Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

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Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Peachoo » Thu Aug 04, 2022 2:58 pm

Recently, there was an announcement on this topic from the DM team and a ruling made about meta-gaming the playerlist.

I agree with that ruling completely, and am actually glad for the clarification on the player list issue.

However, there was a line in the announcement that... concerns and worries me. The line in question is the following:
A good rule of thumb for this sort of thing is asking yourself whether or not the meta you are doing is going to make the other player upset (outing them, scrying to gank them, etc) or if it is a neutral, even beneficent for the player (scrying to find them so you can meet and share tea and cakes!). The latter does not carry so much consequence (depending on the cake), the former certainly can.
To me, wording it like this... sets a dangerous and inherently vague standard that leaves a lot of room to be open to confusion and misinterpretation.

It suggests that you're doing wrong if the other person is upset, and that is your fault. But that's not always the case...

Sometimes it's natural for us to become upset over an ic event that negatively impacts our pc due to ic consequences or actions... and that isn't necessarily always the fault of the opposing player on an ooc level, nor is it ooc fueled.

This line in the announcement suggests to me that conflict ic should be discouraged to avoid OOC hurt feelings. Frankly, that is going to happen when there are a lot of people who are too emotionally (perhaps unhealthily) invested in their own character.


Some of you may remember that Arelith has a sister server called Amia.
Amia specifically had a player base problem where you essentially couldn't play evil characters because evil ic actions would upset people oocly in that their good aligned pc was not always 'winning'. In some cases, players would become upset oocly just because ic conflict was made or happened to upset the status quo. Players would become upset because they see their character as this good aligned idealized hero that always wins, and when they wouldn't win... well, the dms would punish the players of the evil characters despite those players playing the evil characters not doing anything wrong from an ooc perspective. And it wasn't like these evil pcs were always 'winning' over good in pvp or roleplay. It just became so unfun for anyone to play evil pcs at all. This eventually lead to Amia becoming a ghostly wasteland of nothing but Benwick-style players who sit in castles all day and Amia dms who enabled that sort of behavior.

I am not saying that this is what Arelith is turning into. However, I am saying that we as a community should do our best to avoid the mistakes of Amia.
I think we can all agree that a good number of us do become emotionally invested in our own pcs sometimes. It's hard not to, they are our pcs. I think it's good to keep in mind and remind that conflict is healthy for a roleplay server. And that our characters will suffer hardship or conflict due to ic opposition of some kind.

I agree that people shouldn't be scrying other characters just to go gank them. However, there's a big difference between ooc harassment and say for example:

+ A Drow PC icly scrying an Elf PC they know has been hunting them, in order to go confront them, first.

+ A Harper Pc stalking a Sharran PC over a period of time and then later revealing the Sharran PC's true nature to the ic settlements after ic investigation and roleplay. Or not even that, maybe just tipping off a settlement leader about the Sharran pc's sharran activities.


That's not ooc harassment or bullying, that's just ic roleplay and ic consequences for those pc's actions. That is healthy for a roleplay server. It isn't because a player is purposely trying to bully another person with their character.

I do acknowledge that ooc harassments can and does happen. I'm not saying it doesn't.. but I am saying that there should be a better well defined standard between what exactly counts as ooc bullying/harassment for ic actions and ic consequences of ic actions.

Otherwise, I am worried that in the future we will simply have players reporting each other because the ic conflict that is not fueled by ooc is taken out of character by opposing players because they don't believe it's 'fun' for their character to go through consequences of their character's actions.

I think a better clarification should be set for this. Because it's a very fine line to walk that has the potential to enable people who become too over emotional about their own pcs.

That's pretty much what I wanted to talk about. I would love to hear other perspectives and thoughts on this matter, as I know that it does happen more than we'd like it to as a community.

