A Thought On Neutral RP Events

“Should” according to whom?

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List of things you control in RP:

  1. Your character.
  2. Who you choose RP with.

List of people you should be telling what to do, or criticizing:

  1. People who ask your opinion.

They’re both short lists, fairly easy to memorize.

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I am genuinely curious if you are classing all neutral RP events as threats against the Warchief.

As someone that runs several neutral events I think there is a huge difference between a neutral faction meeting VS an entertainment based event VS an event that is actually a conspiracy event.

EDIT TO PROVIDE EXAMPLES

There used to be Cenarion Druid meetings that were run by a ‘Horde’ member. In that case are they being watched for conspiracy because the nature of their job is to pass on teachings no matter the race or creed?

There are several neutral entertainment guilds (mine included) that run neutral entertainment events on neutral ground. Silas Darkmoon in canon does the same. Are they watched or marked as conspirators by the Warchief?

Now, if someone was talking at Forsaken Presentations (neutral) and making the statement that you are against the Warchief… does that mean you might get marked as a traitor and suffer some consequences? Hmm, food for thought.

In addition to all of that, we must remember that Roleplay as a storytelling vehicle does benefit from sources of conflict. So if there is a character that wants to mark folks as traitors for attending neutral events and mingling with Alliance scum - all the power to them. I just hope it comes from that place and not RP policing.

Also - Dark Lady watch over you

EDIT EDIT EDIT - Show your support for neutral events and go bump my neutral event THE NIGHT MARKET (Shameless promo).

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It kind of just becomes 5.4 all over again where… people back then were saying “well personally I just don’t think X would be allowed to Y because the Warchief wouldn’t permit it.” Bonus points when the person saying it is implying they would use this as carte blanche to try to disrupt or break up other people’s neutral events.

Like, it either is or will be the same song and dance, just with Sylvanas instead of Garrosh. And rather than offering the opportunity for compelling tension, it just becomes yet another cudgel to try and control or limit roleplay.

Even Sylvanas “Sociopathy” Windrunner probably wouldn’t go so far as to just order any and every neutral gathering spied upon and likely supermurdered.

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She probably would, but blizzard barely follows their own rules for their story half the time without rewriting or breaking something, so why should we acknowledge their story when it’s getting old, tired and beaten to death and they’re not enjoying it?

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I think, OP, that you should clarify your stance, and the purpose of your thread.

In several places, and due to the overall tone, it suggests that you’re bothered by the neutral events, and consider them lorebreaking, and are wanting to discuss them not being “allowed”. You’re expressing these thoughts in a fairly civil, roundabout way, but in the end, that kind of rhetoric is, in my opinion, harmful.

My two cents:

Neutral stuff is still going on, in Azeroth. Representatives from both factions are seen at Silithus. Not everyone’s involved in the war.

Some people RP full on neutral toons, in neutral organisations.

Neutral events are good :smiley:

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My stance was that of curiosity. That’s it. I was reading some of the neutral events that are posted and the thought crossed my mind. I wanted to share it and see what others thought about it, in a general sense, but it’s gotten to the point to where I didn’t want to respond to anything past my last comment.

I have nothing against neutral events. I even said we need more of them and open faction events alike in the original post. My initial thought was taking the current events into consideration and not actually effecting the events like that. I should have clarified that it was purely hypothetical and it was nothing more than a passing thought I wanted to share.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I’m not even really opposed to this discussion in theory. I think it’s virtuous to consider the way your characters actions would intersect with the narrative and world of the game.

The problem is that’s often framed as a veto for the event itself, instead of as a problem to solve. “Sylvanas’s government would be pissed if they learned that your character is meeting with the enemy. How is your RP going to address that?” is a perfectly legitimate question to ask, whereas “Sylvanas’s government would bomb the hell out of you after spying on your meeting, so neutral RP events don’t make sense in lore” is both untrue and sort of poor sportsmanship, in a way.

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It is, if prompted.

This is my point. It’s really best to stay in your lane when it comes to RP. People can interpret lore and RP how they want.

I also don’t think posing inflammatory things as questions really negates the negative connotations to them. “Isn’t that type of RP lorebreaking?” “Should we enforce this as a rule?” don’t really come off as any less… invasive, just because you’re able to say “Well I was just asking a question.”

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The types of reactions you’ve seen should be an indication of the kinds of situations people have, and still do, deal with when it comes to this subject.

My default stance is not to care what others RP, and it takes quite a lot to budge on that. Consideration of the game story doesn’t meet that bar.

Having intrigue surrounding neutral/disloyal events would be cool, but it has to be opt-in. I think anyone looking for that element should just make an LFRP post with what they have in mind and what they have to offer prospective partners.

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There have been some seasonal events that were formerly one faction but changed recently. Due to my characters being in the war or staunchly on one side, it would break character to go (and personally as a player, I’m not into neutral roleplay). I respect that people want to get together from opposing sides, likewise I wish some people would be aware that not everyone likes neutral RP and would be considerate of that. Neutral RP isn’t demonized, being true to one faction should not be as well. I’m not saying anyone here has done that, just that I have seen it before.

The former was more of my intention, Ursuola. Thank you for articulating that better than I did.

