Of Roleplay, Metagame, and OOC

Ayegor

Rhyot said:

Ayegor said:

I'm more concerned about the fact that I keep joining webs in order to achieve practical in-game tasks, like showing up at lessers and such, and getting to witness respected players such as Fezzix and Zsadist calling other players "faggots" and "shemales". But maybe that's just me. At least you can theoretically avoid the consequences of an Aetolia Discord getting out of hand (pun intended, I guess).

@Ayegor I'm not going to sugarcoat this, yes I use highly vulgar language. That's just who I am. And more times than not, I use those terms for very specific people because I know it irritates the crap out of them or when I'm one of my pissed off moods. Am I in the right? Absolutely not! Am I sorry? Not really. Is it acceptable? Nope... and people like @Cordia, @Xenia, and @Toz call me out on it every time too. That said, I don't do it as much as I used to. So there is that.

Well, thanks for at least acknowledging it.

Sessizlik

I feel like the reason we don't have a rant section on the forums is because people will take the rants personally and then metagame around them and hold it against people in game. It's sad, cause I feel that a lot of people could use a place to rant about the game, when they might not have any other outlet for it.

Just my two cents though.

Aishia

They just get out of control. Someone will say something or passive aggressively allude to something/someone, someone else will get MAD about it. Big long argument chains start. It's never just one person blowing off steam. Never productive. Produces a bad atmosphere and negative environment on the forums.

Rhyot

Personally, I feel the rants section helped alleviate lots of pent up aggression and hatred towards a player, an event, or group of people. Allowing that to fester isn't exactly healthy for the game either, because then you just become a straight up asshole.

It's like family. When you're mad at your brother, you get into a fight, beat each other's faces in, and then when you're done and the blood is covering the floor, you both are good with each other. At least until the next fight.

Sure, it was a lot of passive aggressive name calling and even point blank name calling. But guess what, that's what rants are. At some point, the arguments stopped and someone else started up a chain.

Idk, I think a rants section would be good to have again. Only the next time, less admin intervention and more people solving their issues like we're in mental counseling.

Sessizlik

I agree with @Rhyot. I think it could do people good to be able to actually rant towards the players of the game, instead of harassing their irl friends who doesn't give a crap, which causes you to keep it inside and you just get more and more bitter.
Sadly, I don't think we will GET a rant section, because the players of Aetolia can't stop metagaming things. If someone says something about someone oocly on the forums, I can assure you it will somehow find its way into the game.
I am positive I would play a whole lot more and feel better about this game if I could release some tension, but instead, I just stop playing. I don't like it, since Aetolia has been a big part of my life for years and years, but I don't find enjoyment in it anymore, due to small issues that I could leave behind if I could just rant.

Rurthina

Toxicity lives in our real world, as well as our IRE world. Any OOC venue that allows the verbal abuse of players contributes to that toxicity. It's also just outright bullying, most of us are past high school. What I'm reading here is how much it bothers people, yet we are all guilty of it. I'm no saint. But it starts with policing ourselves. If you don't want it said about you, don't say it about someone else.

I do have to give a shout out to Aetolia. Having played an IRE game (not Aetolia) for years, the toxicity here IC is minimal. I can't speak to the OOC, like discord, because I avoid those venues like the plague. I could tell you horror stories of the personal OOC attacks my character received from other characters. Not for my RP, but just because they were obviously disturbed individuals. Aetolia's toxicity level is minimal in comparison, which is a shout out to all of you, who do police yourselves and each other.

Remember, people don't like being called out in public. Correct them in private. Be respectful, not cold and callous when in OOC formats. We are a venue of very diverse backgrounds. If you're IC character is a cold hearted bitch, let them be. But if that's the way you are IRL, check your attitude at the door. There is no place for toxicity IC or OOC in either of our worlds. And definitely no place for the type of toxicity that leads to people thinking its perfectly acceptable to make OOC inappropriate comments IC to others. Place your vote by not contributing to the toxicity, and if you do - step back, breath, and when warranted apologize with sincerity for your own personal behavior. You'd be amazed at how far that goes.

