Acceptable OOC vs Unacceptable OOC

[Sanvean]

Because there seems to be some confusion about this, here are some clarifications so you know what the staff stance is on OOC activities.

Acceptable:
Communicating with someone in order to coordinate playing times.
Communicating with someone to arrange circumstances, such as playing a character's relative.

Unacceptable:
Communicating with someone to arrange for them to loot your corpse.
Communicating outside of the game to make arrangements like clan policy or assassinations.
Using IM to coordinate play. i.e. using it to say something like "I'm in Flint's" when that information could be conveyed in game via the Way.

Acceptable:
Passing along information contained in the general documentation.
Giving people links to documentation on the website.

Unacceptable:
Passing along information or documentation about a clan gathered from previously playing in it.
Passing along information or documentation gathered while on staff, or through other privileged access to the documentation.

Acceptable:
Getting on the IRC channel to talk about movie reviews. Or your pets. Or coffee. Or any number of non-game-related things.

Unacceptable:
Getting on IRC to discuss living characters in the game.
Forming alternate chat rooms or message boards to exchange information about the game that you know the staff does not want spread.

Acceptable:
Sending in character logs to be posted in the roleplaying section of the site.

Unacceptable:
Sending uncleared logs to other people.
Pasting a log, line by line, into the IRC channel.


These rules exist for a number of reasons, including:
It is unfair to other players when arrangements affecting them are made outside the game. They have no chance to find out or react.
It is unfair to other players to spoil their enjoyment of the game by passing along game secrets that would be more fun to discover in person.
It is unfair to other players to use information that you got by cheating, rather than by IC means.
It is unfair to the staff to create more work for them by acting on erroneous assumptions without checking those assumptions. For example, in clan policy arrangements, higher-up NPCs may have much to say.


In short, common sense is your best guide when deciding what is and isn't acceptable, OOCly. If you don't know, feel free to drop an email to mud@armageddon.org detailing the circumstances, and someone can let you know where the circumstances you describe fall on the continuum of OOC activities.

The staff has put a lot of time and effort into the game, and have extended you the courtesy of maintaining the game at our own expense for your enjoyment. Please extend us the courtesy of playing by our rules.  Thanks.

[Carida]

OOh could you make this into a sticky for newbies? This would have been so useful when I first started. Its still useful now.

[John]

OOh could you make this into a sticky for newbies?

I think putting it on the site or in a help file might be more effective. I've noticed in other message boards that stickies tend to go unnoticed, but also not everyone reads the GDB When I first started playing I read a majority of the docs, yet kept away from the GDB for a while.

[Sanvean]

I added it as a webpage, linked off the General Information.  http://www.armageddon.org/general/ooc.html

If you see any typos or places where additional information needs to be added, let me know.

[lukie]

Yeah, putting it into the docs is much more effective. There's plenty of players who don't visit the GDB. I didn't until about a year and a half after I first started playing.

[Flashpower IRC]

IRC is always going to be a source of OOC conversation about IC topics. I say eliminate the temptation.

[Kankman]

IRC is always going to be a source of OOC conversation about IC topics. I say eliminate the temptation.

Its a proven fact, one cannot police the internet. At least, not all of it. Players made the IRC channel. How could it possibly be disbanded? How many IRC hosty-mcplaces are there on the internet? Shut them all down? Can't happen. Too bad.

[creeper386]

I'd like to say, and I think I'm completely accurate, in response to a few posts ... These AREN'T new rules. Sanvean made the post to help clarify rules that are already in place. Rules that I've always assumed everyone knew were in place. Rules that although I can't think of were they were at, were already in the documentation. No 'new' rules of any sort. They've always been there since I've started at least.


Creeper

[Quirk]

IRC is always going to be a source of OOC conversation about IC topics. I say eliminate the temptation.

The IRC main room is fairly well policed, but of course players can still pass IC information back and forth in private messages. They could also pass IC information back and forth via messengers such as AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc. They could even pass it by email. There is no way to ensure that players do not pass IC information by any of those means short of installing key-logging software on their PCs. Given that this is the case, eliminating the IRC channel would seem a fairly pointless thing to do.

Quirk

[LauraMars]

I nominate this thread for a sticky.  ...As I see Carida has done also.

[Xygax]

Finally someone has solved the core problem of managing ArmageddonMUD.  Eliminate IRC.  This is an excellent suggestion; there are only four or five hundred disparate IRC networks that we'll need to destroy.  Since large-scale denial-of-service attacks are difficult and illegal, we'll have to explore business and financial approaches to shutting these networks down, or perhaps we can have legislation enacted which would permit the FCC to oversee and shutdown IRC networks, and empower the US president to militarily pursue networks being harbored by enemy nations (for example, the UK).

In the next phase of our attack against out-of-game communications, we'll need to topple AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft.  Please post your proposals in OOC Chatter.

-- X

[mansa]

Finally someone has solved the core problem of managing ArmageddonMUD.  Eliminate IRC.  This is an excellent suggestion; there are only four or five hundred disparate IRC networks that we'll need to destroy.  Since large-scale denial-of-service attacks are difficult and illegal, we'll have to explore business and financial approaches to shutting these networks down, or perhaps we can have legislation enacted which would permit the FCC to oversee and shutdown IRC networks, and empower the US president to militarily pursue networks being harbored by enemy nations (for example, the UK).

