RP: Your Lore vs. My Lore

[pewlagon]

I considder this a pretty serious topic for RP in Super Heroic MMOs. Tonight was my first night in champions since the beta. I logged in to chat with my YouTube partner who is a huge RP fanatic. Got on vent with her because the in game chat is aweful and got an earful about a topic that only came up between us when playing WoW.

It seems there is a certain faction of RPers in CO that do not take kindly to outside Lore. Now, in World of Warcraft I somewhat understand the Lore community being combined with the RP community and I can somewhat understand chastising a player for stepping outside established themes. After all, WoW is pretty much a cookie cutter game. You're set into a defined race and class and it is really hard to create something unique without stepping on toes.

However, with City of Heroes, Champions Online, and DC Universe Online you are given a section to define your own lore. The whole point of any of these three games was to create your own hero which means your background can be whatever you want. Now, what my partner encountered was a group insisting she let go of Paragon City as her character's origin point, stop talking about it, and move on. Seriously?! They didn't expect this? Come on, the whole point of Portal Corp. is alternate dimensional travel. Who says one of those worlds wasn't Millenium Earth? Heck my old Pen & Paper Champions game revolved around a semi-Exiles type group before that group even existed.

At the time of this writing City of Heroes has only been offline 6 days. I find it aweful that people are upity about someone who wants to continue their story from Paragon City. Each person is entitled to their own perception of what happened to Paragon. For us, the city is still standing and, from what I understand, her SG intends to keep Paragon Earth alive through IC interactions on their forums. To that I say Bravo!

There is no harm, zero, in some overlap between the two realities. It happens all the time in both of the two major comic companies. No, the only fault here is people trying to force their point of view on others, as if it were the only point of view. To that I ask you stop. If you want to pretend their aren't alternate realities of Earth that could include Paragon's Universe, fine, just state that the RP isn't to your liking and move on. I seriously expected more from the former RP community of CoH and the current of Champions.

[Epelesker]

It comes down to personal perception on both sides of the fence, here, but I do agree that the group you encountered had no real right to tell you how to conduct yourself or your friend.

Respect and tolerance is going to be a hugely needed virtue for all parties in the coming months, given all the players coming to various new games that all have their own version of The End (or lack of) of CoH.

I wouldn't worry about it too much.

(Also, here's some suggested reading.)

[Thunder Glove]

Agreed to that. I'm in the camp that believes their characters are still right where they were, doing the same things they always did; only our ability to log in has changed.

In other words, for me, it's like a TV show ending: just because they aren't making new episodes doesn't mean the characters have died and their world has been destroyed.

(So all my characters based on my CoH characters are explicitly alternate-universe versions of them, rather than those characters transported to a new world.  That also explains why they're back at level 1 and have different powers or even different alignments, since I had to remake even my most megalomaniacal world-dominating puppy-kicking villains as upstanding world-saving kitten-rescuing heroes)

Neither of us is "wrong", since there's no official story about what happened to (CoH) Primal Earth and all the Earths connected to it.

[Kistulot]

While originally I wanted to port over Argent Girl, I ended up making a CO-iverse version of her, Silver Girl.

Name change heavily because well... ARGENT. Grr.

Aaaaanyway, that aside, I was already ready for people to complain about Paragon being destroyed. Sarah's wouldn't have been, because I refuse to let paragon explode just because we can't see it. So in my head-canon, Sarah would have been afraid her world was destroyed - until she found out they were from a different version of Primal Earth.

Which may contradict how Primal earth works, but I figure an event like this will split off into a thousand different realities. It's just that all of the CoH people who ended up in CO ended up in the same "exit" world from different possibilities. Sorta like that one episode of startrek with Worf going around through dimensions like a ping pong ball.

As far as I'm concerned, people have the right to not want to deal with the CoH baggage... but we have the right not to care. There will always be people who insist no one else can run a TF because they have, or an adventure pack. Whaddya mean you saved Multifaria? I did! I AM THE ONLY ONE! These sparkleponies will be punished through decreased social partners. Those willing to bend to multiple canons will be the happiest in the long run.

Just don't be a unicorning vampire, demon, or chaotic good drow.

I might hurt you for making us look bad.

[JRVthatsME]

Glad you mentioned Multifaria Kistulot since it is an alternate earth in an alternate universe that is part of the champions online game. Plus it is also reach through a portal much like what Portal Corp had. These facts of the Champions Online gameworld are more then enough to justify the view that City of Heroes existed on yet another alternate earth and the portals on both worlds are an acceptable part of the lore of both world to allow for travel between the two.

