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If a non/light-RP player whose character was of an opposing faction needed help, would you let RP take precedence over keeping Atys friendly to those who see Ryzom as a game rather than an interactive story? Would you be willing to break character to help them, or would you "stick to your guns" at the risk of causing OOC resentment?

One nice thing about being a Tryker is that RP-ing a proper Tryker pretty much requires OOC decency;

Chronicles of Atys[/p]

Note that nowhere in there does it say that we have to be peaceful about it, nor is there any prohibition against conflict.

oO ... walls of text about roleplay again. So much passion about how to do roleplay. ...

Is there any use to add more words? Maybe words with less passion?
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Ryzom is an online game, and online game is leisure time. In leisure time people want to have fun.
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Roleplay is cooperative story telling. 'Cooperative' means all people who play together want to have fun.

If people have no fun, people leave. Then no cooperation and no roleplay.
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Define fun:
Some people say, roleplay without conflict -> no fun.
Other people say, roleplay with conflict -> no fun.
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... problem ...
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... solution?
-> People talk about 'how' to play conflict in roleplay.
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Define 'how play conflict':
Conflict in storytelling has a start, a climax and a definite end. Best selling story books are with conflicts + happy ending.
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Proposal one:
Conflict in roleplay best be consensual.
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Proposal two:
Conflict in roleplay best with a start, a climax and a (happy) end.
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How to do consensual rp?
Roleplayer one asks roleplayer two out of character (ooc),
if he / she would like to play a conflict story.

Roleplayer one gives a short ooc description [e. g. pn: ooc conflict description]
about start, climax and end of conflict story.
If roleplayer two agrees, both play a roleplay conflict story.

Roleplayer one gets conflict and is happy.
Roleplayer two gets happy end and is happy too.

Fellow players enjoy a cooperative roleplay story with start, climax and end - and are happy too.



Annotation:
'Conflict' can be a lot of things.

Kitins are conflict. Carnivores are conflict.
Cold winter / hot summer can be conflict. No water / flood can be conflict. Disease can be conflict.
No food, no tools, no clothes, no houses, no mektoubs ... missing things ... can be conflict ...
Peeing yubos can be conflict.

I think I already answered that, didn't I? See here:

As for OOC resentment: You will never please everybody. As we have read, you can receive as much OOC resentment by "breaking character" as by "sticking to your guns", if for very different reasons. I, personally, don't mind OOC resentments. People are free to love or hate me, as they please. What I actually do mind is if it colors their play - if it "bleeds" into the behaviour of their characters in game towards my character without any rational IG reason.



That depends on the quality of the player, I think, and on the question if a character in a game is neccessarily a mirror of the player who pulls the strings. I doubt the need (and indeed the truth) of this.

Apart from that, I'd like to remind you that the "Autumn War" and what followed was provoked by the Trykers breaking the international treaty ;):

I already knew your answer. I asked more as a rhetorical question for the sake of illustration/clarification.

Just as in reality, not all citizens agree with all actions of their government. Then again, the history between the Tryker and Matis nations have historically been rather strained to begin with, what with the expansionist Matis thinking they own us despite a few new treaties in the intervening IG decades.

The lore I've seen shows that the Trykers didn't break the treaty, we merely went against the will of those who thought they were our masters and it was the Matis that revoked the Edict of the Four People in 2499. As for depriving the Matis of water resources, I feel it understandable to deny resources to those who are engaging in an expansionist military campaign at your expense.

In 2501, a new treaty was signed that made Loria neutral territory, though the scheming Jinovitch decided to pick a fight with our trading partners, the Fyros. Following Jinovitch's well-deserved death and the ascension of a nobler Matis leader, we've had a new Free Trade Agreement, as well as a Homin Rights Act, so relations between Matis and Tryker have much improved.

Still, it's recent enough history that there is still some friction between us little freedom-lovers and our tree-hugging neighbors to the North. Some wounds take time to heal.

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Nuzanshi - I don't feel like quoting your whole wall-o-text, but you do raise some valid/interesting points. Personally, I think that all toons should have a tag showing where they are on the scale of "just a game" to "Lore is my life!" to make it easier. I mean, asking questions gets tedious after a while, so why not just wear a "badge" instead?

