Clarity?

[Nameless Face]

I have a very broad, non-hostile, question, and I will use a specific quote from AC, but this is not directed at her.  She just happens to be articulate and phrased it well.

AC types:

Once you've eaten a poisonous fruit and died, you'll probably find reasons for future characters to -not- taste that fruit. Once you've tried to climb down a hole in the ground only to find that it was a very long and unclimbable fall, you probably won't make your next character so curious about what is down in the hole. Once you know that a nice, cozy cave you found is haunted by a dangerous spirit, you probably won't go back or send future characters in to investigate it. You learn where the "subtle" dangers are, and then you avoid them

Isn't that cheating?  Forbidden use of OOC knowledge?  Or is it merely that veteran player's characters all have more common sense than any novice player's characters?

I ask not to be confrontational, but because I think that it is a valid and interesting question.  What is the common feeling about more experienced players routinely using their vast accumulated OOC knowledge on their new and totally inexperienced characters?

I do not think it can easily avoided, and we all agree, I think, that discovering things, and putting them to use in Armageddon is one of the best things about playing.

Just curious about the other player's comments.



Nameless Face in the Crowd

[Bestatte]

I would put her quote into a different context. The suggestion, if I remember the thread right, is that players who learn stuff through experiencing the game, are at more risk of modifying their characters' behavior when they are subject to situations their previous characters have already experienced.

This isn't to say that they -will- modify their current PC's behavior. It's just that it's human nature to want to survive..and we often forget that we need to be very careful not to do this, if at all possible.

If your character WOULD try out that fruit, then he SHOULD try it out. Even if YOU know that it's poison and will kill him. That urge to keep your character alive is pretty profound, and I think everyone, at some point, will slip. It's understandable and even forgiveable. But to do things, or not do them on purpose, BECAUSE of your past characters' experiences..is a breach in "ettiquette" of roleplay.

Also to learn info and share it via OOC means will result in an even worse breach, and because you're doing that on purpose *every time* - it's not forgiveable, or understandable.

I think that's pretty much the context her words were in. That yeah, learning stuff through playing the game can make it hard to make those life and death decisions with your current character. But learning those things outside the game, is the mark of people who don't really care that their decisions impact everyone else.

[witchman]

Actually, I think it's the reverse.

If the character and the the Known World were real, the person would not go ahead and eat something that may poison them.

Think about it.  You're out in the woods.  You're kind of hungry.  Maybe even real hungry.  Do you eat the  first berry you come across even though you have no idea what it is?  No.

Do you randomly crawl down steep holes without being SURE you can get back up?

It's actually the new (and short lived) characters that are being played unrealistically.  Experience teaches players to play their characters as though they were real.

Heck, I won't drink milk if it's been in my fridge two or three days past expiration.  I'm damn sure not going to eat some thistle I find in the forest.

[crymerci]

I see it both ways.

It's damn hard to play an experienced, world-wise character when you yourself are a newbie and don't know the things your character would know. (There are some who say you then shouldn't play these types of characters until you do have this knowledge, but I think that's limiting.)

It's also damn hard to play the naive, ignorant character when you yourself are aware of all the potential pitfalls and traps you can stumble into.

I don't know if it's really a problem per se, to avoid what you know oocly to be dangerous, unless there's really no way your character could suspect it of being dangerous. We all put time and effort into our characters, and often we get too attached to want to toss them away on a whim.  It can be fun to let your character make mistakes, but I don't think most people want to kill their character if they can avoid it.

[Angela Christine]

I mostly agree with witchman.  As you become more experienced as a player you learn what sort of people are most likely to survive to adulthood in Zalanthas.  

When you encounter something, like a fruit, that you the player has never seen before you have to assume that your character also doesn't recognize it because the only alternative would be to email or wish something like "Hi, I'm a <whatever> could you tell me what my character would know about <object>?" and that would be silly.  You have some options; you could examine it, value it, assess it, eat it, taste it, throw it away, or hold onto it to ask some other PCs about it, or ask some NPCs about it.  NPCs aren't all that responsive, but you can get some information from them, for example if something looks like food but the grocer won't buy it then it might not be food, if the herbalist or the weaponsmith offers to buy it then it probably isn't food.  This seems reasonable and non-twinky to me, because logically the grocer and the herbalist are familiar enough with local plants to know which ones are edible.  

The problem comes when you the player know something that you didn't specifically mention in your background, because then you have to decide on the fly if it is reasonable for you character to know too.  Which animal does your character believe is the most dangerous: a gurth, a tembo, or a vestric?  A northern hunter would likely know (even if it is a newbie character) but a southern burglar might not know, and would take a few moments to figure it out.  Likewise a woodsman might recognize  a poisonous fruit that grows in the grey forest, (either by having seen one before himself or from being warned to watch out for certain things that are known to grow in the forest) but be less sure about one that grows in the thornlands or the scrub plains.

There is stuff that is widely known by the locals that new players might not know.  If there is a bottemless pit nearby or a place where it is easy to slip off the road and over the shieldwall near a city, there is no reason travelers around the city to keep that information secret.  The town crier may not be spreading it around, but it isn't unreasonable to assume your character has heard about it either.  Sure, they could just put this stuff in the docs if it is widely known, but finding out about it the first time is fun.

There is a difference between avoiding dangerous things and avoiding stupid, foolhardy things.  It isn't unreasonable to make later characters less curious about things like unfamiliar fruits and holes, because a native to the area probably would avoid them.  

Eating a fruit you OOCly know is deadly is simply suiciding your character.  Unless there is a damn good RP reason to do it, there is no need to commit your character to an instadeath situation just because "he wouldn't know any better."  Don't eat the poisonous fruit, don't jump into the bottemless hole, don't wander into the gith nest.  It won't help your character or the game for you to send character after character to the same pointless death, so I think it is ok to err on the side of caution with these simple dangers.

That doesn't mean you avoid all known dangers.  I was once with a group who went to a place, and messed with a thing, and then some very bad stuff happened.  She didn't die then, but she died soon after.  Months later my latest character was in another clan in a completely different city when I heard we were going to the place, and I figured we were probably going to mess with the thing, because it is the most obvious notable thing in the place.  So I went to the place, and we messed with the thing, and some very bad stuff happened that killed my character.  :cry:  I knew there was a good possiblity that people would die on what ICly sounded like a simple mission, but there was no reason for my character to suspect it was more dangerous than the trip from Luir's to Allanak, so I decided that she didn't suspect anything.  I logged in knowing my character might die, she blithely walked into the place, and stood by while people messed with the thing that brought down doom upon us all.  She didn't ask to stay home, or offer to guard the wagon, do anything to avoid the danger that she obviously couldn't see comming.  
I'm not sure what the difference is, except that dieing on an unexpectedly dangerous mission was more memorable and significant than dieing alone after eating a poisonous fruit.  The event my character died in was important to other characters and was part of  an ongoing story.  One more nameless corpse in the wilderness doesn't contribute much of anything.

AC

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I dunno.  I can see the original poster's point, but I honestly don't ever reproduce errors on the level of 'going in there will get me killed' or eat <something> will get me killed.

I don't think its cheating, but who knows.  It just doesn't seem very fun to me to die to some coded feature that I already died to one time before.  If I'm going to put myself in a situation to die, I'll do it to PCs, not all alone on the plains taste testing poisonous fare.