(02-06-2015, 06:54 PM)Nebbs Wrote: I am not sure there is a "normal" way to RP, it is quite a spectrum. Though these are just examples to pull out the fact that characters have no intent of their own, that has to come from the player.
I am still a little unsure of what you mean when you talk about "intent". Yes, all decisions ultimately come from the player - but a character can have very different intentions than the author's intentions for why they decided to give their character that particular intent.
A villainous character might have the intent that they want to cause chaos. They go off to viciously murder several people, frame Osric for the crime, and inadvertently spawn an investigation.
If the player of that character's intent is "My character will have this intent to cause chaos so I can create a kickass murder mystery event for the community to enjoy! I will also respectfully ask Osric's player for permission before having my character frame his character for horrible murder!" -- they are not mixing IC and OOC in a way that causes harm. They are, by most RPer's definition "not mixing IC and OOC".
If the player of that character's intent was instead "I hate Osric and I'm jealous of his majestic facial hair. I'm going to have my character hate him with a furious passion, kill a lot of people, frame Osric for it without his player's permission, and then send a swarm of my friends dressed up as Brass Blades and Sultansworn to harass him repeatedly without end, because it seems like a fun thing to do to someone I don't like." -- that is mixing IC and OOC. The player has an intent to cause harm.
On the flip side of the coin from 'hate', back in the super early days of 2.0 - Tiergan started a romance with a female character. My character's intent at the time was that he was attracted to the other person, and despite his many, many reservations, was going to give things a shot because the woman kept reassuring him that everything would be fine.
My intent as a player was "My character has more baggage than a luggage factory and it will be a lot of fun watching him struggle, grow, and develop as a character while trying to be in a relationship with another person." I did not feel romantic feelings for the other player or her character. She was not my girlfriend. I did not make any OOC demands of her, her character, or her time.
However - after about a month, it was very, very clear that the player of the female character had very, very different intentions than I did. (She definitely no longer plays! Just in case the mods are nervous. :V) Her character would often do extremely illogical things in an attempt to force myself and my character into situations she wanted OOC. The player would also get both IC and OOCly jealous if Tiergan spoke fondly of female friends or spent any time alone with another female character. This was irregardless of whether or not Tiergan was spending that time locked in combat along side the other woman to fight off bandits or just getting a drink to reminisce with an old female friend about old mercenary gigs.
Additionally, if I didn't spend time RPing with her every. single. day - she would get IC and OOC upset over it. It didn't matter if I didn't feel in the mood to RP that day or if I was exhausted and just wanted to PvE. It didn't matter that I had several other friends who wanted to RP with me and I couldn't blow them off to RP with her when my free time was extremely limited. It didn't matter even matter when my router started to die and I couldn't consistently stay logged in the game for two weeks. She would get IC and OOCly upset. She would send me lengthy whispers about how she needed me to RP with her more and her character would talk about how she felt like Tiergan didn't care about her due to their time apart.
It became insanely clear that she her intent was to experience something IC that she couldn't have OOC - whether that be feelings of romance, attention, or even just the feeling of control over another person. She may have crafted the perfect ideal Romance RP in her head for us, but I was in no way responsible for helping make that perfect RP ideal come true for her just because our characters were in a relationship. We were not dating. She was not entitled to me, my characters, my RP, or my time just because our imaginary characters were engaged in imaginary pretend-time romance.
The moment she thought she was and decided to let her OOC desires bleed into IC while also pressing into my space as a person -- she broke the cardinal rules of RP and mixed IC with OOC in a harmful way.