Important Notice from your Mod Team
The great thing about being a moderator to a community like this is getting to see the players take the game's setting and run with it, developing plots and storylines and character relations. It warms our hearts to see everyone enjoying things so, and we love it when you take a small idea of ours and turn it into something much, much grander than we'd ever imagined.
The bad part about being a moderator is that sometimes you have to be the bad guy and talk about rules and guidelines and all those things that no one really likes to talk about, because they're somehow equated with putting a damper on the fun. We promise that this isn't the case, but there's no escaping the fact that we need to have this discussion.
What we'd like to discuss is a phenomenon known as metagaming: what it is, why it's wrong, and why people may not realize they're doing it.
First, what is metagaming? In a nutshell, it's using OOC knowledge as IC knowledge. That is, taking things that you know as a player and making them things your character knows. This can vary widely! It can be something as large as you knowing that the Big Bad Guy is hiding behind Door #3 and therefore having your character warn off everyone without ever having looked behind the door to see what's there. It can be something as small as you knowing that the cans of soup at the convenience store are spoiled and just not having your character pick them up, even though he was commenting in his last post about how much he wanted soup. The severity can vary, but it all comes down to the simple fact that a character just seems to know things without having run into an in-game explanation for why they are so.
As for why metagaming is wrong, it comes down to why you're in the game in the first place. Presumably, everyone joined for the same reason: they wanted to play the game. And that's great, because it means we have a group of people who want to get together and play and have a ton of fun, which is what roleplaying should be all about! But part of playing the game, especially a game like this that relies so heavily on dealing with negative consequences, is to allow your characters to experience those negative consequences. Having a character who instantly suspects everything the minute it shows up is fine if paranoia is part of his personality, but can still be dicey. Having a character whose hunches are based on an OOC blurb attached to an event rather than any suspicious activity in the event thus far is dicier. Having a character try to argue his viewpoint -- which is based on that OOC knowledge -- while simultaneously ignoring or dismissing more plausible explanations... Well, we hardly need to spell it out for you guys.
Besides, having a character who is right all the time isn't as fun to play, or to play with! It's great to be the hero, but it's even better to be human. Humans make mistakes. They fumble. They stumble. They facepalm afterwards because hindsight makes it so obvious that they were wrong, but hindsight by definition doesn't come until after the fact. But that's ok, because it makes them feel real. Even canon geniuses can't base their theories on nothing more than thin air. Remember the old adage: once is a fluke, twice is a pattern, thrice and more is a trend.
Furthermore, having a character blow a plot wide open with suspicions right off the bat isn't fair to the people who wanted to play out the plot and its consequences! Sure, perhaps every mun knows that going to the Evil Enchanted Forest and taunting the Evil Witch therein is going to result in her taking her anger out on her tormentor in such-and-such a way. But people wouldn't have their characters thinking about or mentioning that forest if they didn't want to play out that possibility! If it's a recurring event and a character was there the first time and saw what happened then, it would probably be IC to warn people. If this is the first time something has showed up, it's a bit harder to justify a warning more specific than a generalized 'just be careful, guys'.
As for why people may not realize they're doing it, the answer is simple: we're all human. Sometimes we take for granted the things that we know. Sometimes we have to! For example, a character whose canon doesn't have much in the way of 'modern' technology is going to have problems learning to use the communicator system in the game. But there are only so many times you can do 'accidental post' or fumble with the camera or other such tricks before they get old, so we naturally shorten the learning curve a bit. Other times we just forget what we know versus what our characters know. When an event or effect or character ability or something is outlined, there is a need to explain OOCly what will happen to the people interacting with it, so that the muns in question know how to have their characters act. But no character can know what will happen, good or bad, until it does! While this OOC knowledge does open the opportunity for muns to opt out of things -- especially in a horror game, where there could be potential triggers -- it also opens the door for potential metagaming, which can ruin the experience for everyone.
We all know how it is to get 'in the zone' with tagging, where you're just feeling the thread and commenting super-quickly and on a roll. But sometimes you really need to step back and look at not only what your character is saying, but what the other character is saying as well. It's okay to take your time with a reply! The person on the other end of the screen knows what it's like. He or she won't hate you because you took seven minutes to reply instead of one. In fact, what you may find is that the quality of both of your writing has gone up from just taking the extra moment to think about it.
In conclusion, we're just asking everyone to police him- or herself. Now, we don't mean for people to become psychotically obsessed with every single thing that they write! If you do that, you're only going to stress yourself out, and the game, above all, is meant to be fun. But do take the extra moment or two to look at what your character is saying and how he's interacting with others and what is plausible for him to know versus what should be learned rather than assumed.