Edit: I highlighted keypoints in case you rather skim than read my paragraph.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Shadowy Reality » Thu Aug 04, 2022 3:11 pm

A good rule of thumb for this sort of thing is asking yourself whether or not the meta you are doing is going to make the other player upset (outing them, scrying to gank them, etc) or if it is a neutral, even beneficent for the player (scrying to find them so you can meet and share tea and cakes!). The latter does not carry so much consequence (depending on the cake), the former certainly can.
Let me give you a clear example:

Your PC is an Assassin and works for the Guild, you see a 1 million contract on Bob. You don't know Bob, you never heard of Bob, you have never seen Bob. You walk down the street of Cordor passing by multiple characters you never seen or heard before and at a certain point to see the floaty text above one characters saying Bob. And you go by and make chatter, asking for their name.

You just used metagame knowledge for your advantage, so that you can more easily and quickly get Bob dead. Why would you ignore so many unknown characters and suddenly take special interest in Bob? Was it really his magnificent beard that prompted your approach? Probably not.

Same if in your hunt for Bob you would instantly Scry him each time he logged in as he won't be warded against it. You can check playerlist. You can even switch servers until you find the correct one to scry on. But why is your character doing that at that precise moment, what is their reasoning? They don't have spider senses, you are simply metagaming for your advantage.

It all comes back to rule Number 1: Be nice. It's fine to metagame a bit, your usual writ buddies just logged in and you can't find anyone to roleplay? Send them a Speedy, maybe even a Tell, that's fine. When it comes to adversarial things, don't. Always decide to the other party's benefit in that case.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Halibutthead » Thu Aug 04, 2022 4:48 pm

I think you're getting a little hung up on following the letter of the rule, when the quote you mentioned is one of spirit.

It seems pretty "ok" to see a player actually doing the speedy quest and offering to show them around (even beyond the quest), when you would certainly never do that for someone else who "just arrived to Cordor" because you know they're a veteran and dont need it (ignore the vacuum. Some vets would enjoy that rp, and thats ok, too).

The quoted piece has more to do with using metagame information "innocently" or with malicious intent (IC malicious, mind you. The kind that's "ok"). Thats not to say that someone isnt going to lash out and "be upset" over something you did, simply because you meant no harm, but there's no sense in getting stressed out about that. That's their perogative, and those situations should be handled on a case-by-case basis, and not (ever) in a vacuum.

Or at least, thats my two bits on it.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by -XXX- » Thu Aug 04, 2022 5:34 pm

Another good rule of the thumb would be considering who benefits and who gets negatively impacted by using OOC info.

- Using meta information to a negligable benefit for a small group of characters without putting anybody at a disadvantage is still somewhat fine*
Example: finding friendly characters faster to form a party and go dungeon delving sooner.
a) everybody benefits from the time saved
b) nobody gets negatively impacted.

- Using meta information to make a decision that results in an advantage for own character over others is bad.
Example: seeing someone with a "Name" floating above their head and immediately casting true seeing.
a) the True Seeing character suddenly benefits from a clear mechanical advantage
b) the disguised character gets negatively impacted by abruptly finding themselves at a mechanical disadvantage.


*note that "somewhat fine" =/= endorsed or recommended

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Sincra » Thu Aug 04, 2022 7:56 pm

I actually think it's fine to point out wording like this.

People rules lawyer it and I'd rather the DM's are quizzed about a potential point people will try and get around so they can't be given the old "well due to your misinterpretation you're getting a warning, but next time!!! Watch out!".
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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Rei_Jin » Fri Aug 05, 2022 5:38 am

The "Sensing someone on the ley" thing is a bit... weird, because we're dealing with OOC limitations and trying to find IC justifications for them.

As an example... my previous main character was a sailor, and could both scry and conjure (yoink) people. It was not unusual for a request to be given to me to conjure someone onto the deck of the ship, but because of OOC mechanical limitations, they had to be on Surface server for me to do so.

How do I justify this mechanical OOC limitation?

My way of doing it was to say "Sorry, I cannot see them on the ley to conjure them here".

When they were then on the Surface server, I would say "They are on the ley, I will attempt to bring them here" or something to that effect.

Is it a little cheesy and metagame-ey? Sure. But what else do I do when Arelith is so huge that it's split across multiple servers, and we can't conjure people cross-server?

The same goes for scrying, although I recognise that conjuring someone is usually benign, and scrying them is normally malign.

