I spent all my time in COH on Virtue, the unofficial RP server. I always role-played, but there was one thing that made it difficult: everyone had been on the same missions. This made for some awkward dialogue whenever someone decided it was a good idea to talk about missions they'd been on. How do you properly role-play the fact that you and everyone you're playing with have probably had the exact same missions under the exact same circumstances?
The way I tried to do things was by playing "mission host is the star." In other words, for the sake of game cohesion, if I was helping someone with [b]their[/b] mission, I would RP my character's personality, but I would behave as if the missions he talked about only happened to him, and my character had their own experience. Unfortunately, this wasn't a game most people were willing to play.
How did you deal with this?
I found that if you explained OOC ahead of the mission that in terms of RP your character had not run the mission before, people were generally accepting and willing to work with you on avoiding spoilers.
I was on Virtue as well and went by basically the same rule. Heck the game even told you to. I can't remember the exact message but it said you were experiencing the universe from the the team leaders perspective. On top of that most of my characters were made with a set of villains to face in mind. So the mystical magic user would been based in Croatoa there would be very little reason he or she would be going after the Council. So thought I did the Council missions I don't count them as part of my characters story because there was no reason for him to be involved. I saw it like Dr. Strange going after Hydra and the Red Skull. Sure they are in the same universe, but really don't cross often.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
whenever i tried to rp a mish...there was always someone who had encountered it before, or went out of character..or for whatever reason..didnt follow the rp. I found that it didnt bother me at all.. i mean it was a game that i enjoyed so i enjoyed it. if soemone went ooc ..or talked about the mish they had just run, even on another alt..i just let it go. After all games are meant to be fun and not picked at every last little detail that could spoil the overall experience. being more laid back about things after explaining ooc beforhand as nyght suggestted was the way i dealt with things on the rp front.