I rant about...well, pretty much everything.

[LungTien Temeraire]

That is a no-brainer right there. You where giving me the impression that you where insuating that players MUST simply roleplay in that one area and have no choice.

Your impression was wrong. It wasn't about forcing anyone to RP in a determined area. You shouldn't have taken this that bad. Relax a bit : )

The simple remedy is asking It's wise to ask where a roleplay is taking place before jumping in. While it is confusing...what if a newbie DOES join the roleplay channel? What if they're told nothing and meets a friend. They jump in and roleplaying...let's say Kion. They put that in their establishing post.

New roleplayers might not know where is the RP located and how it works for older roleplayers. Whether they ask or not, it is about letting them know that the characters currently roleplayed at this time, when they join, were on the RP valley.

[Fix]

Your impression was wrong. It wasn't about forcing anyone to RP in a determined area.



New roleplayers might not know where is the RP located and how it works for older roleplayers. Whether they ask or not, it is about letting them know that the characters currently roleplayed at this time, when they join, were on the RP valley.

And what if they're not? What if they come in and every player there's at x's lair? Or flying over an island they happen to be on?

[LungTien Temeraire]

Then, if these characters are not near the others, on the valley or any other places, to make all of them interact should be, in a realistic point of view, impossible, unless they have mental links and mind-reading abilities, like that.
I, personally, has never seen a RP channel in which a part of the characters are in an area, and another part are far away, in another area. Seeing that would be quite new, for me.

[Fix]

Then, if these characters are not near the others, on the valley or any other places, to make all of them interact should be, in a realistic point of view, impossible, unless they have mental links and mind-reading abilities, like that.
I, personally, has never seen a RP channel in which a part of the characters are in an area, and another part are far away, in another area. Seeing that would be quite new, for me.

RE-read my post. I said is NO ONE ELSE was in the valley, and the only roleplay going on was elsewhere, then what?

The valley is simply YOUR favorate. Or a few other's favorates. There is no reason to claim it to be "TEH PLACE"

The point being that I said - what if the current roleplay area changes? According to you roleplaying outside of the valley is impossible. So what happens? Does it implode?

[LungTien Temeraire]

I misunderstood your thoughs.
Roleplaying outside of the valley isn't impossible. If the only RP happening on the channel is located on another place, everything if fine.
The thing who happened when Joemarra came on the RP channel was just that he didn't know the characters already roleplaying there, at this time, were on the valley. Joemarra's character was on Spirit Isle. If the other characters had been on Spirit Isle as well, around Joemarra's character, that would have been fine.

[Fix]

I misunderstood your thoughs.
Roleplaying outside of the valley isn't impossible. If the only RP happening on the channel is located on another place, everything if fine.
The thing who happened when Joemarra came on the RP channel was just that he didn't know the characters already roleplaying there, at this time, were on the valley. Joemarra's character was on Spirit Isle. If the other characters had been on Spirit Isle as well, around Jormarra's character, that would have been fine.

I wasn't specifically refering to Joemarra

I was defending his point, yes. But not refering specifically to him.

[LungTien Temeraire]

I wasn't specifically refering to Joemarra

I was defending his point, yes. But not refering specifically to him.

Sure, I was just explaining what happened at this time. Though, if the Role-Play area is changed, roleplayers who come after the change will likely need to be informed of it, considering the RP area has, for maybe a year now, been, most of time, considered by the most part of the roleplayers as a valley. But before that, the place had been different (like an area near Dralk, a clearing,...). The changes tends to not be occuring very often, but they do occur.

[Fix]

Sure, I was just explaining what happened at this time. Though, if the Role-Play area is changed, roleplayers who come after the change will likely need to be informed of it, considering the RP area has, for maybe a year now, been, most of time, considered by the most part of the roleplayers as a valley. But before that, the place had been different (like an area near Dralk, a clearing,...). The changes tends to not be occuring very often, but they do occur.

True. The fact being that it's not written in stone. One should not yell at others for trying to roleplay elsewhere...one must face it - it will be done again...and again...


Though sometimes I wish they'd make multi-themed and named main roleplay channels...hmm. Wasn't Dragon-chat a public roleplay?

[LungTien Temeraire]

One should not yell at others for trying to roleplay elsewhere...one must face it - it will be done again...and again...

Nobody yelled, the other day, when Joemarra joined the channel. Anyway, yelling at someone for that isn't right, indeed.

