The OOC Masquerade ?
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@Bad-at-Lurking said in The OOC Masquerade ?:
Obviously, if a game's wiki or somebody's page asserts that information on it is strictly OOC, I don't use it.
You know what? I'm going to make a strong statement:
Assume that a Wiki is OOC first. Did your character learn this information through interactions on the game? No? Then it's OOC.
If you want to use the information, do it. I'm all for people using the information, especially using the information as a way to contact someone if they can use the information and the best way to do so. This is Table Talk. This is social interaction. This. Is. Awesome.
What is IC? What is OOC? If people use their common sense, treat each other with politeness and consideration, and treat the game world with consideration, then who in the world cares?
Well, I don't.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain Know what would be cool? WoD wiki pages being based on who they are on top of the masquerade.
Bob is a vampire Hunter by night, but works at a copy store during the day. Bob's wiki page is about his job buddies, his love of pro wrestling, is listed as a mortal.
Radu the vampire is a 450 year old Hungarian Ventrue who has seen the ages turn. He has feasted. He has torpored. He has dined with kings. Radu's wiki is for Timothy Steele, a mortal financial investment banker who enjoys owning box seats for the LA Kings, is an avid sailer on his yacht, and loves his prized mastiff, Archie.
Nevermind the fact that both of them have had to wash blood off of them in a shower in the basement of a YMCA for entirely different reasons.
Delete the Hog Pit. It'll be fun.
I really don't understand He-Man -
@Ghost That's a more valid approach, and I think could be interesting.
Though, really... setting up a wiki with tabs or collapsible sections to denote which info is available and to whom is relatively trivial. I've even considering laying out something like this for the project that's been on hold for about a year, roughly cribbed from the way the various WoD books handle 'how this group sees group B' and so on.
Mediawiki presently won't let you prevent the PLAYER from seeing this information, but it can be tucked away so that only public information is available, front-facing at a skim.
Then you just have tabs or collapsibles for things like 'this is how Vampires know Jane and what she thinks of them', 'this is how this Werewolf tribe sees Jane and what she thinks of them', and so on. That's easy and I'm sorta surprised it's not something I've seen before, but ah, well.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality I wonder if you could setup group permissions. Each character gets their own login and is assigned to a group (example: Vampires).
Only logins in the vampire group get access to the below-masquerade pages that give vampire details.
So my mortal login could only see mortal level stuff, but my vampire login could view data on pages tagged VtM.
Just an idea. It would be a lot of work for stuff people could circumvent merely by having an alt, but might be a neat feature.
Delete the Hog Pit. It'll be fun.
I really don't understand He-Man -
The sheer number of people who go around saying 'You can play X, but don't let my character find out about it, because they'll murder you dead' kiiiind of makes me lean in favor of being Pro-Masq. Plus, I like the seekrits.
I'm totally in favor of this one, though:
@Ghost said in The OOC Masquerade ?:
@Thenomain Know what would be cool? WoD wiki pages being based on who they are on top of the masquerade.
Bob is a vampire Hunter by night, but works at a copy store during the day. Bob's wiki page is about his job buddies, his love of pro wrestling, is listed as a mortal.
Radu the vampire is a 450 year old Hungarian Ventrue who has seen the ages turn. He has feasted. He has torpored. He has dined with kings. Radu's wiki is for Timothy Steele, a mortal financial investment banker who enjoys owning box seats for the LA Kings, is an avid sailer on his yacht, and loves his prized mastiff, Archie.
Nevermind the fact that both of them have had to wash blood off of them in a shower in the basement of a YMCA for entirely different reasons.
You could also have a second page of who you actually are for folks in the know, but disassociate the two identities wiki-side. The CoH spinoff game (or the original? I forget the timeline for all that stuff...) had a quaint... I don't want to say solution, but definitely a feature for those who want to use it. Each 'identity' can have it's own DBRef/player object, while they share the same +sheet and xp stuffs. I'm not 100% sure how (or even if) the code enforces not being logged into both simultaneously, but it's a neat idea that could be used for places that want the option.
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@Ghost You can't. Trust me, I've spent years trying. It sortakinda maybe works but doesn't really at all in any useful way.
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@Ghost This just sounds like implementation and enforcement hell to cater to the 7 total people that still care about OOC masq. This just feels like more work, more hoops, more.... unnecessary. Morew work for staff to do in an age where there's already too much to do and holding onto staffers long term is already a shot in the dark every time. Now add on this? Layers of weird wiki masq nonsense and properly flagging pages and...
please no.