@Zektal

I never once said it was lorebreaking or even hinted at it. Nor did I ever imply that we should force that rule. All I said was I am a stickler to the lore and current shape of things in game. I may hate what Blizzard is doing in general, even more that they’re villainizing the Horde again (been pro Horde since Orcs vs Humans and now my own characters are anti-Sylvanas), but I’m not going to ignore something just because I don’t like it. The problem will still be there, acknowledging it or not.

I also never said that we should enforce such aspects to be implemented in neutral events, only that it would likely happen in mass gatherings of Horde and Alliance members, not just neutral affiliated characters, coming together for celebrations or other social events. Again, it was meant to be presented in a hypothetical fashion, which I failed to do.

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This is simply false.

You very plainly stated that not being stopped by Sylvanas is lorebreaking, and that that “would and SHOULD” happen.

You said it was debatable, which in and of itself is false.

TL:DR Blizzard representatives tell us outside the game not to take what any npc or object presents us as objective fact. They state publicly that what’s canonical is about game design, not keeping lore 100% consistent. They tell us in-game - through their mouthpieces the Bronze Dragonflight - that reality is flexible and the timeways are not controllable by the most powerful entities that are actively interested. Given all that, attempting to argue that there must be universal agreement between players on what’s the real Azeroth is just absurd.

I should add that I don’t really take seriously much of what someone writes whose response makes obvious that they only bothered reading the TL:DR.

My personal take on in-game playability vs. lore consistency:

  • There’s this thing called an “unreliable narrator”. Look it up. I see this or that tweet quoted all the time as support for some player’s strict fundamentalist interpretation of Azeroth design. But no one seems to use the important ones such as the one where we’re told that anything an npc says or any text from an object ingame is just someone’s opinion - that particular perspective, not an objective pov.
  • Same goes for the public statements by Blizzard representatives regarding why something becomes non-canonical. As exemplified in the statements regarding the RPG material. It’s simply to free up game design possibilities. Canon in a game design context is not at all the same as a religious canon. There is no imprimi potest, nihil obstat or imprimatur that guarantees the lore content is valid in perpetuity. It’s just documentation of what the dev teams have to adhere to at any given time. Nothing more. And playability (design decisions) always trumps lore (internal consistency of the past storylines).
  • We’ve had a whole expac telling us alternate histories/worlds exist that we can move between.
  • The Caverns of Time (I’d call it the Cavern of Times but that’s just me) are there & characters move in & out of them all the time.
  • On the Timeless Isle there is a permanent link to the AH world that you don’t need a hearthstone to use.
  • If you’ve spent time questing on the Timeless Isle you may have heard a discussion amongst key Timewalkers that the timeways are beyond their control now. They can’t police Azeroth’s history effectively anymore.
  • I’ve yet to see any lore-yer or lore fundamentalist state publicly that they delete their characters & start from scratch every time new content changes something. If they really believe that Azeroth is only one way & the released patches & expacs are monolithic they should probably be doing that before they spend time telling other people what is allowed in their personal story arcs.
  • I’ve yet to hear about a lore-yer or fundamentalist who only goes to one version of Dalaran. Neither creates a Night Elf nor plays with anyone who does because Darnassus doesn’t exist as a place for any character start since BfA started.
  • Another thing I’ve yet to see is a lore fundamentalist or lore-yer who plays IC 100% all day every day.Running every single quest & instance IC. Starts over with a new character first time their character dies. Good luck getting to 90 with that, let alone 120. Never ever repeats content on a mog run. Really acts as if they are the head of their particular order hall 100% of the time. Really acts like they’ve got the only artifact weapons, unique objects from archaeology, and so on. Good luck with that. No one else of the same ilk is gonna settle for being your sycophant 100% of the time - forsaking the use of all those unique items & never completing content since they can’t be you. Bottom line on all that is if you’re doing it all solo then it’s the truest form of head canon. If you’re not doing all that then you aren’t strictly adhering to canon anyway.
  • Before anyone sets themselves up as an expert on the history of Azeroth consider the equivalent for Earth: Knowing everything that happened in every culture for the last 20,000 years or so. Then adding to it what happened over the same time span since bears discovered how to cook steaks, dolphins taught us how to talk to them, dinosaurs got their own island surrounded by fog where they figured out mind control, orangutans invented internal combustion engines and computers, yetis are better martial artists than Jet Li, Donnie Yen & Michelle Yeoh in their prime while also being more spiritually advanced than the Dalai Lama … If you can’t wrap your head around that version of Earth after studying everything ever narrated about it then you got no business telling others your personal opinion is the only correct one on what amounts to a few hundred pages of unreliable narration about the last 20,000 years of Azeroth that Blizzard has published.

How I handle it myself is that some of my characters know what’s up & more or less treat refugees in time the same way they treat refugees in space. Some of them just say “Huh, when I was growing up grandma told the story this way. I’ll have to think about what you heard.” Some just think some other people are weird & tolerate their differences as long as they are tolerable. & some are those refugees - smart enough to keep quiet about it most of the time because it’s nobody’s business but their own.

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I concede. Only to stop this before it spirals anymore.

Sounds good :ok_hand:

Neutral RP is good RP. Same with neutral events.

It distracts everyone away from my already growing dinosaur army, heh heh heh heh…
:t_rex:

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:comet:

Resident Forumite Token Australian Satanic Disney Princess laughter

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