Yes, people shouldn't be watching the player list and then waiting 30 seconds after someone logs in to try to scry them. It's a jerk move, to a degree, but again, this can easily be seen as a reaction to an OOC mechanical limitation, in that, surprise surprise, my character(s) should not simply disappear because I log out. Evil McEvilface should still be chillin' in his villain lair and able to be scried (unless he has warding up 24/7), regardless of whether the player is logged in or not.

I'm not justifying said behaviour by players. Some players do turtle at times, and some people do practice incessant group scrying of targets and their associates at times.

I am, however, saying, that there are OOC mechanical limitations here, and those need to be taken into account in such situations.

Thankfully, my current character can't scry or conjure, so it's a non-event for me currently, but with the most recent announcement about this, I don't know how I would approach it if they could, beyond saying "Sorry, can't sense them" if they're not on the same server as me at the time.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Hazard » Fri Aug 05, 2022 6:08 am

I think explaining to a friend that another friend can't be summoned or scried because of 'the leylines' is a perfectly in character way of just explaining a mechanical limitation that would not be there if we could have a stable single server (except maybe for the underdark, which is supposed to have some difficulty with that.)

No one is getting hurt and it keeps things in character.

The problem I think comes from when you try to -scry an enemy and realise 'they are/are not on this side of the leylines'.. which then becomes metagaming. An OOC knowledge was used to IC benefit, thus cheating. It's so commonly used, I started doing it myself at one point because I had just assumed it was normal and acceptable and I was being a fool for NOT giving in and playing along with everyone else. I was wrong, and I'm glad I was because it's lame as heck and I never wanted it to be acceptable in the first place.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by perseid » Fri Aug 05, 2022 6:26 am

I think the important part is that it's a 'rule of thumb'. To the general point being made, if once in awhile something you do upsets someone I think that's unavoidable in life and ic. On the other hand, if people (and not just the same person each time) are routinely upset after interactions then it's probably time for introspection.

All the announcement is asking is for people to understand that while it's recognized that certain kinds.of metagaming can, sometimes, serve a benign purpose that acknowledgement and any leniency that might accompany it doesn't mean such actions are always benign (even when the situation involves performing mechanically identical actions) and so to give some thought first to whether the action being considered is actually benign or not. Which doesn't seem especially unfair of an ask considering the size of the community.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Algol » Fri Aug 05, 2022 6:27 am

Hazard wrote:
Fri Aug 05, 2022 6:08 am
I think explaining to a friend that another friend can't be summoned or scried because of 'the leylines' is a perfectly in character way of just explaining a mechanical limitation that would not be there if we could have a stable single server (except maybe for the underdark, which is supposed to have some difficulty with that.)

No one is getting hurt and it keeps things in character.

The problem I think comes from when you try to -scry an enemy and realise 'they are/are not on this side of the leylines'.. which then becomes metagaming. An OOC knowledge was used to IC benefit, thus cheating. It's so commonly used, I started doing it myself at one point because I had just assumed it was normal and acceptable and I was being a fool for NOT giving in and playing along with everyone else. I was wrong, and I'm glad I was because it's lame as heck and I never wanted it to be acceptable in the first place.
I think it'd be fine if the person hasn't checked the player list to see if they are online, as if it'd be still in perfectly character. But things get murky when someone else has made the request to scry and they have checked the player list to see if they are online or not.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by -XXX- » Fri Aug 05, 2022 9:27 am

The iffy part here is when -yoink/-scry are being used for confirmation that someone's on the same server, which can then be used to interact with disguises in an unintended fashion for example.
While these abilities can also be used to narrow a search by getting a confirmation that somebody is not on the same server while their name clearly appears on Arelith :: Portal, it doesn't narrow the search by that much. The other player can always -dissaportal to completely fight this.

Using -yoink for anything other than conjuring another character means using it in an unintended way.
Character saying "they are not on the ley" is super cringewhorthy IMO, as it's almost like explicitly stating that "I've used my ESF perk while checking the player list to get this info". There's a myriad of ways how to RP this in a less lame way, "the magic failed" being one of them.


