Rules Clarification: Log Posting in IC mediums

[Choofed]

Hey there,

This is a feedback more explicitly for the DM team on something that is slowly starting to worry me as a developing trend on the server. This mostly is relevant to the 'intelligence' sorts of characters on the server who collect information and act as spies, spymasters, and so on. Legitimate roleplay.

Recently I've noticed that there seems to be a prevalence of "Log Posting". Log posting is what I'd describe as an individual going into their logging program of choice and essentially copy pasting conversation recordings they get from their log file and slapping it into a text editor and having their character essentially "Picture Perfect Memorize" prior conversations.

While I can understand the roleplay arguments for someone doing this being valid in terms of meeting minutes for certain things to an extent, it honestly comes off as very poor quality RP when they happen to just photographically recall a conversation in the square from a year ago. My primary exposure to this has been people making intelligence reports with perfect captures of the contents of conversations they scried.

So this is my feedback and questions towards the DM Team.

• Presently does the DM team consider log posting a RPR decreasing phenomena? Will the creation of log posting documents be seen as low RP quality?

• Is the capturing of a log for the purposes of perfect intelligence reports or recalling exact words from conversations months prior considered metagaming? I'm talking explicitly when people bulk post conversations they had.

If the DM team sees no issues with this phenomena or not something they wish to enforce then I can fully understand their perspective. But if they do choose to pursue it as against the rules or the spirit of the server could I propose the following rules amendment?

While chat logs can be a useful OOC tool for players, characters do not have perfect photographic recall. Characters should not unreasonably remember past conversations or events with exact wording or detail especially those that happened weeks or months ago. Do not attempt to use game logging systems to advantage your character’s capacity to remember things. If you are attempting to copy public posts, emote doing such an action and write that paper infront of said board.

Considerations for Copying Board Posts

While I can appreciate where oddly perfectly memory is pretty toxic in terms of "I prefectly remember the exact wording you used when you talked about bob in 173 AR", using logs for characters making a copy of a board post that's on a public board should probably not be covered in this. However, someone clicking 1 through 10 and running away to make a copy is a bit cheesy.

With this in mind I added the consideration to board posts.

Thanks for your consideration DM team.

[The GrumpyCat]

This isn't really something i feel that a blanket ruling can be applied on. It's always going to be somewhat case by case.

Copying down five lines of dialogue after a scrying session? That seems reasonable to me.

Recalling 190 lines of dialogue after a casual conversation? Seems skethcy

But maybe your character was emoting writing down exactly what was said as the conversation was occuring? Well - that's not unreasonable.

Remembering a very specific, very important thing said in that conversation? I can see an argument for that.

Memorising an entire book after one glance in game? That's what printing presses are for.

Memorising an entire libraries worth of information within half an hour of being there? Nah mate, you're taking the piss. (Which is to say, that's absolutly NOT ok)

Memorising a board post? Well I'd like to see your character spend a bit of time at the board, ideally, emoting noting things down and such, but I can see why that's not entirely unreasonable.

Memorising AN ENTIRE MESSAGE BOARD of stuff? Yeah that seems a bit much, though dependent on how much access the pc has to the message board, potentally possible.

And so on, and so forth. Keep in mind the above arn't hard 'rules' on what's allowed and what isn't, we'd look at each one case by case! Anmd please note these are just examples to give a very crude idea of what might make sense, vs what might not, not hard guidelines to what we allow and what we don't.

Basically there's not a single 'this is wrong' that we can give, because it really depends on a lot of factors.

This is one of those cases where we'll have to count on people using common sense.

[Choofed]

This is one of those cases where we'll have to count on people using common sense.

I overall very much agree with your positions here Grumpy, it's just a case where I don't think anything is noted on the rules page to dissuade this yet so it would be best we got this in writing and clear that people shouldn't be going OTT with logging software.

[Darkstorn42]

Well, let's think about this from an ICly perspective? Someone is investigating you in 186 and goes to Fred and asks about a conversation from 176 and puts it in writing from their logs. Now you see that the signed stamp at the bottom is much later then the supposed date of the conversation. There is no way you should assume the verbatim is correct ICly and might even throw the report out.

i guess my point is, be skeptical ICly of what seems like gamified to RP. "This conversation happened three weeks ago, why is the date yesterday?"

It's tough, but the logs are great for making scry reports. (Not copy and paste. Always edit it appropriately.)

[Marsi]

Information management should stay in-game and necessarily not scale beyond the limitations of our in-game message creation/tools.

If you are using third-party software to keep perfect records on other PCs, or to augment your information manager PC's abilities, or avoid dealing with the upkeep and protection a physical record demands, I don't see how that isn't metagaming for an IC advantage.

People doing this to position themselves as history experts is annoying and cheesy, but doing this to win arguments or more easily have other characters killed/exiled/defamed is basically just cheating imo.

Not to mention how depressing it is when you join a faction, get the expected Discord invite, and then once inside you're bombarded with hundreds of google drive documents they've come to absolutely rely on and are required for understanding their unnaturally complex logistics.