As for the kind of Champion Online players this thread mentions I can only conclude that many of us will end up with a fairly long ingore list. Though some of them are getting too close to harassment for my liking and we shouldn't have to put up with it. I'm fine with the two group agreeing to stay out of each others way and leave each other alone and I hope that this will at least be the outcome. We always have our fellow members of the CoH community with us in game so as for those mentioned in this thread bet we all avoid them and put them on our ignore list.

[Starsman]

[pewlagon]

Thanks for the link to that on the Champions forums. I will add one thing, Arcana's Immortal Game, while a good read, is not cannon. The Devs supported it on the Beta server to which we never played and, to be honest, this was the first I had heard of her concept. My issue with it is it denies anything that happened in i25, like [SPOLIER START] Keyes' sacrifice [SPOILER END]. Again, it comes down to each individual player and how they want their character(s)'s  cannon handled. Me, I started fresh, most of the character I used are being utilized in my writing. My partner, however, carried over a character that, does in fact, have an established background as part of a race that traverses dimensions in exploration.

I advised my friend to prep her ignore list, but I think this has more to deal with how some people deal with seperation than anything else. It is my hope that the respect given in both this thread, and the one on Champions forums, is the norm and not vice versa.

[Starsman]

[chasearcanum]

To play devil's advocate here:


Cross-dimensional hopping isn't anything new in the roleplayer circles in MMO's.  I knew people that brought characters from other games, from other genres, and even porting their characters from their pen-n-paper tales with their entire histories intact, regardless of how they meshed with this new world.  The problem with this is that, for roleplaying- collaborative storytelling- to work, we have to have some mutual agreement on many story elements- one being the lore that ties this world together.   Many cross-dimension hoppers bring in too much from their "old world" to the new one, creating discomfort for the people that are trying to work within that world's lore.

Now, there's different degrees of lore-complience.  You can be directly tied to the lore, compliant by slopping through the "unspoken" parts of the lore, and then there's the lore-defiant that actively ignore the lore.  You can have a lore-compliant story that's doesn't tie into the lore- it just doesn't go overtly AGAINST the lore, either.  A lore-defiant character is one that expressly tries to insert elements that are contradicted by the lore.  Where you draw the line varies with each individual player, but I draw the line on where it starts to interfere with others' stories.

Most roleplayers have to do some form of selective editing of their character histories, to some degree.  I don't pretend that Chase Arcanum Arrested Countess Crey a dozen times, just because I played that arc multiple times, but I may incorporate parts of that tale into his "official" story.   Likewise, when I roleplay, some of my interactions with other characters need to be edited out because... well... they're too far out there for me to WANT them to be part of the story. 

I once suffered through a RP session in SWG where a new visitor tried to reveal that she wasn't a blue Twi'lek, but a blue dragon, transforming in front of us, from what was essentially the realm of dragonlance.  Her argument in support of this was that there were millions of galaxies out there, so who's to say that one of them wasn't the Dragonlance world.  SWG was essentially sci-fantasy after all.  It was so far outside the norm of the lore, though, that I think everyone else was justified in tuning her out when she persisted.  They made an honest effort for too long, derailing their own fun to try to appease the dragon, but at the cost of their own narrative.

I recall a different debate in EQ2, where someone wanted to RP a vampire, but not as the EQ lore used vampirism... theirs was somewhere between Anne Rice and Twilight.  Again, people tried to work with her, but she was upset  that every time she'd explain she was a vampire, people would assume the official lore vampy and she'd have to explain she was different... and all that time explaining took time away from the story she wanted to progress.  she expected everyone to ignore their own understanding of the lore and our own experiences tied to vampiric lore and just accept her own.

You're right that the CoH lore, with Portal Corps, would allow interdimensional travel. 

The question would be whether the CO lore allows it (I believe it does) because THAT'S the lore that other people are using with their own characters.  If it does allow portal-hopping, is it safe to admit to being one?  what's the legal status of these people (are they seen as illegal invaders, treated suspiciously, or embraced warmly?)  It could be that her characters shouldn't be so open about the specifics of her origin (for that matter, what if someone used her information to travel BACK to Paragon.... maybe she should be more secretive to help protect her homeworld). 