Ultimately, these are all just different degrees of meta.
Meta resulting in zero sum game can still be fine (if a character is just looking for someone to talk to/trade).
Meta used with the intent of gaining a clear advantage is bad (if the character has a kill-squad assembled and is looking for the target to undisguise and gank).

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Richrd » Fri Aug 05, 2022 9:32 am

People who OOCly get offended and really angry over IC conflict are wrong.

Metagaming will happen anyways. It's an issue Arelith creates itself with the Portal being a thing.

Yes, there is also an in-game list of characters online but not only is it limited to the specific Arelith sub-server you are on but also is a pain in the Snuggybear to navigate.


Just remove scrying. It's the ultimate power-fantasy ability for espionage and creates no RP other than "they are there and said X, we can now abuse this knowledge to immediately counter them".


EDIT: Also want to say that the word starting with A and ending on two S being censored is ridiculous, even with the ugly fact of Arelith being PG13.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by perseid » Fri Aug 05, 2022 11:25 am

Richrd wrote:
Fri Aug 05, 2022 9:32 am
People who OOCly get offended and really angry over IC conflict are wrong.

Metagaming will happen anyways. It's an issue Arelith creates itself with the Portal being a thing.

Yes, there is also an in-game list of characters online but not only is it limited to the specific Arelith sub-server you are on but also is a pain in the Snuggybear to navigate.


Just remove scrying. It's the ultimate power-fantasy ability for espionage and creates no RP other than "they are there and said X, we can now abuse this knowledge to immediately counter them".


EDIT: Also want to say that the word starting with A and ending on two S being censored is ridiculous, even with the ugly fact of Arelith being PG13.
If you're concerned specifically about the online portal you can use "-dissaportal" to remove yourself from it until you use the command again. Though do note, you'll still be visible in-game on the playerlist for your current server (if not disguised) and via the "-playerlist" command still.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by AstralUniverse » Fri Aug 05, 2022 12:33 pm

Idk the announcement seems pretty clear and alright to me.

*IF YOU ARE META-GAMAING* make sure you do it in a way that doesnt upset anyone, aka doesnt get you any unfair advantages over someone. This is pretty well said and I dont think it discourages conflict.
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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Amateur Hour » Fri Aug 05, 2022 12:57 pm

AstralUniverse wrote:
Fri Aug 05, 2022 12:33 pm
Idk the announcement seems pretty clear and alright to me.

*IF YOU ARE META-GAMAING* make sure you do it in a way that doesnt upset anyone, aka doesnt get you any unfair advantages over someone. This is pretty well said and I dont think it discourages conflict.
I'd agree. I'm not entirely sure why people are confused about it.

Are you metagaming the player list to do something that would make another character's day demonstrably worse? Don't do it.

Are you metagaming the player list to do something that you hope will simply make another character's day demonstrably better (e.g. bringing RP, delivering a crafted item)? Fine.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Party in the forest at midnight » Fri Aug 05, 2022 3:16 pm

Rei_Jin wrote:
Fri Aug 05, 2022 5:38 am
The "Sensing someone on the ley" thing is a bit... weird, because we're dealing with OOC limitations and trying to find IC justifications for them.

As an example... my previous main character was a sailor, and could both scry and conjure (yoink) people. It was not unusual for a request to be given to me to conjure someone onto the deck of the ship, but because of OOC mechanical limitations, they had to be on Surface server for me to do so.

How do I justify this mechanical OOC limitation?

My way of doing it was to say "Sorry, I cannot see them on the ley to conjure them here".

When they were then on the Surface server, I would say "They are on the ley, I will attempt to bring them here" or something to that effect.

Is it a little cheesy and metagame-ey? Sure. But what else do I do when Arelith is so huge that it's split across multiple servers, and we can't conjure people cross-server?
I've done this too because I had no idea how else to say it IC. Someone suggested to me say "It's not working." I'm going to try and do that from now on. Maybe also something like "Sometimes it doesn't work if they're not in the port, I'll wait a moment and see if they get to the port."

