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Kylin · **04-30-2010, 05:23 PM**

Since nobody else is going to start this topic, I suppose I will xD. This will eventually lead to a vote following the discussion. While definitions for god mode and metagaming will both be both voted on separately, they will both be discussed in this thread together initially. They are two sides of the same coin after all.

The definitions will be used for the purposes of our RP sections here on these forums. Individual RP groups may end up with different definitions for their own guild. Definitions will also be added to our etiquette section as a guide for newer role-players.

This time around, voting will end up differently as well. Instead of just voting yes or no on a single definition, weÃ¢Â€Â™ll end up voting on various different selections of definitions (such as definition Ã¢Â€Âœa,Ã¢Â€Â Ã¢Â€Âœb,Ã¢Â€Â or Ã¢Â€ÂœcÃ¢Â€Â for instance).

So to get this started rather simply, how have many of you defined god mode and metagaming in the past? If you were in a FFXI RP linkshell (or any other RP group in an MMO), now would be a great time to post how that group defined it. WeÃ¢Â€Â™ll likely ultimately draw from these examples to create our own definitions.

What is god mode in the environment of an MMORPG to you? What about metagaming? Examples would also be nice since weÃ¢Â€Â™ll need to add at least one vivid example to our definition.

Zhavi · **04-30-2010, 06:01 PM**

To me, god moding is in effect controlling or directing a character/situation without previous consultation so other players are forced to rp in the direction the god moder wants to go in. It can be something as simple as auto-hitting someone's character (Max stabs Brisia in the eye) or something more complex to do with the environment (Max shoots fireballs in a circle around Brisia, so she can't escape without serious burns. Here it's not quite so obvious, but basically he'd be telling me I have no choice but to stay put or burn my character -- well maybe she can jump high enough to jump over the flames!). Even just outright controlling the character (Max tells Brisia to follow him to the cliff and to swear her allegiance, so she does). God moding could also just mean making an extremely powerful char that no one can contend with.

I think I'm mixing up god moding with metagaming. 0o To me they're so similar as to be virtually indistinct. Largely though, imo, it comes down to controlling rp, without prior consultation, in such a way as to leave your fellow rpers without a choice but to do things your way.

Rikitiki · **04-30-2010, 08:22 PM**

Well, here's how I see it. (I'll write it as I would write it on a random website somewhere, to an audience who isn't necessarily familiar with RoleplayerSpeak. Big Grin

)

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God-mode (verb) (hyphen optional): To perform In-Character (IC), or attempt to perform IC, actions which are clearly beyond the power of any player character.

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Meet our exemplars, AbsurdlyPowerfulMan, or APM, and UnfortunateGuy, or UG. That pretty much tells you all you need to know about them. Tongue

Example1: AbsurdlyPowerfulMan wiggles his pinky finger, causing a flaming crack to open under UnfortunateGuy's feet and convey him directly to a firey death at the planet's core.

(APM is clearly god-moding. There is simply no means within the game for any player character to do that under any circumstances. And what if the world doesn't actually *have* a flaming core?)

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Example2: AbsurdlyPowerfulMan gestures with his right thumb, causing a bolt of lightning to strike UnfortunateGuy and fry him to a crisp.

(Still godmode. APM may very well be a Conjurer capable of tossing lightning bolts around, but UG might very well have survived the blast, depending upon how tough he is, or how resistant he is to lightning. Or maybe UG does, in fact, have tremendously fast reflexes that might allow him to dodge the bolt!)

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Example3: AbsurdlyPowerfulMan raises an eyebrow, causing everyone within ten yards to think that UnfortunateGuy has stinky feet.

(Yep, godmode again. APM cannot dictate what other people think or feel. Whether or not UG's feet actually do stink is, of course, another matter entirely.)

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Example4: AbsurdlyPowerfulMan waggles his fingers, causing a bolt of lightning to streak forth in UnfortunateGuy's direction.

