, it is easy to forget, as I have done quite a few times, and should not be reprimanded too heavily.
And you don\'t have to get in with the \"Uber\" RPers to have RP fun in this game. Some of the most fun I\'ve had is simply playing the role of my character around others doing the same. Merely conversing, usually. And yes, someone walking up to your group and talking OOC can have a negative effect on the experience. But it is important to be nice to them regardless, because not everyone gets this at first.
This thread got too long for me to remember all of, even after having read it diligently. sorry If I repeated anyone else\'s thoughs unecessarily.
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yeah you repeated pretty much my thoughts exactly... i think.... i can\'t remember, you are right this thread is really long.... anyway it\'s still always nice to have someone agree with you... i think you are agreeing with me atleast :D
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I \'m very glad to see we managed to disagree quite a bit here without resorting to immature tactics. Aside from that I just wanted to say I read all the replies with interest.
Personally I put roleplaying on second place and fun on first but I understand and accept that for some people it is one and the same or the other way around.
I \'ve just felt roleplaying being a bit too forced to be fun sometimes lately, that\' s all.
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Well... In regards to the names and stuff, If I have seen the character RP in the forums (official and otherwise) and my character was present, I\'d use that as a way of knowing their name, or at least recognizing them.
Futhermore, if I notice that a character has the same last name as another character, my character notices similarities, and would inquire about that.
But otherwise, no, I\'d roleplay as if my character did not know their name...
(unless somebody else mentions it when I\'m present. :) ).
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Originally posted by Zan
I \'ve just felt roleplaying being a bit too forced to be fun sometimes lately, that\' s all.
There are times when I certainly agree. For example when a new player comes in who has no idea that conversations in /say are considered to be IC by default, and discusses OOC subjects, and other IC players immediately come down on him or her with (often but not always) snobby attitudes of \"What the bloody \'ell are you talking about?\" I think kindly pointing out that OOC talk can be designated through the use of parentheses is the only real practical approach. However if that new player is simply rude, has a stupidly chosen name (e.g., Greatest Ofall), or has done absolutely no reading of anything at all before downloading the client, I think others have a sort of right to pester him or her ;) I know I certainly would, and have before.
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Originally posted by Karyuu
...other IC players immediately come down on him or her with (often but not always) snobby attitudes of \"What the bloody \'ell are you talking about?\" I think kindly pointing out that OOC talk can be designated through the use of parentheses is the only real practical approach...
i think kindly is the key word here. people are too often very harsh and un-understanding of noobs (does that make sense? maybe not-understanding is better)
and i agree, it should be fun for the majority of the people first and foremost. however, right now there is not really much anything to do for fun in game right now for most people except rp... so basically fun and rp are the same thing right now for the majority of the people in my opinion.
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Originally posted by Ralas
I have a thought about the name thing.
It is, actually, somewhat realistic to see someone\'s name floating above their head, even if you\'ve never met them. It is a substitute for a recognizeable facial feature. That way If you see someone you\'ve met before, but whos name you don\'t know, you can ask something like, \"Excuse me, have we met somewhere before?\" The player sees the name so that the character sees the face. Now ideally the character should not know the name without being told, I do agree with this. However, it is easy to forget, as I have done quite a few times, and should not be reprimanded too heavily.
This is exactly my interpretation of it. It is there to get around the limitations of the game. You cannot make even afraction of the number of differences that would be required to make everyone look sufficiently unique to be recognisable, let alone have the level of detail that would take in terms of graphics.
Therefore, it is something that has to be abstracted OOC-ly in order to provide means for IC communication. Thus, knowledge of the name is OOC, recognition of the person is IC.
Originally posted by Ralas
And you don\'t have to get in with the \"Uber\" RPers to have RP fun in this game. Some of the most fun I\'ve had is simply playing the role of my character around others doing the same. Merely conversing, usually. And yes, someone walking up to your group and talking OOC can have a negative effect on the experience.
Once again, you express my thoughts perfectly. For me, people who are OOC are not there IC-ly at all. I may talk to them designatedly OOC, but I almost always give RP preference over OOC. Interacting IC-ly with someone who is undesignatedly OOC isn\'t fun, anyway, unless they are asking things that might be IC-ly if they were worded differently, like when asking for the sewers. Still, this is a means of interaction that I don\'t enjoy.