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by -XXX- » Fri Aug 05, 2022 3:51 pm

Party in the forest at midnight wrote:
Fri Aug 05, 2022 3:16 pm
I've done this too because I had no idea how else to say it IC. Someone suggested to me say "It's not working." I'm going to try and do that from now on. Maybe also something like "Sometimes it doesn't work if they're not in the port, I'll wait a moment and see if they get to the port."
"They are currently out of my reach. Here's a wisp bottle, send them a message telling them to go to the docks if they still want to get on board."

Anyway, we're merely discussing ideas for the propper RP form at this point, as we're still in the zero sum game territory here.
In the above example it's assumed that the player ~wants~ their character to be -yoinked on board to go sailing with you - overcoming the server limits works equally in everybody's favor in this case.
You could've even just poked the other player on Discord telling them to move their toon to the Surface server and likely nothing terribly bad would have happened there.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Scurvy Cur » Fri Aug 05, 2022 4:19 pm

Yeah, honestly when your scry/yoink/whatever doesn't work, you can just say.

"Dang, it didn't work". This does the same work as "can't, he's not on the ley".

The issue with "On the ley" is that it is shorthand for "on the server". I have seen far too many people lately do things like mention in character the moment someone logs in "so and so is on the ley now" (or the reverse when they log out). As the announcement says, this is often done for innocent reasons, or at least for reasons no more malicious than "lazy writing". However, normalizing this use has also normalized less benign uses. If I am justified letting my character sense my friend Jim's login by having him know ICly that "Jim is now on the ley", it's not hard to make the leap to "the raiding party from the surface is on the ley. Get ready for a fight" or "Jim and Jane left the ley together, they're up to something together" or similar, and I've seen a lot of this stuff lately.

It's not difficult to think of a reason why sometimes scry/yoink/whatever isn't working. "Strange magical disturbance" or "this magic is a bit janky and it's not working right now" or even just "I think they're out of my reach at the moment". All of this is preferable to an IC reference to the playerlist.


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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by TurningLeaf » Fri Aug 05, 2022 4:23 pm

Imagine if playerlists and login/off notifications could be turned off server side, that would be pretty epic.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Aren » Fri Aug 05, 2022 4:24 pm

Scurvy Cur wrote:
Fri Aug 05, 2022 4:19 pm
Yeah, honestly when your scry/yoink/whatever doesn't work, you can just say.

"Dang, it didn't work". This does the same work as "can't, he's not on the ley".

The issue with "On the ley" is that it is shorthand for "on the server". I have seen far too many people lately do things like mention in character the moment someone logs in "so and so is on the ley now" (or the reverse when they log out). As the announcement says, this is often done for innocent reasons, or at least for reasons no more malicious than "lazy writing". However, normalizing this use has also normalized less benign uses. If I am justified letting my character sense my friend Jim's login by having him know ICly that "Jim is now on the ley", it's not hard to make the leap to "the raiding party from the surface is on the ley. Get ready for a fight" or "Jim and Jane left the ley together, they're up to something together" or similar, and I've seen a lot of this stuff lately.

It's not difficult to think of a reason why sometimes scry/yoink/whatever isn't working. "Strange magical disturbance" or "this magic is a bit janky and it's not working right now" or even just "I think they're out of my reach at the moment". All of this is preferable to an IC reference to the playerlist.
I agree. Metagaming the playerlist is bad.
I usually use: "They do not answer the call(ing)." when a -yoink fails.
or: "They are warded against my scrying attempts." when attempting to -scry a character on another server.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Xerah » Fri Aug 05, 2022 4:25 pm

The new patch will allow the following:

Added a server setting to disable player join messages

Which would probably be a good thing to disable.

Incase anyone is confused about this new patch:

Beamdog is not paying people to work on it
People are working on it for free (i.e. Liareth)
It will be added as an official patch made by the community (even though a bunch of them got paid for doing this before)
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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by WanderingPoet » Fri Aug 05, 2022 4:44 pm

Party in the forest at midnight wrote:
Fri Aug 05, 2022 3:16 pm
Rei_Jin wrote:
Fri Aug 05, 2022 5:38 am
The "Sensing someone on the ley" thing is a bit... weird, because we're dealing with OOC limitations and trying to find IC justifications for them.