(Not godmode! At least, not if APM can actually toss a Thunder spell.)

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Example5: AbsurdlyPowerfulMan holds his nose. "Wow, UnfortunateGuy, your feet stink! I can smell them from all the way over here."

(Also not godmode, and probably just as likely to make everyone else within ten yards think UG *does* have stinky feet!)

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Metagame (verb): To make In-Character use of Out-of-Character (OOC) knowledge, or knowledge gained through OOC means.

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Example1: AbsurdlyPowerfulMan, having never consulted an alchemist or alchemical text in his life, spends the afternoon before the castle raid mixing together a large batch of sulfur and saltpeter. "This oughtta blow a hole in the castle wall!"

(Clearly metagaming. Out-of-Character, APM obviously knows how to make gunpowder. But, even assuming that sulfur, saltpeter, and gunpowder even *exist* In-Character, there is no way that APM would know that mixing them together would do anything, much less how much of each ingredient to use.)

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Example2: AbsurdlyPowerfulMan, faced with the prospect of raiding an imposing castle, visits the Alchemist's Guild to acquire a few healing draughts. There, he sees an old man demonstrate his new invention, "fire-sand", a black powder that explodes when exposed to fire! Intrigued, AbsurdlyPowerfulMan purchases a large sack of the "fire-sand" from the old man. "This oughtta blow a hole in the castle wall!"

(Not metagaming! OOC, APM still knows what gunpowder is, but his *character* doesn't have any idea... until he happens to see the stuff in action at the Alchemist's Guild! Let's hope he has the good sense to stand well clear of any open flames between here and the castle....)

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Example3: UnfortunateGuy's player posts on the FFXIV RPC forms a bit of his character's background, including a secret place he has underneath a warehouse in town. Later that day, UnfortunateGuy's character opens the secret door behind the haybales, to find AbsurdlyPowerfulGuy waiting for him, sword at the ready!

(Metagaming. The only reason APG's player knows about the secret place is because UG posted on the forums about it! APG's character has no way of knowing about it, much less getting there *ahead* of him to set up an ambush.)

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That about covers it, I think. Thoughts, everyone? Big Grin

River · **05-01-2010, 10:28 AM**

These are the definitions as I have used in the past:

Quote:Don't action on another person's character: Your character is your own, but you have no control over another person's character. Here is an example of the right and wrong ways to handle a situation where the outcome of a situation depends on both players:

WRONG: [Keir] *Breaks Mrree's jaw*
RIGHT: [Keir] *Throws a punch aiming for Mrree's jaw*

The second option allows Mrree to react to Keir's action herself. It gives her more options, such as attempting to block the punch, dodge out of the way, or even counteract. This is the respectful way to RP.

Quote:Remember the difference between IC and OOC: IC means In Character. This refers your character's feelings and emotions.
OOC means Out of Character. This refers to you, as the player behind the character, and your thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

Don't get the two confused!

Just because one character may despise another character, this does not reflect between the players. They may be best friends, while their characters try to slit each other's throats. It is important to try to keep a firm boundary between the two.

Along these lines, if you are having a bad day and your emotions are running high, we ask that you step away from role-play. It is very difficult to role-play when you are feeling down and you will probably end up letting your own feelings infiltrate your character, possibly even having them say and do things they might not normally do.

Also along these lines, when you are not speaking as your own character, either on the chat or in a private conversation to another member, please use (( )) these brackets to indicate you are speaking OOC.

EXAMPLE: ((How do you use this attack command?))

Remember that we encourage members to stay in-character as much as possible, so try to keep any OOC talk about things that you couldn't possibly say as your own character, such as game commands and mechanics.