I, too, think that this \"IC at all costs\" is overdoing it, but I do play PS in order to roleplay. RP definitely has higher priority than OOc chatting, about any topic (except for debugging).
Yes, RP does make sense, no matter what the state of the game. If things are missing in the engine / content, just pretend they were there using the good old /me system, like in textual MUDs. Once the features are implemented, it\'s merely a matter of putting some effort into getting them to the level you RPd them so you don\'t need the /me ing in that case anymore. The nice side-effect of this is that you are a lot less likely to become unrealistic in what your char supposedly can do, since you have to make sure it would be doable. :)
I, too, think that PS is by far too combat-focused ATM, but there are signs of that changing.
Originally posted by Karyuu
There are times when I certainly agree. For example when a new player comes in who has no idea that conversations in /say are considered to be IC by default, and discusses OOC subjects, and other IC players immediately come down on him or her with (often but not always) snobby attitudes of \"What the bloody \'ell are you talking about?\" I think kindly pointing out that OOC talk can be designated through the use of parentheses is the only real practical approach. However if that new player is simply rude, has a stupidly chosen name (e.g., Greatest Ofall), or has done absolutely no reading of anything at all before downloading the client, I think others have a sort of right to pester him or her ;) I know I certainly would, and have before.
Same here. :)
Originally posted by Ralas
This thread got too long for me to remember all of, even after having read it diligently. sorry If I repeated anyone else\'s thoughs unecessarily.
Not unnecessarily, as I hadn\'t expressed them on this thread yet. :)
Originally posted by Taurenthefirst
however, right now there is not really much anything to do for fun in game right now for most people except rp... so basically fun and rp are the same thing right now for the majority of the people in my opinion.
Well, PS is only about RP. As I always say: the rules and features are merely serving as framework to allow RPing to be done by people who are not experienced / disciplined enough to do freeform RP. Thus, things like advancing stats definitely take secondary priority, only done to fit what I am RPing.
Due to the limited set of working options in PS my char has some skills that don\'t fit my RP, but I don\'t use them IC. Likewise, my char has skills that aren\'t working yet, but I do use these IC.
It is still my strong opinion that people who do not want to roleplay have no place in PS.
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That name thing bothers me a lot, and I don\'t quite agree with your \"solutions\" for it. There is no excuse, really, for anyone\'s character to know any stranger\'s name, unless he or she (the character) is truly telepathic, and the player behind the character roleplays a telepath the great majority of the time.
What about having the name be exchanged on a greeting. If you want someone to be able to see your name then you can greet them. My greet shortcut is actually modified to be:
/say Greetings, I am Induane, and Einharjar in The Sentinels of the Ragnarok, it is a pleasure to meet you.
/me bows respectfully
/greet
If you are greeted by someone who has never greeted you before then a dialog can come up and say accept name yes or no. If you click yes then their name can come up above their heads, otherwise no. That way you can keep your name annonomous if you like. In addition, you could even forget names, i.e. if you never contact them again with a tell message within say a week the name will dissappear. Sending a certain number of tell messages to a person automatically could place them on your buddy list, which would be names you don\'t ever \"forget\".
Only mods would be able to see all names so that they can send tells to players as necessary.
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I myself did not RP when I came to Planeshift. I always take this into consideration when speaking with someone who\'s new. It should be considered that many of them have no clue what rp is.
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Originally posted by Induane
That name thing bothers me a lot, and I don\'t quite agree with your \"solutions\" for it. There is no excuse, really, for anyone\'s character to know any stranger\'s name, unless he or she (the character) is truly telepathic, and the player behind the character roleplays a telepath the great majority of the time.
What about having the name be exchanged on a greeting. If you want someone to be able to see your name then you can greet them. My greet shortcut is actually modified to be:
/say Greetings, I am Induane, and Einharjar in The Sentinels of the Ragnarok, it is a pleasure to meet you.
/me bows respectfully
/greet
If you are greeted by someone who has never greeted you before then a dialog can come up and say accept name yes or no. If you click yes then their name can come up above their heads, otherwise no. That way you can keep your name annonomous if you like. In addition, you could even forget names, i.e. if you never contact them again with a tell message within say a week the name will dissappear. Sending a certain number of tell messages to a person automatically could place them on your buddy list, which would be names you don\'t ever \"forget\".
Only mods would be able to see all names so that they can send tells to players as necessary.
