Stance/View on Lore: Factions of the RP Community

[Delilah Scythewood]

I've seen people from all across the spectrum. However, usually people in the middle with the occasional person who's like 'fuck the game, I do what I want'.

 

Personally, I consider myself in the middle while leaning towards trying to stick to the lore as much as possible. Of course, I'm always open to creative suggestions and loopholes. However, I tend to be a stickler about one thing and it's miqo'te lore but that's another story >.>;

[Seriphyn]

Lore enforcers can be autistic bellends, while free spirits can be a bunch of narcissistic wankers.

 

I think the narcissism is there; it's merely expressed OOC by positioning themselves as authorities and the correct arbiters and gatekeepers of acceptable RP instead of IC through their characters' actions. I have to make a distinction here between knowing the lore because you care about it (please don't hurt me Sounssy) and knowing it because knowing it gives your claims regarding correct RP authoritative weight. It's a vanity more likely to show up in things like shaming blogs and tumblr posts than in RP itself.

 

Of course, now I'm interested in what a lore-compliant Sue would look like, using the loose internet definition of Sue as "Overpowered character I don't like."

 

I know you're referring to "you" in the general sense, but you might be onto something. I want to ensure my character is as legit as possible rping x and y, so I mine the lore for any supporting material. When I come across someone who is rping the same thing but with a looser interpretation, I get insecure and feel a need to brandish the lore to defend my rp...even if it was never threatened.

 

Certainly, I'm a narcissist insofar I want my character to be as "loreapprovable" and as "realistic" to as wide an audience as possible.

[ArmachiA]

 

Well not a blog purely of the nature for Balmung but a few months back I saw occasional shaming posts of bloggers who just couldn't blog about anything about how stupid some other RPers' names were, their concepts etc. I decided to just stop going to tumblr shortly thereafter...

 

Ahahah, that sounds entertaining. I love it when people get critical, because oh-so-often they've got some blind spots themselves.

 

I've seen some drama on the Balmung tumblr circuit absolutely. I even vented about non-lore compliance on my own Tumblr (I think I left it untagged however) but that was a VERY special case of literal Demi-Godhood. It wasn't some CNJ who accidently used holy in a fight or something. Literal Demi-God.

I love Tumblr drama though, I'm generally not a part of it since you really have to pick your battles, but it's fun to watch.

 

When speaking of in-game and off-game though -- I tend to be harsher on these forums when people ask for opinions or ask for advice then I actually am in game. I see a thread thats like "What do you think?" and I go "Oh! Time to say what I think!" but I never like... try to shove that down anyone's throat in game. In fact, I'm pretty malleable to roleplaying with 95% of people. I just say my opinion on here because... well someone asked.

 

My guild does have a lore compliance rule, but that's only because we only thinks it's fair for everyone to agree to play by the same rules. Lore is a very easy rule.

[FreelanceWizard]

When speaking of in-game and off-game though -- I tend to be harsher on these forums when people ask for opinions or ask for advice then I actually am in game. I see a thread thats like "What do you think?" and I go "Oh! Time to say what I think!" but I never like... try to shove that down anyone's throat in game. In fact, I'm pretty malleable to roleplaying with 95% of people. I just say my opinion on here because... well someone asked.

 

^ This pretty much describes me 100%. If you come asking for an opinion or advice, then I'll say what I think; if we should happen to meet up in game, though, that's a different ball of wax.

 

Similarly, Mysterium has a lore compliance rule (down in our consent policy) -- but there's a lot of ways to make most concepts work within the bounds of lore. Also, I feel okay with the rules of a group to which one has to apply and be approved to join being stricter than that of "open RP."

[D'aito Kuji]

I've played MMOs for a long time and I've never been on the side of absolutists or fundamentalists.  There are some truths to be sure.  I strongly dislike it when RP'ers try to do crossovers from one game to another, such as playing their SW:TOR character in FFXIV.  But I'm not so keen on the idea that there aren't holes in the lore that the player can't fill with their own ideas so long as they don't completely contradict the rest of the world.

 

And of course, I dislike godmodders and gary stu type characters as well.

 

There are things that the lore actually supports, such as the main character quest/story line that I personally ignore.  For instance, that whole psychic thing that my character apparently has, or whatever that out of body stuff is meant to represent.  I just pretend that didn't happen for RP purposes.

 

And while she is capable and competent, she isn't as capable and competent for RP purposes.  The fun of RP, to me anyway, isn't in what she's capable of doing, it's in what she's not capable of doing but tries to do anyway.

 

I play a Miqo'te and even though there's some Lore, I don't feel there's enough about their traditions, history, biology, culture, and the like so there's a lot of contradictory information on this forum and every forum I've been to.  That's led me to make some truly ass clown mistakes and misinterpretations that I'm busy retconning.  So I could use some more solid Lore in that regard.

 

But there really is a lot of good Lore out there, it's just not always spoon fed to the player.

 

I guess really what I'm trying to say is that I reject the idea that what isn't directly stated by the Lore doesn't exist.  To me, player Lore and headcanons exist until they are directly contradicted by the Lore.

 

What sucks for me is that I'm finding that some of what I thought I knew about the Miqo'te is contradicted.

[OttoVann]

Ive had my balls firmly busted more than once about being Syndicate affiliated. I've since moved on from that portion of Otto almost entirely and wont bring it up ever.

 

My RP is definitely free spirit and I offer no apologies for it. However some things would bother me I guess. Miqo dragoons would be something that is flagrantly....'wat'. Outside of stuff that is just not possible lore wise, I dont care what happens.

[Seriphyn]

Ive had my balls firmly busted more than once about being Syndicate affiliated.  I've since moved on from that portion of Otto almost entirely and wont bring it up ever.

 

My RP is definitely free spirit and I offer no apologies for it.  However some things would bother me I guess.  Miqo dragoons would be something that is flagrantly....'wat'.  Outside of stuff that is just not possible lore wise, I dont care what happens.

 

That is a bunch of BS IMO. Sorry to hear that, Otto.

[Berrod Armstrong]

Ive had my balls firmly busted more than once about being Syndicate affiliated.  I've since moved on from that portion of Otto almost entirely and wont bring it up ever.

 

My RP is definitely free spirit and I offer no apologies for it.  However some things would bother me I guess.  Miqo dragoons would be something that is flagrantly....'wat'.  Outside of stuff that is just not possible lore wise, I dont care what happens.

 

That is a bunch of BS IMO. Sorry to hear that, Otto.

^

[Maril]

I like to follow the lore as much as I can, but I also wont just take anything in. I do not like to involve game mechanics in my RP, and some pieces of lore that /clearly/ just exist to reason for a game mechanic (I'm talking the levels of lore-wise explaining the dutyfinder. Some games do that a lot. That kinda stuff) is stuff that I really just don't take in to effect. Some things needs more than just a flavor text in order for me to feel like I can properly take it into RP.

I also do not follow the main storyline - Ie, my character isn't a hero of light and I do not believe that there's more than one person who goes through the job storylines, in line with what the lore-dev said during the panel. I refrain from involving big lore characters in my RP, and generally when it comes to quests and that I try my best to go "So what would this mean for a normal eorzean" instead of automatically assuming that everyone can do what people do in some quests. I think the latter also increasingly comes from the fact that I play very down-to-earth characters with no special powers as per se. Pretty much commoner-esque characters, my main is only just now learning how to fight with pointy things in a proper way (Being "pretty good in a bar brawl" doesn't cut it when someone wants to kill you specificly..)

On top of that I like to keep my FC on the same page, so some of the controversial things I see in a certain way because my FC has been talking about how to see it and we've come to a general conclusion.