Quote:Abiding by the physical and natural laws of Eorzea: If you are looking to play Lord Zeus, King of the Gods, bent on raining hellfire on Limsa Lominsa, you're going to have to take a step back and realize that you're only playing a Level 3 Gladiator. (Maybe Level 4, I don't judge.) As an adventurer, you have certain restrictions to your capabilities, especially at lower levels. Even if you went to war ten years ago against the empire, if your character is only level 10, then it seems your skills got a bit rusty in those ten years. Feel free to be unique and innovative with your character's history and skills, but remember that there are limits to how much power you can have.

Smiling River · **05-01-2010, 01:59 PM**

To me god-mode is pretty simple. Make sure your character CAN take hits and leave wiggle room for another character to react when emoting. Most of god-mode can be done away with if you steer clear of these two.

Meta-gaming on the other hand is more tricky. We all meta-game. It's just a matter of to what extent can it go. For example we all speak English, use vocabulary, syntax etc. that we learned in RL within the game. Most of gaming is meta-gaming because we use the RL as a frame of reference to an extent.

Where it gets out of hand is when someone reads something OOC and then their character changes their behavior because of what the player has read. In a perfect RP-world we could just forget all OOC when we play but I don't think it's possible. We see the possibilities of stories and events with others as we read their story posts and drive our characters in that direction. Yet from my experience it's not considered foul, in fact both parties use the OOC knowledge to develop a story willingly. There are many indirect meta-gaming scenarios that we should keep in mind. We should separate those from the worst ones, where a character just knows things they shouldn't.

Eltharian · **05-02-2010, 04:57 PM**

I, and a few others wrote a little RP guideline over at the Knightlife site and described it as so,

Quote:God mode is the tendency to roleplay someone else's character or to say their lines for them. When RPing, one should act and answer for themself, and not for the others they are RPing with. It can sometimes be hard, a player may have an idea of where they would like the RP to follow, however, this is the beauty of RPing. One must adapt to whatever comes, whether it was what they were expecting or not.

It's not so in-depth as to what god mode is, but more so about the drawbacks of it, which I think is also important.

Nanapariri · **05-02-2010, 06:29 PM**

For an introto rping post I wrote the following:

Quote:God-modding is an act of doing something that forces another player into a position they may not be comfortable with and is absolutely not tolerated by other players. This can include holding a character against a player's will, dodging every attack regardless of skill, dismemberment or death of another's character and stating how another's character reacts to a situation are all included in this catergory. An example of this taken from my RP LS rules would be:

Player A and Player B are fighting.
Player A swings a sword and Player B and Player B dodges.
Player B counters and comes in and stabs Player A in the stomach with a hidden dagger!
Player B insists Player A has to be dead

Meta-gaming is a character knowing something IC that clearly could not be known outside of an OOC source. This often happens when an RPer writes an IC Journal or a story of something their character did alone for the group to read but never intended it to be OOC knowledge. For example:

Player A is always kind to Player B IC.
Player B thinks Player A is their friend IC.
Player A writes in their character's IC private journal he in reality hates Player B.
Player B reads this OOC and IC starts saying Player A hates them though Player A is still treating them the same way like they like them.

Blade · **05-04-2010, 12:26 AM**

Quote:God mode is the tendency to roleplay someone else's character or to say their lines for them. When RPing, one should act and answer for themself, and not for the others they are RPing with. It can sometimes be hard, a player may have an idea of where they would like the RP to follow, however, this is the beauty of RPing. One must adapt to whatever comes, whether it was what they were expecting or not.

I definitely agree with Eltharian's position on this. I also like how Rikitiki described a (different, but somewhat related topic)

Quote:God-mode (verb) (hyphen optional): To perform In-Character (IC), or attempt to perform IC, actions which are clearly beyond the power of any player character.

My FFXI RP group follows a merger of sorts between these two I think. Our rules state,

Quote:You use the game's lore and canon to determine what your character is capable of doing, etc. Care should be taken to not give your character any overwhelmingly strong relationships with certain NPCs, ie, being family, etc. In-game stats and abilities should only be used as part of your character in terms of how they rank within their job, ie, a level 30 BLM character cannot claimed to be able to throw ancient magic around. However, characters may have other abilities they may inherent from canon, or their own creativity, as long as it is reasonable and not used to give the character an overwhelming edge over others.