I like most of this idea. The only problem is that for me, /tell is strictly an OOC thing. So someone with whom my relationship is only IC, I would not /tell anything. Sometimes you start to know the player behind the character, and this is when /tell is useful, but for RP, it\'s quite unrealistic. Therefore, having it linked to whether you remember someone IC does not work for me.
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I like the idea of characters introducing themselves to each other, but I think it\'ll be a while before such a thing might be implemented, and it still has problems. Right now we don\'t have enough GMs \"patrolling\" the streets to check on offensive behavior and/or names, so the players tend to do most of the work in reporting. At least that is how it appears to me. Once you make everyone anonymous, it will be nearly impossible to send a report on abusive behavior, OOC names, or spamming.
And on the topic of spamming/chat, how will the chat window process text if everyone\'s name is hidden from view? I\'m strictly against assigning random numbers to everyone, as that is a giant slap to RPers, so what would a decent solution be? :/
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Reporting abuses might still be possible by targeted reports with a standard report commando which reports the name of the targeted character.
The problems with the chat processing are nastier I think. The chat window could just display the race and gender in stead of a name, but you\'ll still have confusion as more then one char with an identical race/gender combination participate in a conversation.
(Note that, in the end, a total amount of 23 race/gender combo\'s will limit this problem.) To distinguish between avatars of the same gender and race a speaking motion (or a simple dot above the head) can be implemented, so you can see who spoke last.
I also thought of using different colored question marks as name, to differentiate between two seemingly identical strangers. But I came to the conclusion that it won\'t work because it will lead to total chaos as soon as characters start moving around. Not to mention a limitted amount of usable colors.
Maybe the system with the good old name tags we have now is not that bad after all...
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actually hitancrias I think your additions are a good idea and could be implemented fairly easily. It would be more confusing but I think better for RP overall, and thus better for the whole world.
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I have never met any uber-RPers as you call them, but I wonder just how far will they go to uphold IC. And everyone forgets things once in a while, like I only put one bracket at the end in OOC.
As for names, the Hydlaa Law Enforcement Agency could have an excuse, as they probably have a horde of records in their office somewhere, complete with personal info and a picture taken by a mage who discovered screenshot glyphs (that sounds weird...)
Regular folks could just us pronouns or try to avoid the name.
And for newbie RPing, maybe there should be something on the character creation screen which says \"Have You Read the RP Guide? You\'ll be Sorry if you don\'t.\" or something like that, which leads to a screen discussing the basics of roleplaying. And that could include the rules about names too. (who wants to be called looneytunes?)
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I\'ve got some thoughts and ovservations I\'ve gained from a Neverwinter Nights persistent world I play on that\'s particularly RP-heavy.
OOC information of any kind is to be separated from IC information. ((putting things in quotes)) or using tells, much like others have suggested here, is a perfectly appropriate way of doing this in regards to conversation, and it\'s in widespread use on Avlis. In fact, some of you might be flabbergasted at how freely ((ooc comments)) are interjected into conversation. Until you realize that our \"characters\" ignore the comments as if they never hear them, and they are almost always related in some way to the characters present and the situation at hand; we have an IRC chat room for off-topic stuff. You have to have a sense of humor about this, people.
The other important consideration there is how we keep OOC and IC conversation separate. People fek up. Everyone. Especially new people. Sometimes someone will fail to properly denote OOC conversation. The response to such a dialogue is NEVER EVER EVER RESPOND IN-CHARACTER. NEVER. You will either come across as dumb, not knowing that a comment was out of character, or as a jackass. But either way it shows that _you_ do not fully understand keeping OOC and IC separate. To your IC character, the comment never occured. For the deodorant example, the correct response would not be to be IC confused about what the player said, since it was clearly an OOC comment. The proper way to respond to it would have been an OOC tell or an ((OOC say)) that the previous comment was out-of-character, and that we would ignore it and move on. Things are clarified quickly and without frustration. _All_parties_involved_ need to follow the same guidelines about separation of IC and OOC.
