Halicron's Rules For Good RP (which be more like guidelines)

[Thenomain]

If anyone says that you are a horrible person for how a character acts, @Lithium, they may or may not be complete jerks. They probably are jerks because they don't care to share the same game goal as you do. The unwillingness to cooperate and negotiate are jerk actions.

Or as Gany says, maybe you're the jerk because you're motivated in a way that attacks someone else's play. (I'm not accusing you of this, I'm just saying again that she gets it.)

Goals, theme, setting, character, NPC, environment, these are all tools. When we talk about "IC" we should be talking not about a tool or an action, but the context in which we see our actions and these tools applied.

The tool can be applied to tell a story, or the tool can be applied to fuck with someone else's telling of a story, but it's still just a tool.

The problem with talking about "IC/OOC Separation" is that has become misleading as to the nature of these tools, and that's something you've ignored me saying (for reasons I literally cannot understand don't understand). The term is now a label, and practically a cliche, that does not help our hobby one bit.

Maybe, some day, we can excise it from our vocabulary because we can better understand our relationship between ourselves and the IC framework. IC is not apart from OOC, it is a subset of OOC.

[Halicron]

@mietze Oh yeah, the vicious telepathic pass-agg. That's a horrible one.

[bored]

To talk a little more about the meta stuff, @saosmash and otherwise:

I definitely do it for humor a lot too. And not just humor. When I talked about the evolution in my writing from MU infancy to now, I think the big difference is that when I started, it was strictly an interactive medium through which I was playing a game. I wasn't writing, I was communicating in-game actions. Now I think of it a lot more as an exercise in shared writing, and so I write for people to enjoy what I'm writing, not just to deliver information. So if I can make a pose more interesting, funny, sad, or what have you by injecting a subjective authorial aside, I'm really happy to do that.

I think there's also something to be said for getting at a character's emotional or mental state in the text of a pose beyond 'Name frowns' or so on, to facilitate accurate interaction (this gets at the classic characters are better than their players trope). Players are generally good at neither typing out the specific nuances of facial expression nor at interpreting them from others' texts, while characters might be good at these things. Characters develop bonds and rapports that might be much stronger than the familiarity of the two players may be OOCly for one another's RP. So I often find it's useful to be descriptive and let others decide what they pick up on and react to ICly.

The people who are willing to make metaposed swipes at people are generally nasty little weasels impersonating human beings, and getting them to stop this won't stop them from being douchebags in other ways.

[Lithium]

@Thenomain So essentially, we're sticking over semantics. You're against the use of the term keep IC and OOC separate, because in general it should just be considered good game play and being respectful of the theme and your fellow players. I think Gany is right that we're not necessarily apart in how we feel just not wording it in ways acceptable to the other.

We need to come up with a different name other than 'tools' that is readily and easily understandable as a concept maybe?

As a 'tool', keep your in character actions disparate from your own knowledge/emotions. I don't know of a better way to put it than IC/OOC separation.

I will also admit to being a jerk upon occasion, I like the immersion of a whole world that is not wholly within anyone's control. It's part of why I don't tend to play on full consent places, it's not my style of play.

Also @bored , that downvote was me. I'll own it because I think your statement was completely unnecessary, hurtful, and added nothing to the discussions at hand for this section of the forums. Also: People should behave in asshole fashion if their characters are assholes. They should also own up to it that they /made/ the asshole.

[Thenomain]

@Lithium said:

@Thenomain So essentially, we're sticking over semantics

I'm arguing over cultural expectations. I don't feel that's semantic. I feel that it's critical for the health of our hobby. If this means that we agree, so be it, but I don't feel my point deserves belittling by calling it semantics. I think how we see characters is pretty fucking important in learning how to not just accept but have fun with these puppets on a string that we call characters.

[bored]

@Lithium Ok?

It's my experience. The times I've had people rant and rave and argue super strongly that they are doing something for OMG IC REASONS THAT ARE IN CHARACTER AND ITS WHAT THE CHARACTER WOULD DO, it's 99 times out of 100 an excuse for them being shitty and disruptive.

I doubt you're probably one of these people, as similar to other observations, you're probably just wrapped up in the weird semantics of it. A lot of people took it on as a mantra in early MUing and really internalized it, but don't necessarily seem to evaluate what they're arguing for otherwise.

