The stated intent of the game is to provide a world that is dynamic but leave most of the story crafting up to players. The game merely provides a context or a framework to make stories in. What you did with your Kran is good, Can, but it's not good in a dead RP community. You need a living, healthy community for other players and the environment to contribute significantly to your own character. I know this because that's how I developed my PS characters originally.
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As for you Rig, you are definitely somewhere in the middle. However, you occupy an interesting space in this plotting versus improv spectrum. While we each used both methods, we used them in very different ways. In PS, I generally did spontaneous personality based RPs when I had to drive the RP. In SWTOR I learned how to jumped in on other's plots and filled in any gaps with spontaneous personality based RP. I did learn how to do my own plots but I still didn't do them very often.
In spontaneous PS RP, I usually didn't give my characters goals beyond interacting with other nearby characters. However, I did learn in SWTOR to use some kind of overall purpose to drive an RP, whether I planned to drag someone else into a story or it just kinda happened. I didn't necessarily commit to a "plot" for that though.
The closest I used to come in PS was to head back to some central topic when the RP floundered and build from there. For instance, if Illysia were in the tavern, any lull would be filled with something about the tavern. With Zandral, it would be filled with something about one of her gripes.
Now, if I wanted to explore a backstory or lore, I learned to use or join a specific plot. I assume it's something like table top games where you are
given some goals and a premise so you can RP within a framework, but you can do almost anything as long as you stay in the framework. Admittedly, this is something I didn't do until after I left PS, but I learned the value of it.
Plot RP are good for exploring morals, the implications of a specific circumstance, and strengthening your character's connection to the settings. For instance, testing the limits of the Jedi code, how would my characters react to people from different factions, and the occasional plot based character study. One of my favorite RPs to this day was when my character's friend kidnapped her in a "spur of the moment" action and took her engine shopping on a pirate planet... My character was left with an increased hatred for plants, bugs, and
blue water...
Not to mention she had stories to tell spontaneously at the bar later.
Now in that case, I knew she was going to end up on that planet with her friend to get the engine. Most of the intro narration of the engine related scenes were done by the other player. It was going to end in them safely leaving the planet with the engine in tow. However, the customs issue at the starting spaceport, the reactions to landing at an "uncivilized" spaceport, the melodramatic reaction to being "attacked" by a bug, the reaction of being a rich girl on a planet of shady people, and being dunked in water by a Wookie were all spontaneous scenes that arose within the framework of the plot.
I still end up writing dissertations even when I deliberately cut out large portions of commentary and heavily edit what actually makes it in.
