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Post by Aneirin on Sept 23, 2011 4:13:00 GMT -5
To clarify something 99% of us should already know, tag reading is reacting to a new character based on the name over its head or the guild associations before an encounter even starts.
Example: I was in a battle situation once where Kei, who was a pirate-in-name-only fought along side the residents of Olympus. As the battle wore down, someone whom Kei had never met said, "What is a pirate doing here?"
Now the post: Tag reading is something we have all been guilty of at times. I know I've been in Olympus and saw a new character and called them a muckity-muck of honor before I so much as asked their name. A guild mate still insisted on calling CoD members "undead" at the time I stopped playing, even with no in character reason to suspect it. Usually, it's just an accident where the offender wasn't really paying attention. If it's an ongoing issue, then that's a different story.
My question is, when someone you know tag-reads, how does your character react? How does the offender typically react? How do we dig ourselves out of the rp-hole we just started digging?
To continue the example, when the man called Kei a pirate, he replied, "You must be mistaken, I am certainly no pirate!"
The man then replied, "Ahh, but you have the smell of pirates about you." This, of course, was also impossible, for Kei had never been on a ship (in recent memory, I preferred Farsight and Aneirin for ship board activities), rarely hunted with other pirates, and didn't even call Red Skull Bay home. The tag was just a convenience for me, and had no bearing on the character of Kei.
So I asked about that.
The conversation ended, and the tag-reader pretended it didn't happen, which I thought was a shame, for I wanted to get into an argument. The rp-battle didn't go as well as I had hoped.
Now, should the man have mentioned my clearly-pirate clothes, I may have had to have conceded the point. I am a firm believer in having my guilded characters apply to the dress code.
Or if he had heard rumor about me, or if one of the muckity mucks of honor had defended his point (even lied about having mentioned a pirate in the group!), etc.
So what's a good example of escaping the Freudean slip of accidently tag-reading someone?
Another example: I met a new character in Olympus who was PGoH. Silly me, I said something to the effect of "You honor folk make me sick!"
She replied, "Oh, but I'm not from here." In general chat, she explained that the role was temporary, for training purposes.
I could only reply with, "Then where the hell are we?" and threw a few choice insults her way. Aneirin does not apologize.
That led to a great exchange of insults, where Aneirin may have gotten the worse end of the deal, then I went away (after shooting the offender once, I think.. but that's the end of most of my exchanges. Aneirin wouldn't be the same without leaving scars) to find someone else.
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Post by Aedon Durreah on Sept 23, 2011 14:34:25 GMT -5
I will sometimes look at the profile of a new character I meet for a couple of reasons.
1. I cannot tell if they are male of female. (sight issues)
2. To see if there are any visible scars or attributes that I would react to in character.
Other then that I pay little to no attention to their tags or profiles.
As to Kei smelling like a pirate, what exactly does a pirate smell like? Farty and soaked in rum?
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Post by clivedauthi on Sept 23, 2011 18:06:03 GMT -5
I honestly don't like Tags, to me it's always been just to much of a temptation.
I know it looks nice to have custom titles and show your support for the guild you are in, but when it comes down to it, it is nothing more then that a title to magical float above your head to tempt people into looking and reading. ----
I'm guilty to though, I have to admit in my old pvp leaning days whenever certain guild tags showed on screen I would go ahead and make sure my macros are okay and weapon is ready to insta jump to hand Which if someone is trying to RP jumping someone, defeats the purpose.
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I always thought Tags where good for guild or formal events, If your wearing a guild uniform it would make sense for someone to notice your colors and the badges you have on your fancy vest
But when your out at a tavern, if your character is dressed informally I think it's just easier to keep tags down and let people react to what they see you do and not what the see above your head.
my 2 cents
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Post by Rotep on Sept 23, 2011 22:55:53 GMT -5
I will sometimes look at the profile of a new character I meet for a couple of reasons. 1. I cannot tell if they are male of female. (sight issues) 2. To see if there are any visible scars or attributes that I would react to in character. Other then that I pay little to no attention to their tags or profiles. As to Kei smelling like a pirate, what exactly does a pirate smell like? Farty and soaked in rum? So basically if they're elf they're female/sexless there is no such thing as a male elf, it's a fact. My thoughts on tag reading, I've seen so many people do it I don't give a crap anymore. I know it's going to happen when certain people are about. As for reading profiles I'll read them and then never read them again until I get bored so it could be months before I figure out "So and So is pregnant" or "so and so is bleeding out a hole after having there arm cut off" especially if they don't emote it or something. And when that happens I play it off as apathy because really Scarst doesn't care about anyone and Rotep always acted oblivious because it was funny. Also Aneirin are you back or something?
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Post by Aneirin on Sept 24, 2011 0:57:24 GMT -5
Not back in game, for sure. I'm just posting here under the guise of "Creating discussion" or "Trolling" if you will (funny how those words mean the same thing, but aren't typically considered interchangeable).