In the next phase of our attack against out-of-game communications, we'll need to topple AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft.  Please post your proposals in OOC Chatter.

-- X

You forgot your </sarcasm> flag.

This is in a web page, here:
http://www.armageddon.org/general/ooc.html

[Anonymous]

Finally someone has solved the core problem of managing ArmageddonMUD.

Take that, guy from 2 years ago!

[Xygax]

Yeah!  I sure showed him.

[Intrepid]

I miss Quirk.

[jcarter]

Just a question about what is acceptable: Say player X and player Y are in a clan. Player Y is a sergeant. Player X gets into trouble and player Y is not logged in. Is it all right for player X to IM player Y and say "now would be a good time to log on" or something like that?

[Xygax]

This is a tough one as it is both "coordinating play-times", which is ok, AND carries at least a hint of IC info.  The "abuse" version of this is, you're about to get your ass kicked, and you know that if your friend logs in, he'll be in the same room, so you IM them with "now would be a good time to log on".

I'd suggest that, in general, my example is wildly over the line, and yours is just touching the line with a toe.  I suppose for that sort of thing you should use your better judgement, but I would prefer you avoid it.

-- X

[Naiona]

To answer your question, jcarter.  It's find to coordinate playtimes in a "everyone, there will be a clan event at 3PM CST on Friday" or even, "Try to log on this weekend around 10pm because I'm planning on some clan RP".  Asking someone to log on to deal with a currently occuring situation - really not cool, even if you don't tell them why.  

If you are getting an IC advantage because you know someone OOCly, that is when you've crossed the line.


I hope that clarifies a bit.

[Cenghiz]

Let's say we need to send a message to another player about an IC event he missed and he should have known. Would it be possible to use the kudos tool or a mail to a clan imm? Like, a player Kudos:

"Note: I need to have this message conveyed to <bla>, after being checked by <clan imm> and found approtiate of course.
Our clan barracks was attacked by two defilers. Those gemmed PCs you can see in the barracks were hired by our Lord <lordname> secretly for our defense. Just to make sure, you would know they are not intruders IC but you cannot because you haven't logged in for two weeks."

Note: The note is of course just an absurd, extreme note which just came to my mind. It has no relation to anything in the gameworld and it can be inapprotiate to the gameworld.

[James de Monet]

This isn't a practice that I utilize, but I want to understand the motivation behind saying it's going to far, so I want to ask:  If you're playing a soldier and you know where your Sergeant eats, sleeps, and craps, is it really OOC for you to be able to:

Armer89:*A young corporal runs into the barracks and begins to shake you by the shoulder*
Armer89:"Sarge, sarge!  You got to get up!  Some bad stuff is going down!"
Armer89:*A young corporal gives you one last panicked look, making sure you understand him before running out the door again*
?


And, granted that, is it more of an OOC issue to type:

Armer89:Uh, dude?  You should really log on right now.
?

I mean this as an honest question.  I'm not trying to challenge anyone.  This issue seems quite convoluted because it's stratified, i.e.

ICly Something bad is happening - get the Sergeant.
OOCly The Sergeant is not logged in.
ICly No such thing as "not logged in" they've got to be somewhere.  Go find them!
OOCly You can't find them, they're not to be found, except through something external to Arm.
ICly It's fricking important, you'd wake them up/pull them out of the mess hall/stop them from drinking/drag them away from that cute Merchant at the bar to get them here.
OOCly You IM them.  Now you gained an IC benefit from something OOC.

Is it more IC or more OOC?

[spawnloser]

Cenghiz:
As far as passing messages goes, I'd just send an email to the clan IMMs.  Really, they know better what is going on and if your message would get passed along.  They also have your clanmate's email, I'd wager.

James:
"Dude, you should log in," is fine by me.  Giving information beyond that, like your first example, is not.

[Cuusardo]

I think another abuse of this would be the people who recruit people OOCly for things that should be recruited for ICly.  Things like saying "Hey, I'm playing this big muckety-muck and I need an aide/friend/spy/assassin/freaky deaky lover.  Could you make a PC for that for me?"  Or "Hey, I'm trying to start my own criminal organization and I need trustworthy people for it.  You should make your next PC for that."  I don't think this is a HUGE problem, but it's come up before.  This is not fair to the other players.  Sure, it's nice to have people you can trust in the game, but sometimes life throws curveballs at you.

[Xygax]

spawnloser's post is correct.  If you feel some PC should have gained some info while they were offline, forward it through your clan-staff (or through the mud account, if no clans are involved).

-- X

[diealot2l2l]

What about syntax?  I'm not talking about 'say kanks to get 100 sid from this npc'  I'm talking.. leave.. rent.. and some other not-so-obvious commands that confuse people, or are not noticed, but which are mentioned in helpfiles.

Thats where I'm usually 'giving away too much', I'll help with a syntax, after offering some (non invasive/not overly ooc) information to aid in the logical-process to find the correct way to do something

[Xygax]

Syntax is fine, just try to avoid falling into OOC to give syntax in a place where your shift to OOC is going to jar a lot of players out of a scene.  Teaching people how to emote, rent kanks, get out of the game, etc., is a GOOD thing, though, not bad.

-- X