[xanes]

Role-playing is fun. Definitely, but a lot of the strategies people use to implement it aren't really very effective, at least in my opinion or experience.

First, if my character says a four letter word every other word, and does it in some consistent way, that's valid RP isn't it?

If I pkill indescriminantly, it's something I don't do OOC, so it's playing a role of some kind.

Here's what it comes down to: If you don't like murder, keep it from happening, but do it IC. If you break character to enforce not breaking character...well, just think about it.

People will be difficult, but there are ways of dealing with them w/o trans'ing them to 'The Celestial Jail' or whatever and locking them up. All that does is force them to discover they can be profane in their title also.

Finally, part of role-playing is letting go. You can't steer the fate of the world very smoothly without either breaching RP or working really hard. The first rule of game programming, as I often say, is 'Perception is Reality'. Players don't need to know about interlocking structures and linked lists, or telnet negosiation, so why do they need to know about RULES OF RP. If someone speaks a dialect that is OOC, pretend not to understand him. That kind of thing is the idea I propose.

Well, end rant.

-Xanes Lone Coder -=- WinterMute