EVE Fiction

I've wondered this ever since I discovered that an account had multiple character slots. I know people who explain this by saying that they jump clone between their alts, which explains why two alts from the same account can't be online at the same time.

But in regards to different accounts, how does that work? Some RP their multiple accounts as different people with different personalities, but this doesn't make sense to me. Even if a small group of people were close friends, it wouldn't explain why they all pool their resources together. If you think about how people use alts, there's usually a money-making alt that does nothing fun itself, and that is used to fund a main. If they were two different people, why would one devote their life to funding the other in this way?

I've had a look into some old threads and found some people writing about some form of black market technology that forms neural links between people. Is there anything that has been confirmed in regards to alts? Any theories? If there are any shorts out there based on this idea, I'd love to read them.

Odd question. No offense.

Very simple answer though - In RP terms of course alts are separate people.

In my case most of my alts are either family members of my main (There are 3 sisters and one brother) or they are family employees.

Yes, they are all "me", but they are very distinct and separate characters in a roleplay-sense. If you messaged each of them in-character you would get very different responses. It can be quite a challenge to RP multiple-characters like that, especially when I have more than one in a RP channel at once.

Edit: In terms of how one account and how you'd RP the fact that only one can be online at the same time? Well the others are sleeping, or course. Or attending duties "planetside". Not really difficult to RP around *shrug*

The end of the first comic for EVE: True Stories shows the BoB director stumbling toward a clone of his alt; this provides a bit of canon support for alts being the same person.

At the same time, some players play their characters as separate people for RP purposes, and that's legit; sure, there's fudging on assets, but so long as the characters are distinct and recognizeably individual, then I say go for it.

.....frick. Post got eaten. TL:DR

BOOBS! (re: why would you jump into an alt's clone)

And then I had a couple paragraph rant about how the very concept of being an RP player is ridiculous in the extreme. Everyone in EVE plays their role. Whether it's the New Order being more blatant about it, the white knights against the New Order, big bad COWs, um, BoB and Sir Molle--er, Goons and Mittani, Gevlon and his anti-Goons/RVB kick he's currently on, the podcasters as the media or EVE, the null alliances/coalitions/blocs, the PVPers, the marketeers, the miners--they're all playing their role in EVE.

Some people realize it (Erotica 1, James 315, arguably Mittens) and some don't. But IMHO if you're logged into EVE and/or contributing to the EVE meta, you're roleplaying.

Yourself.

Some people just happen to put a bit (read: a lot) more work into their roleplaying than others.


Personally I would argue that The Mittani is the single greatest RPer in EVE. He knows he's the big bad villain and he plays the self-aggrandizing, James Bond, mustache-twirling, tie the damsel to the train tracks villain to a T.

The fact that he manages to get a corp/alliance/entire CFC to roleplay his vision alongside him is what makes him so bloody brilliant.

James 315 is, to me, the second greatest RPer in New Eden.

My personal lore is that my (many) alts are all friends (and/or relatives) (or at least acquaintances) who happen to work together. They buy their Concord 30 day PLEX with either planetary currency or ISK that they make in the normal playtime.

I had a lot more of that on a blog on podlogs before it went belly up and I lost a lot of stuff.

Generally the explanation given is that the alts have some deeply persona reason for taking up the limited role they do.As was mentioned above, some consider them family; others might have been funded into being a capsuleer (which, remember, is an extended process and not merely a quick surgery and you're good to go) by the 'main' in the equation. Maybe some huge debt is owed - did the main do something for the alt that would leave them with some sort of personal or blood debt that would leave them choosing to repay the 'main' with service? Sometimes the reasoning is that they were forced - maybe the 'main' is holding a family member hostage, or has some deeply damaging information regarding the 'alt'.

On the Amarr end of things, one trope that often comes up is the 'alt' being a subservient member of the same Amarrian house or organization the 'main' is; not just slaves (although those appear often enough) but just lower-ranking members of the same house who would follow the higher-ranking 'main' because Amarrian society is highly authoritarian and doing what your Holder tells you to is ingrained deeply even into capsuleers.a

I always think of on-account alts as the same consciousness and off-account alts as allies.

Interesting question, one I've only briefly considered. I generally don't RP. I am just me, and my character I guess is my alternate ego in the cosmos. Well, I guess I AM RPing then LOL. But not in any strict sense of the term.

I've never been able to make my characters all be different. This character, for example, acts the exact same as my old one which I have now lost forever.

I don't think what happens in the comics is prime fiction. It is presenting the meta-game (decidedly not part of the prime fiction) through the lens of in game activity (because a comic of chat logs and Ventrilo conversations would not be as exciting). A capsuleer can only be on person. (Minus the eternal special case, rule breaking Broker.)

It was Broker, not Heth. Heth is (was?) an ordinary human.