Two examples come to mind, off the top of my head. One directly involved me, the other not.
The first is when someone dismisses or belittles OOC concerns. The specific case (non-FFXIV) was that someone made it their character's mission to insult and antagonize my character without my permission, or indeed knowledge that they were going to do that in the first place. This happened over the course of a month, where their character would bad-mouth mine to everyone they knew (and they were well-liked and trusted by their in-group IC, so everyone I tried to interact with approached my character with suspicion and hostility), outright refuse to associate with my character IC (while still hanging around my character loudly proclaiming how they don't want to), and generally made RPing miserable for me.
I contacted them OOC that this was not where I want to be for my character, and I was feeling uncomfortable OOC with the sheer hostility my character was receiving. The answer I received was that I should "learn to separate IC and OOC", and "it's just RP, no need to take it so seriously".
I ended up leaving that RP community soon afterwards. It wasn't until much, much later, that someone else who happened to be in that RP community (who wasn't involved in all this) asked me about it and learned my side of the story, before relaying the background: that person had randomly chosen my character to pick on because they wanted to start a plotline about Friendship After Rivalry, and everyone else thought that this was pre-arranged between them and me OOC, because that's what that person had assumed. So my own bewilderment at this treatment had read to them as me being a prima donna incapable of separating IC and OOC.
To this day I don't know whether this misunderstanding was cleared up. I did tell that acquaintance my side of the story, but I don't know if they decided to pass it back to that RP community. To be honest, that bridge is well burned for me.
TL;DR When someone says they are not comfortable with the current plotline OOC, listen to them, rather than deciding that they're a bad RPer who should suck it up.
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The second instance is when someone is in the middle of a group RP session, and then takes a metaphorical huge, steaming dump on the conversation.
The conversation in question was something light and inconsequential, mostly about people's backgrounds and how they felt about being in Eorzea. Just shooting the breeze, learning about each other, nothing too serious.
Then someone, who had been silent until then, mentioned "with a giant smirk" that she had been orphaned at a young age when her parents were murdered in front of her eyes, spent her early life begging in Ul'dah, was raped almost daily as a child, sold herself into prostitution when she could, and had scars all over the place.
I was about to join in the original conversation then, but stopped short when that dropped into my chatbox. My immediate thought was: "How the hells am I supposed to respond to that?"
The conversation, which had previously been fairly brisk, devolved into one-line responses about "that's terrible" and "well, sorry to hear that". I left quickly afterwards, because I didn't want to get involved.
The character might not be able to read the mood IC, but surely there's a better way to join in the RP than to kill the conversation completely.
TL;DR Include OOC considerations when planning to join IC conversations.
The first is when someone dismisses or belittles OOC concerns. The specific case (non-FFXIV) was that someone made it their character's mission to insult and antagonize my character without my permission, or indeed knowledge that they were going to do that in the first place. This happened over the course of a month, where their character would bad-mouth mine to everyone they knew (and they were well-liked and trusted by their in-group IC, so everyone I tried to interact with approached my character with suspicion and hostility), outright refuse to associate with my character IC (while still hanging around my character loudly proclaiming how they don't want to), and generally made RPing miserable for me.
I contacted them OOC that this was not where I want to be for my character, and I was feeling uncomfortable OOC with the sheer hostility my character was receiving. The answer I received was that I should "learn to separate IC and OOC", and "it's just RP, no need to take it so seriously".
I ended up leaving that RP community soon afterwards. It wasn't until much, much later, that someone else who happened to be in that RP community (who wasn't involved in all this) asked me about it and learned my side of the story, before relaying the background: that person had randomly chosen my character to pick on because they wanted to start a plotline about Friendship After Rivalry, and everyone else thought that this was pre-arranged between them and me OOC, because that's what that person had assumed. So my own bewilderment at this treatment had read to them as me being a prima donna incapable of separating IC and OOC.
To this day I don't know whether this misunderstanding was cleared up. I did tell that acquaintance my side of the story, but I don't know if they decided to pass it back to that RP community. To be honest, that bridge is well burned for me.
TL;DR When someone says they are not comfortable with the current plotline OOC, listen to them, rather than deciding that they're a bad RPer who should suck it up.
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The second instance is when someone is in the middle of a group RP session, and then takes a metaphorical huge, steaming dump on the conversation.
The conversation in question was something light and inconsequential, mostly about people's backgrounds and how they felt about being in Eorzea. Just shooting the breeze, learning about each other, nothing too serious.
Then someone, who had been silent until then, mentioned "with a giant smirk" that she had been orphaned at a young age when her parents were murdered in front of her eyes, spent her early life begging in Ul'dah, was raped almost daily as a child, sold herself into prostitution when she could, and had scars all over the place.
I was about to join in the original conversation then, but stopped short when that dropped into my chatbox. My immediate thought was: "How the hells am I supposed to respond to that?"
The conversation, which had previously been fairly brisk, devolved into one-line responses about "that's terrible" and "well, sorry to hear that". I left quickly afterwards, because I didn't want to get involved.
The character might not be able to read the mood IC, but surely there's a better way to join in the RP than to kill the conversation completely.
TL;DR Include OOC considerations when planning to join IC conversations.
