It seems like every week or so, we're putting out an announcement regarding roleplay culture: so I think it's going to be a good idea to have regularly-released 'GuidePosts' that at some point before beta we will compile into nicely-documented rules and guidelines. This is the March edition.
Today we're going to tackle... EXCLUSION.
Now, sometimes it's in-character to exclude someone from a plot. Maybe your character just doesn't trust them, and is discussing a very sensitive and dangerous matter. We would actually encourage exclusion regarding this kind of situation, because if you include a person that you really shouldn't have been trusting in your secret plan, just for the sake of OOC inclusion, and then they betray you -- you're going to naturally be OOC miffed. Please include people for IC reasons, not OOC reasons.
However, exclusion needs to be handled delicately. And, it's nice to go out of your way to imagine IC reasons to include others. The alpha of this game is purposefully small. We're building the game's culture. And we want our players to be kind to each other. So, here are some pointers regarding ignoring other PCs, excluding other PCs from your plots, and when and how to do this in order to avoid feelings of OOC hurt and sadness.
- 1. If you do not emote at someone, and they don't emote back at you, you can't really consider them to be ignoring you, either OOC or IC.
- They are just focused on their own business. This is perfectly acceptable.
- Further, if someone is ICly ignoring you in-game, it's important not to take that personally out-of-character. It's best to assume that there is an IC reason for it, and if you want to investigate why, that is excellent!
- 2. If someone emotes at you, and you want to ICly ignore them, please emote about ICly ignoring them.
- Use thinks to establish reasons and in-character motivation for ignoring another person. This makes it feel more like an in-character thing, rather than an out-of-character snubbing.
- In a crowd, you could even use a think, like -- "It's so crowded here, there's no way I can pay attention to everyone!" and then emote rubbing your head and just focusing on whoever you're directly talking to, or adding something like, "The Mistsparrow keeps its attention fixed on the weird antics of a shadowy vagrant, not even seeming to notice anyone else trying to get attention in all the hubbub!"
- 3. If you feel ignored and excluded, do not emote passive-aggressively about it.
- Only emote actions. Use think and feel for thoughts.
- If you are upset in real life about being excluded, please let us know via ISSUE, and don't play the game while clouded with upset feelings. This could lead to your making not-truly-IC decisions, and hurt feelings all around. Since some measure of exclusion is going to be necessary at times due to the existence of in-game intrigue, we can only promise to investigate the situation -- not necessarily to force people to roleplay with you. We could come up with potential plot hooks for you to be more engaged, and suggest alternate courses.
- 4. If there are only a few people online, or a new player lost and alone, try to see if you can imagine IC reasons to include people who would be otherwise abandoned all to themselves.
- It's not very kind to cozy up in a private meeting chamber with your three best friends while a single PC idles sadly in the inn. Sometimes there can be reasons for doing this! Maybe that single PC is someone your own character actively mistrusts and you're discussing an important plot thing. But if it's at all possible to be like "Ugh, I'm hungry, let's take a break and go get lunch and come back to this later" -- then that'd be the nice thing to do.
- Sometimes this isn't possible, like if you only get another half-hour to play and you really have to finish discussing this important plot thing. Nobody is going to be punished for failing to change their plans to include people and involve new players, and it's important to do things that are consistent for your character.
- But, including people and involving new players is a nice thing to do. We might award that kind of thing with xp and Presence, and also it could be its own reward!
- 5. Use exclusionary measures against other PCs only as necessary.
- Excluding Behaviors will all potentially be necessary sometimes due to in-character dynamics -- but whenever possible, try to use them as a last resort, for the sake of maintaining a friendly out-of-character community. Try to imagine reasons to involve people, and realize that while people's chosen alliances and behaviors are actions that often require in-game consequences: we want consequences to be fun, whenever possible. In-character consequences are not out-of-character punishments.
- These excluding behaviors might be anything in the range from:
- murdering someone to keep them out of your business, to
- rendering a PC unconscious and unable to participate in a conversation, to
- tying someone up and leaving them behind a locked door, to
- engaging in a lot of whispering when they are the only other person present, to
- purposefully escaping a random person in order to scheme elsewhere,
- and so on and so forth.
- These excluding behaviors might be anything in the range from:
- Excluding Behaviors will all potentially be necessary sometimes due to in-character dynamics -- but whenever possible, try to use them as a last resort, for the sake of maintaining a friendly out-of-character community. Try to imagine reasons to involve people, and realize that while people's chosen alliances and behaviors are actions that often require in-game consequences: we want consequences to be fun, whenever possible. In-character consequences are not out-of-character punishments.
If you have any ideas to add to these guidelines, or any thoughts, feel free to discuss!