IC/OOC separation, alts privacy, etc.

[Lapis]

I am certainly not meaning to brag when I say I've been MU* RPing for over a decade. Most of those MU*s have come and gone offline. Each has its own flavor, management culture, menu of in-MU* programs, rules, interpretations of those rules (even when they are expressed as a rule common between multiple MU*s, such as 'Keep IC/OOC separate'), etc., of course. That said, there are some things about Narnia MUCK that I find a bit befuddling ... given how long Narnia MUCK has been operational (over a decade) and its level of activity, to me that establishes as fact that Narnia's system works quite well, it has survived where as the MU*s I have been on previously (aside from one) have not ... but it still leaves me a bit befuddled and uncertain at particular rules and rules interpretations.

I hope it is appreciated as healthy to ask questions and get answers. I feel, quite strongly, it is important to have as exact of an understanding of house rules for wherever I happen to be, whether its a MU* or other venue on the Internet or a "real life" home or business run by someone else. I always aim to abide by the house rules, but of course this is difficult when I don't know exactly where the delineations are.

"Keep IC and OOC separate" sounds nice and simple, but even that rule, common to all "RP-focused" MU*s, has different interpretations. I confess to not following it to an absolute interpretation, and allowing what has been a reasonable margin to improve playability and increase roleplay opportunities -- typically, on other MU*s, page, chat and game programs like 'where' and map are accepted to be used, despite their OOCness, to collaborate to organize roleplay. Relative to my experience thus far on Narnia MUCK, this OOC-provided information made it easier than my experience thus far on Narnia for players to put their characters in the proper MU* room to roleplay with other characters. I know Narnia MUCK has more elaborate means that clearly intentionally vague-ify locations. I am so accustomed to the way those other MU*s operate, that I had not thought about it and realized it was, technically, an IC/OOC mingling. I am a bit befuddled by how Narnia's system, taken closer to pure IC/OOC separation, works, as its hard for me to imagine it helping RP, but Narnia's enduring success and active users even after well over a decade is clear evidence to me of the fact it does work, but I hope I can understand it better.

I feel almost like everything I thought I knew about MU*ing is useless, heh. It reminds me a bit of Yoda's line to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, "You must unlearn what you have learned." I beg everyone's patience, I apologize for rules I have infringed already (such as an innuendo I made and thought was PG-safe, but was uncomfortable for someone). I hope I am not the first user to find their way to Narnia after being accustomed to IC/OOC and other interpretations of common roleplay MU* rules can help guide me and keep me from causing trouble.

I am trying to adjust my behavior to avoid running afoul of Narnia's house rules, but this is causing me some conundrums which is the concern I am trying to ask for advice about in this thread (I apologize for taking a long time to 'get to the point' but I want to make it clear I am asking for help and not meaning to sound like 'You guys is meen for dooing this deffrant from eevreeone else waah waaah' which is most definitely not my feeling nor motivation in making posts like this).

The specific trigger for this thread was an idea my uncertainty about rules and interpretations is censoring when I started to think of making a post in the RP Discussions area of this web board to ask for tidbits of knowledge for Lapis, a Un'aireken unicorn. It is suggested in character creation to consider "backgrounding in" a character to a group, rather than introducing them on the grid as being born to some far-off invented NPC group and foreign to an established IC group like Un'aireken. This is comfortable and good, and something I have done in creating new characters for MU*s past, but runs into the conundrum of my character Lapis should know things, the idiosyncracies of Un'aireken standard behavior and culture, that I as a new player have no clue about. If I make a web board post, however, asking for extra information about such things my character should know if they were born into the particular IC group that I have not been able to find in the INFO, SIC files or even the UUB board that a Un'aireken group member character's player gets access to after their character (which, conversely, a new player would not have access to while trying to set up their new character or even initial RPs until they are OOCly placed into the IC group their background has them born into) so that I can avoid making mistakes like posing Lapis asking a predator friend what they had for lunch when a prey species would never actually ask that, wouldn't that be a technical violation on my part of OOC/IC?

Narnia MUCK has some rock star users and staff (Melody gets a 200% gratuity tip from me! ) with unbelievable levels of patience for newbs like me. I hopefully can get a clue about these things before ruffling too many more feathers/fur/scales/skin. Thanks a bunch!

