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As a person who is coordinating sandbox RP based events in one faction...I can see how, like the "Bloody Protest" at the Prince's Wedding, events which are pro-one faction can ruffle feathers for the other faction. Because I intend to hold more of these sandbox RP events, I think a healthy discussion at the meta-level (meaning in general, without specifics...although specifics might be used to illustrate) might help us all understand where each other is coming from. As illustrated by previous threads, I highly doubt we at opposite ends of belief will convince each other, but at least here we can give it a try. A second purpose for this thread is to allow people to understand how, why, and when others will perceive them as greifing, and maybe even (for the positive) neglect to act due to this understanding.

To me, there is a huge difference between RP and griefing, but the difference is often entirely subjective and cannot be known to anyone but the person doing the action. Therefore it requires personal policing. But, there are clear definitions of RP for a community (the lore) and any RP pushed upon the community that is not in line, could indefensibly be viewed as griefing.

So, the difference between griefing and RP is in ones purpose. With any action one takes, there is justification...the RP, it is what my character would have done...the fun, it is what I as the player find fun...etc.

When one interacts in another's RP, possibly wrecking their intended story arc, without RP justification. That is obviously griefing.

When one interacts in another's RP, possibly wrecking their intended story arc, with RP justification. You have to ask...which would interloper have done without:

If they would have acted identically for fun, but without RP justification, then it is griefing.

If they would have acted identically for RP, but without the fun justication, then it is clearly RP (as long as the previous statement about the necessity of matching lore is met). The fact that they had fun acting as they did is irrelevant to the discussion. It is a game and hopefully always fun; in other words, this is an inclusive "or", one might have acted in a way both due to fun and RP...but as long as the RP condition is met (and the previous lore condition is met) it is RP.

So, to understand how this criterion might work in an extreme case. Imagine the Kami faction intends to send an expedition to explore PR (something I do intent to do in a lore seeking archeological way). Now imagine the Karavan, as long as their stance on exploring PR has not officially changed), send a group to stop them. The Kami have a whole story arc planned, but the Karavan show up an repeatedly kill them time after time. You must ask, is this griefing or is it RP? Both parties are acting within the grounds of the lore, so it becomes a question of whether the would act the same without fun and without RP. As long as they could say they would do as they did without the fun justification (which does not mean they did not have fun, that is irrelevant), we must conclude they were within their RP grounds to act as they did...and the fault lies with the Kami for not being prepared for their own story in a manner required by the world we play in.

Of course, this is all based upon the idea that all RP is equal. It could be argued that Event Team RP and player based RP are two completely separate entities and they should not interact...or at the least Event Team RP trumps player based RP. If you make this argument, then we are playing two different games and we just have to agree to disagree...but, by all means give your argument, maybe you will convince some.

Well, this ended up longer than I intended it, but the purpose remains the same...I would like to start a constructive dialog.

I can follow you in most Loryen. But I just wanted to add something else here I heard after wedding that is also something to take into consideration.
The events on servers can be quite different but some events are always done the same just so that they don't need to write a totally different lore for each server. This wedding was one of those as Meagon said later in FH. She said this event was really needed for the backstory of Ryzom and was needed to go further with the whole story. So I can understand that some event team events need to take place in a right way for a big story line that has writen to unfold but there is no way for the ppl coming in doing there own little RP to know that.

You can cancel a wedding event, and hold it elsewhere (perhaps even in secret), and it wouldn't (or shouldn't) have any impact on the storyline other than that the location of the wedding was different.
Would make the character story a bit more interesting than "they held their wedding at x and they lived happily ever after".
The writer for the events should forsee such cases and have backup plans. The entire story just cannot be dependent on the wedding on a specific location at a specific time of some irrelevant character proceeding without interruptions.

Well know Kaetmi and I don't know if Meagon was just talking or not or if he really does know more but he did say we would soon see why and what. But that the event was really needed then and there.
* Meagon said something about he needed to be married of and be gone out off yrk * or something like that

"Role-playing refers to the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role." (Wikipedia)

This means that the person behind the keyboard conducts his or her character in a manner suitable to fit the story and environment. For this recent wedding, invited or not, a VERY appropriate response to an event celebrating the person who recently ordered the destruction of a town in your homelands (or that of your friend and ally) is a protest.

