yes eldrad you are

hehe

you cannot forget what you know, but you can choose not to use it.

Of course. But good luck enforcing that on everyone, terjekv. Most people would not be willing to forget and turn the other cheek. But can you blame them? I mean what are you going to do the second time around? Fool themselves and ACT surprised?

It's kind of like sending yourself a birthday card in the mail, walking over to the mailbox the next day, taking it out, opening it, and then acting surprised that you received a card for your birthday.

* Example taken from a Mr. Bean skit.

Love the example though. I can just imagine that in game.

"Oh WOW!!!. A Heliocene roid I just -accidentally- stumbled upon in a supposedly empty sector.

I have several alts, and I don't have any trouble keeping them seperate. My Itani characters know where Heliocene 'roids are in Itani space; my Serco characters know where Heliocene 'roids are in Serco space. No conflict for me there. The only thing that really transfers over between my alts is any improvement to my skill - and I don't think that's a problem. There are some other things that I *could* transfer over, but I don't *have* to, and I don't have the slightest temptation to. As I see it, my alts are completely seperate characters, with little or no interaction between each other. If I were to transfer knowledge between them, that they wouldn't have gained already themselves, it would take a lot of the fun out of it for me. I feel the same way about cheating in other games - it detracts from the fun, not only for any opponents, but even more so for me.

My knee-jerk answer to "when it is and isn't considered proper role-playing to use multiple characters for a single goal" would be never, but really that's far too cut-and-dry. While I don't choose to use my alts the way Borb does, I don't have any problem with him doing what he does. Usually, he's very clear that he's the same person (OMFGWTFBBQ!?! "Borb The Second" is the same person as "Borb II"?!? No way!). And when he isn't clear that he's Borb, it's because he's roleplaying being "under cover" - I'd like it better if there was a more in-game mechanism to do that, but as there isn't I don't have a problem with Borb using alts to roleplay how he wants.

Also, even looking at alts as seperate individuals, there's really no reason they couldn't share the same goals. I have had alts that fought on the same side in CtC - they shared a goal, but there's nothing wrong with that, because they would have shared that goal, even if they weren't both played by me.

Arolte, I never seek to enforce onto others what they should or shouldn't do. I leave that up to each and every one out there. what people do with their alts is their business. some things I condone, some I don't. I deal with people and alts from experience by their history. some are proper roleplayed alts, some are spies, some are "I want to kill the other side".

if I can trust the player, I deal with the alt as a seperate entity. if I can't trust the player, all his alts are the same to me.

I can see where alts have a purpose...I first picked UIT as my nation when I started and like most people, didn't read any of the background info. Then I saw the WAR thing and felt totally left out. As I see it, I have two choices, start an alt in a feuding nation or play sides as UIT.

You picked a GREAT topic! Kudos! Because it seems more a of a moral delema and some players have none! (just kidding)

Thanks Screwball : you brought up a topic I was toying for a long time because <RANT> I AM PISSED OFF WITH PEOPLE MIXING UP THEIR REAL LIFE AND GAME LIFE. </RANT>

Arolte : I disagree with your opinion about "1 char is the only fair way".

That being said :

RolePlaying Game Golden Rule #1 : This is a ROLE PLAYING GAME. You play ROLES, not your life in this game. Sure you can play yourself in this game, but don't judge others who ROLE-play.

RolePlaying Game Golden Rule #2 : Keep OUT OF CHARACTER information OUT OF CHARACTER. I have 6 chars, some of them "tied" (like Borb/Lahmi), some of the completely separate. My "tied" chars share info/friends/enemies, my "seperate" chars don't. E.g. My pirate char hates XXXX's guts, but my trader pacifist char does not. (If you find this hard to keep apart, because your emotions take over you, yes it is. But this is what RP is all about.)

RolePlaying Golden Rule #3 : RESPECT others' Roleplaying Alts. Nothing pisses me off then when I am trying to roleplay a separate alt, and others keep trying to expose me.

Borb/Lahmi did a great job. The best even. His characters are tied, and he is HONEST to clear that up. Those who keep picking on him as "cheat" should take a hard look at themselves, and ask themselves are they really "playing a ROLE playing GAME".

And for those Incognito multi-alt players who can keep their alts separate : I salute you. This is the pinnacle of RPing.

softy2 (to clear it up before it even crop up that I am pro-BLAK : I am speaking as the PLAYER, not my main char Holden Caulfield. I have 2 chars who are KOS BLAK).

Nice post, Softy2. I completely agree with your Golden Rules 1 and 2. I am not Broma-Ba Slick. I play a character named Broma-ba Slick. I currently don't play any other characters because I don't have the time and I find Broma fun to play.

