Preferred Narrative Fallthrough

[Terminal]

So hey, the following segue involves a description of an argument regarding practical and philosophical differences in roleplaying and writing in general, as a collaborative effort. It's sort of long and probably not of interest to anybody who doesn't care too much about literary theory or in managing interaction between thread participants. Also it's probably sort of divisive. I put it here because after pondering over what happened, I am genuinely curious regarding what other posters might think/feel regarding the positions expressed by the parties in the argument.

This is Kind of Long

A while ago - approximately a month and a half or so - I was participating in a roleplay and happened to be witness to an intense disagreement between two posters concerning what one or the other was or was not permitted to do, and eventually required GM intervention in order to resolve the matter before it generated further problems. For the sake of keeping things civil, the RP in question, as well as the posters involved, will be kept anonymous. If you participated in that particular RP or know of the incident in question, your discretion is appreciated.

The basic problem boiled down to the fact that one poster (henceforth Poster A) did not want to interact with another poster IC. Seems straightforward enough. However, the second poster (Poster B) argued that Poster A's position in the RP was such that it made evading interaction IC highly improbable and implausible, and that they could not force their characters to not take specific actions in response to events or actions executed by the characters of Poster A. Poster B further argued that, by insisting they did not want to interact, Poster A was knowingly acting in a manner which invalidated the 'contextual reality' of the RP, and that their actions could be constituted as metagaming.

When asked specifically why they did not want to interact with Poster B, Poster A said that it was because interaction in that circumstance with Poster B would influence a particular plotline Poster A was running with their own characters in a way they did not want the plotline to progress. When asked if they would consider interaction with any other poster and characters that might possibly influence the aforementioned plotline, Poster A did not give a firm answer but implied they would prefer to not permit any other posters to influence that particular plot and had no desire to accommodate for any such potential influence.

When asked why they could not force their characters to act in such a way as to accommodate Poster A's preference, Poster B said that it as because the way Poster A's characters and the actions they were taking were, within the context of the RP, impossible (or at least highly improbably) for Poster B's characters to ignore, destroying the 'contextual reality' of the RP. They also indicated that they could not force their own characters' actions, but rather as a narrator merely 'reported' what actions their characters took, as though Poster B's characters were independent agents with free will. As such, Poster B argued that they had no ability to accommodate Poster A even had they not cared about the 'contextual reality' of the RP.

Eventually Poster B accused Poster A of 'metagaming', couching the term as the utilization of OOC knowledge and behavior in order to facilitate IC events and actions which would normally be considered unacceptable.

After that, the GM was called in to intervene. I will not describe their decision or how they reached it here, since it was a (semi) private affair, with only the other members including of the RP including myself serving as witnesses.

The basic argument between Poster A and Poster B sparked a brief discussion amongst the other posters present however, whereupon the following opinions were expressed. I would like to reiterate that these were observations made by the proverbial peanut gallery and are not being construed as fact.

- Poster A's desire to not permit any kind of outside influence or interference with their own personal plotline, in an inherently collaborative setting, was both disruptive and detrimental to the RP as a whole and the IC setting. Posters should enter into RPs expecting to have to play to others. If they were so caught up in their own personal plots, they could just write a book or short story on their own without having to interfere with the roleplay. By expressing a 'preference' to not have to interact with other posters based on possible interference with their own creative ideas, Poster A was being supremely selfish.

- Poster B was being incredibly silly by not respecting Poster A's explicit desire to not have to interact with Poster B. Arguing that the narrative consistency of a fictional setting was more important than a real, actual person's request to another poster was both rude and immature. Their insistence that Poster A be forced to interact with Poster B is a shameless instance of powergaming, and their accusation of Metagaming against Poster A was mere bullying and intimidation.

A number of participants in that particular conversation brought up specific instances where both observations were true. One poster indicated that, in Free and Casual NRPs (as an example) it had been extremely common at one point for people to power trip, joining roleplays simply to cruise around with random nonsensical death armies and auto-stomp the posters with the weakest militaries just because they could, and as such they were sympathetic to the request itself. They indicated that such a request, while potentially extremely inconvenient within the IC setting, was not unreasonable for a poster to make in instances where they felt they were being singled out as victims of blatant powergaming. Another poster indicated that the foremost concern of an Advanced writer was to create an interesting story and that concerns such as 'winning' were immature conditions best left to the Free and Casual subforums, and so all posters had an obligation to work with one another even in situations where their own personal plots and ideas might be influence by those of others.

Everybody in the end was able to agree that, all things being equal, no single event or action of significance IC occurring between two or more posters and their characters/concepts should occur without all parties involved being able to reach a mutually satisfactory conclusion.

Compromise proved to be impossible due to reasons which I cannot fully provide here without spoiling anonymity. Considerable efforts were made by a number of other posters and the GM to reason with both Posters A and B to see if there was some or any way in which to arrange the situation to their mutual satisfaction, or at least in a way in which they could both continue to participate in the RP. Both Posters were adamant in their stances however, both feeling that their positions were reasonable and that the others' position was unreasonable.

The conflict ended when one of the posters, feeling as though it were impossible for them to proceed any further within the RP itself, willingly withdrew from their RP of their own volition and without any prompting from the GM.

And so I am left wondering.

