Quote:Making RP accessible to only the select few is a surefire way to kill a RP enviorment...
Knowing too much about this and that and why he or she did this and that kills RP enviroment aswell. My 2 pennies.
Can't repreat myself enough times but people confusing role play with all knowing. Thats not the same. Role play symbolises a fictional world. But as in the real world you never know why the thug stabbed you down, he only said "stand and deliver" when you were wolking down the street right?
Nuff said, some people need to explain EVERYTHING while other people can just engage you without a word, then you go all furious about you've been killed by this n that?
Too much spoiler going on, and with this amount of...how did I say, all knowing, game is becoming something less. Lot of you people trying to justify everything with the word RP while loosing the core meaning of RP and how it should work.
The spark of mistery is fleeting away with each forum thread read wich isn't meant for your eyes. Cant repeat myself enough and I hate to be parrot joe. :angry:
You can contact people by other means then the forum
And no one will know about it.
You can discuss things without anyone knowing about it.
Just post the result of your actions on the forum,
Everyone deserves to have a look at politics, diplomacy etc.
Because if you want to join a group you wanna know what they do and what has been changed since the last time.
Maybe punish people if they come walking in topics which they have no connection what so ever with and/or un-invited in.
Having "Only for LN" or something in your topic name should be enough to keep people from posting, but don't forbid people to read it, because it can be useful for indies who are in the faction. But using the into for a character that shouldn't know anthing about it is just stupid and should be punished if it could be tracked down. It's the same as going OOC in system actually.
Having said that...
Just let everyone read everything.
But when un-invited forbid them to post, although not for moderators ofcourse.
Nooblet, drop the conspiracy theories. No-body is ganging up on the Omicroners, this is a general argument.
Now then, on restricting forum RP. As I see it, the reasons could be as follows-
a) To avoid Metagaming (Easily the strongest reason)
b)To prevent hijacking of RP (also called Powergaming, which can arise out of metagaming..but heh)
The reasons against, have already been given.
This is quite simply, a kind of discrimination against Independent players who are not directly linked with faction affairs, but would like to have a general know of how the faction's RP is going. The point here is, if you encrypt threads or hide them for non faction members...The Indies get left out cold. Because quite simply, it is impossible to keep track of all the Indies and give them access to the various encryption codes needed. If a faction wants to hide it's RP even from itself....:wacko:. Fine, you want to avoid metagaming. Aerelm said it best, Metagaming only occurs when people act on the information they can access as a player. I am kind of happy to say, this does not happen all that often here.
Fine, hide your RP such that only your faction can figure it out. What is the point of posting it on the forums then? As I read, it is to allow people "partial" Access to information that would normally be exchanged via Skype. That is utter bull of a point, because no-one is going to spend time trying to understand your encryption, so your partial access counts for nothing.
Also, It causes the Forum host, a significant amount of trouble with Legalities, which can only be avoided by moving the server elsewhere. If you do that, it'll cost more, the server is run by donations, donations are fickle in nature. I doubt we want to spend more money just to allow some childish people to hide their toys from others.
Hiding the RP gives similar results. Also smacks of elitism, allowing only select people to read your RP. And let's talk about metagaming while we are at it.
In the real world too, information leaks out. Why? Many people work on big things, and sometimes a stray word leaks out. This is called a rumor. Fine, they might not figure out the entire essence of what you are planning, but rumors spread about any and everything. A little metagaming is actually justifiable because of the phenomenon of rumor spreading...But hey, let's be nice and try not to do it. I think this argument only came up because The Zoner faction is feeling kind of bullied and shafted OORPly...
So long story short, There is no need for encryption or hidden RP, and the server is fine where it is. Thank you A&L for being so generous as to help us out...
' Wrote:Fine, you want to avoid metagaming. Aerelm said it best, Metagaming only occurs when people act on the information they can access as a player. I am kind of happy to say, this does not happen all that often here.
Hiding the RP gives similar results. Also smacks of elitism, allowing only select people to read your RP. And let's talk about metagaming while we are at it.
