The Crimson Empire about Role Play concept

I'd like to take a moment to speak about The Crimson Empire and the concepts involving role play.

There are many misconceptions about it's meaning and appliance in game, so I'd like to clarify a few things in advance.
First, let's see some basics:

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to role-play is ``a player taking on the roles of imaginary characters, usually in a setting created by a referee, and thereby vicariously experience the imagined adventures of these characters.''

Of course, this begs the question of what it means to "take on the role" of an imaginary character. In many games you have a character which is really a token without personality. For example, in the boardgame Clue ™ your token is a suspect in a murder mystery. In a video game, your token might be a fighter pilot.

In my opinion, the difference between a token and a role-played character is this: Hypothetically, a person watching the game looks over your shoulder and suggests a move, and your reply is "No, my character wouldn't do that." If this happens, or is capable of happening, then at some level you are role-playing. This simple distinction puts a world of difference between role play a character or not.

There are many levels and discussions that could come with this mind set. Some goes extreme by saying that the mere fact of logging in into a game makes you a role play. How? You're automatically a space pilot. We, at Crimson Empire don't believe in this concept.

For us, role playing is, forming a character , toon or token with a complete unique and separated identity of the player. We use our characters as an actor would use his personage.

Each of our characters are completely separated identities from players and that's very important to understand. Meeting Revan Neferis, The Thrice Illustrious eccentric Sovereign isn't the same as meeting Stephanie, the player.

To distinguish we use the IC ( In character) posts for role play and OOC ( Out of character) posts meaning that we are communicating as a player.


This part clear, I'd like to proceed to the next important issue: There is a misconception regarding role players simply " creating stories " and not applying them to in game mechanisms. This isn't our case.

We will reflect our Role play exactly as we will act at space. We don't fake wars. We don't make out of character agreements to influence in character actions. We are absolutely strict about this. What happen IC, must have ic consequences.

That's the way we operate.

Nice one Steph, Important explanations that I'm sure will serve us well now and in the future.