As for the peeing Yubos, I personally think that the entire reason Yubos exist is to redistribute the water of Atys. Why we need them when we have clouds that can drop rain is beyond me, but at least they make more sense (to me) than Bolobis.

an occ tag would be awesome, it's like a big sign that says "roleplay isn't an excuse to attack me because i don't roleplay" only thing is that it's still going to require that someone ensure that a player with this tag on is protected properly, meaning that if someone attacks someone because of RP and the person attacked has on this tag that the attacker will be punished. so it's still going to require policing properly.

but i like the basic idea, at least it would help to cut down on the RP excuses to do things.

@Talk I think if you are ooc, or have a problem with being attacked for any reason you just don't tag, right?

My only reason to refer to lore earlier was to point out that there is no commandment to be a complete jerk. Yes, there is conflict on Atys, it adds interest to our lives, but if you choose to be so extreme, then people do not want anything to do with you and that does not add to the roleplay.

Not all attacks involve loss of HP though; words can be weapons too.

I have no problems with someone coming up to me in PR and hitting me with an axe without saying a word. After all, being in PR for more than 2 minutes is considered "implied consent" for that sort of thing.

I do have a problem when I am told I am playing Ryzom wrong because I help a Kami-cuddler train or rez a Marauder. I actually consider that more of an attack than being smacked upside of the head with a 2H Mace, and I can be "hit" that way regardless of whether I am PvP tagged or not. (And I'm generally not after having a friendly 3v3 between lowbies turn into target practice for a pair of multi-master griefers that were >100 levels higher than any of us were at the time, but that's a separate issue.)

Point taken.

LOL. "hardcore" primarily means 'dedicated and faithful' or even 'purist'. A hardcore gamer is someone who plays a lot, plays intensely, for whom gaming is a big part of his or her life, and who generally knows a lot about games. By the above use of the word, however, a hardcore gamer would be one who kills people or avatars nonstop, completely forgetting that there exist countless games which have no killing in them: board games, card games, and - on computers - SIM games, to name some examples. MMORPGs are by nature more like those SIM games: a world is being simulated in which (as in any world) many things are possible. Hatred and killing are only two of them, and - quite frankly - not all people want them. I sometimes can't help but wonder about those who want nothing else. ;-p

The normal meaning of "hardcore" seems to me to be much better matched by Gidget's definition of "casual":

As I mentioned before, RP has two letters: R = role, meaning you play in character as much as possible; and P = play, meaning you keep it fun for yourself AND the other players. Otherwise you may soon find yourself playing all by yourself (as happened to an AD&D GM I recall who played so much against rather than for his players that we all soon abandoned the campaign).

The combination of R and P means, you enrich the atmosphere of the simulated world for yourself AND everybody else through your roleplay as much as possible, rather than spoiling the game for yourself and others through such things as excessively speaking or acting out of character (spoiling the mood) or intentionally or carelessly borking other player's play. Since players are part of the OOC world, the latter (dragging OOC issues such as player dissatisfaction created by yours truly into the game) also injects too much OOC stuff into the game experience, so it is not only for the sake of "P" that one should be considerate of other players in one's RP, but also for the sake of "R" since you make it easier for others to participate in and contribute to the "R" if their game participation isn't torpedoed by you.

You do this by carefully designing the character you will play, and by letting the character grow from experience as needed. While challenges can be the spice of life for those who seek adventure in an RPG (remember: not everyone does), life brings all sorts of challenges which aren't conflict with other people, and even conflict amongst people doesn't have to always be rude or lethal (in fact, most people in the real world try to avoid both).

In this regard, I find Nuzanshi's voice of reason refreshing in this discussion. I only have two caveats with his/her post:

(1) In this day and age, where the term roleplay has been both watered down and distorted a lot, I would no longer define RP as "cooperative story telling" since there now exist comparatively large initiatives of cooperative story writing which label themselves (or are mislabeled by others?) as roleplay. Nowaday's, to better distinguish from those, I would define it as "cooperative story living". In RP, unlike cooperative story writing (or "telling") there is usually no product (a tale which can be published), and the story - if one develops - develops organically through the spontaneous play of players, much as history in real life.

