To Whom It May Concern

[ChukchiDog]

Please refrain from taking OOC things and making them IC. Examples of this:

While positioning my character I accidentally bump yours out of position. You have your character fall to the ground and cry out in pain, and/or remark how rude and clumsy I am for bumping you.

I misclick and jump out of my chair and run across the room for no apparent reason. You remark that I must be spastic.

I ask a question that has already been answered, because I type slow and occasionally hit the enter key just after the answer has been given. You tell everyone I must be hard of hearing.

Some people may not mind this kind of thing. I do mind it. Respect that.

While prompted by a recent incident, this is not directed at any one person. Even Akai has on occasion done this sort of thing to me.

Thanks for listening.

[Psye Shaar]

If you find people continue to do this and/or use anything OOC to further their own cause for whatever reason or simply for their own amusement, ignoring the immersion of others, then please let us know. You can either PM any DM or the Hala Team account.

[blue wolfy]

As the offender that was the one that said IC that gilden was 'hard of hearing" as Tanaris, I just want to say i ment no offence to the player of Gildan, as Tanaris IC can just be an ass. But you also have to take in account that the same question was asked three times, and answered twice already at that point, And considering Gildan is always the one talking about his advanced years, it was perfectally logical for an ass like tanaris to say something like that IC. Nothing was even said about it being an ooc mistake til this was posted after the event this morning was over.

What upsets me was when it was mentioned that the question was already answered twice, that i got an infatic "no it wasn't", it started a little bickering, as much my fault as anyones and I'm sorry. It shouldnt have gone that far. Next time we get on at the same time i would like to talk with you and ensure there are no hard feelings as IC (as all but tan) and OOC i love your characters and would hate for either of us to feel uncomfortable if we get tossed into another IC situation together, as that happened often.


edit: the event hadn't ended but i had to leave for RL reasons

[ChukchiDog]

In answer:

What I objected to was the player taking OOC considerations IC. Tanaris pointed out today that Gildan had asked questions that were already answered during the event LAST NIGHT. And yes, Gildan did, because I, as a player, am incompetent. My incompetence is NOT Gildan's. I find it difficult to believe that the player really thought that I was intentionally having my character ask questions that had already just been answered.

The fact that Tanaris is an ass is not relevant. Tanaris can be an ass; I've no problem with that at all (though Gildan does, of course). But I don't want Wolfy using my OOC mistakes for Tanaris to be an ass to Gildan about. That's my point.

Today was different. Today I missed an answer and mistakenly thought I hadn't been answered, and then argued about it until I spotted my mistake. Yep, I was wrong, and Wolfy was right. Sorry about that; it happens. However, that has nothing to do with the above.

At the point at which Tanaris made the comment, the question had been asked by me, answered by the NPC, and asked by me again (because I had missed the answer, not because I was typing my question out while the answer was being given, as is usual, and as was the case last night a couple of times):

Gildan: And who did X?
Gildan: And who did Y?
NPC: Usually Person A. (the line I missed)
NPC: Y was usually done by Person B.
(some other discussion)
Gildan: Who did X?
Tanaris: He already said, Gil.
NPC: I thought I already said that.
NPC: Person A did X, Person B did Y.
Tanaris: He is a bit hard of hearing I think; he did this last night, asked questions even after they was answered already.

(Then I, as Gildan, corrected the NPC and asked the question yet again due, this time, to my usual problem of typing too slow. I saw at once that the answer had already been given, the NPC obligingly answered it yet again, and we went on from there. Wolfy sent me a tell saying that the NPC really had answered the question the first time I asked it. I scrolled up to check and missed the line a second time, and replied to Wolfy via tells that he was wrong. Wolfy kept on insisting and eventually I scrolled up again to double-check and saw that Wolfy had been right, and admitted as much to Wolfy. End of incident.)

No, I didn't post it after the event was over. I was actually so pissed off that I went AFK and posted it immediately, because it happens to be one of my hot buttons and because I was already in a rotten mood (still am, by the way). I didn't say anything in game because I didn't want to waste everyone's time there with a long detailed OOC discussion and explanation.

So, Wolfy, that's the deal. I'm sorry I argued with you about my mistake. You were right, and I was wrong. But again, that's beside the point.

I hope you can understand the point I'm making here. I'm not offended by anything Tanaris says to Gildan IC. What I do object to is your using my OOC incompetence against my character. I hope you can see the difference.

Thanks for listening. There are no hard feelings on my side. It's the sin and not the sinner I'm upset about.

[Sable]

just to chip in here, if players spend all their time trying to second guess if something was an IC or an OOC mistake, things are going to get insane fast.

OK, misclicks are usually pretty much obvious when they happen, but when it comes to speach its less easy. So, within a little reason (2 comments posted pretty much at the same time) players have to allow things to boil down to "what happens in game is IC and it happened so we have to roll with it".

Players make mistakes, so do characters. Therefore a screw up by a player is easily incorportated as a screw up by the character and we move on. No harm, no foul.

Lets turn this one around with a simple example - in the CO plot when we were talking to tiamat, Sara gave Sulavan a strict order to shut up. I missed it completely and merrily went on with Sul shooting his mouth off as he is want to do. Was 2-3am here, I was tired and struggling to keep up with things. Gildan had a go at him with something like "don't you ever follow orders?". There was no way in hell you were to know it was a player mistake and no one should expect you to. It happened in game so its RP which makes it IC.
...took me a couple of days to work out why the hell Sul would do it, but I got there in the end and its now a cornerstone for an interesting (to me at least) personality dynamic within the CO. So mistakes aren't always a bad thing.

End of the day, life becomes so much more simple and stress free when you take the attitude that whatever happens in game is IC and part of the RP landscape. Life only really gets stressful when you start making exceptions and adding complecations.

[ChukchiDog]

When it's not obvious it's a mistake, as in your example, that's one thing. When it's obvious, or pretty likely, as in my examples, that's another.

In the example you cited, I'd have reacted differently than you did. I'd have said ooc "He'd have shut up; I just missed it", or even better, I'd have had my character apologize ICly and explain that he didn't hear the order. I would not have been mad at anyone about it, but neither would I want my character to have done something badly out of character for him. If I misclick and my good character acidentally kills an NPC child, I don't want him to be branded a child-murderer. There are people who would do this. There are people who would bring it up later, and say IC: "Well, who are you to talk about murder, you hypocrite; I saw you kill that child." This is the kind of thing I object to.

I'm not stating what you, or anyone else, ought to do. I'm just saying what I don't want done in relation to my own characters. There's a lot I do let go; many misclicks and miss-statements can be explained ICly, and that's fine. But where it's going to give an incorrect impression of my character in some area that I think is an important aspect of my character, then I correct it, and if it's pretty obvious that it was an OOC mistake I don't want it jumped on IC. That's all I'm saying.

[blue wolfy]

But no one knows its an OOC mistake unless you tell us RL we arnt mind readers, last night when you asked the questions after they were answered you said nothing about it being a mistake ooc, so how was anyone to know besides you? Tan was there then and he was there today, So IC he saw two inccidences of gildan not hearing answers to questions he asked, a simple "//ooc: sorry i missed that", would have let us know you handt ment it and this wouldnt have happened.

[Arkon]

Topic locked as this discussion is going in circles. New Rule forthcoming in the rules page.