I can't see the specifics mentioned here being an issue in the CO world-- the pen n paper game that this was based on was well-crafted to allow myriad backstories, even ones that seem conflicting.  I suspect this is something else- simple tribalism.   CoH was a rival for very long- and more successful than CO in population, appeal, and developer activity.  The forums there show a mix of acceptance and contempt to CoH, and that may have colored these peoples' sentiments to your chosen story.

[pewlagon]

As to hiding background details, that brings us full circle to WoW loritism. No one should be forced (bullied) into keeping their story hiden. Again, your hero is your hero. If you do not like a person's RP or back story then that's fine move on and don't RP with that individual. Now, this is a two way street and the same could be said the other way around. What is distasteful is being told, quite bluntly, how to play and RP your own character. That happens a lot in WoW and should not be encouraged in the MMOs involving supers. Each of us are authors in our own "write" and should be respected as creators as long as we're not stepping on someone else's background, which shouldn't happen anyway without working with that individual.

Now as to i24, it was on beta and that is, from what I understand, where Aracna had her event. I have been prompted to correct myself about my previous spoiler in that it occurred in i24 which was, in fact on beta. With regard to both. Again, it is up to an individual what is lore with regard to these two events. I find the i24 content more plausible because it was, in fact, very near to being published. Aracna's story, although brilliant, is her own creation and while supported by the Devs via spawnings and such it is very much like has been stated about unpublished material. It is up to the individual what of these two events is official in their lore. For us, the planned content fits better because it keeps Paragon more open and accessable to the storylines that were still ongoing. And from this point forward, barring that the game is not resurrected, divergent reality complexes arise.

Bless Andre Norton, she popularized alternate realities and now we can run with it.

[chasearcanum]

As to hiding background details, that brings us full circle to WoW loritism. No one should be n character. That happens a lot in WoW and should not be encouraged in the MMOs involving supers. Each of us are authors in our own "write" and should be respected as creators as long as we're not stepping on someone else's background, which shouldn't happen anyway without working with that individual.forced (bullied) into keeping their story hiden. Again, your hero is your hero. If you do not like a person's RP or back story then that's fine move on and don't RP with that individual. Now, this is a two way street and the same could be said the other way around. What is distasteful is being told, quite bluntly, how to play and RP your ow

Agreed.  I wasn't there to see how bluntly the text was, so I'll take your word for it.

There's a difference between a sentiment that's, "((welcome to CO.  Just so you know, many of us don't like being involved in dimension-hopping-from-CoH stories, so you might get a better reception if you exclude them))."  which would serve as a warning that they're treading on something that may make them a lonelier roleplayer and a blunt "tell you what to do" type of thing.

[Epelesker]

[Starsman]

but I don't think it's fair to paint an entire community that's following that provision as a proponent of anti-CoH behavior.

My point was not that the whole community was anti-CoH, may have failed at explaining but my point is that they likely know well how a select group of role-players react to lore that is related to other games, and so put the disclaimer to discourage it without saying the actual reason (because copyright really is very poor reason.)

But I also was not trying to say even that the players in question that have a grudge have a grudge about CoH specifically. There is likely many other games to have reasons to hate, especially games that may not fit at all if forced to join in (like World of Warcraft.) CoX players just happen to be the group of people that will very likely break that CO RP code fast, due to lack of familiarity and clinging to our old characters.

[Epelesker]

I was more meaning just the RP community rather than CO at large myself, so my apologies for not being clear there. But I still stand by my point that one rule by one person doesn't make a law: though while I'm not personally a fan of mixing the settings myself, I'm not going to report anyone for content nor tell anyone how to play their characters if I ever meet them in game. Tolerance and adaptation, especially because I know what we all are going through. I was kicked out of the City as well, y' know.

I know a lot of people who are, on the outward facing end (aka spoken dialogue and character descriptions), keeping events from their CoH backstory vague on purpose for the sake of transitioning into the Champions setting while keeping old stories intact. In suggesting this, they aren't really changing anything about their characters or what they've done, only providing less detail so as to avoid that awkward moment, because they expect it to happen at some point if they include them.

[Atlantea]

This has been a debate we've been having in my SG. We're still undecided totally, but we're taking the position that some of us are local counterparts, and some of us actually traveled here from Primal Earth Dimension.

Me - I've played CO off and on since launch, and already had a version of two of my characters already set up well before the Aug 31 "Black Friday" announcement. I've since added two more of my favs.

