(07-27-2013, 05:44 PM)Naunet Wrote:(07-27-2013, 05:31 PM)Ashren Snow Wrote: Have you ever sat in a cafe or something and overheard a conversation, and then walked up to one of the people involved and whispered in their ear "Hey do you mind if I join your conversation?" I'm going to guess the answer to that is no. That would be incredibly creepy.
I'm all for folk walking up and entering a scene at will, but characterizing asking for permission as creepy is a bit disingenuous. This isn't real life; this is roleplay.
I think I misspoke, what I was referring to was immersion and I don't think I clarified that. Let me spin a tale here for a moment as an example.
Let us say that my character has an encyclopedic knowledge of the southern deserts of Thanalan, and he's just sitting around bored in the Adventurer's Guild waiting for something to do. In comes these two other adventurers talking about an expedition into the southern deserts, but perhaps they're bickering about some specific landmark or some such. My character overhears this, and his natural reaction would be to chime in and offer his expertise. Now either the two accept his offer of help, they decline it, or they outright ignore him but in either case I can roll with that and fluidly continue to RP. If they accept, and adventure starts and now the group has a guide! If they decline I politely nod my head and go about my business. If they ignore me then I can either pretend they didn't hear me, or perhaps react as if they just gave me the cold shoulder and make some remark before going on about my day.
This is fluid, immersed roleplay that plays out without any OOC direction or narration. It just happens as the events unfold naturally.
Now under the same example, lets say before engaging the two I whisper one or both of them to ask if it'd be alright for me to join them, and we'll say I get any of the three above responses in either case. Even if they respond positively and I get to join them, the problem I have is that I still had to pause, step outside of my character and then address them as the player before joining in.
This is what I meant by whispering in someones ear for permission to join their conversation. Imagine if you had to watch movies unedited where before every scene the director stopped the movie to tell the actors what to do next. There's no way you could get involved in the movie if he keeps breaking the immersion, and for me that's what needing permission to RP is like.
Don't get me wrong, if I see a small group of people somewhere secluded I'm not about to come running up to them with my pants on my head shouting "HAI GUIZ WACHA DOOING?!" I understand being courteous and what not, but my character is the type of guy that likes to sit around in popular places and listen in on conversations, so if he happened by a small group of people in an isolated area, he's more likely to sit a spell and have a listen in case something interesting is going down and if I see people posting in /say I feel it's only polite that I do the same to at least make it known that I'm there listening IC. If no one is saying anything in /say, I'll assume it's private and be on my way.
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