Unclear Description: God Modder

According to their articles, God Modder is a very contradictory term, it's origins say it comes from god moderating and yet 'godmodders' essentially hold no power. They say they're like "Stop Having Fun" Guys but are essentially Scrubs who think they're as good as "Stop Having Fun" Guys.

Then it says not to confuse with "godmoding" (one d), which links to the God Mode page, which describes godmodding as more or less "acting as if they were in God Mode".

Clearly these two need to be cleaned up, in some way, shape, or form, to actually make sense.

edited 5th May '12 4:55:49 PM by ReplisMonathin

The tropes appear to be the terms exactly as used in the wild. I'm not seeing the issue here. Then again, I game heavily so I'm familiar with the terms. I can see how the concepts would be confusing to someone who doesn't.

edited 5th May '12 5:36:32 PM by shimaspawn

Fixed the tag.

I like the idea of having a trope about the line between bug-exploitation and unorthodox tactics, but as it stands now, it's just complaints about things they don't like on bug-fixing forums. Perhaps we could document the term like we did for Mary Sue, but I don't want this to turn into a natter war about whether the people who like this or that patch are horrible people. This definitely needs to be labeled YMMV if not flame bait. I'm not sure if examples are appropriate either.

I think the problem is that God Modding in a video game setting originates from a different root than God Modding for a forum, even though they're spelled and pronounced the same.

I would rewrite to make the part about forum God Modding a "contrast with" as opposed to "it originates from" in the description. Beyond that, though, I don't think the page has any problems.

The term also has a complicated definition for loose-form roleplaying, which could confuse things. The problem is that it has many different definitions, some of which are highly controversial (I've seen people accusing each other of it before, and it looked a lot like the arguments you get over Mary Sue, which isn't that surprising when you realize that they're related terms.)

Depending on who you ask, definitions can include:

• Describing the actions or, sometimes, emotions of a character controlled by another person in a group RP. That is, dictating what their character does to them. ("I frown at you; terror shooting through you, you run away!")

• Automatically assuming that your action succeeds when it affects a character controlled by another person, and/or dictating its results. ("Pulling my arm back, I suddenly punch you in the face, sending you flying!")

• Refusing to let other people affect your character no matter what, even when they logically could. Note how this can directly contradict and come out of people invoking the implications of the definition above, which is one of the chief sources of arguments where both people accuse the other of godmoding. ("As you punch me in the face with all your might, I just smirk, not budging a hair!")

• Playing a character that's much more powerful than anyone else, sometimes ludicrously so. ("I'm an ancient immortal shapeshifting Dragon Goddess Kitsune Wizard from the dawn of time, with thirty-two tails and absolute control of the physical universe! Tell me more about your plumber character.")

You'll notice that most of these can be summed up as "playing your character as a Mary Sue", which is why I said they're related! But not everyone would agree on all of those definitions.

Some people have different terms for some (or all) of these, but I've heard godmoding be used many, many times to refer to each of them, often in different context and plainly by people who thought it only referred to that one specific thing. The problem is that roleplaying communities are very insular and depend on a degree of cooperation between the participants; this results in people internalizing their own rules and terms and creates friction when they encounter other styles.

(Also, while it's odd to say this, it's important to recognize that Tropes Are Not Bad — that is, while the term itself is thrown around as an insult in the same way Mary Sue is, none of the things I listed above are always bad. Though they're bad practice to one degree or another most of the time, it really depends on your group and its culture, on the level of trust and cooperation between the people involved, on the rules and what you've agreed on in advance, and on many other factors. So it's important that the trope page not be written as a "THIS IS BAD! ANYONE WHO DOES THIS IS EVIL" rant.)

edited 7th May '12 5:23:55 PM by Aquillion

To bring it back to video games, and showing just how muddled the words are, I've also seen stuff like that referred to as God Moding - as in, acting like your character always has God Mode activated.

Getting down to brass tacks, we have three different concepts, all of which are distinctly different and all of which can be described by the term.

I'm inclined to say that, due to the fact that other tropes cover the other two definitions, the video game community definition (i.e. someone who cheats their way through competitive play) should be the page definition. There should also be two notes. One will direct people thinking of the forum moderator on a power trip should look up Small Name, Big Ego, while those thinking of uber-powerful free-form role-play characters should look up Mary Sue.

Clocking as inactive.

Ah, right.

So, I do realize one issue with god moderating (i.e. moderators on a forum acting like they're god) going under Small Name, Big Ego - the standard problems that resulted in said page becoming No Real Life Examples Please. The only safe way to handle that is to note that an accusation of such is another way of accusing someone of Small Name, Big Ego.

That said, I think the note about that would be a sufficient fix to clear up any confusion. Thoughts?

Inactive for too long. Locking.