I am a roleplayer, so my character of course has a personality. However, it only has a vague influence on my choices in quests. I make sure that the DS/LS points, professions, etc correspond more or less to the personality, but on the details I'm not very preoccupied. First reason is that sometimes my character would take option four. Second is that sometimes my character would never be in the plot in the first place. In fact, because everyone with the same class goes through the same plot, by necessity my character cannot actually incorporate that plot. Third reason, is that I don't really consider it to be roleplay. To me, roleplay requires other players with whom to interact. I could consider the interactive storyline system to be the other roleplayer I suppose, but at best, this is a simple 'trinary' tree, and at worst a linear story. No matter what my option is, the end result is rarely very different. It has none of the variability and dynamism of roleplaying with other people. It's fun, yes, but not half as fun as roleplay with other human beings. What I will do sometimes is consider that while questing, I'm actually playing a different character, for whom all the choices make sense. Like my character on WoW was pleasant, righteous, scholarly, bearded, eccentric-blue-robes-wearing Lord Withamhall most of the time, but was misogynist, troll-hater, bearded, multi-coloured-armour-wearing Sir Michael Tarbane while questing.

The only problem I have with all this, are those brackets. I avoid speaking OOC in /say or /yell as much as possible, brackets or no brackets. If I want to talk to someone OOC, and I do so quite often, I'll use whatever channel that isn't /say or /yell that is most convenient. Brackets are for very specific and special circumstances where no other channel works, and never for idle chatter. My reasoning for this comes down to this: Roleplaying while people are chatting on other channels is hard enough. Roleplaying while a crowd of people are roleplaying around you is also hard enough. Roleplaying while people are chatting OOC on the same channel is extremely distracting. And brackets only make it worse because your ability to roleplay is being diminished by fellow roleplayers who should know better, and not merely by people who are often just ignorant of the nature of their server or the plight of roleplayers. I would urge my fellow roleplayers to follow the same guidelines as I think they create a better environment for all of us. As for being OOC, I do agree that if you can make something work IC, it's always nicer to do it IC. But sometimes you can't, or aren't in the mood to roleplay. So long as you don't interfere with other people's roleplay, there's no problem with that. I often do so myself, especially when alone. In this case, I would say they were interfering with other people's roleplay, by chatting OOC in /say. I'm sure there's some alternate channel they could have taken their banter to.

Galactic Basic: as spoke she is - By Yoda and Jar Jar Binks

Species/Race: Human Name: Ban Corain Sathelleon Nickname: Corain Gender: Male Place of Birth: Chandrila Age: 46 Height: Average Weight: Average/Light Hair Color/Style: Short light brown hair with white streaks. Full beard Facial Appearance: Face-like. Prominent nose. Eye Color: Grey Body Appearance: Light build. Home Planet: Tython, usually. Travels extensively. Current Residence: None, currently. Allegiance: The Jedi Order and the Republic. Profession: Jedi. Scholar of holocron lore. Armor/Clothes: Jedi robes. Primary Weapon(s): The Force Secondary Weapon(s): Green lightsaber. Likes: Enjoys mathematics, physics, history, philosophy, politics, visiting rural planets, huttese poetry, chandrilan beverages and the company of members of the opposite sex. Dislikes: Ecumenopoli (city planets), extreme temperatures, non-huttese poetry, hutts, unreasonable inflexibility, deceit, disregard for life and aerial pests that fly into your face. Biography: Corain was born in Chandrila to a family of politicians. While the family had ostentatiously wanted a Jedi in the family, they resisted when faced with the prospect of actually loosing a son to the order. Despite this, Corain was quickly taken to Coruscant to become an Initiate. He was taught by Chyroh Faron, a well respected Jedi Master. For unkown reasons, Master Chyroh Faron fell to the dark side and defected the order soon after Corain passed his Trials. Initially the order watched Corain with concern, fearing that he'd been 'contaminated' by or perhaps even been involved with his master's fall. However, their fears faded with time. Corain was eventually allowed choose his first apprentice. However, he lost this apprentice during confrontations with the Sith at the time of the Treaty of Coruscant and has only recently taken another.

ARGH. A damned power outage murdered and ate my super-long super-awesome forum reply. (Okay, it wasn't so awesome, but it was long.) Well, I'll give you the digest version. This is not impossible. I've seen it done, to a degree. But its success depends on a number of key issues that need to be addressed. And they are almost all related to power in roleplay. Power is given, not taken. Roleplayers don't tend to like it when someone tries to impose their character's power over their own character. Power institutions need a critical mass of community members must accept it, or their are meaningless vanity projects. And in order for those people to accept it, it needs to be careful about how it presents itself. First, I'd advise against doing the Dark Council or the Senate themselves. They are important lore institutions and there's a lot of encroaching on the lore involved when RPing them. Roleplayers don't tend to like that. I'd go for secondary non-lore institutions that act on their behalf. Second, it must establish the limits of its power carefully. It should probably avoid a situation where its members are by themselves powerful, and instead delegate specific temporary powers when necessary to enact a decision. Three, it should be an open community that actively engages with the community OOC. If RPers feel that they have a say in how the institution functions, they will probably accept its decisions. By participating, they give it power. Fourth, and perhaps most important of all, the institution needs to make it explicitly clear that any power that it has is restricted only to those who accept the institution. The institution's attitude OOC, if not even IC, must be one of service to the RP community, as a tool to generate interesting roleplay, rather than a centre of power that dominates anyone. Anyway, in roleplay things like power, fame and history are at their best when they emerge on their own. They are kind of like the holy grail of roleplay. Very difficult but very rewarding to achieve. The difficulty comes precisely because they are things that are determined by community, and not by an individual. Power requires others to obey, fame requires others to know you and history requires others to remember. But, like I said, it's extremely rewarding when they happen. On the other hand, if you go about it the wrong way, it can be hell. So, that's your game. Very difficult to find. Very rewarding when found. But potentially disastrous if it fails. /endramble