I go round and round on rule no. 3. Here's why. Suppose I were the commander of a guild that advertises that it has the best mining maps in the galaxy. And those maps were generated by hours and hours of hard work by guild members. Other players in the game might be tempted to join my guild for the sole purpose of getting ahold of those maps and then selling them to other persons or guilds. In such a case, I would be darned interested in finding out the alts of the people in my guild, whether they wanted me to know about them or not. In this case, should the commander respect the player's tied alts, or not? And if a guild member has alts, how is the commander to know whether the alts are tied or not, or even whether the player is playing by Golden Rule #2?

dbradhud: does it change anything if the "spy" is an alt or a single character?

someone thinks i am eldrad.

cool.

I am honored

actually it deos since the less people know about it, the slower it will reveal the purpotrader.

eg if you rob a bank... only you can rat on yourselve. If however you and 10 other people are part of the robbing of the bank, then there are 9 othe ropportunities besides yourselve to become exposed.

Or you are a spy, and never had contact with anybody. They only have to get hold of you... Now if you are a spy and work with an associate then there is somebody who can rat on you... ergo if you are playing both people you will never have to worry since they are only looking for one and not both (and if one is part of the searchers and th eothe ris the hunted...). If however you are not playing both people you always will have to wonder if the other person is going to rat on you effectively increasing the chance of ratting him out in case of problems...

PS: I will never accept tied characters as roleplaying softy, sorry. Unless you could have easilly obtained the information from another route. (aka: you wouldn't really hav eneeded the other char to find it out). Although even hten, it is walking a fine line between RP-ing and just not rp-ing. But that is my opinion and you know everyone got an opinion...

This whole discussion reminds me of experiences playing olde worlde RPGs like "Dungeons & Dragons", (I'm old) anyway many a night was spent imagining the horrors of deep dark dungeons all without the benefit of computer graphics and dolby surround sound - One friend of mine who was an experienced role player, was inclined to always play a Dwarf...not the same Dwarf, but a differently named Dwarf, who just happened to share all the character traits of the last dwarf he had played, but he did have a different name! Another player would respond to his characters' death by immediately rolling a chaotic neutral assassin character, and hunting down the killer of his recently deceased former character. These guys were indulging in poor roleplaying, in my opinion, but what they were doing was easy, and they were having fun.

I have also seen players role play two or more characters simultaneously. Characters who had distinct, and often vastly different personalities. One character would be played as if he was totallly unaware of facts which the other character was fully aware of. This was excellent and skillful roleplaying, but it is very difficult to roleplay to that level.

Overall I dont believe it is likely that the majority of players in VO would be able to role play an alt as if it was a new character, without relying and acting on the knowledge and game experience that the player would have gained while roleplaying their main character.

While some may be able to pull this off, most would just abuse the facility and it really adds little to the game to be able to play alts. i would be happy to see alts go as a feature of the game.

PS. London is NOT afraid

Main function of the alt IMO is to allow a player to be able to try out all three factions, Serco, UIT, and Itani, secondary is RP since the game is mainly a multi-online deathmatch anyway. Roleplaying is always a personal opinion and can never truely be outlined, as each person does it differently.

rant away :o)

Props to Londoners. Live Brave(tm).

Anyway, I was too lazy to ever make any alts. Plus, I knew I'd always play the same character basically since I'm a lot like the guy skystrider knew who would always play a Dwarf. Except it was a Chaotic Good Elf Ftr/MU/Thf. So I'm boring. Meh.

I envy the RP'er who can mentally separate their characters enough to never let things slip through. I could never do that, which is why I was distrustful of players like, well, most of [BLAK] for starters, who created alts, joined different guilds, and became privy to conversations not meant for them. Perhaps it was just a personal failing (which is the way I'm sure Shape and Borb will see it) but I saw that as underhanded and sneaky.

Especially like with what Shape did, posting the email from the Viper forums on the [IA]-[VPR] treaty thread. Made you wonder who you were REALLY talking to. Sometimes I got the feeling that there were like 20 "real" people who were playing this game but each had 6 alts, and would snicker to themselves as I stupidly treated them as different individuals. Oh well. All in good fun.

Eh Leber I always treat people as different, but I never tell them any thing I would not tell my worst enemy just in case. Good opsec and all that.

dbradhud : Rule #3 relies on the sincerity of players following Rule #2. Yes, it is hard, especially when guild secrets are involved. I don't have a good answer to your question, except to say that one should be careful about who to invite into a guild.

Rene : Sure, I respect your opinion. Tied chars are no easier to play well as separate chars. Borb did it really well. Look at it this way : think Clark Kent/Superman. They are the same char, but they have two different public faces. My own pair of tied chars have, on the surface, vastly personalilties, such that even many of their guild members do not know they are actually one same character. I have a backstory why this char has two lives : read the RP forums carefully and you might see the hints that I have dropped.

