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Obduction Backer |
Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 1:17 am Posts: 1702 Location: Spokane, WA
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D'Neile wrote: Gorobay wrote: @ D'Neile: The Imaginists would not have to go through any canon-checking. What they are doing is encouraging ICness; not role-playing necessarily, just acting IC. No one needs permission for that. WOW, guess I am confused still after 3 years of this debate. Guess I can't comprehend how pretending to be In a Real Cavern, or are you saying the Imaginists are "Acting" as if your pretending to be in a real cavern, Not the same as Role playing? Actors have a script I guess. Role players pretend they are something they are not.
Hopefully I can try to clear the air a bit here... if not, well, then hopefully I'm not blowing smoke in an un-appreciated direction.
Role-playing would be taking on a character and "performing" in the game in some way. J.D. Barnes, Echo McKenzie, and (less spectacularly) Sydney Austin were all role-players. They played parts and contributed to the collective fiction of the game's story.
In-Cavern is simply treating the game world as a real place, and behaving like you are your avatar, actually exploring that place. There's no role-playing required to do this, just suspension of disbelief (or what kids like to call "playing pretend" ). Playing in-cavern, you would ideally refrain from mentioning the game as a game; ultimately it comes down to using in-game metaphors for your actions whenever possible. Rather than saying you were signing off for the night, for example, you'd say you were returning to Relto. Rather than directly referring to the link-in delay in a crowded instance as a server issue, you might simply state that it's taking an unusually long time to completely link into that area. It all comes down to perception and terminology, and admittedly, while it's fun to pretend, it's not something that everybody wants to do.
Now, IC has its limitations, and players should ideally be flexible enough to recognize when being IC is detrimental to the experience of others and react accordingly. For example, a new explorer asking how to change their screen resolution should be given a straightforward explanation of the process, even though doing so requires "stepping OOC". They shouldn't be met with the text chat equivalent of blank stares and "I don't know why you have a screen in front of your face down here"-type responses.
I'd say that role-players are more able to avoid stepping OOC because they're actually performing as part of the game world, but the number of video game characters who have told me to press the B button to save my game has sort of weakened any case I might have there.
Speaking from the perspective of a former ResEng, it was often a fine line to ride when it came to being in-cavern. On the one hand, I was a character in the game and was expected to act like I was actually in there, not in front of a computer screen in Spokane. On the other hand, a lot of my responsibilities included doing things that were obviously OOC, like getting people unstuck from walls and telling people how to use the game menu to get help. Whenever possible, I was simply myself, working for an organization that didn't exactly pay me top dollar, dealing with a constant barrage of questions from other people who had found this strange underground cavern. I even got clever when it came to telling people how to do OOC things like using the game menu by telling them to press buttons on their "KI-board" to access the various functions like contacting support. However, if asked a pointedly OOC question, I'd give up the rouse and give a straight answer. In a sense, I was doing all three things - role-playing as a ResEng, being IC as myself, and stepping OOC to answer technical questions - every time I logged into the game for my shift... so just because someone might choose to subscribe to a certain style of play doesn't mean it's the only way they are allowed to play the game.
Okay, that's more than enough smoke-blowing from me.
_________________ Grand Master
Guild of Archivists
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