Wouldn't this lead to characters with no background story at all? The current character creation system shows player, that a background story is important. It surly isn't perfect, but just choosing a race, type and subtype doesn't sound good to me. A new player will select the kind of character he wants to play and won't spent any time on thinking about the background of his character.
Leaving the background story out of it, was the whole point of the suggestion. A Background story is something only a creative mind can
come up with. Computers are not creative, nobody honestly reads nor cares for the created background. Especially not because the player
in question usually made the choices s/he made for getting the desired stats. A new player selecting the kind of character s/he wants to
play without spending time on thinking about the background is
exactly the situation you now have.
But whats the point of wasting
time on implementing a backgroundsystem if nobody cares for the result?).
Maybe to help players with no experience to find a starting point for their story?
This was rather an economical question, whether or not it makes sense to invest work in further developing a system with obvious
shortcomings or rather invest that time and energy into something more beneficial. The answer to your question is: No, it does not
help inexperienced players at all. Look around ingame, how many players run around with the text produced during charactergeneration.
It's a safe bet, a lot of people do not even touch it for the fear of breaking something (e.g. at some point running into a quest, where
the NPC wants to know something from the original background which is no longer available).
Point simply is: New players have other worries then writing a background story and writing a good story requires familiarity with the
world. Both comes naturally over time.
I always thought that's why the OOC-bracket rule is there. Longer OOC conversations shouldn't be in the main chat tab or the auction tab. You could use /tell(s) for this. I always thought the brackets are for situations where some short OOC information is necessary (like the quality). Ah, and don't we have some nice attributes for ingots and stocks now (like inferior). I think those attributes could be used to advertise your stocks.
Point is: The [occ] rule does not work very well in practise. It even becomes utmost ridicolous, if someone tells you "[use [brackets] if not speaking IC]". Appearantly that someone is well aware of the fact, that something said was OOC (at least in his/her opinion). In this case, the use of brackets did not just not tell this person something s/he did not know already, but also provoked more OOC chat from a rulenerd. It gets even worse, when a chatline can be considered either IC or OOC or a conversation begs an OOC answer. A simple example for this is indeed weapon quality. Don't expect people to buy, if the only meassurement of quality you can give is "inferior", "standard" or "superior". Then what? You give an answer like "[yeah, this one is q50 and that one is q60]". The customer decides upon the OOC answer and you both pretend it was never said. Congratulations, you just roleplayed yourself to death by making an IC decission based on OCC knowledge (please no suggestions, on how you could say, that both blades look standard quality, but one seems a bit sharper. The weapon example is just the most common one, where it clearly shows, how the [ooc] rule falls flat on it's face in practical gameplay).
What about those situations, where you as a player want to tell another player your opinion (or that you can't stop laughing before the screen). Sometimes it's very hard to distinguish what your character says, or what you as a player say
How about assuming, that your conversational partner has the ability to think and is able to determine from the context, what is IC and what is OOC? Even though it seems like people do expect it: OOC is not the cause for server crashes. If it is really needed, there is nothing that stops you from using [ooc] brackets by convention, if you feel you have to make perfectly clear, that something is not said IC. Point simply is: RPG dialogues are nice. I enjoy doing RPG, when there's a good opportunity to do it. But it's utopian to expect people to do it constantly. It takes the joy out of roleplay having to think for the other.
If there is such thing as a "cautious player" why wouldn't they chose to explore and ask questions about OOC allowances to players through /tells, or the forums, or IRC #planeShift or PM's to obvious well established players? I find it hard to believe that a player would play PlaneShift and just keep to themselves due to warnings about OOC behavior in the tutorial.
You do realize, that is is complete and utter nonsense? A cautious player in this context is a new player and you expect him/her to use the means of well established players? Also you might consider me to be a cautious player, as this was written from my experience. I'd be seriously insulted if you insisted on me not existing.
This would work if people followed the rules. But they don't and still continue to talk in public chat with [] brackets. It seems impossible to get players to understand this, especially when new to the game. Hence the tutorial that you dislike telling players about OOC and the penalties. That was made for new players to get the idea of how important RP is in this community.
Well appearantly people are not following the rules and never will. This might be considered as a hint, that there's something wrong with the rules.
Also I have the impression, that you did not understand the point I was trying to make: You are not getting anywhere by being pushy. Being just a bit more subtle on the importance of role play might be a bit more effective, then letting the last NPC hammer it into your skull with a q300 warhammer.
self proclaimed ulber roleplayers and rule feticists.
Wow, I really am sorry for who ever has given you this impression.
[/quote]
Currently? Sad to say this: You.
Reading your post, I get the impression, that you consider RP something holy and that your style is superior to that of others. Also you appear keen of rules. I might do you a lot of injustice here, as one post is hardly enough to judge a person, but nevertheless postings like this seem to be symptomatic for this forum. This is what forms the impression, people get and proves my point. Please don't take this as an offense, it was/is not meant to be one. Rather as a thought provoking impulse to stop and think for a moment. Whether you agree or disagree with me afterwards is up to you, I don't intent on commenting further on the issue, as I am not intrested into derailing this thread into a flamewar.