We've heard lots of horror stories on Siren about characters who developed powers that just weren't reasonable... like someone who could burn others with the touch of their hand. Some RPs might go for this kind of style, personally I don't.

But yeah, doing "punches ____ in the face" as an emote without prior consulting with Mr or Ms. ____ is definitely a no no. You can't write in RPers taking hits or not being able to react to something you do, that's scripting their character.

Zhavi · **05-04-2010, 08:12 PM**

I really like and agree with Tsumi and Rikitiki's posts. They are written in a friendly and concise manner, and get right to the heart of things.

Varov · **05-05-2010, 04:51 PM**

I think that this was all very concisely summed up by Riki, Keir and Etharian.

Eva · **05-06-2010, 02:24 PM**

Excellent points by all!

The one thing I try to remember when dealing with both godmode and metagaming is that both anomolies deal specifically with boundaries.

From my perspective, metagaming is simply the improper passage of information from player to character, or in even shorter terms, "allowing your character to know something that they shouldn't."

The most important thing one should consider when RPing something that is potentially 'godmodish' is whether those actions will breach one's own bounds and cross over into another RPer's. One should always try to put him/herself in the position of examining how he/she would feel if another character infringed upon these boundaries in the opposite direction. "Would I be offended if someone did this to me?" should be in mind. In the case of the attack situation, the opponent's thoughts should be taken into consideration. Maybe in an effort to avoid some kind of 'cheesy' fight scene dialogue, the participants arrange (in /tell or somesuch) that certain hits can land without doing the passive 'aims for' such, which admittedly can grow tedious during long fights.

In the case of 'superpowers' and such, it's not just one person that's impacted, but potentially everyone in the community who may be made to feel diminished by such a thing. Consideration must be given to one's actions before taking them - particularly the extreme.

And the only one thing I have issue with from the above examples is this:

Rikitiki Wrote:Example5: AbsurdlyPowerfulMan holds his nose. "Wow, UnfortunateGuy, your feet stink! I can smell them from all the way over here."

(Also not godmode, and probably just as likely to make everyone else within ten yards think UG *does* have stinky feet!)

This could be construed as godmode under certain circumstances. Perhaps UnfortunateGuy goes to painful lengths with his personal hygiene to the point where he would be offended at such an accusation. In the spirit of RP this can easily be played off as discovering another source of the offending odor, but it crosses that same line as assuming another character's thoughts/response.

To conclude all of this, I agree that the RPC should have some sort of definition of godmode/metagaming. I don't think it should be up to the RPC to determine how far these bounds should reach, though. That seems like it will be something that each guild will have to decide for itself. I know it hasn't been brought up because it was probably inferred, but I just wanted to mention that.

Varov · **05-06-2010, 08:46 PM**

Kes Wrote:This could be construed as godmode under certain circumstances. Perhaps UnfortunateGuy goes to painful lengths with his personal hygiene to the point where he would be offended at such an accusation. In the spirit of RP this can easily be played off as discovering another source of the offending odor, but it crosses that same line as assuming another character's thoughts/response.

I vehemently disagree. I constantly go around and make non sequitor claims, and most people are too stupid to put A and B together, and then some guy gets blamed for something he didn't do - etc. If APM points at UG's feet and says they stink, and they don't, the characters around have to make a point to react and go "Eww!" or react and go "Really? I don't smell anything. You, sir, are in violation of Logic!" And then everyone begins to point and laugh at AbsurdlyPowerfulMan's bad attempt at using logical fallacy to insinuate that UnfortunateGuy has smelly feet. APM is then cast aside by Socratic method as his ethos is utterly shattered.

