TRL
Radio Bob Approved
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2022
- Messages
- 133
- Thread Author
- #1
Hi there, TRL here.
I'll keep it short and sweet here by saying that Willard Network's current rules on metagaming are bad. They aren't helpful, prevent any sort of malicious behavior, and produce more work for staff members themselves by policing behavior that doesn't need to be policed.
The current system as it stands prevents players from coordinating any sort of roleplay through Out-Of-Character means. And while at first glance that may seem beneficial, the problem lies in how orthodox their enforcement of that rule actually is.
- If you have contacted someone over discord asking them when they'd be on, or that you'd be online at a certain time to roleplay, that would count as metagaming.
- If you tried to work around timezone differences and trying to organize a date to play together, this would be metagaming.
- If you contact someone to conduct roleplay and state your at a spot to meet with them to RP, you are metagaming.
From my experiences roleplaying, metagaming rules have been put in place to prevent malicious actions from occurring, such as disseminating a player characters identity to ruin their well-maintained alter-ego, or perhaps trying to rally your allies at an individual location to commit a hostile action against someone. Never in my life have I actually had been told that actually trying to coordinate roleplay was against the rules until now. Therefore, I propose a rule change. We should change:
Metagame - The act of using Out-Of-Character info to your own advantage In-Character OR relaying/leaking In-Character info into an Out-Of-Character space like Discord or Steam.
To:
Metagame - The act of using Out-Of-Character info to your own advantage In-Character with there being no realistic way for characters or players to acquire said information.
It's a very simple and non-intrusive change to the rules that prevents people who are simply trying to roleplay and try to create interesting stories through the medium without actually allowing malicious individuals from using the system to wantonly metagame critical information. After all, a citizen would know that their malignant friend would most likely be hanging around the NPZ, and so simply informing them provides no change other than adding convenience and speeding up the process of roleplaying. For examples of other servers that do this, I will link a few popular servers from different mediums that have this same interpretation of the rules. They are all serious RP servers that actively have or have had large playerbases similar to the size of Willard Networks.
https://projectzomboidroleplay.com/rules/
https://www.lordofthecraft.net/rules/
I would like to hear what other players on the server actually have to say about this, as I see that it's kind of an overlooked rule by the looks of it. I'll be checking the comments and answering any questions others may have on scenarios or ways this rule could be abused, thank you!
I'll keep it short and sweet here by saying that Willard Network's current rules on metagaming are bad. They aren't helpful, prevent any sort of malicious behavior, and produce more work for staff members themselves by policing behavior that doesn't need to be policed.
The current system as it stands prevents players from coordinating any sort of roleplay through Out-Of-Character means. And while at first glance that may seem beneficial, the problem lies in how orthodox their enforcement of that rule actually is.
- If you have contacted someone over discord asking them when they'd be on, or that you'd be online at a certain time to roleplay, that would count as metagaming.
- If you tried to work around timezone differences and trying to organize a date to play together, this would be metagaming.
- If you contact someone to conduct roleplay and state your at a spot to meet with them to RP, you are metagaming.
From my experiences roleplaying, metagaming rules have been put in place to prevent malicious actions from occurring, such as disseminating a player characters identity to ruin their well-maintained alter-ego, or perhaps trying to rally your allies at an individual location to commit a hostile action against someone. Never in my life have I actually had been told that actually trying to coordinate roleplay was against the rules until now. Therefore, I propose a rule change. We should change:
To:
Metagame - The act of using Out-Of-Character info to your own advantage In-Character with there being no realistic way for characters or players to acquire said information.
It's a very simple and non-intrusive change to the rules that prevents people who are simply trying to roleplay and try to create interesting stories through the medium without actually allowing malicious individuals from using the system to wantonly metagame critical information. After all, a citizen would know that their malignant friend would most likely be hanging around the NPZ, and so simply informing them provides no change other than adding convenience and speeding up the process of roleplaying. For examples of other servers that do this, I will link a few popular servers from different mediums that have this same interpretation of the rules. They are all serious RP servers that actively have or have had large playerbases similar to the size of Willard Networks.
https://projectzomboidroleplay.com/rules/
https://www.lordofthecraft.net/rules/
I would like to hear what other players on the server actually have to say about this, as I see that it's kind of an overlooked rule by the looks of it. I'll be checking the comments and answering any questions others may have on scenarios or ways this rule could be abused, thank you!