Rhyot

Correcting people in private only goes so far. There have been multiple occasions where I've talked to some people respectfully and all I get in return is "That's nice you feel that way. Don't talk to me you fuckwad." or even "Don't talk to me, jerkoff." (Granted, at that point, I use this fancy tool called IGNORE and I start making their game time a living fucking nightmare.)

As for apologizing, it doesn't go as far as you think it does. When it comes to the truly toxic players, they don't care if you apologize for your behavior or not, because in their eyes... you're scum. You're the bottom of their boot, scrape it off into the trash, and throw it out kind of scum... despite the fact that you tried to apologize. And yes, I know a handful of these players and I personally choose not to interact with them BECAUSE of how toxic they are.

Some people don't care that their toxicity ruins the game for other people. Some people don't care that their metagaming cliques ruin the game for players. And some people don't care about anything but their own fun (as has been seen in Duiran).

Sessizlik

Word.

Phendegwen

This thread right here sums up a lot of why I don't log into Aetolia all that much these days. True, I've been having a pretty crazy time IRL, but, when I do have free time, I've been finding other things to do with it rather than dealing with what feels like rising levels of toxicity due to the metagame/OOC impact upon IC matters. As others have said, we're all guilty of this on some level, myself included on past occasions, but extraction and stepping away makes the scene clearer, and it's a very disappointing one. Unfortunately, it seems as if there's no way to fix this issue given the prevalence of OOC communication mediums and the inability to implement any toxic metagaming controls. Which bums me out, as Aetolia's been a big part of my life for many years, and its now hard to find the enjoyment there that I once used to.

Lehar

I've been watching this thread for a while and giving it some thought and wanted to share some small points, especially in relation to leading a guild and trying to keep things on an even keel.

I don't use the discord. I haven't even given it more than a passing thought on if I wanted to join. Why? Mostly because I don't like the things I hear about it, but also partially because I don't want it to change how I play. I have very few people on Skype, of which maybe one or two have a character in the Illuminai, and the rest are just friends I've made over the years. A past GM I played under had the distinct notion that using Skype or Discord for ingame things or even discussing game issues/situations was a no-no, and they had a very prosperous time leading and engaging their guild, so I've attempted to take the same stance and mold it to what works for me.

I want the guild that I'm in charge of to exist past skype groups or discord cliques or even ingame cliques. I've done what I can to include people of all different archetypes into how the Illuminai function - do I have the ability to make it into a clique of just my friends? Sure. Just people I enjoy roleplaying with? Sure. A crew of only pk-nerds? Of course. I could recruit a handful of people and make it into a sham of what it can be, but I won't let myself, because I enjoy trying to figure it all out in just an in-character fashion. Trying to make the puzzle pieces fit without having the solution already given to me in Skype, or in Discord.

I think that's one thing that is lost in all of the OOC communication, at least for some people. Part of the joy of roleplaying in a game like this is that you're not supposed to know the outcome. You're not supposed to know that somehow everything will work out. Roleplaying when you know the slated outcome almost feels like cheating, to me. Sure, I have the journey to experience part of it, but the resolution is just as important of a plot point.

At least, that's my opinion.

Lin

Lehar said:

I think that's one thing that is lost in all of the OOC communication, at least for some people. Part of the joy of roleplaying in a game like this is that you're not supposed to know the outcome. You're not supposed to know that somehow everything will work out. Roleplaying when you know the slated outcome almost feels like cheating, to me. Sure, I have the journey to experience part of it, but the resolution is just as important of a plot point.

I don't think I know a single person who considers themselves a serious roleplayer yet plans the outcome of RP before it happens. I don't disagree with the rest of what you said but this one came way outta left field - do people really do this?

Drestyn

I do everything blind though I normally just check with people if certain things are OK to do. That's really the only 'planned' type of thing I get into.

Toz

Seir

Lin said:

Lehar said:

I think that's one thing that is lost in all of the OOC communication, at least for some people. Part of the joy of roleplaying in a game like this is that you're not supposed to know the outcome. You're not supposed to know that somehow everything will work out. Roleplaying when you know the slated outcome almost feels like cheating, to me. Sure, I have the journey to experience part of it, but the resolution is just as important of a plot point.

I don't think I know a single person who considers themselves a serious roleplayer yet plans the outcome of RP before it happens. I don't disagree with the rest of what you said but this one came way outta left field - do people really do this?

