Slynky's Demise

[Lord Chane]

geoschmo said:
No, of course if I encountered someone dressed like this in a public place I would have concerns. And it would be for good reason. People often dress in such a way to demonstrate their affinity for that particular set of beliefs. Not everyone that dresses that way believes that way, and I wouldn't support tossing people in jail based on the way they dress, but it would give me a preconceived notion about the person.

The preconceived notion is all I was going for.

geoschmo said:
But again, your example is flawed. We are talking about a game, while you are giving real-world analogies.

As I said to Tesco in my Last post to him, you apparently see a clear separation between the player and the position they play in the game, even in non-RP games. I don't and no one has offered any objective evidence that there is such a separation. I submit to you that it is pretty much impossible not to carry over some of our personalities into the game. If you agree that players carry over even one small attribute from their real personality into the game, then you invalidate the clear separation hypothesis. It's then a matter of determining how much of the player's real personality leaks over into their in-game personna. And I disagree about my examples being flawed. My point was that people have preconceived notions and that they have them in games as well as out.

geoschmo said:
If I was playing a strategy set in WWII era earth, and an opponent chose to play as a Nazi country, I would not take this as an indication that they were sypathetic to those political beliefs.

No, neither would I. Any more than I would think that an actor who plays Hitler is a Nazi sympathizer or that one who plays Jesus is a godly or devoutly religious man. It's a role. I've already said that I've no problem with what someone does in a role-playing game. They should play their role. I played a Nazgul position in a Lord of the Rings play-by-mail game once and I tried to stay in character. Would anyone trust one of the Dark Lord's servants? But unless the other game players had never read, seen, or heard of LOTR before, then they knew what to expect. Is every game of SEIV an RP game? In my opinion no and that notion is supported by the fact that some games announce themselves as being RP and others don't. If they were all RP, then there's be no reason to announce some games as RP. So for me there's a clear difference between someone playing a role and just being a player in a game.