Thoughts on realism and role-playing

[abbamouse]

Elements of Freelancer are "unrealistic" if taken literally, but can be taken figuratively. For example, if you take space as represented on your screen literally, planets are tiny and the distance between them is small. However, if you assume that you aren't really looking at space, but simply a representation of what's going on, it makes sense that it looks the way it does. After all, cities on our road maps aren't drawn to scale -- they normally are much bigger than the dots on the map. Similarly, ships are not drawn to the same scale as planets to make it easier to see everything at once. It's just more convenient to represent things that way.

Other elements can be understood as a matter of perspective. For example, there ARE vertical systems in Freelancer, but since direction in space is arbitrary, the ship's computer orients you as if the system were horizontal. The terms horizontal and vertical have meaning only with reference to some external fixed point -- and no such point exists to compare systems (you must use jump holes to travel between them, after all). As for why they are disks at all, that is actually pretty realistic (albeit a wee bit too perfect, with no planets out of alignment). Stellar systems really do tend to form disks. Even galaxies do that.

How big is Sirius? There are probably many "unexplored" (uninteresting) systems like Omicron Lost. However, we only have access to systems with jump portals of some sort. No one constructs jump gates to systems without anything useful in them, and we're stuck with the jump holes we get. The overall map is not drawn to scale -- indeed, it isn't even drawn to shape. It is the equivalent of a subway map, with everything laid out in a grid that makes it easy to see how to get from one system to another. The traveler simply doesn't care about absolute distances, only travel time -- something represented by this map.

As for populations, remember that here on Earth populations can both increase and decrease. Europe's population is expected to actually decline as fertility drops below replacement level. Indeed, nearly all population growth in the US is due to immigration, not fertility. So the figures in the same seem reasonable to me. Remember that these aren't worlds where the vast majority live in abject poverty. The GDP of these planets is immense, and per-capita GDP must also be immense. After all, it is actually worthwhile to ship food rations across multiple star systems instead of just growing food at home. Despite the oceans seen on some planets, water is mined from ice fields. These indicate that space travel is so cheap and affordable that domestic producers simply cannot compete with foreign imports (shout-out to the Xenos).

What we SHOULD to make realistic on this server is human motivation. If you're infested or a Nomad, you are ALIEN and so we cannot know how you think. However, most people RP humans. The whole exercise in RP is always a "what if" scenario: what is people existed in such a fantasy/scifi/Western/ancient setting? What kind of personalities would emerge and how would they behave?

This is actually the part that usually breaks realism for me. Bad RP makes suspension of disbelief impossible. I can handle technology and even magic, but not humans that don't behave like humans. I won't list all the ooRP stuff I see, since everyone else sees it too, there are a multitude of threads on the subject, and there is widespread consensus on the value of RP. However, I do have three general thoughts on RP I'd like to throw out for discussion:

1. If people in our world behave in some way, shouldn't we expect them to behave the same way in other worlds as well? Bad people do bad things, like murder people for money or even fun. A handful of server conventions make it difficult to genuinely RP a bad guy.

Example: my Corsair decided to become a peaceful trader and give up her thieving ways. She got a cargo ship and a Trader ID and began making trade runs, shooting at Corsairs from time to time so people would know she was no longer one of them. However, an Outcast saw her ship in Bretonia, said "die Corsair!" and destroyed her in short order. This is actually realistic and reasonable role-play. If someone has a Corsair tag, regardless of ID, that means they have a reputation for supporting the Corsairs. Outcasts are going to hold a grudge even if they do decide to become Traders. But I think this was actually against server rules, since the attacker either didn't scan for ID (a no-no) or scanned and then attacked a trader as a pirate (Outcast) without demanding money.

Surely, there is some guideline for piracy that would enable pirates to behave like the nasty thugs that most of them are. Some of them are modeled on organized crime, and I don't think Michael Corleone (or John Gotti, for that matter) always made demands for money before actually killing an enemy. Or perhaps people could be attacked by "at war" factions (Corsairs vs Outcasts) regardless of ID (OK, exempt the neutrals for admin reaons) if they have a bad reputation. Why would you suffer someone with a rep for selling your kind up the river to continue to live?

