It's a tricky balance. I personally find that journals can be a really powerful character development tool, and especially for long lasting characters it becomes living proof of how the character changes over time - and how events, written and unwritten, affect their way of thinking.Â
Journals can also become powerful items in the RP itself, if you were to say, let your journal get stolen and you happened to be one of those mages who writes down their secret, powerful and desirable spells.Â
I tend to keep one if I feel the inspiration for it, Sastra's currently only has one entry because she's hardly got the time to sit down and write anything these days.Â
However, as to where I would post it, is an entirely different thing. More often than not, I wouldn't post it to anywhere where I can't moderate who sees it. Having been the victim of rather intensive metagaming in the past, I'm super paranoid that something similar might happen again. So, these days I only post my journals on our website, where only the members can see it. That way, if someone does metagame on the information, I will know that it was one of my own and that I will be able to fix it before it spreads.Â
I also never use journals as a way to progress any ongoing RP/Plot, as I think one shouldn't mix the medias - since you inadvertently end up blocking out other characters influence because they don't use all types of media.Â
At most, I will try to tease or confuse the players behind the other characters, so as to make my characters choices be even harder to predict.Â
It's a shame that the notion of "Do not metagame" isn't as crystal clear for everyone as it is for one self, because when it happens it can have very serious consequences both IC and OOC, but it's practically impossible to make sure everyone understands it the same way.
Journals can also become powerful items in the RP itself, if you were to say, let your journal get stolen and you happened to be one of those mages who writes down their secret, powerful and desirable spells.Â
I tend to keep one if I feel the inspiration for it, Sastra's currently only has one entry because she's hardly got the time to sit down and write anything these days.Â
However, as to where I would post it, is an entirely different thing. More often than not, I wouldn't post it to anywhere where I can't moderate who sees it. Having been the victim of rather intensive metagaming in the past, I'm super paranoid that something similar might happen again. So, these days I only post my journals on our website, where only the members can see it. That way, if someone does metagame on the information, I will know that it was one of my own and that I will be able to fix it before it spreads.Â
I also never use journals as a way to progress any ongoing RP/Plot, as I think one shouldn't mix the medias - since you inadvertently end up blocking out other characters influence because they don't use all types of media.Â
At most, I will try to tease or confuse the players behind the other characters, so as to make my characters choices be even harder to predict.Â
It's a shame that the notion of "Do not metagame" isn't as crystal clear for everyone as it is for one self, because when it happens it can have very serious consequences both IC and OOC, but it's practically impossible to make sure everyone understands it the same way.