As an example... my previous main character was a sailor, and could both scry and conjure (yoink) people. It was not unusual for a request to be given to me to conjure someone onto the deck of the ship, but because of OOC mechanical limitations, they had to be on Surface server for me to do so.

How do I justify this mechanical OOC limitation?

My way of doing it was to say "Sorry, I cannot see them on the ley to conjure them here".

When they were then on the Surface server, I would say "They are on the ley, I will attempt to bring them here" or something to that effect.

Is it a little cheesy and metagame-ey? Sure. But what else do I do when Arelith is so huge that it's split across multiple servers, and we can't conjure people cross-server?
I've done this too because I had no idea how else to say it IC. Someone suggested to me say "It's not working." I'm going to try and do that from now on. Maybe also something like "Sometimes it doesn't work if they're not in the port, I'll wait a moment and see if they get to the port."
Part of the problem here is that the WYSIWYG actually encourages the IC explanation of the ley.

When you attempt to scry or yoink someone not on the server, you get a message "Could not find X"
If you attempt to yoink someone and they don't come, nothing happens, no message. When they resist, you get a message "They resisted your summons".
When you attempt to scry someone that is warded your scry goes on cooldown and you get a message saying they're warded.
When you attempt to project image/speedy someone not currently online (or stealthed/disguised/paid off speedies), you get a message saying they're not available at all.

By WYSIWYG, you're informed -why- your ability failed, your yoink failed because they ignored you, it was resisted or you couldn't find them. Your scry failed because you couldn't find them, or they were warded (and your scry goes on cooldown).

So it's not really a surprise that people would see these messages and determine that "Hey, I know I couldn't find them, therefore they're not on the ley... Even though they're in Guldorand and I'm at the docks, and I can summon someone from the arcane tower but not Guldorand".

---------
Practically if you want to fix that particular issue, either scry/yoink need to work across servers (teleport does, so they should be able to, same with raise dead), or the messaging needs to change to provide less information why they failed.

Scry especially - if they're not on 'the ley' it doesn't go on cooldown, but if they're warded it does. Just that alone can tell you IC that someone is 'on the ley', with in character information given you have to wait 30IC minutes to scry again. Unfortunately neither removing the cooldown when warded or adding a cooldown to failing because they're offline are good ideas. The latter would encourage people to check playerlist (as otherwise you're waiting 10 minutes to try again), and the former would have people just spam their target until their ward drops.

Yoink is easier to solve as it could always go on a minute cooldown, and "Well, I guess they didn't want to come", but reasonably, making it work across servers would be a vast improvement (and fixing raise dead to do the same would work wonders for RP, given the death areas of the servers don't even connect properly).

But, project image/wisps/speedies still tell you if someone is probably online (outside of disguises/stealth), so these would only solve the 'on the same server as me' issue.

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There is also the simply fact that since you have to be on the same server, we have to talk about leys anyways. "Oh we're going sailing, make sure you're... Not in Guldorand or Cordor proper, but at their docks or anywhere else on the surface and I'll summon you." or "I'm going to stonehold to scry surfacers and see what I can learn"; it's not metagaming to know IC that you have to be 'closer', consistently. You can always come up with good excuses like "Cordor's scry network means I have to be in the town itself to scry people... " but you can also go to any plane? "Go to Cordor and I'll pull you to the Astrolab, as while we're using this attunement potion in the heartwood, I can't pull you from here, but I can from Cordor for Reasons(tm)".

It shouldn't be a wonder why "the ley" is a known IC thing people use often; after all the alternative explanations are that 'magic is consistently weird on this isle/nearby planes' or 'I'm incompetent at magic'.
Path_of_Play wrote:Fear, intimidation, anger - All these, the tyrant's tools.
Laughter, encouragement, play - not simply just for fools.
These tools reveal,
More is learned,
From another in an hour of play,
Than in a year of contention.