Since I've been collecting the Champions books for the better part of two decades, I understand and respect the lore (though unfortunately much of it is not reflected in the MMO). There are certain ways in which it'd be very difficult to reconcile "Paragon" Earth and it's neighboring dimensions (the shadow shard and the local multiverse of alternate universes that Praetorian Earth and the Rikti Earth are a part of) with that of the Champions cosmology. 

A friend I made during the last couple of months - Captain Electric (a regular poster here on these forums in fact) - was on a couple of days after the closure and I welcomed him to Champions. (and Captain Electric's costume, more than anyone I've seen so far, is remarkably like his COH counterpart! He lucked out!) He's an avid roleplayer and was really getting into attempting to RP the silver-age nature of the universe while we did some adventuring. Somewhat to my amusement, really, he's a VERY "silver age" character. ^_^

One of the more interesting things he came up with - and I don't suggest this universally - I just mention how he did it - is he considers himself a dimensional transplant from Paragon City and Primal Earth. But he ALSO says he's aware that "he" has never really left and still flies the skies and patrols the streets of Paragon City as he always has. In other words, he's sort of been duplicated in the process.

While we were doing a mission, Cyberman 8 was ambushed by minions of his CO Nemesis. And I had to explain where they came from and who was sending them. In the process I improvised on the spot and came up with the following vague outline/bullet points:

- This is the original Cyberman 8 from Primal Earth/Paragon City.

- C8 has all his memories from Primal Earth, but he also has what could be considered some "native" knowledge of the CO World. Some of this could be due to wi-fi connections in Millennium City he's able to access (MC has a very robust internet system - part of that whole "city of the future" thing) and being able to look up information on background data on-the-fly. But some of it he seems to just -remember- as if he's been here a longer amount of time than he can account for.

- His current nemesis is "Prototype 6". P6 is one of the original 7 failed attempts at the process which created C8.

- Like in the original universe, there were 7 "failed" attempts by Dr. Tani of the procedure that created C8. Dr. Tani never actually activated number 6 back in Primal Earth.

- C8 isn't sure HOW Prototype 6 could even be active. C8 understood that the nature of the previous 7 failures was that a consciousness - the "spark" if you will (to use a Transformer term) - of a human intellect and/or soul - simply failed to take hold or survive the transfer intact. So there shouldn't even be any "ghost in the shell" inside of Prototype 6. Either there's a demented A.I. driving that android or someone completed Dr. Tani's work.

- There may be a native universe version of C8 somewhere. But if there is, he hasn't been seen. C8's been able to look up records in the local history that reference him and his adventures. But the details are different than he remembers them from Primal Earth. And also none of them are any newer than 1974, which is consistent with when the Primal Universe C8 was trapped underground and went inactive. In Paragon City C8 was rediscovered and revived in 2006 when Faultline was re-opened to development and they started to recover the zone and unearth several of the underground bases there. In this world there is no Paragon City or Faultline. So C8 isn't sure what happened to his local counterpart.

That's what I've come up with so far. It's subject to change/retcon as we figure things out.

In the case of Kara Skye, who was my Grav/Kin controller in COH, the difference in the way she plays in CO is radical enough for me to consider that she may be a local counterpart to the COH Kara.

Lily the Diamond is no stranger to time travel and cross dimensional stuff. She's a full transplant. And is taking the opportunity to go "straight" with the law. At least for now.

Sassinak was my main Praetorian, so maybe she's a dimensional transplant as well. But I'm not 100% certain. I -could- make her a local counterpart by making this version a transplant from Multifaria instead. But I'm not sure if that's where I want to take that.

Just offering the above as examples.

[Kistulot]

I think I realize now one key thing I forgot to put in my post.

Accepting differences meaning sometimes you just can't play with other people on that character, and vice versa.

Not the first person to say this, but I don't want to sound like I missed this point. I was the kid getting in trouble for being angry with other kids because I would play with everyone and anyone, even people I near violently hated. Not only is it important to roll with others' rp, and is it only fair for that to be returned, but sometimes we just need to accept things wont work out and move on.

It's irrational to think even being calm and rational that everything will work out all of the time, even a majority of the time. But maturely handling conflict is key.

Feel free to politely apologize to someone and remove yourself from a situation. I only say this because I know I wish someone else would have aught me that lesson when I was younger in a way I would have listened to.