And yes, elves are all female, according to Aneirin. To make matters worse in Aneirin's head is that not one elf has ever violently disagreed with him enough to make him reconsider.
And gargoyles are "it". But in a roleplay sense, he has met two (Ravven and Avalon), so they hardly count.
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Post by Aedon Durreah on Sept 24, 2011 4:00:25 GMT -5
Well they are certainly all pretty enough to be women. Although, I haz known me some homely women.
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Post by Sage Aurora on Sept 24, 2011 14:11:17 GMT -5
I remember a new tavern opening up on Malas and I was going to support it on its opening night but when I entered the door the barkeeper looked up and told me they don't serve my kind...
I asked what he had against drow [that is something I've encountered before I couldn't hide lael's black skin and hair well at the time; it is an argument that has led to some good rp]? The barkeep however spit on the floor and said Drow are fine but he didn't stock blood for us undead sorts.
There is no way he could have assumed Lael was undead from looking at her; her eyes aren't even red to be used as a give away or an assumption either.
When I questioned what on Malas made him think I was undead, he used his sense of smell [seems popular for tag reading] and told me my rot could be smelled from 15 feet away. As a scout Lael goes to tedious lengths to hide her true nature, rarely does she enter into public smelling of anything other than annise to not only confound people but animals as well. After a nights work she may pick up the smell of undergrowth or a tavern but she doesn't smell of rotting flesh.
Lael sniffed herself and expressed she was sorry the barkeep didn't like the smell of licorice and made her way out of the tavern. But as a player I kept that rp'er at arms length, I let my GM know of the encounter should it become a problem where the assumption was claimed as public knowledge.
I can only guess that it became a problem for the rp'er, his tavern was only open for a few weeks and him and his guild disappeared a month or so later.
I tried to give the player an opening where by he could engage in rp over his slip, but he never caught on and stood by his assumption as truth because he read my tag. A lot of my characters don't even display their tags to avoid this happening at all.
I know when I returned to RP after a few years break I was guilty of it also and was grateful for the folks who used the same outlet to engage in further RP and allow me to climb out of the hole I dug.
PS: As I read over this post something else comes to mind, I questioned leaving in Lael's name. There have been times where something read on the forums becomes assumed IC knowledge in game. Lael does work for a known vampire, and if you know she does, you can assume from that she might be not is the same, but association is not evidence.
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Post by Rotep on Sept 24, 2011 14:54:35 GMT -5
Pirates don't need a reason to hate! Associated with corpses is just as good an excuse as being one haha. =P On a slightly more serious note, as serious as talking about RP can actually get (not very), I've basically stopped playing. I could go into reasons but screw it haha.
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Post by Darkheart on Sept 24, 2011 19:24:11 GMT -5
In the early days of RP on Catskills having your tag visible was required for most guilds and tag reading wasnt really disouraged though it certainly wasn't encouraged either. The reason beinbg is that there were very few characters that tried to conceal their identity and loyalties. Most guilds had a strict uniform and class/proffesion system. Orcs were in Shadow Clan, Undead were in Undead Vampires were in the Crimson Alliance. Kinship and Winterfell were mostly humans with a handful of elves. Order of the Griffon and Knights of Yew were humans. The vampires of Crimson Alliance were publicly known as vampires. Things were simple. On rare occasions a vampire of CA would drop their tag to feed off of the patrons of the Kinship Tavern. On these occasions the CA vampire would take extra precaution to not incite any altercations. And even if someone was to find out they were a vampire and challenged the CA Vampire the vampire would have to make a quick exit. They would most likely never be able to make an appearance ever again without some kind of incident. But then things changed when Trammel came out. People were able to create their own guildsat one point I remeber there being around 10 vampire guilds. Shadow Clan had to split its members because it had too many members. More unusual races made their appearances like the Fae or what ever Clive is there were even a handful of cat people at one point. Many of the new races and super-humans needed tags. Half of them were telepathic anyway. They needed a tag to tell them what the characters name was. Things are still kind of like this. I accept iw for what it is. On another note profiles have gotten better over the years but it is along the same lines. I feel profiles should reveal to the reader what can obviously be seen and maybe a little of what can be easily detected. I always feel I have wasted my time when there is a peom or an origin story. Because with a peom it tells me nothing about the character, Is the peom about the character or is it a poem the character likes? It never says and is always annoying. With origin stories it tells me nothing of what the character looks like that UO's graphics limits and if anything gives telepaths a story to work with. Thus validating unfair tag and profile reading. The way I deal with tag reading is I avoid weak RPers. No offense but to most of the members of PGoH but I have had several bad experiences with I would assume are some of their newer members. A few years ago there was a member who was OOCly tasked with getting to know some of the other RP guilds on the shard. I guess it wasn't explicit that some of these guilds do not exist in an IC sense. One of my guilds as well as S^S were named in a book advertising that the member wanted to meet some