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Scurvy Cur
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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Scurvy Cur » Fri Aug 05, 2022 5:41 pm

WanderingPoet wrote:
Fri Aug 05, 2022 4:44 pm
There is also the simply fact that since you have to be on the same server, we have to talk about leys anyways. "Oh we're going sailing, make sure you're... Not in Guldorand or Cordor proper, but at their docks or anywhere else on the surface and I'll summon you." or "I'm going to stonehold to scry surfacers and see what I can learn"; it's not metagaming to know IC that you have to be 'closer', consistently. You can always come up with good excuses like "Cordor's scry network means I have to be in the town itself to scry people... " but you can also go to any plane? "Go to Cordor and I'll pull you to the Astrolab, as while we're using this attunement potion in the heartwood, I can't pull you from here, but I can from Cordor for Reasons(tm)".

It shouldn't be a wonder why "the ley" is a known IC thing people use often; after all the alternative explanations are that 'magic is consistently weird on this isle/nearby planes' or 'I'm incompetent at magic'.
This is actually the attitude that made the announcement, not just about the IC-ification of "on the ley/off the ley", but also about use of meta (mostly wiki) knowledge of class abilities/spells/etc. necessary.

Basically you are saying "there is no room for mystery or inexplicable behavior in a system of magic, because I know the rules on the wiki, and don't want to be bothered separating what I know IC from what my character knows". Strip away all the excess words in your post, and that's what you wind up with.

It is perfectly fine for "magic to just work that way".

Players overall should do less rulebook regurgitation and more creative writing.


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Party in the forest at midnight
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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Party in the forest at midnight » Fri Aug 05, 2022 6:08 pm

WanderingPoet wrote:
Fri Aug 05, 2022 4:44 pm
Part of the problem here is that the WYSIWYG actually encourages the IC explanation of the ley.

When you attempt to scry or yoink someone not on the server, you get a message "Could not find X"
If you attempt to yoink someone and they don't come, nothing happens, no message. When they resist, you get a message "They resisted your summons".
When you attempt to scry someone that is warded your scry goes on cooldown and you get a message saying they're warded.
When you attempt to project image/speedy someone not currently online (or stealthed/disguised/paid off speedies), you get a message saying they're not available at all.

By WYSIWYG, you're informed -why- your ability failed, your yoink failed because they ignored you, it was resisted or you couldn't find them. Your scry failed because you couldn't find them, or they were warded (and your scry goes on cooldown).

So it's not really a surprise that people would see these messages and determine that "Hey, I know I couldn't find them, therefore they're not on the ley... Even though they're in Guldorand and I'm at the docks, and I can summon someone from the arcane tower but not Guldorand".
This is a really good post and goes into something that came up in Discord yesterday, where Sincra was saying they like it when people rules lawyer in the open like this so things can be addressed BEFORE they need to be ruled on. So with that in mind, in the past people have asked for feedback messages to be changed. You're absolutely right, with wyswyg, the feedback messages aren't helpful and lead into the behaviour that the team is asking players to stop doing. Would it be possible to change failing to summon or scry messages to be the same, no matter what reason the spell failed?

It's come up in the past weird cases where people decline a summon and the feedback is "They refused your summon," which makes things really awkward if someone wants to be where they are and people get very accusing about why the summon was declined. "Refused" is a pretty strong word. Why not changing it to "The summoning failed", regardless if the person said no, if the person is offline, or whatever failure case there is.

Similarly with scrying, if it fails, have the error message be "You see nothing." Regardless if the person is offline, scry warded, or whatever else.

These are very minor things but I think it would go a long way in helping people react to why their spells failed. At the very least, changing -yoink in particular would help in cases where someone was kidnapped and wants to play out the scene and doesn't want to be rescued. There have been cases where this has happened and people have reacted very hostile to the person who was captured for REFUSING help. If the failure state message was the same for someone declining and for an area being teleport warded, that wouldn't happen.

