(05-05-2015, 04:38 PM)Verad Wrote: What do you, however, when the player proves it through some metaphysical means? Some dimensional traveller, to use Klin's example, leaps into another Final Fantasy setting in front of you and comes back with Shantotto. Somebody claiming to be a primal manifests as such in front of you. For the more hardline lore-hounds, a WHM casts Succor or Holy. In short, something that would have a tangible effect on the world and can't be denied by a simple claim of insanity.
It's possible to retcon the matter and say that the person only said they did these things, and it didn't actually happen, but that's very much not letting the character lead; it's making an OOC judgment call in the moment and declaring that a fact stated by another player isn't actually a fact. On the other hand, taking the claim on faith and reacting to it means having to grapple with denying it IC at a later date. How do you address this problem?
It depends.
I'm of the opinion that a person can claim anything they want ICly. I've often played liars, cheats, and scoundrels in MMOs, and they claim all sorts of things that aren't true. Even L'yhta lies now and then and sometimes makes claims about what she can do that aren't as easily dismissed as her typical puffery. It's when the person starts making OOC assertions that things go haywire -- and "proving the claim" falls into that territory. Perhaps it's not a popular approach, but when wild IC claims start turning into wild (or godmoding, or powerposing) OOC claims, I typically just excuse myself OOC with something akin to, "((I'm sorry, this scene isn't working for me, so I'm going to have to bow out.))" I then retcon that part of the scene, if not the whole scene, in my personal continuity. I don't see it as productive to argue with the person, IMO.
To the specific examples, when it comes to most magic, that's actually fairly easy, at least to me; it looked like that spell, but it wasn't that spell -- or it was that spell and they got some access to it through some means. This can be a spark for conversation, and I can usually run with that. The primal and the dimension hopping at will fall into that "highly outside of lore" category, and I'll just politely excuse myself OOC.
The Freelance Wizard
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((about me | about L'yhta Mahre | L'yhta's desk | about Mysterium, the Ivory Tower: a heavy RP society of mages))
Quality RP at low, low prices!
((about me | about L'yhta Mahre | L'yhta's desk | about Mysterium, the Ivory Tower: a heavy RP society of mages))