Okay everyone. This is a topic that ticks many people off and others couldn't care less.

The gweth for major example is an in character tool for communication. Crystal rings are private but not everyone has one or can use one conveniently. And not everyone can be conveniently close enough to whisper something to someone they don't have a AIM contact info for.

So people try to make an effort to make an understandable reference to something that is OOC but in a way that is not "Hey dude, send me a instant message at my AOL message!". So they make reference to a messenger pigeon, but this isn't good enough for some people who get a burr up their butt over it. So what works?

There has to be a community accepted list of "code" words that someone could use in game when it has to be used but that doesn't shatter everyone's fantasy world. You may know what they are referencing to but they are trying to not be purely and blatantly out of character with it. They are trying to meet up to your desire to remain in character and not spoil anything for you, but what else can they do.

You can't expect everyone to play by your personal set of rules and you should not punish others for doing something that might be out of character but is TRYING to severely limit the out and out of it all.

this little list for example https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/OOC_Euphemisms is a good example. Sometimes there may be an issue to talk to someone who you are not able to whisper to, send private ESP to, etc about something out of character. But you have to give them a nod to the fact they are trying to remain as much as possible in character on the subject.

There really needs to be an accepted common ground so people know what they can use when the need comes up but without being strait out of character. euphemisms and thinly vieled is better than flat out out of character.

We live in a time in which there are more forms of communications than the average person has brain cells - there is literally zero reasons for their to be IC 'code words' to reference OOC subjects. If you feel an absolute compulsion to communicate via IG means to discuss OOG topics, maybe keep it to whispers or crystal rings.

Immersion breaking or not, phrases such as 'send me a pigeon' are just skirting the OOC policy and make as much sense from an IC perspective as if you'd just used their RL counterparts. Are you really sending someone a pigeon? And further more, you owe me at least $0.25 for every stupid acronym I had to use in this post.

> So people try to make an effort to make an understandable reference to something that is OOC but in a way that is not "Hey dude, send me a instant message at my AOL message!". So they make reference to a messenger pigeon, but this isn't good enough for some people who get a burr up their butt over it. So what works?

This is not difficult.

>think Hey Soandso, I tried to contact you more privately, but I couldn't seem to reach you any way I tried.

>think Hey Soandso, can we meet up at HereIsAPlace?

>think Hey Soandso, can you put on an albredine ring?

>think Hey Soandso, could you try to get in touch with me privately?

>whisper charm Soandso Hey this is my message to you.
Bird charms are expensive, but not impossible to get.

>say }moonmagecharacter Can you locate Soandso for me and maybe think a message to them?
A few other guilds have find-a-person abilities too! And/or delivery methods whereby you could give them an albredine ring, as well!

>profile <person>
oh look their AIM is listed, I will message them

There is zero excuse for getting publicly OOC. I loathe "pigeon" references. Unless you have one of those whisper charms, you don't have a pigeon. Even if you have a bird charm, it's likely not a pigeon.

You want a shortcut, I get it. But play the game you pay to play. Almost all those euphemisms are awful (and some aren't even used and would baffle me). "Great Mages" and "Elven Time" are my next most common "oh come on now" facepalms. Is it a thing that's not in the game in any way at all? Then shhhh. That's what the ooc command is for.

People communicate. It's significantly easier to go 'Hey bob, you closed your IM, open it' with psuedo-IC terminology than it is to waste 30 minutes looking for a MM/WM/Thief/Ranger who is not AFK and will help you.

Frankly I find the use of pigeon or pidgeon far less annoying than 5 second bursts of 'anyone seen X?' or 'Anyone locate someone for me?'

No offense but I'm still not hearing any reason why all the bending out of shape and threats of smashing that goes on. People even get worked up when people are even using the things period.

lets really look at this...

Message one.

You here Someone thinking: " Hey can someone how knows the verb commands for this thing please send me an instant message."

Yeah that is all kinds of wrong and the like.

Message two.

You hear Someone thinking: " Might someone know how to work this unusual thing I found? Send me a pigeon if you someone knows anything?"

This message is about something of an OOC nature. But the person is trying to be IC about it. So cut people dome slack instead of cutting their necks.

Complaining about people using euphemism when the alternative is flat out out of character is plain and simple stupid. One is IC and one is OOC. You can't have it both ways.

In the end this is a computer game and other people besides you and I play it. Not everyone is the type of person who immerses themselves in something that they learn to speak klingon or read Tolken elf rune language. They play their way. Someone thing a little bit ooc but in character enough shout not stop the game and force you to get off.

One of the main mottos of DR is 'suck it up." I hate that motto but having a bit thicker immersion skin would go a long ways in the game world today.

Other options to simplify things would be..

Remove all gweths from the game.then everyone is in character.

Make the gweth purely ooc then no one has reason to complain.

or allow chatter for those who want to use.

or accept the effort to remain as IC as possible and don't sweat the little things.

>It is really not hard to engage in a tiny amount of creativity and stay in character. You can "try" to be IC or you can actually be IC.

His example specifies a contact method (IMs) while yours does not.

I AM NOT taking a stance on this, I am simply pointing out the differences in your two examples.

>>It is really not hard to engage in a tiny amount of creativity and stay in character. You can "try" to be IC or you can actually be IC.