[Antheia]

Lapis,

Part of why NarniaMUCK has remained this long, in my opinion, is a willingness to make changes when things aren't working. You're right, we do have a pretty strict IC/OOC separation rule, but in cases where it impedes RP, I think we would prefer some bending of that rule to not being able to RP at all. We're working on updating our info files right now, and that might be where part of the confusion lies. Paging someone to ask to RP and decide where to meet is fine. The reason that it's difficult to find people using where is threefold:
1. It gives people some privacy if they don't WANT you to come in and 'stumble' across their RP.
2. When we had really active evils, it kept you from knowing where they are and them from knowing where you are, giving the game some needed mystery.
3. When the game was more populous, it made sense to actually stumble across people rather arrange for RP, because you didn't need to arrange for it, so that ambiguity lended some realness to the game.

Three is out of date, because although I would say our game was quite active, it's not as active as the days when Ubel (the kingdom of evil) fell and there were 100 characters online at once. However, two is still important to me to keep intact for when evils are active, and one is also important to me, because it can be annoying to have people jump in on your RP when they would have no idea where you were.
That said, please feel free to page "looking for an RP?" or "may I join you?" and arrange a meeting place via page.

In regards to backgrounding in, asking questions about your background or about what you conduct would be like is 100% fine and even encouraged. Obviously, you don't want to ask about things you wouldn't know about, like the detailed history of the fauns in Bergdale, but about your own character, please do ask. We're working on making more detailed Species Info files in order to make this easier as well.

Constantly changing means constantly updating, so we have a lot of work ahead of us on the info given to players! Your questions help us to know what is most urgent to update. Don't feel like you have to apologize for asking.

[Lapis]

One rule that itself is rather unique to Narnia over the scores of other MU*s I have been on (I would be rather stupid to arrogantly presume it is absolutely unique to Narnia MUCK, as I have seen listings for thousands of MU*s I have never visited and don't plan to) is the 'keep your alts private' rule. I have tried to think of it as an extension of the very common "don't reveal someone else's alts" rule every single MU* I have ever been on has had, but it actually is a rule much different than that, forbidding revealing even my own alts to other regular players. This has already created an oddball situation, when I realized I need to stop, think and ask first, that on any other MU* I would not have thought to do so -- a unique song I have an MP3 of, for instance, about unicorns that I helped write (well, I wrote the lyrics -- the actual music composition and recording was done by someone with actual musical skill ). I hoped it might be enjoyable to other unicorn players, and so thought to share it, but my only way of sharing it is via e-mail ... but realizing this, I suddenly realized offering to share it could violate the absolute rule of not sharing alts, since I would only use the one e-mail address for any characters I might have. I am intensely, perhaps unhealthily curious about the reasoning behind this rule. I am glad questions and answers are appreciated, as I don't want questions about rules like this to be mis-understood as gripes. There have been occasions when I have found a house rule on a MU* to be incompatible with my play style, and have left since I am sternly opposed to the jerks who come to MUCKs and insist that if they don't like a rule in someone else's house they don't have to follow it (I hope you guys don't run into that often, but my brief failed stints staffing several other MU*s and even co-headwizzing on one quickly gave me a distaste for having to act on such users and sympathetic feelings from me for those who do handle such un-fun chores on the MU*s I enjoy), but nothing on Narnia MUCK I have found even comes close to doing this for me ... its just that some things are really stumping me for understanding, and I like to at least have a gist of understanding behind things. Understanding intent, I think, helps me project more accurate interpretations and gauge whether an idea I have would or would not run afoul of a rule. No such explanation is required, of course, but I am curious on that one.

[Melody]

The reasons we ask that you keep your alts secret on NarniaMUCK are discussed in depth in the info files--you can get to the specific article by typing "info", then selecting "character setup", then "requesting a character", then "alternate characters", then "alt privacy". (Regarding the info files, by the way, I'd really recommend that you go through and at least skim them, especially if you're worried about fitting in and understanding the way things work here.)

[Antheia]

The short reason for alt protection is as follows:
If there are OOC player conflicts between Joe and Jane, Joe's alt Lu and Jane's alt Larry can still get along.
Sometimes people have a really hard time keeping OOC out or IC, so if Joe and Jane accidentally bring any of that OOC conflict IC, it doesn't extend to their alts.

We've had a few players say 'hm this rule seems silly' and then something happens and they say either 'wow I'm glad that rule existed' or 'I wish I had respected that rule better, it would have helped'. It can be a little hard to protect your alts because of sharing OOC things like that song, but there are some ways around that that I'm happy to discuss with you, and that rule is definitely a part of our being an RP-Intensive MUCK rather than a social one.

If you have more questions after reading the article Melody pointed out, I'll be happy to go through the subtleties further with you.

