Metagaming - responsibilities on both ends
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Hi dudes,
Metagaming information about other characters you are perhaps in conflict with is pretty bad, can really break stories and possibly end characters.
So that's bad, and should be avoided at all costs, we have ret-conned things in the past due to metagaming.
The thing is…
If you put information out there, publically (IC, or OOC) even in a place that someone should not be able to see with their character, then you are causing a problem for yourself, and actually being really quite harsh on your enemy by expecting them to be able to "Pretend" they don't know about it. It just gets insanely confusing, and ridiculously difficult to do.
An example of this might be speaking about your "Secret" ally on IRC, joking about it, talking to your enemies about it, or generally letting the information exist outside of the game - If you do this, and someone metagames, I'm not really going to be that hard on them, it's also going to be REALLY hard to figure out what was metagamed and what wasn't at that point.
The same is true of using the IC Discussion forum for "secret" messages. Don't do it, it's silly, anyone can view them, and, while they shouldn't, they CAN and might, I mean... they might be bored at work and just be scanning for new posts and reading because they are interested in whats going on and come across you hiring an assassin to kill their character. You can't expect them to be able to ignore this effectively, and it also causes a di-lemma. What if they were already worried about assassins, and were going to hire some people to infiltrate various criminal gangs? What if they were about to hire bodyguards? If they do that NOW, they might look like metagamers... so it's unfair.
If you want something to be secret, KEEP IT SECRET!!!!!
> It is also a VERY good idea to, say, if you use forum PMs, copy them into your player plot ticket, or send them to a DM so we know what's going on if needed.
If you don't keep something secret, don't expect it to be secret.
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Metagaming information about other characters you are perhaps in conflict with is pretty bad, can really break stories and possibly end characters.
As the wise mole rat above said, metagaming is bad. We, your friendly DM team, would like to remind you all that metagaming in any capacity, be it through forums, IRC, or Curse, is severely frowned upon. We are at liberty to administer punishments appropriate to the severity of the metagaming incident, but we also understand that sometimes it may be difficult to determine what was metagamed and what wasn't. Rest assured, we take each instance of alleged metagaming very seriously and work to ensure that everyone's story can be told without being damaged by the actions of others.
Thank you.