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@Wretched said in The OOC Masquerade ?:
@Ghost This just sounds like implementation and enforcement hell to cater to the 7 total people that still care about OOC masq. This just feels like more work, more hoops, more.... unnecessary. Morew work for staff to do in an age where there's already too much to do and holding onto staffers long term is already a shot in the dark every time. Now add on this? Layers of weird wiki masq nonsense and properly flagging pages and...
please no.
Yeah, youre probably right. Probably not probably.
It's a lot of data entry for something easily cheesed by cheesers.
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I think OOC masq should be a player's choice. You don't want to know that the other PC is a whatever? Then you can not look at their wiki, ask them not to tell you, etc. If you want to know, then you can know.
"Just leave me alone. I'm not myself. I'm falling apart, and I don't want you here." - ― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
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I find that when information is widely available there is a concomitant social pressure to minimally familiarize myself with it or Not Know What is Going On.
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Yeah, because more paperwork is what we need in this hobby.
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DOOBLE POOST:
@saosmash said in The OOC Masquerade ?:
I find that when information is widely available there is a concomitant social pressure to minimally familiarize myself with it or Not Know What is Going On.
I find that people love to read logs, explore wikis, and immerse themselves in the culture.
I also find that if people are familiar with each other—or want to be—to joke about things on people's wikis on OOC chat, they are acknowledging that it's Table Talk, that it's OOC, and that supports a culture of keeping it considerate. Saying, "WE are the players, these are our characters. They aren't the same thing."
This is one dino's WoD focus, but I've watched the shift, and seen other cultures (specifically AetherMUX) be confused that "OOC Masq" was ever a needed thing.
When people here say it's up to culture, it really is. And staff's approach informs that culture. Which includes code implementation.
Ta.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain said in The OOC Masquerade ?:
And staff's approach informs that culture. Which includes code implementation.
Quoted for truth. Even when the game's +policy documentation explicitly states you are totally allowed to have said OOC Masq and there is even code in place to support it, if a staffer oversteps their bounds and just... removes some of the code bits from your character that were put in place to keep said Masq in place.
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Or any time staff decides to overstep the rules for their own sake, or ignore proper decorum, that clues people that the rules are not being enforced. I've seen staff try to clamp down on players do what staff says but not what staff does, but it's nobody's fault but their own.
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If the game leans more towards a MUD atmosphere, is competitive, or has a theme entirely built around keeping secret identities and such like in a Werewolf/Mafia sort of game or BSG with cylons, I would say keep the masque. Otherwise I feel that it gets in the way of collaborative storytelling.
Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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@Ominous said in The OOC Masquerade ?:
If the game leans more towards a MUD atmosphere, is competitive, or has a theme entirely built around keeping secret identities and such like in a Werewolf/Mafia sort of game or BSG with cylons, I would say keep the masque. Otherwise I feel that it gets in the way of collaborative storytelling.
So having played a BSG game where I WAS a skinjob... I was sent an @mail by Staff with my designation (#7), when I would 'go active,' and a couple other (v. limited) details.
No one knew (I think a couple people suspected just because ofc people knew PCs would be chosen) until my character outed herself after deciding to align with humanity. She knew who the other skinjob at the time on board was, but I didn't out them. And this was on a game with FS3, so it had open sheets, etc. But BSG games have been long-running enough that it's in the culture to handle things well in that sense.
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I'll make a comparison.
I played on Modern Nights, a recent V20 game. It had a lot of options and a lot of potential. But there were no wikis, and the players weren't really talking to one another online. It was hard to find RP most nights, and I did not have the ability to sift through wikis to even see where I might have a tie or two. Yes, there was code available to guide me towards folks that my PC may have known, but that's a far cry from being able to browse at leisure.
Contrast this with Echoes in the Mist. That game had a wiki, but you didn't have to reveal your stats if you didn't want to. Even the most basic information -- Clan, Covenant -- was enough to help me figure it if it would make sense that my PC would bump into another. That made me feel more comfortable reaching out for RP.
Aside from Ares-based games, I don't know of or haven't played on games which allowed all-but-full disclosure of stats. Whether an OOC masquerade is purposeful I think largely depends on the kind of game you want to run, but I prefer games with player wiki pages.
