Role Playing Rules

I've always had a different working definition of Godmodding in an RP; I think of it as the player rather than the character going into "God Mode" and thus determining things that are rightfully the GM's domain and generally playing God. This would include controlling established NP Cs, Determining other player's actions and the success or failure of actions that would normally be in the domain of GM.

I think it's a bit more of a practical definition since it captures the entire phemonemon rather than solely determining the outcome of combat oneself.

Tweaked.

I like Faux's take on it.

Tweaked again.

Looks great now.

Shouldn't there be a rule about character power levels? Or does that fall under the GM's rules?

That should be solely up to the GM and the roleplay.

Godmodding takes care of that problem anyway.

@Col: And, anyway, different RPs have different power limits. It's kinda pointless to have a general rule for them; as Irene/Hydronix said, it's already covered under 'obey the GM'.

I think it might be worth our while to consider;

Keep Discussion to the Relevant Thread: The Main RP thread is for Roleplaying, the Discussion thread is for Out of Character Discussion and the Sign Ups is for signing up. If you are wondering if a game is accepting new players, ask in the Sign Ups thread for the relevant thread. If you are wondering how/whether your or someone else's character can/have performed an action, post in discussion, not in spoilered text.

Often when drama flares up in a game, I find spoilered messages decrying certain actions. I think it's best to keep discussion to the discussion thread, even in those situations.

edited 11th Jul '12 10:54:50 PM by Fauxlosophe

I second this. It's rather annoying to check your watchlist and find that an RP got five pages, four of them are spoilered discussion that should've gone in the OOC thread.

Agreed. Although it doesn't hurt to say "Check the Discussion" in spoilers, heh.

I know from experience. It bothers me when people do this. :|

Added.

An odd problem I've seen is people new to the forum not actually knowing that discussion threads are a thing, apparently.

Oh, I quite know of that. Tis annoying, about you.

Yesss, that is odd, but I've seen it also.

Most if not all RP threads on here will have a Discussion thread and signup thread. Only a very few are missing the latter.

The ones that don't have a sign up thread usually use the Discussion thread for sign ups.

I'd hate to bump this, but I want to know what the ruling on this scenario is:

Let's say Jimmy is running an RPG, and someone signs up with their character. Jimmy has experienced their rude and anti-GM behavior on another forum, and decides that they're more trouble on the RPG so he declines.

Would this be allowed? Since it has nothing to do with the character but with the user (so it might become a repeat of that banning a few months back with the favoritism and all), and it's referring to drama that happened somewhere else.

If they haven't done anything wrong and there is nothing wrong with their character, then I'm not sure what you can do outside "Stern Warning not to screw up" and "Flat Out Rejection".

There are rules about doing what the GM says, including the one where they have the final say with sign-ups, and not pestering games you aren't in. The Forum as a whole has a rule against Importing drama, so if they've come here only to start trouble, then its a whole different problem.

edited 10th Sep '12 9:26:00 PM by Parable

To my knowledge, Roleplaying games are by rules invitation only. The Signups are an application and you are fully within your rights as a DM to decline any invitation, including for reasons that might be personal; this is fair since when you have strong personal feelings, particularly in a negative way about someone, this may affect your ability to serve as an objective arbitrator.

If there's an appeal made, tell that person honestly why this is happening; There is a past you feel uncomfortable about that you're not sure whether you can arbitrate fairly or that he, as an applicant, fits the general feel of the game.

• Do not be offensive, rude or dramatic about old difference. If you are, then that is importing drama. Telling someone politely that you'd rather not have them is avoiding this.

• If the player makes a strong enough appeal that you feel like accepting him or you don't bring up the issue at all, make sure that when actually playing you do not reward other players more than him or deliberately single him out as a buttmonkey. Telling someone that they can't play because you don't feel like you'd be able to arbitrate their character conflict fairly is not in violation of any rule.