[Lithium]

@Thenomain I don't think it's belittling to call any disagreement a disagreement over semantics. We were arguing the same 'cultural point' using different terms for the most part. @Ganymede got that. The fact that we were butting heads on it was because of semantics, or our inability to express the same concept in ways that were acceptable to each other.

[Thenomain]

@Lithium said:

@Thenomain I don't think it's belittling to call any disagreement a disagreement over semantics.

And I don't care if you don't think so. I do, and I was pretty goddamn clear about that before you typed this response. Learning how to get along with other players is the whole point, and if you can't bother to try in a discussion like this one then I don't see you as being the kind of person who can be trusted to honor the give-and-take that's necessary to play an RPG drama-free.

[Halicron]

Also, for anyone who thinks I am a prattling asshole who takes shit too seriously, I have been known to play Deadpool from time to time-- and I have literally emitted Deadpool addressing the other writers present and chastising them for their bad life decisions, sloppy writing, or the meandering sexual habits of their parents. So I'm not above getting 'meta' with my humor.

Remember what day one was of creative writing class, 'Here's all the rules'. Day two, 'Now, we're gonna break all the rules in order, then by height'. These 'rules' are the things I reflect on when I roleplay. It's very easy to give short, terse replies, but the quality of the narrative seems to suffer after the fact when I'm reading the end result via log. There are times when the pace of the story absolutely demands a quick, snappy two-liner, because it's moving fast and taking time. There are times when it's great to slow things down and craft a magnificent single moment to capture the enormity of it all.

There's a time when a powerpose is -beautiful- (always with permission). One of the best praises I ever got was from a friend on Hmux when ICly his character pissed off Magneto for the nth time. It'd always been cool detente, it had always been cat and mouse, and Magneto had never been violent with this fellow (who's notionally immune to most physical harm). My friend swore to god he'd never felt more scared, channeling his character, then in that moment when Magneto grabbed him by the throat and throttled him. He said 'I am literally, actually afraid in RL, and this is incredible'.

Rules are meant to be broken and bent! I'm really pleased at the debate it's fomented. If you think my rules are dumb and stupid, that's awesome, because maybe you've got BETTER rules! Maybe you make your own rules, and then break them, because you're a wildcard maverick who doesn't play by anyone's rules, even his own.

These are the things I think about when I roleplay. I think about crafting a narrative, painting a picture with my words, and creating depth in a scene that reads like a novel afterwards. If you go for something else in your writing, more power to you. Diversity is what makes us great.

[Lithium]

@Thenomain Ok.

I apologise for upsetting you or belittling what you were saying with how I responded. It wasn't my intention and I am sorry that it happened.

I honestly didn't know we were having anything resembling a 'heated' discussion, just, discussing.

My mistake.

Again, I apologise.

[bored]

@Halicron

You can't put up a definitive list and then wave off criticisms of it with 'all lists are made to be broken'. If that's your feeling, you probably should have written a different post to begin with.

[Thenomain]

@Lithium

And I apologize about getting heated, but I have been, and seen others be, hurt by all of this. My comment about "it takes egos to keep all this running" is because we seem to only have popular, long-lasting games when staff are utter jackasses. How is this fun?!

I think (and here, yea, opinion) this is because we have been hammered with rules and concepts and labels over the past decade to lead to this, mostly by strong-willed people who will fight to get their ways which are usually pretty selfish, from this kind of person.

I get passionate when I think people are abusing one another, and I feel very strongly that this cycle needs to be broken even if that means breaking and discarding a term, or how we see something, because how we see the interaction of IC and OOC is a cause of major drama.

Characters are tools, puppets, toys, things to be enjoyed but eventually put away. They serve a role, but we've learned to make the character far more important than the game itself.

Not that I haven't taken games too seriously. I swear, if I'm forced to play another game of Agricola...

---

edit:

@bored said in Halicron's Rules For Good RP (which be more like guidelines):

@Halicron

You can't put up a definitive list and then wave off criticisms of it with 'all lists are made to be broken'. If that's your feeling, you probably should have written a different post to begin with.

You may have missed this part of the thread's title:

(which be more like guidelines)

If you didn't miss it, then maybe you don't know what it might mean. Let me help you out, there.

I read the post as "if you do these they would probably help you quite a bit". I'm not alone in this.

[bored]

@Thenomain

Well that escalated quickly.

His post absolutely implies a sense of best practices, and saying 'which you can violate sometime if you have sufficient reason' (like uh, playing a character who specifically breaks the 4th wall as a personality trait, I guess?) doesn't really especially soften that. He goes on to use a 'rules are meant to be broken' analogy, which sort of implies a level of authority on the initial, which he's trying to backpedal on.