(2) For this reason, I also find the idea of planning an RP romp as a pre-scripted "story with start, climax and end" as both impractical and abstruse, much as if in real life I would have to arrange with other people something like: "from 4 to 6 PM we will be alive, the rest of the day we will be dead". The same applies to GM-run "events" which I therefore see as a symptom that RP is lying on its deathbed. Additionally, in an MMO, prior arrangements are also often impractical (unlike in a pen and paper game), since you rarely know in advance whom you are going to meet as you log on. However, occasionally breaking out into OOC communication to exchange intentions and such with other players where RP could get into a direction a participant would find objectionable is a good idea if players don't manage to negotiate this IC or if OOC considerations happen to be unavoidable.

Quite frankly, RP starts as nothing more than simply speaking in character (avoiding references to "game", "stats", etc. as much as possible), then acting increasingly in character as well. A good roleplayer does this convincingly but also knows where to draw a line, namely when he/she or other players are negatively impacted, since - at the end of the day - we are humans putting up with life on Earth and making time for a bit of R&R as homins on Atys. A good number of us, especially older ones I suspect, already have more than enough conflict and hardhip in RL on Earth than to want more of it in life on Atys. Some players may find relaxing play boring. Some may hunger for interpersonal conflict and tactical duels and battle against other human minds and their hand-eye-coordination with keyboard and mouse. To each his own. All is good, as long as one doesn't ram one's preference down other people's throat. There is also nothing to be gained by pooh-poohing one another's preferences. And one thought to mull over: as long as we have homin avatars who can wield weapons and cast spells and traverse a beautiful fantasy world, don't we all imagine that sword or this spell to be real, at least for a moment, at least deep down somewhere in our minds? And don't we all have more fun with the game during those moments? This is the essence of roleplay. How could any of us here consider this evil and not wish for more of our play time to be like this?

Thus I don't see this either/or duality proposed by many, this idea that you can only either be a roleplayer or a gamer. RP is simply the immersive part of one's playing the game. The more, the better. And it doesn't come with special license to spoil other people's fun. Neither does a holier than thou anti-RP attitude based on experiences with bad roleplayers who forgot the "play" in roleplay.

Sorry for the long post. Just digesting what I read and giving feedback. ;-)

P.S.: I think Gidget's idea is great:

Now, the only question: is there a way for this already? In my case, I created a new guild for Crick two weeks ago, primarily so he could have a badge like that float above his head.

Crick - I can see where you're coming from, and would probably have chosen different words if I were able to think of ones that I felt fit better. In fact, I do have a few words that I think fit those that I called "hardcore" here better, but we're not allowed to use those words on these forums ;)

The trouble with being a monoglot stuck with a non-expressive language...

Hehe. :-)

Well, "fanatical roleplayers" or "griefer roleplayers" might capture the spirit best and not insinuate that all RP by definition is the same (namely irresponsibly aggressive in Ryzom or - something I also see a lot in today's MMOs - unnecessarily dramatic).

English can be very expressive and playful, btw. Recommened readings: books by Jack Vance. ;-)

@ Crick: I agree in part with your objections, so let me be more precise about my post.

about caveat (1): Sorry, I was unaware of the term 'cooperative story telling' as already being a fixed label in parts of the roleplay community / creative writing community. Will 'consensual story telling' do it for you?

about caveat (2): No no no, I have no intention to propose clumsy 'pre-scripted roleplay' in online roleplaying. Sorry if my proposal was mistakable in that point.
From what I experienced and whitnessed over years both on Leanon(german) server and on Atys server I came to the following conclusions:
(a) 'Conflict roleplay' should be somehow consensual. Otherwise 'conflict roleplayers' cannibalize their roleplay community.
(b) Whenever a 'conflict roleplay' gets started, the involved roleplayers should agree about a rough idea of how to play a 'conflict ending scenario'. This could be done by short ooc talk at the beginning. I believe experienced roleplayers will be able to roleplay towards one or more constructive ending scenarios without much ooc talk in advance.

(I witnessed some 'neverending roleplay conflicts' in Ryzom forum right after server merge and it was frightening to follow those endless fights over verbal dominance. To me it seemed as a definit lack of will for constructive endings in those 'conflicts' - 'conflicts' that ceased to be roleplay.)


'... life brings all sorts of challenges which aren't conflict with other people, and even conflict amongst people doesn't have to always be rude or lethal ...' - thanks a lot, fully agree.
Roleplay challenge can be much more than merely 'conflict roleplay' :)