So tell me, how can a character I freshly created, (just woken up from sand storm and whatnot is a startup scenario for new characters) instantly "know" the bad and the good people?
Bad and good don't mean anything. Freshly created don't mean anything in RP too, as you begin at min age of 16. Why you know enemy of this faction? Because they share it widely, through poster, radio, whatever (it's pretty much the RP explanation when you share it on forum, as you can't do it IG at all/easily/in a proper way. GP>RP, as always). And it's up to the char and it's Rp to believe them (and use their NC) or not.
Ah yes, it is because the player controlling him/her has stored all these datas in a nice and nifty file. This essentially means, that we don't play our characters, but we are the actual players in there, which is incredibly lame and goes completely against anything even remotively having to do with playing a role in a game.
Nothing prevent you to use different NC with different chars... Also a color don't mean anything by itself. For me, as all teams have a color, I can either shoot them or let them alone, depending of diplomacy, character, humor. It is obvious that someone in wasteland fighting with a gang will be known as member of this gang. What you do with this gang is your business, and it's player choice to follow their character and act RP or not with information that everyone could known.
Every character you roll is a new one, he doesn't know who the bad or the good guys are.
Sure. Doesn't mean he doesn't know that gang X shot Y member of gang Y if they spread it.
Instantly having the knowledge through some inane game mechanic is pretty much the definition of metagaming.
Metagaming have so much possibility without this, this feature doesn't add much metagaming (there is even much RP explanations) while it add much RP....
I really understand its usefulness for PVP fights and whatnot, since it can sometimes be confusing. I also get that players want to categorize their enemies/friends a bit more. I get that, and would even support that. But it pretty much destroys the purpose of Roleplaying, when via some uncanny effect all the characters share the same background - the player.
Which is false. A Cryo and Cryolead (to take a real example) don't have same affiliation thanks to NC, and won't be shot by same guys. While without NC, both will be shot by everyone because they recognize him and won't bother to think "Oh cryo is gang X while Cryolead is gang Y" if ythat's not displayed on their screen.
I think, why we have this long discussion here is simply because "Roleplaying" is a term which can't be 100% described, everyone has a different definition of it. For me, it comes more from a PnP background, traditional sessions with a dedicated GM to a dedicated playergroup doing campaigns.
Sure, but you can try to understand what it means to others people, and understand in what a feature is useful for their RP while it "literally totally destroy entirely" your RP (some irony there).
For other people, roleplaying is already if they say suddenly decide to try to talk a bit incharacter. This is nice and all, but if you want to roleplay, you don't suddenly switch back and forward, you do it all the time. You don't need to announce any projects or anything, you just do it. And I would not call that roleplaying, it is simply staying in the boundaries of the world you are playing in and avoiding out of character talk.
If you talk out of character once, you can't Rp forever! Yes, irony again, but that's kinda what you're saying...
This is exactly the purpose. The player is supposed to only control a character, not be a character himself.
Which NC is actually helping...
Previous post is bug, you can delete it ;p