Though sometimes I wish they'd make multi-themed and named main roleplay channels...hmm. Wasn't Dragon-chat a public roleplay?

You can create some yourself and discuss with others about it. Dragon channel was a RP channel before, but the arrival of new players (needing help, advices, informations,...) on this channel convinced the roleplayers to report the RP on Role-Play channel. There can still be RP on Dragon, if some player wants to do it there, but it is now rare.

[Fix]

Nobody yelled, the other day, when Joemarra joined the channel. Anyway, yelling at someone for that isn't right, indeed.



You can create some yourself and discuss with others about it. Dragon channel was a RP channel before, but the arrival of new players (needing help, advices, informations,...) on this channel convinced the roleplayers to report the RP on Role-Play channel. There can still be RP on Dragon, if some player wants to do it there, but it is now rare.

That is the point. First off, I did not mean literall YELLING AND FLAMING AND BREAKING RAWR. No. Even passing a comment or correcting them.


Second off, what I ment was as an official channel. Many people consider "Roleplay" to be their official roleplay channel. Lets say you're like me - you don't know alot that own their own private channels or you are a bit shy. What I was just talking about - hell, what you are continuously trying to defend is the fact that players are frowned upon for trying to roleplay in a seperate area in roleplay, or attempting to set one up.

What I'm thinking of is the best interest of my fellow roleplayers. Nothing more. Especially the new ones.



Edit: And with that! Break time.

[LungTien Temeraire]

Second off, what I ment was as an official channel. Many people consider "Roleplay" to be their official roleplay channel. Lets say you're like me - you don't know alot that own their own private channels or you are a bit shy.

Some channels are private / invite only, for people who wants to interact in private, like RP families. Some others are for everyone interested, without being main channels.

What I was just talking about - hell, what you are continuously trying to defend is the fact that players are frowned upon for trying to roleplay in a seperate area in roleplay, or attempting to set one up.

I am not trying to defend the fact that players are frowned upon for trying to roleplay in a seperate area in roleplay, or attempting to set one up.

What I'm thinking of is the best interest of my fellow roleplayers. Nothing more. Especially the new ones.

I am doing the same, like the other roleplayers there.

[Fix]

Good, you've made your point. Now let's let other people discuss it.

[LungTien Temeraire]

You have made yours as well, that is good. And indeed, we should let others express their thoughs.

[Sereamha]

The roleplay channel takes place in a specific place for a reason. If everyone just treated like a place to post what they are rping, be they n Dralk, Kion, or where ever, the channel would turn into a complete and utter mess. You get 3 people rping they are in dralk, 2 are in kion, 4 in Chiconis and so on. It would just be one biiiiig headache trying to follow everything. If it is in a specific place though, it allows for more indepth rp since you don't have to worry about trying to make sense of what the heck or where the heck the other people are in the world. Some of the rp in the channel can stretch a bit out of the valley, true, but it is always somewhat nearby. Usually if they totally go to another place, they go to another channel. Makes sense to me. ^^

[Raptress]

Players are not "frowned upon" necessarily for making a post that is outside the generally-accepted RP channel setting.

What does happen (or at least, what I personally will do) is someone informing the person RPing in another area that many who enter RP chat do so under the assumption that the area is the RP valley. If someone's RPing in Dralk, they're not really going to be able to interact with anyone in a valley, now, are they?

Since no one wants to be just RPing alone with no one joining them, usually the newer player will switch to using the valley. Maybe it's not a perfect system, but as Sereamha has said, trying to keep with RP where multiple, mutually exclusive locations are used in a single channel would be a huge headache. So, the majority of RPers chose to set the setting of RP chat to reduce confusion and ensure that the characters one sees ICly in the chat are, for the most part, ones that your character can interact with.

If people in the RP chat go off to another area, say Chiconis, they usually will RP leaving the RP valley and take their RP over to Chiconis in-game or to another channel, perhaps even to tells.

[Chasing]

*Disclaimer* Need to point out that I do not predominately RP, and I live on Chaos as opposed to Order (only time I really log into Order is if I want to talk to someone on Order).