As long as the protesters acted with knowledge that could be obtained strictly through in-game sources and behaved according to the manner that someone protesting such an event would behave, it was a perfectly reasonable addition to the scheduled event.

To the Matis party, the protesters would appear to be a bunch of lowlife thugs, rambling on about trivial matters of the past. It would be a bother to have to kill them to restore order, but a necessary bother. The scum didn't even deserve the honour of being slain by the Royal Guards, but you must do what you must do.

To the Protesters, they were standing up to make their voice heard. They were willing to give their lives to ensure that the "Butcher of Thesos" knew that they hadn't forgotten his crime. They were making sure that all in attendance at the wedding knew of his crimes and exactly who was being venerated at the event.

Yes, this would be a disruption, the same as we are unexpectedly disrupted every day in our lives. That doesn't make it griefing. It makes it a disruption, a temporary set-back.

This was a beautiful example of role-play DONE RIGHT.

Since reading Mokoi's response, I've calmed down quite a bit, and think we can all take the lessons learned at the wedding event to heart, to prepare for future events. Maybe now, more than ever, we all know that events may not proceed exactly as planned, and we should all be more flexible.


<soapbox>
It is unfortunate that some are so dead-set on controlling every single movement and activity in this game that they can't see past the nose on their own faces and realize there is more to this game than themselves. THAT attitude is what will stifle creativity, imagination, and fun.
</soapbox>

Oh, this difference is actually very simple and straightforward.

Let us use as example that John's character somehow bothers Jane's character, with John claiming an RP motivation.
->This is RP if John's motivations for his action are to make the game more fun for both himself and Jane.
->This is griefing if John's motivations for his action are to make the game more fun for himself at the cost of Jane's fun.

In practice, motivations cannot be read directly from someone's actions. But a straightforward rule to establish motivation would be to ask: "If Jane asks John OOC to please leave her alone, would John comply?" If not, then he's griefing.

This is really the first rule of RP, that still many RPers in MMOs do not seem to get: "This is what my character would do" is never a justification that overrides OOC courtesy. It doesn't make you a good RPer, it makes you a griefer who only uses RP as justification. A good RPer would find a way to be true to their character in a way that is fun to everyone involved.

Marelli,
Best explaination yet I think.

While your solution is simple Marelli, I fear it is too simple. By your definition, everytime anyone is annoyed we must all stop...and as is obvious from the comments we have seen so far...someone is always annoyed and just had their fun wrecked.

Another concern is that your method seems very Utilitarian, which seems at first to be ideal, especially for a game...but, we can only ever know our own feelings and intentions. So, relying upon the amount of happiness (or unhappiness) one actions make in the game world is a difficult thing to quantify.

On the otherhand, I do acknowledge my argument has flaw as well. It requires self policing, but would a person who would grief in the first place...self police?

After thinking on it further Marelli, I think you present not the difference beteen griefing and RP, but something perhaps more important...respect. If any action you are taking in really upsetting someone and you continue to do it even knowing this...than that is griefing as well. This, I think, has nothing to do with RP.

At some point, someone somewhere is going to be "offended" at something someone else does, regardless of well-meaning intentions. Too many people think their OOC wishes and desires for a story trump everyone else's and play the offended card to try to reign things back in. This is the kind of person to whom I address the "control freak" comment. To feel this way is human. To try to force your will upon others this way is ... less so.

"Fun" is unbelievably subjective. To rephrase your example:

John's motivations are to make the game more fun for everyone, but John and Jane disagree on what is fun.


Who is right? It's not quite so straightforward.


In the most recent event, quite possibly the majority of the people at the event thought the extra but of action made the event more fun, some who would not even have attended otherwise. Some obviously did not find it fun.

Who is right?

