Trust (RE: Staying Alive)

[Synthesis]

(Posted this here to avoid derailing the staying alive thread.)

Trusting no one usually ends up getting people killed just as well as trusting everyone does.  You might not die to lying PC raider bastards, but you'll probably end up dying to the random uber-gith that walks in and hands you a vicious beat-down just as a horde of lag-gremlins begin to tinker with your internet connection.

I think the whole "trust no-one" thing stems from a few largely OOC phenomena:
1) It's easy to be a bastard raider if you're an experienced player, because the supply of noobs is never-ending.
2) It's easy to be a bastard because people's VNPC families never come looking for them.
3) Ditto because most people die quickly anyway, so if you fail a raid on someone, they'll probably die to something (or someone) else before the word gets out about you.
4) Ditto because it gives folks an adrenaline rush to kill other PCs, and there are very few consequences to suffer for failure (see above).
5) Raiding someone is instant-gratification roleplaying.  You do something, and you get the full rush of the results immediately, like huffing paint.  (Unfortunately, like huffing paint, the high wears off quickly, and harms you in the long run.)  This instant-gratification phenomenon is a common characteristic of internet culture, and the whole information-age generation, in general.

All of this amalgamates with our Western capitalist society's distaste toward anarchical and communal social systems, and it sums up to making trusting someone seem downright naive.

However, as I stated above, trusting people can save your ass just as often as not trusting them can.  For example:
1) If you're starving in the desert and you have a good ranger buddy, you can contact him to come haul your ass in.  
2) If you're a ranger/bard, you can team up with a warrior/armorcrafter and make a mountain of coins from the vicious beasties you kill together.  3) Travelling in groups makes you less of a target, since most raids occur opportunistically, and attacking two PCs alone is just not a good idea.
4) If you have someone to team up with, you can -spar- and increase your skills in relative safety, making it easier to defend yourself later.

And on, and on, and on.  My advice is to trust everyone initially, but know where to draw the line.  Once you develop a rapport with someone, it's much less likely that they will kill you, because:  1) Almost nobody has a scheme as simple as "kill everything that moves."  Accomplishing anything worthwhile takes allies, and not killing everything that moves is sort of a pre-requisite for developing allies.  2) It's fun to roleplay with the same few people consistently.  Your character, much like yourself, develops more fully into its potential when it is interacting with its environment, specifically, other PCs, and if all you do is kill other PCs, you're going to get very bored very quickly.

I know this, because I've played on the Dark Side before, and I was (am) quite good at it.  But after 60+ characters and 7-8 years of playing the game, I can tell you that my most enjoyable characters were ones that were involved (implicitly trusting) with other characters.  Sparring the dirty, muscular man while looking over your shoulder constantly may result in you becoming an uber-assassin, but you'll die a lonely death, and you won't have anything particularly fond to remember about your character.  You'll spend 15 x 24 hours playing him, and only have a body count to remember him by.  And statistics just don't make for good stories.

[Larrath]

Not trusting someone doesn't mean you can't rely on anyone, it's all a matter of degree.  For instance, if I was a noble and I was competing against another noble in my House in order to have some fancy one-on-one meal with the House Head, I wouldn't tell that other noble how I felt a little queasy the other day, because he could pass that information on and make the House Head refuse to meet with me on account of being potentially contagious.
However, I could trust the other noble with...
Uhh...
...
Okay, bad example.

But the fact is that you can't have absolute faith in anyone unless you're retarded, an elf in a tribe, or possibly a tribal human.  If you know someone would kill for two 'sids, don't tell him you're stuck in the desert with the latest shipment of polished emeralds for Kadius... But this doesn't mean you can't stitch the abayas while he carves the buttons for you.

You can become friends with a templar and trust him with your life, but letting him keep an eye on that wine shipment for Tuluk while nobody else is around isn't very smart.

Keep your eyes open, learn to assess people, and always trust people just a little less than you probably should.

[Spoon]

I'd like to see more people trusting others because their PC would do so, rather than whether or not they would.

[Delirium]

I seem to see a lot of this "trust" factor stemming from OOC considerations, reading the original post.  That isn't what trusting people in-game (whether you do or don't) is supposed to be all about.  Like with anything else there are many levels of trust, and you should explore those ICly with your character for reasons applicable to the world, not because you're trying to decide if they're a newbie or an established player.  Trust them or don't because of who that character is and who your character is.

Telling new players not to trust everyone easily is still good advice, because Zalanthans are going to be a suspicious bunch.  They will work together and profit from each other, but that doesn't mean they fully trust each other.. yet.

You can save someone's life by bringing them a poison tablet only because you have further plans of using them mercilessly in the future.  Complete trust is rare but possible.. but it wouldn't be until after years of testing.

[Xygax]

Trusting someone is a different thing than finding them useful (even if the usefulness is mutual).

You can travel with someone because their particular abilities and goals mesh with yours nicely; that doesn't mean that you will necessarily share your deepest, darkest secrets with them and hand them your weapons to guard you while you sleep.

-- X

[amoeba]

The only thing that irks me about the whole trust debate is the very black and white nature it's often couched in.   I think Delirium stated it best when she said that there are levels of trust.  Exploring those levels leads to a much richer character.  

I had a character who had a very close relationship with another character. In time they became mates.  Now my character always thought that one day he would be killed by her, even to the end.  Did he trust her completely, yes.  He knew she would lay her life down for him if it came to it. Did he expect her to betray him at sometime, yes also.

LIfe is messy, confusing, and often full of contradictions.  The issue of trust should be no less so. Exploring these levels creates more interesting characters imo.  Yes it is good advice to say don't trust anyone.  Okay, now you have the basics, a baseline to work from.  Go see where it goes from there.

[jstorrie]

I've played two characters in the past year that have both trusted essentially everyone they met. One of them died of natural causes (ie, retirement) and the other of a very unusual event that had nothing to do with betrayal.

So yeah, the knife in the back isn't allllways there.

[Manhattan]

ic you can trust them, but ooc you dont have to.

friend pc in game says "hey come hunting out in the tablelands with me buddy"
your pc says "uh, alright, but I have to help my uncle shave my kank's balls so not today."
you the player is thinking "hell no i aint going out with that foo. he'll kill my pc"

[Yokunama]

Really, I've found out that you can only trust in a certain group characters. Though, this does depend on where you are in the world.