(Dwilight)
So, a lively discussion concerning Role playing, players perception of it, how it can be used, and such has recently begun in the Lurian realms in response to an RP of my character's thoughts while sitting in a region. My character was contemplating his need to place a bounty (a rather large one) on two of his so called "allies" who are also part of Luria. The entire thing was the character's thoughts and thought process about what was taking place and how he should respond to it based on certain things. I sent the RP to my entire realm (PeL) and then to our guild which has a large membership of all 3 Lurian realms jointly because I figured those were the two groups who would best understand the RP and could then get a better feel for my character (from a player pov) and because I feel that Roleplaying is fun and is an important part of the game.
After doing so, I got backlash asking that I don't send RP's to such a wide range of people because it forces the players to deal with having knowledge which their characters do not and which if their characters knew would likely act a different way towards my character. The reasoning was that because they had received the RP through their character (not OOC tagged) and even though it was listed as an RP could lead players to use the information of my character's private thoughts and thus cause problems, etc...
I was taken a bit aback by this because I consider the whole point of roleplaying is to show your characters "character" as you will and their reasons, reactions, etc... for things. Every RP you do (unless its about some stupid, LOL, LMAO thing) is going to reflect this in someway and thus likely have something in it which could "hurt" your character from a strategic standpoint if used against you unjustly.
Now, I can understand when you RP a conversation that someone else can RP it being overheard, from spies, etc... or other similar things but private thoughts of someone's head while these can be even more revealing should never be able to be used.
The Question I have for the community of players, is do we have any sort of sanctity of role play? I mean quite frankly I was surprised by the outburst against the RP that I did because I believe it is a fun part of the game and is what makes BM unique from a simple strategy game. Since there is no "winning" in Battlemaster, I see no reason for anyone to do what I consider "cheating" by using OOC information gathered from RP's to adjust behaviors or otherwise. (I'm not saying that if I RP: "We will attack region X, in 2 days from region Y" to the RUler's channel that it won't happen to accidentaly be used or quite simply purposefully used against me) but this whole situation seems weird to me.
The final statement someone has made about this is that there is no backend reinforcement (from Titans/Tom) to stop players from abusing RP knowledge in this way. That players are free to abuse things however they want and nothing can be done to them. The only reaction of course is to change your reactions for your own characters outside of what they would normally do to fix the situation or punish the character which you knew to abuse it. I don't see this as an ideal solution.
Overall, I'm perplexed and would love to hear what the community has to say. I can post a copy of the RP if that is necessary, (since anyone involved would of course already know about it) but want to hear what my fellow players think on a large scale.
