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Playbys (Faceclaims) in an environment of duplicates


Morrigan
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So, more questions about things as I develop a site that was spurned by "Least favorite trends" and @Honorem.

 

Playbys aka Faceclaims. With my new site I've been waffling over having them as they will have duplicates for androids and similar people. This means that I don't necessarily want the playbys to be exclusive since there is all sorts of potential there for copied faces and whatnot.

 

Now I know that some people like to have a level of exclusivity to certain playbys because they are attached to them or something which may be a possibility depending on rank of the official (basically certain ranks can have exclusive faces unless they agree to let someone else duplicate it).

 

The question here becomes, how do you, as a member, feel about non-exclusive playbys? Would that be something that is off putting? Would you want the same control over the use of your playby as a higher ranking official? Would you be willing to earn through in game play an exclusivity or be able to donate to the game to get an exclusive playby? (By this I mean you use an in game currency or donate real money to gain the exclusive playby that you can then choose who else is able to use it.)

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So long as it's made clear, somewhere, on the site, that Face Claims are not exclusive, or have the potential not to be, then I don't see a problem with it. However if they're up for grabs among human/biological creatures, then that might be a little weird, unless there's something along the lines of specific cloning, or facial reconstruction used. Having androids/robots/mimics with the same face? Doesn't bother me the least bit.

 

I also like the idea of getting exclusive 'rights' to a face, but not for real money. In-Game currency, or deeds, fine, but real money? To me, that's pushing it. Unless it's something like donating directly to the site host or something. I think there would be a need for something more to go with it for me to give real money.

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1 hour ago, mellomeme said:

I also like the idea of getting exclusive 'rights' to a face, but not for real money. In-Game currency, or deeds, fine, but real money? To me, that's pushing it. Unless it's something like donating directly to the site host or something. I think there would be a need for something more to go with it for me to give real money.

Donations are still something I'm considering. Something as basic as this would likely be included with another donation "upon request" as an alternative to using the in game currency. For example custom items and whatnot, donate an extra dollar on top of your custom staff made item and you can have an exclusive playby sort of thing (is what I was thinking at least). Of course it would be toward hosting and whatnot (that's the only way I do donations) ;)

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1 hour ago, Morrigan said:

Donations are still something I'm considering. Something as basic as this would likely be included with another donation "upon request" as an alternative to using the in game currency. For example custom items and whatnot, donate an extra dollar on top of your custom staff made item and you can have an exclusive playby sort of thing (is what I was thinking at least). Of course it would be toward hosting and whatnot (that's the only way I do donations) ;)

 

At which point I think there needs to be proof it's going to hosting. That's just the skeptic in me. I've seen a lot of folks get scammed in ways that are not cool. Most of the time there's a way to make payments to the host, (mostly I've seen this for gaming servers, not so much website hosts) as opposed to the person running the site.

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I've never been a fan of exclusive playbys, to be entirely honest. Lookalikes and "accidental twins" always seemed like a fun In Character encounter.

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I have never ever played on a site where we had a face claim process. People just provided a face for their character and it was generally self regulated. That said, because it was Star Trek mostly, sometimes we'd end up with accidental twins of a human and some other species that was photomaniped from the same face. I think the only time there was ruffled feathers over this was if someone was bringing in an established character, and someone was already playing a character on the same ship using the same face, it could be a little weird, but eh. Whatever.

 

That said, one of my favorite books is Houston, Houston Do You Read? by James Tiptree Jr... and well, I won't spoil it, but let's just say that the plot there is quite compatible with multiple people using the same face. I highly recommend the book if you haven't read it.

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I prefer exclusive face claims, but in a situation like you described I think if you had it arranged so, like, X was taken as human but available as Y it'd work.

 

If you didn't do exclusive, I think you should make it clear somewhere that that is the case.

 

I'm not a fan of claiming for donations but maybe allow every player to have 1 exclusive then they can get extras by donations or time spent in game.

Edited by Rune
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1 minute ago, Rune said:

I'm not a fan of claiming for donations but maybe allow every player to have 1 exclusive then they can get extras by donations or time spent in game.

I like that idea.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Face claims are important on my site as we only allow one account per member which is not tied to you RP character/s. We don't limit them either or make any exclusive, but when it comes to twinning, that can be a problem. I have one, (Jennifer Garner) which I do use as two characters. The way I got around that was to explain that character A/ Cate MacGregor was chosen specifically for her job initially (ASIS the Aussie version of the CIA) because she was a virtual twin, albeit younger of character B/ Sydney Bristow.

Other than that, we don't generally allow two people to have the same face claim in the same game. There are some on the board who have the same face claims, but they are in different RPGs.

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I wouldn;t mind duplicates. Maybe I'd make sure that no two people use the same picture, though, unless for twins. I mean, Johnny Depp in "Pirates of the Caribbean" is different from Edward Scissorhands and from later movies.

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There is that factor. An actor or personality can look totally different in various phases of their life and career (if an actor) Sir Ian McKellan looks different as Gandalf and Magneto :)

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2 hours ago, Elena said:

I wouldn;t mind duplicates. Maybe I'd make sure that no two people use the same picture, though, unless for twins. I mean, Johnny Depp in "Pirates of the Caribbean" is different from Edward Scissorhands and from later movies.

 

The issue with this is that they are two different worlds. But you can have a character develop from one version to another. For example, my fave playby, Charlize Theron, can go from Aeon Flux Charlize to Standard Charlize to shaved head (Mad Max Charlize) to short haired (current Charlize). While all of them are different you can't say that a character won't evolve or change their look.

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This is how I handle it: faces for actual human characters are claimed. Androids are assumed to be one of potentially thousands of the same model (therefore not exclusive to that one android character). Might sound complicated, but it's really about finding a member base that recognises these things. I've had members propose to me characters that are clones of mine, and made two characters using the same face (two androids of the same model), and stuff like that. I find it's better to have some sort of face claim page to fall back on and stop random newbies just making endless, nonsensical copies of existing characters, while also encouraging members to keep the sci fi tropes in mind, and suggest ideas of using taken face claims if they really want to. If there's a plausible reason for the duplicate, all good.

Edited by Honorem
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