As for names - right now it\'s probably not worth getting riled up about _how_ they are implemented until we have features that allow us to differentiate characters by other means. But I\'ll eat what I just said and comment anyway:
In NWN we still have floaty names, but they only appear when you mouse-over a character or press TAB (it shows every targetable thing when you do this, btw). The mechanics of the game also don\'t let you see anybody beyond a certain distance. I\'d suggest a similar system for PS, when you mouseover it shows the floaty or when you press and hold a button it shows the floaty of everyone within a certain range. And the floaties should always be the same size, rather than scaling with distance (as it was last time I played. That\'s real annoying.) It also helps that in NWN chat appears above a character\'s head as well as the chat window, it\'s much less confusing who said what, and doing so makes it easier to not have to keep track of who said what _by_name_. I doubt that exactly would work in PS, but there should be some kind of indication that \"this character has spoken\" like a little floating text bubble (just the bubble no text) that shows for a second. Something like that plus not constantly showing the name should provide just enough of a disjuction to make it easier to ignore the floaty name of someone you don\'t know.
I strongly discourage the implementation of hiding a character\'s speech in the chat window behind a fakey description. That would be more confusing than helpful. If someone abuses a floaty name, again, the response should be an ooc tell explaining what they did wrong and why, then IC pretend it didn\'t ocour and try again _the_right_way_.
If they CONTINUE to abuse floaties and OOC speech, that is a different story. First, there should be a policy about it, which I don\'t know if we have. Not guidelines. POLICY. And a way to report the offending player. A function to do that in-game is NOT necessary. That could get abused, or mistakenly used. Since it\'s an OOC concern, the methods should be separate from the game, like a special board account you can PM. And finally, we need people and methods for actually enforcing decisions made about infractions. Whether or not this game is mature enough to go there is up to the development team. I\'m not sure we can really afford to \"jail\" accounts for OOC infractions at this game\'s current state.
If any of you are interested, the world I\'m discussing is http://www.avlis.org. I\'m sure if anyone is interested in how exactly these concerns are dealt with in that community, there are people there who will be more than willing to discuss it with you ad nauseum. Not all the tools the DM\'s and team there have at their disposal are applicable to PS. But the system they have in place _works_. I\'m sure an interested PS member could learn a lot.
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I met one uber RPGer. I was down in the sewer when this female cat player/character came up and make a comment about how she really got off to seeing a muscle bound man killing rats like that. She then asked if she could stand there for a bit to watch me. The whole time she was talking she kept purring and stuff. She even went through an entire dialogue where she was cleaning herself with her tongue...
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Winterk, that is \"normal\" RP ;) If that was \"uber roleplay\" to you, then man do you need to explore more.
Pincushionman (I love that xD), I really enjoyed reading your post. Definitely agree about the name scaling, first off, it\'s an irritation. The chat bubble suggestion has been made before, and I was against it previously... but somehow it doesn\'t sound as bad anymore. Perhaps as you said if it is just the bubble, without text. And of decent size. (Another irritation is the current size of name displays - I doubt the font really needs to be that large, and so bold.)
I\'ll certainly need to explore the Avlis website as well :D
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I completely agree with Karyuu: it was normal RP all the way.
And I also agree to Pincusionman. As I said, I answer IC-ly to questions that could be IC, like when asked for the sewers. I answer OOC-ly to questions that contain OOC information.
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I have not run into as much of a problem with uber roleplaying because I am almost always IC on public chat except when I am talking to a n00b because he/she is a n00b and probably doesn't know any better
secondly I have run into a couple of other types of rolplay that I find slightly annoying one is "soapopera roleplaying" in which the roleplayer is being overly dramatic in a situation which any normal person of any time period would be bothered but only to an a certain extent I think you cross the line when you trash talk an entire race for one mugging and then go to war for it or drag out a "scene" past its worth
and the other is "ignorant roleplaying" in which people make something happen that according to the yliakum historys and other base information could never happen in the immediate future such as the dwarves and the Enki's going to war. According to the race discriptions that the Stonebreaker Dwarves may be disagreeable with races taller than them but they have a good relation ship with the Enki's who provide them with the meat that is the dwarves basic food item and as for the Hammerwielder Dwarves they have good relationships with all races because of their great ability as blacksmiths. Finally a war between the Enki's and the Dwarves would be econimically improbable because the dwarves get their food from the Enki's and the Enki's would in all probability since they provide the dwarves with their food in turn get their weapons from the dwares in exchange.
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It is still my strong opinion that people who do not want to roleplay have no place in PS.
Actually, to be truthful, at least a few of those have become GMs...
And with sufficient imagination, a use can be found for any raw material.
Such people inspire me to make greater effort, as well as sparking my creativity in less nurturing roles.