I would like to hear any and all thoughts or comments all of you might have on the positions/ideas being described above. What do you think was right?

Please keep any commentary constructive and try to be as objective as possible. I did not make this topic to start a flame war. I made it because I am interested in seeing what other members of the RPG community think about the situation and related problems, and also as to what reasoning others might have as to the validity of the positions/ideas described. I'll try to answer any questions posed to help clarify the exact situation, but please bear in mind that I was a fly on the wall, that the incident was a month and a half ago, and that I would like to preserve the anonymity of everyone involved. As such, there is not much more information I feel I can provide beyond what I have already laid out above.

You know. Assuming anybody even read through that whole thing and then actually wants to comment or ask questions.

[Nemaisare]

Honestly, without knowing the exact situation(and I don't need to :P), that all seems very reasonable to me. At least, insofar as it doesn't seem to have escalated into a flame war or trolling effort. I can see the merit of both stances as well as what the rest of the players concluded. But if I were to look at each part individually, I'd have to agree most adamantly with the peanut gallery.

Poster A's inability to bend their plot towards an accommodation isn't exactly the cooperative working with the group that one generally expects and implicitly agrees to when joining a group roleplay. If you aren't prepared to let your plot be influenced by outside forces, then you shouldn't really be bringing it into a public forum like that. On the other hand, if you are willing to let influences occur, but can't find a way around them to a satisfactory conclusion to the plot(which is certainly still, at the heart of the issue, yours), then I can understand trying to avoid the influences you can't work around. However, if you already have the plot idea in your head upon joining and the complete avoidance of characters (more than one of which are not yours to control) is necessary to finish said plot, you should probably either not join, change your plot, or try to talk with the other rpers before things come to a head and they can't find a good reason to have their characters ignore yours.

Poster B's inability to control their own character is... not an exceptionally valid argument. I've encountered it before, where a writer says that they are merely reporting or letting their character write through them. I can understand the sentiment because I do know that when you write a character, you are writing a person who should remain consistent with how you want to portray them. If they do not like mushrooms, you would not write them happily gorging out on mushrooms with a huge smile on their face. But it is entirely possible that they've only actually eaten mushrooms once, and they were poorly cooked, and these are, in fact, very good mushrooms and they are surprised at how good they taste. If they would not ordinarily ignore suspicious or overt, or even just curious, behaviour that catches their attention, then why would they suddenly turn a blind eye? Bribery? Distraction? Sometimes, especially if you are suddenly in a corner and did not have the chance to prepare for the necessary actions, it can seem inevitable that your character should react one way and one way alone in order to maintain consistency and continuity. If that's the case, and backtracking was not an option(given as it's a group rp, it would be hard to manage), I can understand them being stubborn and possibly, probably, frustrated by a request to change their character's actions.

But for Poster B to say that they cannot make their character do anything different is rather silly in my eyes. They are a text based creation, and in your head, you are fully capable of making them do a 180 without any consequences. They aren't going to attack you while you sleep because you made the manliest macho man dress in drag and do the hula. It might make you and everyone else cringe to see it happen, but it is not impossible to manage. And if it allows things to continue peaceably, then maybe it is in the group's better interests that you sacrifice that character's momentary integrity and work together to find a retroactive reason for why the ignoring was a plausible action. I can understand being frustrated about it though, and the stance concerning contextual reality; consistency and continuity are important to any story, breaking them should not be done without thought and preparation and maybe a back-up plan.

I think that Poster A might be a little more in the wrong, but only if this issue came up after a lengthy period of time during which they could have been working, and weren't, to avoid it by discussing their plans and how to work around them with the other group members. But, along the same vein, demanding that someone's character interact with your own smacks of the sort of thing most people want to avoid. It should be a collaborative effort to entice characters into interacting together to further their and the rpers' aims ICly, not OOCly saying that this has to happen now, because it's going against one character's supposedly written in stone traits that can't be finagled by the writer to get them out of the situation without sacrificing either consistency or plotline.

As I don't know the rp, I'm not sure about the examples being brought up by the rest of the group, and can't say whether or not they're valid to the situation. I really don't know NRPs, at all, either. >.> But I should think that in any collaborative setting, working together is kind of, y'know, the key element.

[Jig]

I tend to side with Poster B.

Poster A shows a disregard for the rest of the group and other people's characters by requesting that the universe be bent around their character, and seeks to 'godmode with permission' another player's character by denying them the chance to interact, infringing on that character's autonomy by design and forcing them to behave in a manner that is out of character. I don't see why Poster B should compromise their character so as to suit the plans of Poster A.

[Animus]

Poster A was wrong.

Simple as that. An RP is a collaborative work to generate a fun and/or interesting story. We assume everyone as equals so to do something as "I have a plot in mind, ya'll are not to interrupt it and instead accommodate to me," sounds downright ridiculous. Who are you to dictate that you or your characters possess more importance than others? Why on earth should other people accommodate and compromise around you so you can your ideal plot out?

Some might argue and say Poster B was partially at fault for not accommodating. Well, if someone copied your homework without permission then you have the right to be angry. Would it make sense if someone told you that you shouldn't have gotten angry and instead have been mature about the matter? You could have but you are not obligated to nor are you in the wrong for not letting the matter slide.

I don't think this is really debatable.