Where Are Our Characters?

[Wes]

I was thinking about how there's no "neutral centerpiece" of the Star Army setting like I've see with some other sci-fi RPs (even ones with multiple played factions). I guess this is because our RPs tend to be pretty isolated, even insular, from each other. The characters in an RP plot almost never see characters from another plot, and characters in one faction almost never go to the RP locations inside other factions. There's been some wonderful exceptions like exchange officers, indie plots that pass through multiple factions, or times when ships meet (the Eucharis and Sakura II are both docked next to each other right now), but it's not very common. People usually grab onto a plot storyline and hold on for as long as they can. Additionally, it's hard for characters to run into each other by chance because our universe is just so darn huge and because we organize threads primarily by plot and not by location.

Anyway, all this got me thinking: Where is everyone? The idea I came up with is this: We could try to overlay a dot for each player character onto the starmap and see where everyone is hanging out. If we did this regularly, it would create a sort of "heat map" for the setting and show where the most popular places in it are. The only problem is it sounds like a lot of work keeping track of everyone's characters. >,>

 

[Dumont]

The focus on many major plots being 'plotships' mean that most major RP's are almost always two things: Mobile, and somewhere other than a home port.

If you're aiming for something like identifying a possible central hub where people can meet up and intermingle, then you're better off asking 'where do you have shore leave?' or alternately 'Where are central locations where ships will be maintained?'

But I doubt this would gain much traction; this whole place is set up with groups going somewhere and doing something in mind. You'd need to revamp the structure of how you run plots (IE, make them based around a hub to begin with) to have everyone frequently in similar locations; until then you're stuck having to arrange crossovers.

 

[ArsenicJohn]

They could meet up in a VR space of some sort.

 

[shadowclasper]

Another issue is that from what I can tell, the isolation is fairly enforced by the will of the players to actually make an impact on things.

If you have 'hubs' where multiple factions interact, then you have multiple FMs butting heads over various groups trying to get shit done and effecting both factions and it basically becomes a form of PvP.

And as I pointed out to you before, that's never going to fly (due to trust issues inherent in the system) as long as there's one overriding Admin who is also in control of the largest, most powerful faction. The isolation of factions, from what I can tell looking through the archives and generally judging from the history, dates back to approximately the Freespacer Genocide, where one FM's faction tried to make a significant impact on another FM's, and got their shit so thoroughly wrecked, without any chance to gainsay it from what I can tell, that the faction has effectively stopped existing except as an extension of Nepleslia.

Hubs would bring about more of these situations, which FMs and by extension, GMs running plots under the aegis of an FM, would be reluctant to get involved in, for fear of triggering a similar thing and having their brain childs obliterated because they dared to challenge the power of the Admin and largest, strongest faction in the game.

edit: For this to ever be a thing. The person in charge of administering the WHOLE SITE, and anyone put in charge of administering neutral areas, must put themselves outside of the Factional Fictional Politics of this entire situation, and how incredibly personal they get, and further, the factions, as they exist right now, have to be put on far more equal footing in some manner. Both technologically, populationally, defensively, and offensively, at least in some manner approaching a perfect imbalance where the whole thing has a form of equilibrium.

Until that's achieved, having 'neutral hubs' that were more meaningful than places for PCs to interact and shoot the shit, without having any actual plots going on for them that could possibly significantly impact the metaplot, is going to be incredibly difficult to achieve, if not completely impossible. Simply due to massive imbalances in both OOC and IC power between Factions, the people running and playing in those factions, and the history of how those imbalances have been exploited in the past (how the whole IWL and Freespacer Genocide were handled in such a one sided manner without allowing for a response by their FM), have lead to this situation.

 

[Wes]

Those are some good points, although I disagree that the interactions of individual characters on some neutral ground is going to bring about situations like that because all the FMs have to share their plans with each other in advance (and try to come to some agreement), and also because individual character interactions rarely change the political status of the galaxy. The purpose of having some sort of "starting hub" for characters would be to push characters together and see what happens in the RP, not to be some sort of factional battleground (political or otherwise). I think a bigger obstacle is that there's very few places in the RP that are both popular to visit in RP and also neutral.

 

[Kyle]

Potentially because no one's really made a neutral here, we had one place that was close to being neutral but it was still not so. Probably the best way to create a neutral area is to use a planet, or small sector of space, where all factions have a presence, but *NO* faction has overall control of the area. This means that the place is, effectively, neutral because no one really owns it and we can keep it that way on an FM-standpoint.

 

[Nashoba]

The bigger issue in general is that most of plots move at different paces. So even if you happen to have two plots at the same place. Getting them into a cohesive thread or threads becomes difficult.

 

[Kyle]

If not outright impossible, I've wanted to do a cross-over arc where the Aeon and Gammy happen to meet but its not easy since btoh plots move at different speeds and it wouldn't be fair to the players to slow - or even stop - one plot just so another can catch up

 

[shadowclasper]

Those are some good points, although I disagree that the interactions of individual characters on some neutral ground is going to bring about situations like that because all the FMs have to share their plans with each other in advance (and try to come to some agreement), and also because individual character interactions rarely change the political status of the galaxy. The purpose of having some sort of "starting hub" for characters would be to push characters together and see what happens in the RP, not to be some sort of factional battleground (political or otherwise). I think a bigger obstacle is that there's very few places in the RP that are both popular to visit in RP and also neutral.

The issue is that precedent has been established in the past that FMs -don't- come to a consensus in this. See IWL and Freespacer Genocide. That's the basic element of trust missing from this.

Those neutral spaces could have existed at one point as well, but they were sorta absorbed into Yamatai... the giant confederacy of neutral colonies seeking to retain their independence is always a favorite for that sorta thing.

Finally, there's also the issue of FLAVOR.

This is a military sci-fi roleplay for the most part. Yes, there are neutral mercenaries and such, but by and large, it caters too, and always has catered too, military focused roleplay. Which is inherently political.

edit: Not saying that it's impossible to achieve this, but it needs to be approached in a very particular manner, and it is going to require some heavy retooling of admin and metaplot structure

 

[Kyle]

Do keep in mind as well that some factions have expansive sensor grids - the Neshaten for example - and they'd pick up on such anonumous objects before they even got within range of a station, or worse, a planet. This actually happened at teh start of teh Gam'trosha where a rogue element of the HSC (which Nash and I need to continue on, I've been horrible in that regard ;-; ) where they sent a rock toward Levia and although the defense force was able to widdle it down, it still impacted the planet and killed thousands (and badly damaged the military base, the orbiting station wasn't completed at the time and thus couldn't assist)

 

[Nashoba]

Shh... no telling...