As always, we are here to answer any questions or concerns that you might have. Feel free to ask them on this entry here, or -- if you desire a more private forum -- our permanent contact post has anonymous commenting and comment screening enabled. You are more than welcome to contact us on AIM as well, if you desire to speak to one of us individually.
The bad part about being a moderator is that sometimes you have to be the bad guy and talk about rules and guidelines and all those things that no one really likes to talk about, because they're somehow equated with putting a damper on the fun. We promise that this isn't the case, but there's no escaping the fact that we need to have this discussion.
What we'd like to discuss is a phenomenon known as metagaming: what it is, why it's wrong, and why people may not realize they're doing it.
First, what is metagaming? In a nutshell, it's using OOC knowledge as IC knowledge. That is, taking things that you know as a player and making them things your character knows. This can vary widely! It can be something as large as you knowing that the Big Bad Guy is hiding behind Door #3 and therefore having your character warn off everyone without ever having looked behind the door to see what's there. It can be something as small as you knowing that the cans of soup at the convenience store are spoiled and just not having your character pick them up, even though he was commenting in his last post about how much he wanted soup. The severity can vary, but it all comes down to the simple fact that a character just seems to know things without having run into an in-game explanation for why they are so.
As for why metagaming is wrong, it comes down to why you're in the game in the first place. Presumably, everyone joined for the same reason: they wanted to play the game. And that's great, because it means we have a group of people who want to get together and play and have a ton of fun, which is what roleplaying should be all about! But part of playing the game, especially a game like this that relies so heavily on dealing with negative consequences, is to allow your characters to experience those negative consequences. Having a character who instantly suspects everything the minute it shows up is fine if paranoia is part of his personality, but can still be dicey. Having a character whose hunches are based on an OOC blurb attached to an event rather than any suspicious activity in the event thus far is dicier. Having a character try to argue his viewpoint -- which is based on that OOC knowledge -- while simultaneously ignoring or dismissing more plausible explanations... Well, we hardly need to spell it out for you guys.
Besides, having a character who is right all the time isn't as fun to play, or to play with! It's great to be the hero, but it's even better to be human. Humans make mistakes. They fumble. They stumble. They facepalm afterwards because hindsight makes it so obvious that they were wrong, but hindsight by definition doesn't come until after the fact. But that's ok, because it makes them feel real. Even canon geniuses can't base their theories on nothing more than thin air. Remember the old adage: once is a fluke, twice is a pattern, thrice and more is a trend.
Furthermore, having a character blow a plot wide open with suspicions right off the bat isn't fair to the people who wanted to play out the plot and its consequences! Sure, perhaps every mun knows that going to the Evil Enchanted Forest and taunting the Evil Witch therein is going to result in her taking her anger out on her tormentor in such-and-such a way. But people wouldn't have their characters thinking about or mentioning that forest if they didn't want to play out that possibility! If it's a recurring event and a character was there the first time and saw what happened then, it would probably be IC to warn people. If this is the first time something has showed up, it's a bit harder to justify a warning more specific than a generalized 'just be careful, guys'.
As for why people may not realize they're doing it, the answer is simple: we're all human. Sometimes we take for granted the things that we know. Sometimes we have to! For example, a character whose canon doesn't have much in the way of 'modern' technology is going to have problems learning to use the communicator system in the game. But there are only so many times you can do 'accidental post' or fumble with the camera or other such tricks before they get old, so we naturally shorten the learning curve a bit. Other times we just forget what we know versus what our characters know. When an event or effect or character ability or something is outlined, there is a need to explain OOCly what will happen to the people interacting with it, so that the muns in question know how to have their characters act. But no character can know what will happen, good or bad, until it does! While this OOC knowledge does open the opportunity for muns to opt out of things -- especially in a horror game, where there could be potential triggers -- it also opens the door for potential metagaming, which can ruin the experience for everyone.
We all know how it is to get 'in the zone' with tagging, where you're just feeling the thread and commenting super-quickly and on a roll. But sometimes you really need to step back and look at not only what your character is saying, but what the other character is saying as well. It's okay to take your time with a reply! The person on the other end of the screen knows what it's like. He or she won't hate you because you took seven minutes to reply instead of one. In fact, what you may find is that the quality of both of your writing has gone up from just taking the extra moment to think about it.
In conclusion, we're just asking everyone to police him- or herself. Now, we don't mean for people to become psychotically obsessed with every single thing that they write! If you do that, you're only going to stress yourself out, and the game, above all, is meant to be fun. But do take the extra moment or two to look at what your character is saying and how he's interacting with others and what is plausible for him to know versus what should be learned rather than assumed.
As always, we are here to answer any questions or concerns that you might have. Feel free to ask them on this entry here, or -- if you desire a more private forum -- our permanent contact post has anonymous commenting and comment screening enabled. You are more than welcome to contact us on AIM as well, if you desire to speak to one of us individually.