In short, if the character doesn't inquire into the fact that UnfortunateGuy is actually very clean and his feet don't stink, it's not godmode. That's just someone making a false claim and getting away with it. And I cite the past two Presidents and their policy claims. If they don't get away with it, it's their credibility that suffers. I cite the past two Presidents and their policy claims.

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EDIT: I should add -- Godmode in my opinion is just a test of logic. If something defies logic then it shouldn't happen. Example: I kill Bob, and he can't fight back. Nanner Nanner Nanner!

In reality, Bob would have a chance to fight back. Even if he's got all the facts against him - Bob has no legs or arms and is blind in one eye, and I have a gun - there's still a chance that Bob could get lucky or I could miss. There's thousands of factors. So, the golden rule that I play by is that if it fails a basic logic test, it's probably god-mode.

Tyriont · **05-07-2010, 10:49 AM**

I think Varov has the right of it. A key difference (albeit a subtle one, perhaps) is perhaps the difference between that which is emoted and that which is stated. For example, if AbsurdlyPowerfulMan had emoted ::recoils in disgust at the noxious odour from UnfortunateGuy's feet:: that would probably fall on the wrong side of things as the action states an absolute certainty. A more appropriate emote would be ::recoils in disgust:: without stating the reason and then continuing to state that the reason was the noxious odour from UnfortunateGuy's feet, thus giving poor ol' UG the chance to call out APM for being the lying liar that he is.

To call a character lying Godmoding is going too far, I feel...which is the impression I get from the previous statement. It also starts down the slippery slope which I'm sure many of us have seen before that results in more "sensitive" individuals crying "Godmode!" whenever anything they don't like happens regardless of whether it truly fits the definition or not.

Also, I request that when this gets officially written up we utilize AbsurdlyPowerfulMan and UnfortunateGuy for examples as they amuse me greatly.

Eva · **05-07-2010, 11:08 AM**

If it was a well-documented fact that UG was very hygenic and APM clearly knew this and made the claim that his feet stunk when they clearly did not, than yes I think he could be labeled a liar or just out of his gourd.

I made the statement based on the fact that APM unknowingly made the assumption (you know what they say about assumptions) that UG's feet smelled, when in fact they did not. While not explicitly godmode (unless perceived as such by the extremely sensitive, as Tyriont pointed out), this would be the result of a breakdown of communication whereby APM probably should have done the responsible thing and sent UG a /tell inquiring if this was an ok emote to make. Sometimes this is feasable and sometimes not.

Case in point - and true story. Kes has blonde hair based upon one of these communication failures. It had been planned that her hair would be silver, just like her father's. This was never expressly communicated to anyone, and at some point several months later someone I was RPing with - I believe it was Hirilonde - made some mention of how long Kes's blonde hair had become, or something to that effect. He had probably assumed this based on the way the character's mother looked, and I had never at any point publicly or on storyline post indicated that she was supposed to have silver hair. It wasn't a big deal for me and I just rolled with it, but some people might take issue with inconsistencies such as this.

Again, this sort of deviates away from the godmode discussion at hand, but I did think it was worth mentioning. Clearly Riki was right and the incident should not be construed so much as godmode so much as a potential mixup in communication.

Kylin · **05-10-2010, 03:44 PM**

Wow, this topic slipped down the page quite a bit Laugh

. Was hoping for a lot more debate but I guess there really isn't a lot to discuss this time around. Whatever happened to having 10+ page discussions? xD

Would anyone like to formally submit a definition for one or both to be voted on? As stated in the first post, I'd like us to have more than one definition to choose between this time around. It's a bit better than a simple yes/no vote. If you wish to submit a definition to be added to the ballot (even if it's a copy/paste of one already stated in this thread), please do so now. If you intend to propose a definition for both god mode and metagaming, keeep in mind that they will be both voted on separately.

Be sure to include at least one example in the definition. I may end up submitting my own definition to be added to the ballot later this week. Official voting will begin this weekend if we have at least 2-3+ proposed definitions by then.

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God mode and metagaming

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes