Reminder: RP, OOC and LFG channels

[Alykia]

Just a friendly reminder of some public channels to help with the role playing and general gaming community

 

(Note: The following is standard for the RP-PVE server Lord Adraas and what had also been seen on other servers. Server channel style and use may vary.)

 

/cjoin

 

RP - A public communications com.

All chatter on this is considered to be in character.

 

OOC - Out of Character discussion.

Complimenting the RP channel, generally anyone in the RP channel is often found in the OOC channel as well so as to make sure that any ooc chatter remains separated from the IC communications.

 

LFG - Looking for Group

Not a roleplay server specific but still useful, this channel is great for receiving LFG requests such as Flashpoint requests while on other worlds. If you join only one custom channel, it is heavily suggested to join this one.

 

==========================

SERVER:______/IC_______/OOC

Lord Adrass:___/RP_______/OOC

Vrook Lamar:____________/RPOOC

Jung Ma:________________/RP

==========================

 

 

 

• PC
  Player Character. - a character controlled by a player. Other terms commonly used for this are also; Toon-Cartoon, Avi-Avitar and Char-Character.
  
• NPC
  Non-Player Character. - Any other character in the game world. Most common examples are a bartender at a cantina, commoner on the street, quest givers and any other game controlled character. Also included are characters that exist purely for storyline and background basis and are not controlled or role played regularly by a player.
  
• IC
  In Character. What your character thinks, says and knows.
  
• OOC
  Out of Character. What you the player thinks, says and knows. This includes anything that takes place outside the game world.
  
• Metagameing
  When OOC knowledge, opinions and/or personal feelings are brought in game and affect the character's knowledge/actions/ext. This includes a character using any information they have not gained IC.
  
• Godmodding
  Literally acting the part of a god and/or invincible character. Claiming your character is all powerful, or with no weaknesses. It can also refer to the case where a player describes the outcome of their own actions against another character. Another form of godmodding is where a character dodges everything, and no attacks ever land during the course of roleplayed combat in text (/me). Godmodding is thus used like a "Get Out of Jail Free card" when things don't go the way a player wants, rather than working with previously unfolded events.
  
• Reading Tags
  Reading an avatar’s name or description to use in the RP without having discovered it IC. Also see Metagameing.
  
• F2B
  Fade to Black. When actions and/or consequences happen in a scene, but are not roleplayed out. Example: Characters often sleep, or tend to personal maters but it is not roleplayed.
  
• Mary-Sue
  An unrealistically "perfect" or "special" character, especially when it is not consistent with the lore (ie, a being made purely of the Force with special Force Powers no other person ever had, does, or will ever have.). Alternatively, someone whom nothing bad ever happens to, and/or all issues and conflicts are easily resolved in one or two "episodes" or encounters.
  
• Perma-Death
  Also known as permanent death. The act of having a character be permanently killed off the game. Doing this would completely delete your character from play. Usually this requires the consent of all participants. Due to the workings of the MMO and the time spent in leveling characters, this is a rare occurrence and characters are usually killed and come back later with no memory of the death or any event leading up to it, and are not aloud and/or are unable to take action/revenge for the death itself.
  
• Canon
  The original source material, e.g. the books, comics, movie, video game, etc. where the characters and/or world came from.
  
• Retcon
  Short for 'retroactive continuity'. This refers to a player (or players) OOCly backtracking and erasing plots from the IC continuity as if they had never happened
  

.

 

Please share any comments/suggestions on anything I may have missed.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Alykia
Corrected error.

[Guildrum]

Just a note, I have never seen fanon regarded as "almost as true as canon", it is only a story in a universe made by a fan of that universe, nothing more, to my knowledge that is.

 

Mary-Sue- An unrealistically "perfect" or "special" character, especially when it is not consistent with the lore (ie, a being made purely of the Force with special Force Powers no other person ever had, does, or will ever have.) Alternatively, someone who nothing bad happens to, or all issues are easily resolved in one or two "episodes" or encounters.

[MsChevious]

On Vrook Lamar the most used OOC channel is RPOOC. There may be an "OOC" one I don't know about, but if you don't find anyone there, check out RPOOC usually there are people hanging out in that one

[Sendra]

Would probably help if you identified the server and faction the OP refers to.

 

On Jung Ma, the creators of the RP channel on both sides stated their intention for it to be for general OOC chat among RPers. As a result, there is no OOC partner to it. Those of us who have been using the RP channel the most (on the Republic side at least) are continuing with the OOC nature of the channel.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Sendra

[Alykia]

Thank you for the helpful responses!

 

Edit:

Added Mary-Sue. Also added note about server and channel variations.

 

A thought. People could list what their RP channel is and I can add it on the bottom for the RP channel for each server. A server IC channel list. That could be handy unless its been done before. I had not gone through the forums to try to find a thread with that yet.

[DuchessOfKvetch]

I know our off-site Ebon Hawk web has a thread for custom chat channels, but every server seems slightly different.

 

OOC & LFG seem to be good reliable staples - but then, most people still post LFG requests in General chat.

 

IC channels are where the most diversity comes into play. And I've been on several at once, that remain mostly silent. I think once the communities become more integrated (right now most rpers are still scattered and on questing honeymoons), we may see more activity on the IC channels. For now, people who want to RP ironically hookup on the OOC channels, and then do all their IC communication in person.

[shadowdream]

For Kath Hound, I've started RPrepublic and RPempire. Both are OOC channels to meet, chat, and organize.

[CosmicKat]

I remember the "good old days" when RPers never worried about 84 billion different terms, abbreviations and other assorted acronyms to define what RP was, or where and when it was acceptable. With no offense intended to anyone here are some of my RP Golden Rules.