The DM's right to "auto-ban" is in place to prevent these eventualities and thus is allowed.

edited 11th Sep '12 2:45:57 PM by Fauxlosophe

A few suggestions:

• No Timelords: While Talking Is a Free Action, if you're going to do some sort of physical action with your character, try to limit it to one action per post in order to give people a chance to respond. In real life, you would not stand by if someone came running up to you, pressing the elevator button, punching a puppy in front of you, reciting half of Hamlet and giving a "Reason You Suck" Speech, and then finally jumping into the elevator and closing the doors. Stop your post at the first point where another character will react.
  • Additionally, try not to cram in lengthy actions into a single post when there are other player characters involved, as people will have to explain why their character did absolutely nothing in the large chunk of time you just took up.
• Retroactive Actions: Don't say your character was somewhere all along when they weren't. Many times, characters will act a certain way due to who they're with, and might say different things depending on who's currently at a location. For example, if Bob and Alice are talking and Bob looks around, sees the coast is clear, and says something intended only for Alice's ears, don't say that your character, Charlie, was actually right next to them the whole time and heard everything. Whether Charlie was eavesdropping from a concealed location is a whole 'nother issue that could be totally justified depending on the RP, but at least try to avoid turning other characters into idiots .
• Read the Discussion: Since you're no doubt using the nifty watchlist feature, just read the posts in the discussion thread before moving on to the actual RP thread, because the GM will sometimes mention some details or background information that might not be apparent from the content of the RP itself, and it just leads to a cascade of trouble when you miss an important detail.

I've considered mentioning the use of the watchlist just as a suggestion in and of itself. As it seems you did as well in the first page here.

I have, at least at one point in time, been in about five RPs at once. Since every RP here technically consists of three different threads, that's fifteen threads to be keeping track of. Watchlist lets me check one place and be told automatically if any of the threads I put on my watchlist have new posts.

Admittedly, it only tells you about new posts, and does not mention if any previous posts have been edited. Still, between refreshing one page and refreshing fifteen pages, I'd say the use of the watch list is worth it in that case.

I think at the very least it might be helpful to mention it so that new people at least know it's a thing they can use if they choose to do so. I was on these forums for... I think at least three years before I even knew the watch list feature exited at all.

The Timelord thing should really depend the roleplay. Many times it's appropriate to do a long post. Especially when it's supposed to be a cutscene, or done in Story Format instead of Script Format.

Read the Discussion ought to be mandatory anyway. Some roleplays have that in their rules.

Going to say no on the Retroactive part. That's actually legitimate in certain roleplays depending the people who play. It's as easily solved as "didn't notice" or saying "I tried to speak to 'em, but they were blanking", etc. More or less, this should really depend the roleplay as well.

Everything depends on the roleplay. There are roleplays where godmodding, autohitting/controlling npcs, and things like that are all acceptable. But unless otherwise stated, it seems like it should default to a "not okay" status.

...Outside of a cutscene or something planned, none of those really happen. They're not okay.

The ones you listed actually may be okay depending the circumstance. For that matter, they happen more often and nobody ultimately complains. Except maybe the person writing the longest post at best. I don't feel comfortable putting anything beyond the "Check the Discussion" rule up. The others are a bit too demanding and aren't very often a problem at all.

I agree with Nman. Timelording is probably the most serious once, since personally, nine times out of ten, it's what causes retroaction in my experience.

Hell, I've actually PM'd a DM to ask if I could just whack a guy in the head midspeech when his In the Name of the Moon deal dragged on way too long. (Permission was granted. It was pretty great.)

Where the misunderstanding comes from here is that Timelording does not refer to any long post at all but instead to situations where it's sort of an unspoken/passive Godmodding, where, while you don't outright say it you are indeed demanding that no one else do anything for an extended period of time while your character performs an action or gives a monologue when other people might not be inclined to listen.

What I might recommend instead, if we want to be more liberal about this, is give players the right to either post in Discussion or PM the DM and ask for an interupt on a Timelord action; If the other guy is being unreasonable in expecting everyone else to be passive, DM should okay an interupt point and let things unfold from that retcon.

This further solves the retroactive part because I've seen a game fall apart where every other PC except myself suddenly warped in to somehow see another PC slip away and later many of them placed themselves in such away that they could eavesdrop on private convo. Let the DM handle this; If it is reasonable (The conversation is happening very close to where the other person is for other reasons or something like that) the DM can okay it, if not then give definitive word on why not.

This solves timelording somewhat without making people have to fear possibly unnecessary stop points [dangerous in slower R Ps] while giving reasonable retroactive actions a route of appeal.

edited 7th Nov '12 4:03:51 PM by Fauxlosophe