[JRVthatsME]

If and when the foundry (Cryptics version of AE) there will very likely be many foundry mission created by us about how CoH characters ended up in the Champions Online universe. It also seems that many among us share common themes in this regard such as the Portal Corp accident. I have to wonder if it would be benefitial if players who's characters arrived in the Champions Online universe because of the same event should collaborate on creating the story of their event so that perhaps one shared coherent version (and mission if we get the foundry) of this could be created would be better. I mean with many variation of the same event being told (and hopefully played through) there is bound to be a level of contradiction which could really out of hand depending on how many versions get created.

I know we are story people. We love to have, create and tell our own stories and that's one of the best things about this community. The thing I'm thinking though is this. If we get one shared coherent arrival story built in great detail in the foundy (if and when it get added) and if every CoH player gives that mission a high vote it might become a permanent highly recomended mission that many other CO players might play and enjoy thus becoming like CO lore after a fashion in its own right.

Of course mission verions of these shared coherent arrival events will have to omit the exact names of places, NPCs, enemies etc that are specific to City of Heroes and the look of them will have to have enough differnce to keep us from getting in any official trouble but these could be a great way to introduce none CoH people in game to who we are and what were about.

I've had an idea for a mission that has the player (a CO character) come to the earth of the City of Heros universe trying to find help in stopping a major threat on their own world (I'm thinking trapped with Witchcraft and a few magic students by the portal in the Magic Lantern while a horde of demons are pooring in trough a rift upstairs to get their hands on an artifact of immense power Witchcraft has aquired. With the magic students help Witchcraft errects a protective magical barrier baring the demons from the chamber for a time and uses the portal to access an unknown parallel universe in the hopes that the player can find help there).When they arrive on CoH earth they wind up getting involved in stopping a Rikti plot near the end of the last Rikti war (before shutdown) that could mean the difference between victory and defeet. Joining forces with numerous heros they earn final victory over the Rikti and then the numerous heros travel back with the player to Champions Online earth in force and decimate the demonic horde. Near the end of be battle Witchcraft can no longer hold the portal open so it closes leaving the numerous heros stranded in the CO universe until she can eventually figure out exactly which parallel universe she opened the portal too so she can send them home.

[By numerous heroes (not going to actually call them numerous heroes in the mission) I'm hoping that it will be a group made up of a fair amount of duplicates of recreated CoH characters who players like this as an arrival story for there characters and want to be part of it. I really want it to be possible that after of CO player plays this that they could actually team up with the heroes they met and get to know them while playing regular missions and story arcs together. I wont add in any CoH player characters of players that have not asked to be or do not want to be part of this arrival story and will fill up the remaining ranks of the numerous heroes with made up characters]

[General Idiot]

Personally, on the one character I brought over from CoH I just leave it vague - she's from an unspecified alternate dimension in which she lived in an unnamed city full of numerous superheroes, and is unable to get back for unspecified reasons. The only time I get into details is when I meet someone else from CoH or a champions native asks about it. Works well enough for me.

[thunderforce]

Personally, on the one character I brought over from CoH I just leave it vague - she's from an unspecified alternate dimension in which she lived in an unnamed city full of numerous superheroes, and is unable to get back for unspecified reasons. The only time I get into details is when I meet someone else from CoH or a champions native asks about it. Works well enough for me.

I think it's worth (as you may have done) making it blindingly obvious to any CoX refugee you're a CoX refugee. Let's face it, the CO community is going to have to get used to CoX refugees - there are an awful lot of them. (Of us?)

[Kistulot]

As Zwill was so fond of saying, we were the number one super heroic MMO.

[chasearcanum]

Personally, on the one character I brought over from CoH I just leave it vague - she's from an unspecified alternate dimension in which she lived in an unnamed city full of numerous superheroes, and is unable to get back for unspecified reasons. The only time I get into details is when I meet someone else from CoH or a champions native asks about it. Works well enough for me.

That would seem to work rather well in my eyes- it isn't overtly pushing "the other game" for CO natives, but it preserves your backstory.  There have been plenty of other examples of "alternate dimension" backstories, so what's the harm?

It also helps avoid one of the other issues- copyright.  Starsman alluded to copyright issues, and they do exist.  Fansites like the PRIMUS database generally can legitimately reference and derive works off copyrighted material of the game they're promoting, but (for example) if NCSoft asked PRIMUS to remove references to their properties ("carnival of shadows" showing up in players' backstories there) they'd probably be forced to do so.  They don't actively hunt down and expel their users, but by listing it as a prohibition, they're covering their butts should someone come a-calling.