Can confirm that I've seen it before, Lin.

Seir

Edit: Never mind. I'd rather talk to people privately about this rather than bring it up in a thread. Suffice to say, Lehar's post really resonated with me and I left the Discord (again) this morning for good. I'd rather just keep the game IC and talk to people outside of it individually.

Jensen

I have RP'd with planned and open endings. It can be as open as X will happen but how you get to X and what results because of X is open; to closed curtain that's a wrap folks. Depends on what I was doing. A lot of guild team building RP is like that, where I'm more concerned with the meat of the event than the ending.

Seir

So, I want to add this ultimately, having talked with a few folks over the last few days:

There is a cardinal rule that I think everyone should adhere to, and one that I seem to always be able to apply everywhere but even I can falter when it comes to Aetolia: "At the end of the day, it is just a game and people are playing to have fun. However, never forget that your actions can inadvertently or blatantly reduce the enjoyment that another individual has."

This rule is something I've applied to myself as (story time) the folks who know me as Nienla from Lusternia can attest that I was a notorious griefer. Not in the sense of, "I'm going to repeatedly kill you for no reason" but in the sense that I spent more time in the territory of enemy organizations than I did in my own. I was a very notorious raider and I was playing at the expense of those around me through my actions. I was beloved by my organization (Glomdoring), but I was absolutely detested by many in other organizations because I'd frequently interrupt their guild events or social gatherings by forcing folks to defend all the time. Now, I wasn't completely bad about it, if someone asked me politely to leave, I actually would, but I don't think many people knew about that. However, it got to a point where Estarra, the game's producer, had to tell me to knock it off because I was causing people to quit and why I was causing people to quit. That was kind of a revealing moment for me as a player, and I realized that I was part of a community and I was destroying it from within. This was directly before I created Seir.

Fast forward to when I created Seir in Aetolia and I became more invested into roleplaying. To be honest, it was the first time I became really invested into roleplaying in the eighteen years in IRE. Imperian, Lusternia, and Achaea? I "roleplayed" but it was shallow. I had never really been exposed to something on the level that Aetolia had. While I wasn't a griefer in the Lusternian sense, I became too emotionally invested in the outcome of my character Seir and what happened to him, rather than just allowing things to just "be" and happen. Mind you, I still don't care for drama RP (because it's just not fun for me as a player), but I was lashing out at players around me instead of just playing the game and having fun. I alienated myself from the community on a whole through my actions and I hurt some people who helped me get started in the first place within Aetolia.

I think, over the last few days, I've come to a realization that I was falling right into the same trap again. I think a lot of people know that I consider Duiran and the Sentinels both to be "my baby". Together with others, I've poured a lot of time and effort into having Duiran break the stereotypical negative mold that nearly all traditional forestal orgs fall into: "snuggly", people fondling each other in public, negative cliques, uninteresting atmosphere, and more. I largely consider it to be the greatest "achievement" in my time playing IRE. This time, I was caring too much about Duiran faltering and losing players because they became disheartened and felt like no one cared. I took this personally. The reality, however, is that I cannot force other players to adhere to my idea of what is fun in the game nor force them to be inclusive by my definition. People will inevitably flock together and form groups of people that they just enjoy being around. That being said, I still feel like leaders, as players, owe it to their organizations to be involved, outgoing, and inclusive. If they don't, the organization will die as a result, and this will also inadvertently affect the fun that others have. I've resolved to simply let things "be" and cut off my OOC ties. If Duiran does fall, it just gives my character something to do in picking up the pieces in making it fun again. Our character's failures, or our organization's failures, should not be something that we take personally. Rather, they really should just be looked at as opportunities to do something about it, if we want to. It is, after all, a game where we have fun. To conclude, I wanted to make this post because another player had told me that they were inspired to do the same thing that I did in cutting off myself from things like Aetolian skype groups, IRCs, and Discords.

Having come to this conclusion thanks to individual talks that I've had with other players, I want to thank them for their candor on the subject: @Emelle, @Nola, @Phoenecia, @Sibatti, @Qephah, and @Lehar for the post she made the other day. This is the last long-winded post I intend to make for awhile. Just have fun, folks, but don't play at the expense of others.