These people sometimes argue that you should believe another character (who is of the high nobility) over the word of a minor, possibly non-noble, functionary. So if the noble says "I didn't do it", but the functionary (i.e. game generated message) says "He was spotted at the scene of the crime", obviously the functionary is lying, and to believe them over the word of the noble would be bad RP.
I find this to be one of
the most pointlessly aggravating arguments in the game.
Like I said before, if you do not trust the word of these "functionaries" here, why should you ever trust them? Why should you believe them when they tell you that the fortification was even damaged? Why should you believe them when they tell you the noble is there? Why should you even believe the letters you receive, which were penned by a commoner scribe and delivered by a commoner messenger? Why, in short, should
anything in the game be trusted?
That way lies madness. I wonder if we could fight this absurdity by making it explicit somewhere in the game's text that the people responsible for all these reports are minor, NPC nobles. That would certainly gut the "would you believe me or a dirty commoner" argument.
Which play style is "right"? I personally don't think there is a right or wrong. Play your character however you want, and let other people play their character their own way. If you want your character to be fooled by another character's clever tale, go for it. If you don't, then don't. And don't expect some other player to play your chosen way.
I do think there's a right and wrong. And the problems come when the two camps collide. Generally, the people who accept game-generated messages as just being part of the game, and thus trustworthy, have no expectation that there will be any disagreement, because it's
obvious what happened. So they're blindsided and often have to take some time just to adjust to the fact that there are (from where I sit) a bunch of trolls just trying to get someone off for a crime that he obviously committed.
Imagine the scenario where you've got a dozen players who subscribe to the "game-generated messages are trustworthy" camp, and two players who subscribe to the "just like in real life, no one can be fully trusted (and if you RP your characters to believe otherwise, you're obviously an idiot, which is usually implied)" camp. One of those is the actual culprit in the attack, and the other is the Judge.
The culprit, when challenged on his actions, says, "No, you must be mistaken, you can't believe these dirty commoners when they tell you it was me!" The judge backs him up. The rest of the realm points at the culprit's history of flouting orders, doing whatever he damn well pleases, and causing trouble. The judge, who wasn't particularly sympathetic to the shenanigans before now, just says, "But if we punish him for this on the word of a bunch of commoners, we may as well just abandon the whole system of nobility."
Ladies and gentlemen, the story you have just read is paraphrased from truth. Only the names have been removed because I can't recall all the details.
...In fact, I've seen this scenario play out multiple times, the most recent being when Galen Perth tried to get out of responsibility for auto da fe-ing a fellow Zonasan in good standing, and Vellos not only stood up for him, but agreed with his multiple wild claims of having received different reports than what the game actually generated, and having done things in different orders than what actually happened (and thus, different than the order in which we all received the messages).