In the real world too, information leaks out. Why? Many people work on big things, and sometimes a stray word leaks out. This is called a rumor. Fine, they might not figure out the entire essence of what you are planning, but rumors spread about any and everything. A little metagaming is actually justifiable because of the phenomenon of rumor spreading...But hey, let's be nice and try not to do it. I think this argument only came up because The Zoner faction is feeling kind of bullied and shafted OORPly...
So long story short, There is no need for encryption or hidden RP, and the server is fine where it is. Thank you A&L for being so generous as to help us out...
Sure thing. Then all you've got to do is make an indie character for the factions you're interested in, read their encrypted messages(even when It's encrypted for their member, elitism? yes, maybe. trying to avoid meta gaming? absolutely).
Let's twist your real world example because it seemed a bit flawed to me.
Let's say I'm a member of a certain country, lets call it T. The T. government is using encrypted messages to communicate with It's military assests, financial assets and whatever it needs to communicate with. I, as a citizen of T. DON'T have the rights, nor the means to look into these encrypted messages. But turns out my friend, who is working for the federal T. agency have the encryption codes, and one day we drink a lot, and my friend starts to show me the inner communications.
Would you liek to know the result?
Even if T. is the most tolerant democratic state, we would get serious jail time, for the breaking of national security.
So if you're for example a cadet of the libertty navy(indie character) you won't be able to read the communications of general x and general y(encrypted to their eyes only).After all that's what official factions about, to be able to get the little background information of your selected faction trough a lot of work and dedication Isn't it?
There have been use of multiple information gathered from the forums. That's metagaming, and even a lot more cases where people don't really USE the information, but have it, so they actually know what the hell is happening, while their character should not.
I don't think the indies are being closed out of anything, rather I think the officials are mis-using meta gaming. Devil's doorway to avoid the meta game rule: don't USE the info. It's well enough if you KNOW it.
And for god's sake, forget justifying everything with the zoners. It's boring to hear everywhere that everything is because the zoners do this and do that. These issues are about much more than 1or2 zoner factions.
Elitism is a sin right? While you judge metagaming much much much more lightly.
Quote:rolf why encrypt messages on a public RP forum?
Seems my posts have been ignored time and time again.
The idea was to give away snippets of secret information that you would other wise never know. Understand this concept. The entire plan was to reveal roleplay that no one's ever seen on the outside because everybody uses Skype for their secret messages.
The encryption thread was simply a test. My message, when translated, was something like: "This is an encrypted transmission. You need a special key to read it." What followed was a response of "yes, we read you, this will be useful." After that the plan was to maybe have a few, very limited RP threads with readable information and hidden data intertwined. It would work like a sneak peak into the inner workings of things that most people never put on the forums.
And as far the legal business is concerned, I gave away the encryption keys to a mod and an administrator.
' Wrote:Yes i know i'll be posting something that will have nothing to do with the current discussion, but i think it still should be adressed in this thread.
How do the Danish think about violence described in a story?
There's no censorship issue wrt Danish law, so be as graphic as you want, within the rules of the forum.
' Wrote:And as far the legal business is concerned, I gave away the encryption keys to a mod and an administrator.
Which moderator and which administrator, and when ?
Since I am the one that needs to have it, and none of them have contacted me, nor have you done so. Neither the mods, nor the admins are the ones that needs to comply with the legal issue at hand. I am.
I have used encrypted emails, rhyming code between myself and pieguy to discuss the political situation in Gallia. It was amusing to do as a one shot thing.
However, I trust that the SCRA message dump is secured.
If there is a problem with the communication threads being intercepted, it is for the moderators to decide what is and isn't metagaming, fairly, as a team.
I trust the Admin team to step in when they need to.
So do we need encrypted messages, meh, I think it is redundant.
People are usually careful in what they post on the forums, if in doubt... take a sensitive negotiation IN GAME.
So my opinion is simple, obey the Danish law (and eat a Danish if you get the chance)