Well, yes, there isn't really a line between griefing and RP, as they're not mutually exclusive concepts but overlapping concepts. Something can be both. So what I defined was not the line where RP stops being RP but just the line where RP becomes griefing, which is probably the same line where anything becomes griefing ^^
Nah, you misunderstand me, it's not about whether fun actually gets maximised, it's just about what John's motivations were. I don't consider it griefing if he ended up ruining Jane's fun by mistake. And like Loryen says and I also did admit, the big problem is indeed we can never be sure of someone's motivations. But in my personal experience, it's usually fairly easy to make a pretty accurate guess if you just talk to John a bit.

You are correct that I only talked about when John is wrong and left out the other half of the equation; the one where Jane claims that her fun is ruined by *everything* John does. This is something I also see disturbingly much amongst RPers; as soon as the story doesn't go exactly as they want, they break out of character and accuse the other of being a bad RPer.

Now this is not griefing, but it's also no longer RP. It's just monologuing. The nature of RP is that it's interactive and improvisational. Reacting to other players' unexpected actions is the crucial part of it. A good RPer is one that can go with the flow and adapt to any unexpected turn, including (especially!) those that are bad for their character. If you don't want surprises, you shouldn't be RPing, you should be writing a book where you have complete control over every character.

Now you both point this out, and you're right, my rule can only be cleanly applied to 2-people situations (and even then with the difficulty of never being 100% sure of someone's intentions). The situation gets quite a bit more complicated when MMO-levels of players are involved. But not because the rule is no longer valid. There's now simply too many variables involved, so you have to resort to statistics.

I've shied away from this discussion because it's... well... quite a bit bigger, to say the least. But okay, I'll take it on now. Right off the bat I can identify 3 difficulties that MMO-situations present over 2-person situations.

Problem 1: I enjoyed the Fyros intrusion, Iala did not. If we make the rule that no action may be taken unless not a single person present objects to it, then nothing will ever get done.

The best solution here, I think, is to resort to group-opinions. If your actions affect a group, what does the majority of the group think? In events, it comes down on "who's event is it?" If it's a player event, the organising players should get the last say on which intrusion is accepted. If it's an official event, then in my opinion everything should be fair game, as official events shouldn't be excluding players.

Problem 2: Surprises are a big and often the most fun part of RP. You can't always ask OOC permission for everything beforehand. Example: I think Loryen would enjoy it if I ambushed her PR party, so I do this and darn it, it turns out Loryen didn't want that, and she's now accusing me of griefing because technically, yes, I ended up doing something that was fun for me but at the cost of her fun. This wasn't my *intention*, but it still ended up happening.

So, to prevent conflicts, what's also needed is some forgiveness, tolerance for mistakes and willingness to not always assume the worst about people's intentions.

Problem 3: Many casual RPers aren't even clear on the IC/OOC distinction. If Marelli kills Erizon in the PR, and Erizon asks in region chat "please leave me alone", is that the character or the player asking? It's a big difference.

Moreover, many people in MMOs don't even RP at all, and will consider all RP-intentioned action as OOC and griefing. Now the question becomes "how far am I allowed to go, and how far can someone else demand I not go?" or "may I do everything the game rules allow me to do? may the majority push their morals on individuals?" Completely unrelated to RP. Which in itself is a HUGE discussion. (See: PR PvP, outposts, dragging during outposts)

And which leads in turn to the question "what is morally right?" IN THE MOST GENERAL SENSE. And now you're starting to see why I shied away from this discussion, I hope? :P

You have hit the nail on the head for a quite a few "roleplayers" in Ryzom with this. However, I believe that the dedicated roleplayers will continue their RP and withdraw themselves from the interactions with these types of characters. In my experience, those who are serious about roleplay stay in character and welcome opportunities to expand their character. I personally have roleplayed, at all various levels, for years and can never say that my RPing experience has ever been ruined by anyone that remains in their roleplaying character.

As far as RP griefing, the few times I have experienced what I would consider RP griefing, I have found it to be OOC and consists of inappropriate dialog to the specific roleplay event and many times are brought to channels not normally used for roleplay (in Ryzom this would be Universe - all the time, and Regional - majority of the time). This can include name calling, badgering, belittling, etc. However, only if the harrassment got obessive would I even consider reporting these types of incidents - I am a big girl, sticks and stones, turn the other cheek, etc. - since 99% of the time the other person's griefing attempts are not worth the acknowledgement nor the expenditure of energy.