I think it's fairly obvious there's a prescriptive element to his post, and I disagree with some of it (like the idea that metaposing is inherently to be avoided - I only agree in the very narrow passive aggressive subset).

Also, since you decided to be a cock, you should actually read that wiktionary link, I don't think it says what you think it says.

[Thenomain]

Sorry, @bored, since you decided to be a cock earlier in this thread I thought you were continuing along that theme. They read the same to me. My bad.

And yeah, that link says pretty much what it looked like the first time I read it, too.

[bored]

I guess we'll just have to agree to agree that we think the other is shit at reading comprehension.

[Thenomain]

@bored said:

I guess we'll just have to agree to agree that we think the other is shit at reading comprehension.

+1, would upvote again

[wanderer]

@bored said:

I think there's also something to be said for getting at a character's emotional or mental state in the text of a pose beyond 'Name frowns' or so on, to facilitate accurate interaction (this gets at the classic characters are better than their players trope). Players are generally good at neither typing out the specific nuances of facial expression nor at interpreting them from others' texts, while characters might be good at these things.

I share your approach to RP as a writing exercise. Really, how would one describe specific emotions without resorting to some degree of metapose? I've tried and found it impossible in some cases. In real life, we sense that a person is sad, bothered, upset, without consciously going through the physical clues (unless one is on the autistic spectrum).

Most people will claim this is because we pick up facial micromovements on a subconscious level. I personally think that's a bullshit explanation on the level of homeopathy. I have weird views on this, but I'll refrain from going off on that tangent. There is a podcast which goes into it, here's a link:
http://podbay.fm/show/953290300/e/1422586800?autostart=1 (About a woman with a debilitating disorder that makes her feel, directly, what people around her are feeling. A type of super-empathy, apparently hereditary.)

I use metapose as a tool to build mood and atmosphere. I'm not going to describe in minute detail how someone's eyebrows and eyes are positioned in order to describe that they're sad. I'll say something like, "she's sad, it's in her expression." Even if it's an outright thought-pose you can't react to, if it brought a sense of mood, or a creative spark, it has contributed to the scene. With the caveat that it has to be well written.

Mainly, if the pose I've written feels like an awesome piece of writing, I'll send it in without regard to any unspoken rules. RP is often a constricting medium for writing, and I welcome good opportunities to break out of the mold.

One of the best characters I ever played with was Ike@HM, whose poses were full of metaposing. He played a film noir detective.

[faraday]

@wanderer said:

I use metapose as a tool to build mood and atmosphere. I'm not going to describe in minute detail how someone's eyebrows and eyes are positioned in order to describe that they're sad. I'll say something like, "she's sad, it's in her expression." Even if it's an outright thought-pose you can't react to, if it brought a sense of mood, or a creative spark, it has contributed to the scene. With the caveat that it has to be well written.

I agree. I'm not a good enough writer to convey subtle facial cues, and even if I could - would anyone pick up on what I meant? Describing feelings that others would have a chance of picking up on isn't metaposing to me. Metaposing is like: "Jane smiles, but inwardly thinks: OMG he's suck a jerk." I have no issue with something more like: "Jane smiles, but the gesture is tainted by the obvious disdain in her eyes."

[Ide]

I usually like metaposes as well, but I think that's more because I see my character in the third person, and not 'as me' if that makes sense. So I don't mind an overall director/author view of the writing. The 3rd person omniscient style isn't very popular in fiction anymore, but it's been used to good effect IMO (Dune is one example).

However my problem with lists like this is while they say they're about roleplaying, they usually (and this one is no exception) ignore most of the important rules, like setting stakes, agreeing on the social contract, pushing for consequences, saying yes or rolling the dice, and <insert RP jargon here>.

[Ganymede]

@Thenomain said:

The problem with talking about "IC/OOC Separation" is that has become misleading as to the nature of these tools, and that's something you've ignored me saying (for reasons I literally cannot understand don't understand). The term is now a label, and practically a cliche, that does not help our hobby one bit.

And yet "IC/OOC Separation" is an important concept that we should discuss regularly, as in: "just because someone is fucking with your PC IC does not mean they are necessarily doing so for OOC reasons." Which is, I think, what Lithium is getting at.

Like "capitalism," it's important to remind people how the concept has been perverted from what was once quite a noble, sensible idea.