 

1) Just Role Play. It's a role playing game, or at the very least, a modern derivatitive of a role playing game. Don't worry about anyone else's Ye Olde Important Rules For Roleplay.

 

2) This one may seem revolutionary to you kids out there but..... Role Play while you are playing the game! There is nothing at all stopping you from RPing while you level up, explore, craft, quest or anything else you do while playing the game.

 

3) Role playing does not have to be epic or earth-shatteringly important. Always remember that you are the actor of the "play". You are not the director, writer, and producer.

 

4) Lighten up.

 

5) ((OOC: Using brackets and/or OOC is only needed when there is any doubt that what you are saying may not be IC.))

 

6) ((OOC: If the majority of what you type is in brackets and/or includes the "OOC:" disclaimer, why are you playing a Role Playing game on a Role Playing server?))

 

7) ((OOC: It is exceptionally easy to play any game almost entirely In Character with very little excercising of the imagination muscle.))

 

8) ((OOC: I really hate brackets.))

[Soultranna]

/me slices CosmicKat's systems, and disables her ( and ) keys

 

Yes... an example of god-moding AND OOC metagaming. Hopefully an amusing one.

[Guildrum]

Cosmic, the point of this is that there are already a bunch of abbrevations, and if you don't know what they mean, you could be terribly confused by them.

[Ajli]

Lord Calypho empire side uses the RP channel as an OOC communication chatbox, mostly. I do believe this is the case on republic as well, though I'm not sure.

[CosmicKat]

Cosmic, the point of this is that there are already a bunch of abbrevations, and if you don't know what they mean, you could be terribly confused by them.

 

I understand what the point of the thread was. My point is that roleplayers often spend far more time arguing about this nonsense than they do roleplaying.

 

Example: I can't remember which of the RP servers I was on yesterday but somebody on General was attempting an in character "LFG" post. Instead of just "rolling with it" the so-called roleplaying community jumped all over him/her for having the audacity to roleplay on a General chat channel. This is entirely self-defeating and more than a little pretensious. Sadly, the original offending (?) post was the only instance of roleplaying I had seen on that particular server.

 

Is it so hard to suspend disbelief for a few minutes to pretend that General could somehow be used for IC posts? You are using a laser sword that ends 3 feet from where it began! You are blocking laser beams... with a sword! The laws of physics, science, logic, reason, have almost no connection to the Star Wars universe. It is high fantasy and, as such, anything is possible.

[DuchessOfKvetch]

I haven't seen hardly anyone using LFG or Trade, even - people are lazy and just use General.

 

This is why I favor super-simple approaches - setting "go-to" standards that are easy to remember and work for ANY server you roll up on (or any MMO, for that matter).

 

Having fancier custom names can work down the road, once the community is big enough to support it, and there's more than a handful of folks spreading the word about it. Aka, once the usual channels of communication become common knowledge.

 

But adding complexity early is just asking for it to be largely ignored.

[JekRendar]

Honestly, I've been on LA since Day 1 of EA, but only recently heard of the "RP" channel. However, since EA Day 1, I've been using the swtorrp channel on both my Republic and Empire characters. It's the unofficial channel of SWTOR-RP.com.

[DuchessOfKvetch]

We tried that too, but no one ever used it.

 

Custom chat is still somewhat crippled by the 2-channel limit (that last hotfix did nothing to fix it).

[DuchessOfKvetch]

Can the OP post this over on the new server forums section?

[SelinaK]

I like this thread, there should be more effort to be inclusive for new players I think ingame too, I don't like how guild RP tends to get people out of the public areas and away from the streets so that there's less chance of new players being able to see RP happening and get interested in it, and possibly even join in - it's much better I think if everyone just tries to keep it "real"

 

There's another thread about dealing with channel problems here, I just posted a reply:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=204594&page=3

I think the only real answer is for Bioware to start lurking on channels since player-ran communities always turn out bad due to the type of people that rise to the top, well... it's often not the cream that rises to the top usually in the real world either, people do it for the wrong reasons, power, control and need for self justification in the face of inferiority complexes - like with fan site self-appointed "owners", "administrators" and "Editor-in-Chief"s, it often ends up with people that have not-so-good real lives soothing their egos by bullying others online.

 

Can the OP post this over on the new server forums section?

This isn't specific to any one particular server - it's in the right forum. Edited January 22, 2012 by SelinaK

[DuchessOfKvetch]

Last time I looked, the "2 custom channel max" bug was still unfixed.

 

So like a lot of others I suspect, I'm using them for "OOC" and a semi-private channel I use to keep in touch with friends cross-guild.

 

Anything else I create, simply for a special event or scene, I do so knowing that it will go POOF when I log off.

 

Still, this bears repeated stressing - getting as many rpers on your server's designated OOC channel will do wonders for enriching a community and bringing people together. I try to let every stray rper I run into know about it, but since I mainly play on one faction, it only goes so far.

 

When you're visiting planets, spread the word in General chat too!

[DuchessOfKvetch]

Le bump. Been a while. For you new RP servers, list your channels too!

 

TLDR though - most every rp server uses "OOC" as an alternative for General chat. It works across all planets/zones (just not cross faction).

 

Some servers use a variant, or have good luck with an actual IC chat channel, but what you're looking for first and foremost is that way to turn off the trolls in General and locate other rper's when in game.

 

The more people use OOC, the more the community grows, as it gets used a lot more than these forums do.

Edited March 15, 2012 by DuchessOfKvetch

[Scorpienne]

Sanctum of the Exalted has IC roleplaying and OC galaxy-wide channels.

 

Republicnet is the Republic IC channel, and Republicooc is the Republic OOC channel. These are server-wide. Imperialnet and Imperialooc are the Imperial equivalents. They’re generally quiet, until someone starts RPing and then a lot of folks chime in.

 

 

Paige