Jim said:
If you want your character to be doing something during downtime that will have any impact on the plot controlled parts of the game, then email us. Just showing up at an event and stating you plundered the City of Nightingales will not make it true. Now if just want to be lying, then great, go ahead. But if you really want to rob the famed city, let us know... we can set up a mod.
(Again, I'm more just keeping the up in the interest of open discussion, not trying to be arguementative, and I hope anyone reading my comments realizes this.)
The bolded text is actually my specific point of discussion. If a player went to Rythia and had dinner with their family, etc., it wouldn't have an effect on the Seattle-plot-controlled parts of the game,
unless we define interactions with Rythia to be Seattle-plot-controlled.
The example you give regarding the "City of Nightingales" is a strawman, in that I am not making any such claim, nor supporting such. Nor would I suggest that your statement "If you've been ordered by the Sindaco to apprentice to an alchemist for two months and there is no event during the next two months we won't assume you showed up for duty, fire us off an email." should be read to assume that if we didn't write plot to tell them that we had beef and mashed potatoes for dinner IG, that we'd necessarily be lying in that regard. (And the consumption of beef might very well be of plot-importance, given that for all we know, all the beef in Crocevia is now chaos-tainted, whatever that means.
)
Ultimately, it falls back on clearly delineating to who governs the ability of characters to travel from one campaign to another. If there is an unwritten and unspoken policy of "campaigns under the control of a chapter which has gone inactive, closed, or been suspended are unreachable by any means until use of that capaign setting has been approved by the consortium of owners", then I would suggest we make it a written rule. I know Mike has been harping on getting unwritten rules written (shades of my "Secret Rules Suck Society", for certe), and I definitely would like to suggest that our ownership proposes making a clearly defined statement in this regard for publication in the upcoming rulebook.
However, I think the discussion of far fetched possibilities is this case is not warranted. I don't think the other chapters would allow such a thing. I would hope our player base wouldn't try to do things like that... it smacks of Mom & Pop'ing to me.
If there isn't a universal rule on the matter, then I don't see that players, and more importantly, characters
shouldn't use the physics of NERO to their advantage if they can. Mom and Popping simply for the sake of snubbing the nose of one chapter or another is rude and simply being a jerk, and I agree that it should be addressed as such. However, utilizing the wacky physics that NERO Alliance invokes with its use of "the mists" isn't necessarily rule abuse. I've had Seattle NPCs "mistwalk" on me when they were trapped in the Earth Guild circle, and you simply accept that it is possible within the rules and that NPCs can and will use it as much as PCs. Whole sorts of mystical theorems on why you can get to Rythia from Ashbury but not Iyave can be created, hypothesized, etc. It simply adds to the weird tapestry of what the NERO world is.
Rolling up my comments into something a touch more concise: a player shouldn't need any particular plot team's permission to roleplay in a defunct chapter's campagn setting anymore than they should need plot's permission to eat beef. The rule regarding "making up your own countries" does not apply, in that the lands referenced were created and designed by a plot team
at some time. If there is an unwritten rule directing us otherwise, then it needs to be written.