Socially engineering a reasonable and productive role for this particular minority, and not just for selected individuals, will be an interesting challenge...
I would like to thank Seytra, Karyuu, and others of you, who have posted in this thread.
Reading it has been rather a treat for me.
Last year, some of you opposed my viewpoints passionately.
That you have since adopted so many of my positions as your own, and show such understanding, tolerance and patience with those who disagree with you, well, it quite literally brings tears to my eyes.
You have made me very happy.
Thank you so much.
~Verrliit~
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Which of your viewpoints, that I once opposed, have I now adopted? :)
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My turn...
So.. i agree with a lot of you, but i feel no one actually hit the nose on how i feel about RP in general. Some of you came very very close, but i guess im picky.
First off.. the term "uber RP" should not be applied to those that you described. I believe in most of those situations, that was simply RP. The only times i find people taking RP "too far" is when:
1. they RP a role for you ahead of time and have this huge plan for what you are supposed to do. I despise this. especially when they have this part for your character that makes absolutely no sense. to me, RP is having a character and being in that character. If you meet someone who that character wouldn't like, then you act as such, or in other words, play your role. You don't have to neccessarily plan anything, just be who you [your character] are. Things will happen, just as they do in RL and any other universe and/or dimension.
2. they RP things that simply make no sense. like having a statue mysteriously suffer an explosion in the arena and it begins to fall on the crowd below. pardon my french but what the heck? sooo many things wrong with that. What explosives could have done such damage? how could a crowd of people jump into that rp? "/me is crushed by the statue and is instantly killed". i can't imagine anyone wanting to do that, or even calling that rp.
Now, as far as /tells. To me, they can be IC or OOC. for example, if i RP a /tell i use something like "/tell player A young dwarf runs up to you panting as he hands you a note. You open it and it reads, 'message'." I just say i have a messenger that will run messages to people around Yliakum. if a /tell is ooc i sometimes put brackets, but if i don't it is extremely obvious that im not IC.
Thanks for listening
Easton Ghent
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Which of your viewpoints, that I once opposed, have I now adopted? :)
Oh, dear. There are so many. I am not entirely sure that it might not be all of them...
Wherever will I begin?
Oh wait, I have it.
This is truly and wildly off topic.
Yay! Now I don't have to spend hours sifting and quoting old posts. :)
Big hugs, sweetie.
~Verrliit~
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::)
I'm not so certain, Verrliit. Thanks for trying though.
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It is still my strong opinion that people who do not want to roleplay have no place in PS.
Actually, to be truthful, at least a few of those have become GMs...
Quite indeed. Non-RPers, even PLs. However, the overall GM quality seems to have increased, at least the visible parts. Most GMs nowadays even have proper names.
I would like to thank Seytra, Karyuu, and others of you, who have posted in this thread.
Reading it has been rather a treat for me.
Last year, some of you opposed my viewpoints passionately.
That you have since adopted so many of my positions as your own, and show such understanding, tolerance and patience with those who disagree with you, well, it quite literally brings tears to my eyes.
You have made me very happy.
Thank you so much.
~Verrliit~
You're quite welcome, however I fear I need to point out that the posts before the one by Hirogurth (which bumped this old thread) were posted before you even jouned the boards...
Last post before BUMP: Posted on: 21:22:52 - 15.06.2005
Your registration date: 02:33:33 - 21.06.2005
Thus either there has been some sort of misunderstanging over the last year, your post has ended up in the wrong thread, or your PoVs have changed. Whatever it may be, it's good to agree.
Adding to that, the major point that I recall disagreeing with you with, is the /tell as IC vs. OOC issue. And on that, my position has not changed in any way: /tell is, unless in very specific situations, fully OOC. Regardless, I still use parenthesis even in /tells to GMs, in order to avoid any and all possibilities of confusion, as well as maintaining the habit of doing so, thus reducing the chance of accidently forgetting a set of parenthesis when it would be needed.
Edit: spelling
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Apologies on missing the dates... The new default colors are difficult to read...
(I don't suppose there is any chance the dates are a result of the changeover in servers, and are more recent, is there?)
*Sigh*
Oh, well. I guess I get to look really silly.
But you know...
I liked very much what I saw posted in this thread, whenever it was done.
It never hurts to encourage people, when they do things you approve of.
So...
More hugs, anyway... :)
.