Leber : Shape has already said he has a spy in VPR. I think that's part of Shape roleplaying. Sneaky? Of course. But he is consistent and well within the bounds of legitimate roleplaying.

Sky : Ah. good old D&D. I am still playing a game via email, and I play two characters with two vastly different personalities (and very different from my own too). I agree that multichars can be easily abused though. On the other hand, multichars allow one more opportunities to add colour/depth into both chars.

Softy, I like your rules a lot. However, I don't see how one can "be careful about who to invite into a guild" when it is almost impossible to verify that someone isn't an alt. Put another way, how can you reasonably distinguish between a tied alt and a not tied alt?

Sun Tzu, you asked if it mattered whether a spy is an alt or a single character. That's an excellent question. In my opinion, players that spy using a single in-game name definitely fall under the category of role-playing. Thus, while it may upset some characters if a fellow character turns into a traitor, or elicits secrets from another character, I'd consider that "fair" role-playing.

Once alts get involved, whether or not it's ok depends on your view of role-playing. In my opinion, the difference is "honesty" in role-playing. That is, is the player keeping the roles separate or not, and when is it ok for multiple alts to share a role. Borb's use of an alt to go undercover was terrific spying. Whether it was terrific role-playing or an abuse depends on whether you accept:

1) Alts are the only way the game provides to go undercover
2) #1 outweighs the difficulty in determining which alts are played by a single player
3) Even if #2 were easy, #1 outweighs the difficulty in determining which alts are "tied"

To be clear, I didn't start this thread to justify or condemn Borb's behavior, or even that of other players. What I am hoping to get out of it, though, is a sense of what the VO community views as fair or unfair play. This matters to me as a player, and to fellow players in my guild (TGFT), because we actually had a discussion about this and ended up voting in a by-law regarding alt's several weeks prior to Borb's post about being Lahmi. The by-law stated, in essence, that we would not use alts for spying, because it wasn't "fair" role-player behavior. We realize that this puts us at somewhat of a disadvantage, but our hope is that by publicizing this policy, other good players will return the respect. Further, we as players want to be considered ethical citizens of the VO universe.

Given the community reaction to Borb and other's revelations, and the fact that we had not considered the existance of "tied" alts representing a single character, we wonder whether we as players and as a guild should remain committed to our current standard, or if we are just being Pollyannas.

Screwball : You are certainly right about the difficulty in distinguishing tied-non-tied alts. But like you said, it boils down to the honesty of the players themselves to do so.

Like TGFT, one of my alt's guild has a discussion about RP-ing alts in the guilds. Basically, one of our members were found to be the alt of another KOS guild. When this alt claimed that he is roleplaying "separate" alts, I defended his membership in the guild (though many were calling for his head), so he remained a member. But at the end, he got kicked out, because he did/could not fulfill his obligation to keep his alts separate in a rather blatant way. [EDIT : I would hasten to add that it was not spying though : he kept his side of the bargain on that aspect.]

Finally, I would like to point out that "tied-alts" are not just for spying, which seems to be the focus of all the controversy about alts (viz Borb/Lahmi). My tied-alts are not spies for their respective guilds, for example.

I seem to have come up finally.

I DO use alts to get into other guilds. But most of the time its to see how the other half breathes. Just a way to get a feeling for the community as a whole.

When I originally created Matriarch, it was at a time when the valk-svg (both with N3's) was the only fight you would really see. So, I wanted to know why SAF was frustrated. (And I wanted to kill a lot of itani, it wasn't that hard to step into a role as a serco).

Likewise with my VPR spy. I have a number of people I would call friends in that guild, but there have also been some harsh words.
I wanted to fight like them, alongside them, and get a REAL idea for what they were going through. I imagine that Borb felt similarly.

Admittedly, I've done my fair share of spying (but if you can't catch me, that's your own lookout, I drop a hint every now and then)

But I don't always spy.

For example, I told Lin who I was shortly after I joined SAF, needless to say, she was not happy. But over a fair amount of time, I think we've gotten to know eachother a bit better (despite our share of arguments). And she allowed me the opportunity to really be a part of a wonderful team.

My roleplay?

Shape was branded a deserter in a time of war. He made his way, by and by, to serco space, where he, after some time, realized that there was a community that the itani could never have.

A close knit group to whom personal enlightenment and ego were secondary (Ok, I don't know if anyone has thrown out their ego on this game, better to say that the ideal of being a warrior is to have no ego) to the ties between oneself and the web of your environment and community (read old thread, Serco as Taoist)

Shape can never quite leave his piracy, as he holds a grudge against the UIT and all traders who traffic in the means of war, but Matriarch is the character in which he is free to be at home.

The VPR spy is a way to get into the mind of the "Lawful good" characters that perpetuate the law, before the good.