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Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by WanderingPoet » Fri Aug 05, 2022 6:17 pm

Scurvy Cur wrote:
Fri Aug 05, 2022 5:41 pm
WanderingPoet wrote:
Fri Aug 05, 2022 4:44 pm
There is also the simply fact that since you have to be on the same server, we have to talk about leys anyways. "Oh we're going sailing, make sure you're... Not in Guldorand or Cordor proper, but at their docks or anywhere else on the surface and I'll summon you." or "I'm going to stonehold to scry surfacers and see what I can learn"; it's not metagaming to know IC that you have to be 'closer', consistently. You can always come up with good excuses like "Cordor's scry network means I have to be in the town itself to scry people... " but you can also go to any plane? "Go to Cordor and I'll pull you to the Astrolab, as while we're using this attunement potion in the heartwood, I can't pull you from here, but I can from Cordor for Reasons(tm)".

It shouldn't be a wonder why "the ley" is a known IC thing people use often; after all the alternative explanations are that 'magic is consistently weird on this isle/nearby planes' or 'I'm incompetent at magic'.
This is actually the attitude that made the announcement, not just about the IC-ification of "on the ley/off the ley", but also about use of meta (mostly wiki) knowledge of class abilities/spells/etc. necessary.

Basically you are saying "there is no room for mystery or inexplicable behavior in a system of magic, because I know the rules on the wiki, and don't want to be bothered separating what I know IC from what my character knows". Strip away all the excess words in your post, and that's what you wind up with.

It is perfectly fine for "magic to just work that way".

Players overall should do less rulebook regurgitation and more creative writing.
I'm talking about the messages presented to your character in game, I didn't mention the wiki once. Your argument is like saying that we should remove all text from spells and spell scrolls.

If we operate on a WYSIWYG system, you cannot fault people for using what they see in their writing, when they're told specifically why something didn't work.

And frankly, that you think 'its perfectly fine' and better creative writing is simply your opinion. Magic doesn't just 'work that way', that's not how magic works, and it's sloppy writing (this is my opinion, opposite of yours) that you have 9 spell levels and many epic spells that function the exact same way each time but your character can't manage to get a spell they know to work consistently, because 'reasons'.

Are you saying that a specialist conjuration wizard who can regularly and routinely summon a monolithic elemental from another plane is just "Eh, yeah I know that he's right outside the room but I can't summon him because magic just works that way"? No, that's sloppy writing, that's not creative. That's simply shrugging at mechanics and saying "I can't be bothered to come up with a reason for why this works as it does".

Look at the -vast amounts- of lore on magic, we're not all wild mages where things just randomly don't work. Spells are made to be consistent. That's why spells exist and why reckless dweomer is random.
Party in the forest at midnight wrote:
Fri Aug 05, 2022 6:08 pm
These are very minor things but I think it would go a long way in helping people react to why their spells failed. At the very least, changing -yoink in particular would help in cases where someone was kidnapped and wants to play out the scene and doesn't want to be rescued. There have been cases where this has happened and people have reacted very hostile to the person who was captured for REFUSING help. If the failure state message was the same for someone declining and for an area being teleport warded, that wouldn't happen.
Agreed! I saw this recently actually, and it /is/ suspicious IC when people refuse help, even though OOC they want to continue the RP they're in. While I personally ignore the refusal message to prevent the above, I can understand why others don't when the game is specifically telling you.
Path_of_Play wrote:Fear, intimidation, anger - All these, the tyrant's tools.
Laughter, encouragement, play - not simply just for fools.
These tools reveal,
More is learned,
From another in an hour of play,
Than in a year of contention.

Seven Sons of Sin
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Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 3:40 am

Re: Discussion: Metagaming and IC/OOC confusion

Post by Seven Sons of Sin » Fri Aug 05, 2022 7:41 pm

"On the ley" is super lame. I don't even know what that means. Often times, attempting to create IC justifications for server mechanics will always, always risk metagaming.

9/10 it is better to just say, "I don't know why, but it didn't work."

A constant need to rationalize and explain minutiae of the server opens up a lot of risk for players to abuse that.

I think the OP is fair to call out the language. I've had players "upset" (players, not characters) with me because I had characters that refused to let their IC leadership be without consequence. Took all the fun right out of conflict.

You have to be kind but assertive. But we can't confusing really disruptive behaviour with behaviour that might inch people out of their safe secure bubbles of comfort.
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