However here is are couple of observations that jump out at me (consider this as an outside view looking in)

The role play environment on Order is not clear to a new player

• They make mistakes whether OCC or RP
• They don't know which channels are private, OCC, open RP, constrained RP
• The ingame tutorials point players to the Istaria Bot Channels but don't explain their use in a RP/OCC context.
• How to use OCC is not explained in the policy (for example I know that if you want to say something in OCC in a RP channel you are supposed to use () around what you want to say - who made that rule? etc)

Role play is predominately 'self policed' by the playerbase (as indicated in the Role Play policy)

• Players are establishing rulesets on the main system channels which differ from the official policy on the system channels.
• There may be different rulesets in place on the system channels and no official buyin/agreement (what one set of players impose may or may not clash with another persons view of immersion)

Role Play is open ended

• Players want to immerse themselves at different levels (casual, geographic, deep etc). This creates a situation where people will choose to use specific channels because they want a level of immersion they can't get from a system channel.
• Everyone has a different mindset when it comes to role play (I am assuming here that it is difficult to find other players easily that share the same mindset/immersion)
• How can a player (new or existing) join into a specific channel when they don't know the depth / context of RP in that channel ? (and whether it is RP or OCC). Example already mentioned in this thread, players not responding to other players as due to their level of immersion they consider the player is not in the same location as themselves and therefore cannot respond.
• One person's choice of roleplay immersion may clash with another person's choice of roleplay - How is that managed without being counter productive to role play as a whole? (different people will deal with this in different ways, maybe a good way, maybe a not so good way)

Now I can suggest possible solutions/workarounds but I don't want to yet (one glaringly obvious one to me). More interested in what people say to the above.

[Raptress]

• How to use OCC is not explained in the policy (for example I know that if you want to say something in OCC in a RP channel you are supposed to use () around what you want to say - who made that rule? etc)

• Everyone has a different mindset when it comes to role play (I am assuming here that it is difficult to find other players easily that share the same mindset/immersion)

I'm only addressing these right now as I have clearer answers for them than the others.

First point: As far as I know, use of some kind of bracketing for OOC is standard practice in many other places than just Istaria, so I'm thinking figuring out who made this "rule" (more a courtesy) would be an exercise in futility.

Second point: Your assumption is incorrect. I would say that most people on the server are compatible as far as RP styles/immersion levels go. Even those who do not do the whole "posting ten sentences at a time" thing can RP with those that do if they don't mind a bit of a wait for a reply.

Cases where someone does what joemarra did are rare. To use the RP chat "valley" again as an example, the system of having a set place in which characters meet works for most of the RPers on the server; that's the entire reason that it persists.

It is not like it is a group of a few people that are trying to enforce the fact that RP chat is its own place. The fact is that most of the server uses it this way, and I've seen many newbies to the server happily assimilating to this way of doing things.

[LungTien Temeraire]

When I talk with new players about this, I tend to ask them, at first, if they know how the other roleplayers do, and if they don't, I explain this to them (IC, OoC, brackets, RP areas,...). I tend to not speak about rules, just explaining them what, when, how, and why. I did that yesterday, with a new player, and he quickly adopted the brackets.

[Fix]

Excellent to see people discussing this!

Just what I wanted.

[Chasing]

First point: As far as I know, use of some kind of bracketing for OOC is standard practice in many other places than just Istaria, so I'm thinking figuring out who made this "rule" (more a courtesy) would be an exercise in futility.

*Nods*, my knowledge of how RP actually works across the MMO genre is limited, but saying that, if someone was completely new to RP and wanted to RP they still wouldn't know what is 'standard practise' or not.

Second point: Your assumption is incorrect. I would say that most people on the server are compatible as far as RP styles/immersion levels go. Even those who do not do the whole "posting ten sentences at a time" thing can RP with those that do if they don't mind a bit of a wait for a reply.

Fair enough, however there is still a minority then (how big a minority?).

Not to discount your view Raptress, but how many ppl on Order would agree or disagree with what I've said? That would be a better measure of whether it is an issue or not.

It is not like it is a group of a few people that are trying to enforce the fact that RP chat is its own place. The fact is that most of the server uses it this way, and I've seen many newbies to the server happily assimilating to this way of doing things.

That is good to know then, 'Self Policing' can be dangerous if individuals or groups of players decide they want to impose specific rules on boundaries of RP in public areas or public chats, because they want everyone to follow a specific mindset (which in itself is ironic as roleplay is only limited by a person's imagination, however I would say that RP'ing that is morally wrong/dishonest is not suitable in any context).