[Lydia]

Another reason for alt privacy is that RP is a much more immersive experience if you don't know who is playing the other characters that yours interacts with. Many players get a lot of enjoyment out of getting into their characters' heads. Say that you're in the middle of a plot with a character who is being horribly unpleasant toward your character. Say it's really believable and you are thrilled to get to experience that tension and to explore how your character responds in the situation. Then say that the player of the other character reveals that he/she also plays your character's best friend. Now you're remembering that time your two characters planned an ingenious prank together, and you're also remembering the time you two had an OOC conversation about movies and you found out that the other player has a thing for cheesy romantic comedies. Even if you manage to not change your character's behavior at all in light of your new knowledge, you as a player will never perceive the other character in quite the same way again. You've just lost a large part of what made that RP so fulfilling.

Now, not everyone feels that way. Some people would say that they have no trouble separating the two, or that they would actually enjoy their RP more if they knew who played whom. The thing is that you just don't know other characters' preferences, and you can't safely assume. There's also no really good way to ask what they prefer without giving too much away, so it's better if it just never comes up.

[Lapis]

Given none of the MU*s I have been on previously have had a "keep your own alts private" absolute rule, I've gotten around it. I do tend to experience the sensations and emotions my characters do in scenes, I readily confess to a bit of wetness in my eyes as my characters go through sadness, heartache, etc. I had to wipe my face when a romantic pursuit went awry for one character as the romantic interest prioritized their family when forced to choose between family and an relationship with my character, and another character of mine earned himself the direst of consequences for his actions, hunted down and killed by an unexpected alliance between those he had been ICly harrassing.

Those two specific cases, and several similar of IC angst/strife, actually resulted in the other players asking to RP with me again as other characters. I do acknowledge, of course, the experience of things not going so well OOCly with other players as a result of IC conflicts taken to OOC. I guess its a rare flip for me ... usually I remember bad stuff more than good, but in this case I guess the good cases of IC angst not being taken OOCly over the other cases, even though I would actually guess the problematic cases I've experienced of IC/OOC conflict transgressions perhaps more numerous.

The cases that did transgress from IC to OOC conflict, though, I came in time to feel it just as important to maintain as public my alts list, so players who disliked me because of previous RP with me could choose for themselves to avoid my characters.

Again, these are just my experiences, and they seem quite different -- at least in how I responded to them -- over Narnia MUCK's present day, and while I may still not fairly agree reason and the "why," in defiance of what I fail to grasp, I cannot argue with the results -- Narnia MUCK has been up an admirably long time and is active.

These explanations I think will help me to learn and adapt and keep my unicorn-horn in line, and I thank everyone who contributes to my understanding greatly. I certainly hope no one takes offense at my questioning and poking, and can forgive minor transgressions I might make as I try to get a feel for the system.

[Antheia]

I'm not sure how big a MUCK the events you describe occurred on, but one difference may be that on NarniaMUCK, avoiding one player could seriously hamper your ability to be part of a large number of plots.

Another thing which we don't officially encourage I don't think, but which a lot of our players do (and it seems to work well), is to pick a few 'mains'. These 1-3 or so characters are used more ICly, but also more OOCly, that is, socially. I've found that when I keep my social interactions to a few characters (barring of course polite OOC hellos, sorries, etc which are necessary for the other characters), it helps me protect my alts. I have also seen it make it possible for players who dislike interacting between two 'mains' interact fine between two 'alts'.

[Caerca]

OK, the other staff members have said much of what should be said on this topic. I simply want to make one addition here.

The cases that did transgress from IC to OOC conflict, though, I came in time to feel it just as important to maintain as public my alts list, so players who disliked me because of previous RP with me could choose for themselves to avoid my characters.

Believe it or not, this is exactly what we're trying to avoid. What is presented in an RP should not be you as a person, but the character you are playing. If another player dislikes you either ICly or OOCly while playing a certain character, there is a distinct possibility that, when playing different characters under different circumstances, if you don't know that you're supposed to dislike each other, you might very well end up enjoying the experience and coming out with an appreciation for the other player, even if you don't realize they're one and the same.

One other note: if you do find yourself struggling with an IC conflict brought OOC, please don't let it sit unresolved. If you do not think you can resolve the situation amicably yourself, then ask us for help. It's part of our job.

[Lapis]

Noted for future reference, but I wasn't meaning anything on Narnia MUCK, only on my previous experiences elseMU*. All the players I have encountered thus far on Narnia MUCK have been great, and those that have posed IC conflict/strife with mine have taken great steps to OOCly assure there's no OOC conflict from the IC friction.