2. If differences between factions' ships and weapons were merely cosmetic, then using them would be important for RP because it would reflect the trappings of one's culture. However, in a world where there are important functional differences between weapons and ships, people will naturally want to live rather than die. I assume this basic human motivation exists in the Sirius sector, since 800 years really isn’t much time to breed out the instinct for self-preservation.

In our world, people often think that their weapons are inferior to those of their rivals and try to remedy the situation. Bandits and thugs will use whatever they can lay their hands on. Do you think the mafia cares whether its people carry Berettas or Colts? Guerillas will also make do with what they can access, although they may begin to standardize as they grow in numbers and rely on extensive supply chains.

However, even modern professional soldiers have been known to use the enemy's weapons. In the first World War, the Germans lacked effective tanks of their own, so they used captured British models. In the second World War, the Soviets routinely used captured Panzerfausts, since they lacked comparable anti-tank weapons of their own. In the current war in Iraq, many American soldiers actually bought their own body armor (Dragon Skin was a popular choice) rather than make do with the sub-standard GI equipment. They did the same with their Humvees, often removing armor from Iraqi vehicles and welding it to their own.

The rule against using opponents' weapons cannot be for game balance, because you can't get any more balanced than everyone being allowed to use anything. It must exist for RP reasons. If that's the case, then perhaps it can be refined by simply attaching a list of permitted weapons for each faction. I suggest that in order to make such a list, we should think about the real constraints and opportunities faced by characters in that faction. The general RP thing to do is to look at your character's motivation (most rational people expecting combat would prefer to use the best weapons for their anticipated life-or-death struggles), the constraints around your character (law enforcement has very standard equipment, as do military organizations -- so you wouldn't be permitted to use non-official weapons and ships), and the access to spare parts and ammunition (not really represented in the game, but this implies you should be able to dock at bases that sell the item). This set of guidelines would give a somewhat broader selection of weapons than the "use only your faction's arsenal" rule.

3. A number of people have recommended establishing a trader character to make money and fund the operations of one's other characters. This strikes me as a core anti-RP position. After all, the first rule of RP is to distinguish player knowledge and motivation from character knowledge and motivation. In, say, Dungeons and Dragons or some other RPG, it would be poor form for a player to have two characters who always supported each other, even when one of the characters was supposed to be a greedy backstabber. Players would expect the DM to intervene and enforce RP.

Similarly, in Freelancer, why would your trader character suddenly have a desire to donate 10 million credits to your pirate character? Can one honestly RP a trader that exists only to fund others? And if so, why doesn't the trader hand out credits like candy? How does the trader "know" that this other character is being "run" by the same player as the trader? I understand that we might wink-wink/nudge-nudge at such behavior since it makes the game fun for some people, but surely we shouldn't be openly broadcasting calls to refrain from RPing one's characters in an honest manner.

This is WHY my Corsair became a trader, instead of having her controller (ME) create a new character without a bad rep and trade happily. In RP, she learned that the money was better if she switched to trading -- and she has a radical religious cult to fund (she was only using the Corsairs as a front to extort money). She simply had to deal with the fact that she was treated as a pirate by most NPCs -- and PCs -- until she killed enough pirates to prove she was no longer one of them. This was difficult and she got blown up a lot, but it made the character more interesting and reinforced her willingness to use any means to achieve the ultimate ends of her religious calling.

In conclusion, I'm not really suggesting anything radical. The rules are close to RP as they stand. However, there are a few discrepancies and incremental changes (an exception to the pirate-trader rule, a list of weapons instead of a simple faction-only rule, an explicit ban on broadcasting or advocating non-RP interactions between a player's own characters) might make for more realistic characters in this fantasy world, allowing for suspension of disbelief.

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I go by abbamouse, but my characters are the Cryer researcher Daniel Moss, the very boring and ordinary trader John Smith, the borderline-insane civilian Mr Joker, and a Bundschuh activist who goes by the alias Rosa Luxemburg. I am not them and they are not me.