of these guilds. The PGoH member made several copies and dropped them all over New Haven and Luna. I ICQed the PGoH member and told her it was a bad idea to announce OOC guilds like that. Then I spoke with Charlie at the time who I assume handled the incident. A few days later Charlie posted on the forum of the day about how she was tired people calling PGoH a "part time RP guild". I shrugged it off. I felt the incident I had with the one member was isolated enough and I dealt with it in an OOC way so I never had to deal with in ICly. A few months passed and I was sitting in the Knights Rest and I was looking around at how people were dressed and reading their profiles. I had just been in Luna doing some banking where I had also done some people watching of non-RPers. I got to thinking what makes a RPer an RPer? I took several screen shots of those at the Knights Rest and then later of a handful of people at the Luna bank. I concealed their names on the paperdolls and names in the tags. I shuffled the pics and gave each a number and sent the pics to a few friends and asked if they could pic out the RPers from the powergamers. It was nearly impossible. I'll send you the pic if you want to see for yourself. I attached it to the bottom of my post for you to see for yourself. Some of the noteworthy examples was a necromancer who had a title of 'dishonorable' who was a member of Purple Guardians of Honor. I'm sure there was a well played out backstory of guardians of Honor came to accept a dishonorable necromancer. Ironic none the less. A high ranking Knight of Inertha used not a lance or a sturdy broadsword but "Cold Blood" an artifact cleaver with a dose of deadly poison. Even I wasn't totally immune. I had a smith version of my 'Good' Dante who had title of scoundrel when that character had long since redeemed himself from being known as a scoundrel. I've just come to the conclusion that we will never know as much about other characters than their owners. I once though "oh lets regulate RP" or if we had a standard set of rules like Europa that all RP guilds followed we would be better off. But I came to two conclusions. One, Europa is very boring to play on. And two, Catskills will never unite like it once was ever again. The current player base is shrinking and will probably never grow. We can't risk alienating those still around to RP with. These days I only log in on request or if there is an event and I usually try to stay away from those that don't look like RPers.
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Post by Rameses on Sept 25, 2011 9:39:44 GMT -5
I never had a problem with tags, or Profiles. it gives Perceptive to the character. the only problem was, People new to the R/p world would use the info and not R/P learning the persons nature. Same problem was having names on Character dolls. Strangers would just walk up and call me by name. My reaction would normally be " ? Have we met ? ".. My Rule has always been Read the Tags , but never mention them in Public. After all I'm not a Mind-Reader.
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Post by Hunters Moon on Sept 26, 2011 6:53:55 GMT -5
One of my pet peeves is tag reading. One of the worse cases I have personally experenced was when I still had Dagonet in pgoh. I recalled to Haven bank after some hunting and was jumped kos style. No warning. No RP. The player only saw that I was orange and attacked. There was nothing about Dagonet that would even begin to give away he was a part of that guild.Nothing in profile,but only had my tag up and was orange.
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Post by Rianna Edmunds on Sept 26, 2011 15:22:42 GMT -5
Mr. Darkheart: #11 is Galanor. #12 is possibly Robert. (wow how long ago was this?) Both of them "RPers". Oh and #14 is Dante On the subject: I read tags. We all read tags. You can't tell me that you don't actually note the words on the screen floating above someone's head when it's there. If you have all names turned off there's no tag, so there's no tag to read. What we do with the knowledge is the issue. Ignore it or...? *is not pregnant*
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Post by Rotep on Sept 26, 2011 16:39:27 GMT -5
Yeah you have to emote that whenever walked into conversation because you were pregnant more than not
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Post by Aedon Durreah on Sept 26, 2011 16:51:10 GMT -5
I think #5 is Guy Skymourner
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Post by clivedauthi on Sept 27, 2011 13:42:23 GMT -5
I'm still holding firm that Tags just lead to problems. As Darkheart touched on, If you have a decent profile* that shows other what they are seeing/feeling from a character when they walk into a room, You have Won, and there should be NO NEED for any Tag at all
*Songs/Poetry does not count as a good profile, I have yet to waste my time to read a profile that quotes a song, Why would you even think that is appropriate for a RP character?
I also am going to mimic what a few of you have already said as well IF you do Tag read, you don't usually get a 2ed shot with me, I have two accounts, and a sh!t ton of stuff in my personal life. Why would I waste my few hours of RP I get a week for someone who can "Smell Undeath" or see who someone is behind a hooded rope with their "Super sight" No If you Do this YOU are NOT a good RPer
if that makes me an elitist so be it, but ppl ignored me when I first started RPing for this same Reason AND THEY SHOULD HAVE It made me into a much better RPer
As for Darkheart commits on the varity of characters in Catskills, I wouldn't have it any other way. I love that we have imaginative people who are willing to think outside the box with their characters and guilds, It was the LACK OF this which makes Euro dull in my opinion
I mean, Rping random solider of the Republic number #34 arguing with random solider of the empire #45 Just is really really bland compared to Rping a Vampire scientist trying to outsmart some faeling creatures.
One sounds like the History channel, one sounds like Fun
So In short Turn your Damn Tags off.
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