Like, for example, saying pigeon. The fact that you personally don't like an IC euphemism because you find it "too glaring" based on the idea that no one owns messenger birds (because the idea that people use those is CRAZY for whatever reason) doesn't mean it isn't an IC euphemism.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>If you can't imagine a mideval serf or knight saying it, you shouldn't either.

Fireballs are out.

So are all magic items (messenger bird charms).

So is most math and education in general.

Hib has a fully functional electrical system, guess that's out.

The annual fest is a giant steampunk spider. As is the Dragon quest.

Magic in general is out, since mideval knights/serfs would have claimed it was devilry and revolted like we currently treat necromancers.

DR's setting is informed by a certain age in history but it's not identical, because of a lot of reasons. Also any person using 'ye olde english' needs to be shot.

This is not the bickering thread, address the points of posts without snarking because you don't agree with the responses.

Right now, it's players discussing how to role play in general in DragonRealms.


Annwyl
Message Board Supervisor

If you've questions or comments, take it to e-mail by writing me at DR-Annwyl@play.net.

>>skirting the OOC policy

Staff is, in general, not likely to ask someone to stop being OOC on a gweth for using the OOC Euphemisms on elanthipedia.

>>Discussing RANKS on the gweth

This will probably get you nudged, esp if you're discussing numbers and mechanics. EXP RP is your friend, check it out sometime.

>>Since f2p and worldwide gweths have gone live, the amount of OOC has gone up to such a degree that ...

Several of those things were happening before, there are just many more people now, making it more noticeable. Staff tries to monitor this, but if you see it, feel free to REPORT and let us know.

>>I don't like people using OOC euphemisms.

Sadly for you, they are likely here and not something staff would be inclined to police, because the moment we tell you "you cannot say this and mean this other thing," someone will come up with a different one. Example: Fog was used by people to discuss server lag. Staff decided this was too OOC and people then started simply saying the world was moving slowly.

There is not a GOOD solution here other than to try not to take it personally.

Fun Fact: Circles were actually the player preferred word for discussing Levels in character.

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NaOH+HI

>>ever since beta?

Correct. This is supposedly where it came from, though.

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NaOH+HI

>>There is not a GOOD solution here other than to try not to take it personally.<<

^ Exactly what I was thinking.

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"Brace yourselves, Squanto is going to bleh blah fart fart bleh.." -the player of the character formerly known as Pureblade

Well a lot of the problem I have is it ticks me off when someone is talking to someone else on the gweth and then the gweth smasher threats start.

Or just... relax and ignore it? There's a ton of OOC like chatter around various gathering spots, I don't see anyone suggesting we break up those gathering spots.

>My favorite DragonRealms trope: "If you do THAT one more time I'm going to kills you." It's little wonder nobody can pull off an evil character in DR considering the supposedly good and/or neutral characters are homicidal psychopaths on a good day. Solve all the problems with murder!

Death in DR is a few minutes of idle time and the loss of your pool EXP. Nothing else players can inflict carries any impact at all. Wounding? Meh, it either has 0 impact, is healed faster than you inflicted the damage, or results in death. Players can't engage the justice system, or levy lawsuits and economic sanctions/etc.

TIL about curse and shun.

>> Death in DR is a few minutes of idle time and the loss of your pool EXP.

Being that this is a thread in the roleplaying forum...no. Death is pretty serious ICly; as Persida says, for the vast majority of people you get one shot. Even if you're favored, even if you've died a hundred times before, that's no guarantee that your next death isn't going to be the starry road for you because your PC is not immortal and everyone walks eventually when the Immortals decide it's their time. Death is frequently incredibly painful, potentially humiliating or traumatizing, and dangerous, both for the risk of never coming back and the fact that you're literally bleeding off pieces of your personality and memories every second your soul remains disembodied.

While OOCly it's good to keep this attitude about your character dying, because as players we can recognize that losing a fight isn't the end of the world and death doesn't have super serious mechanical consequences most of the time, ICly I think it's good to try and treat death with a more serious attitude unless you're playing the kind of character who is that callous on purpose.

Adventurers are the 1% and this has frankly made them into a class of incredibly privilege-blind sociopaths, which is an interesting thing in itself.

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Thayet
Follow @thayelf on Twitter for absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever!

>Death is pretty serious
>Being that this is a thread in the roleplaying forum...no.

I'll stop laughing as soon as you point me to more than 1% of the population who seriously and competently RPs as though death is a huge issue. There are 530 people on right now, so I'll spot you .3 of a person. Go on.

This is especially hilarious because the 'huge' 4 year festival features a ton of games which mostly feature 'death' as the failure and win mode.

We also have to examine our characters social circles; even before 'permadeath' was removed it was simply so uncommon that it is reasonable to say our characters, who probably have 5-500 deaths each, consider death a minimal thing. Certainly more problematic than our players do, but our characters see other players die constantly, they die regularly, and all of them just pop back up like clowns on amphetamines.

I never could figure out why folks would get their feathers all ruffled over pigeons.. or eastern bells. It is only jarring to my RP experience if I decide to let it be jarring. I can easily (and do so often) ignore all sorts of stuff.. typos.. mis-gweths.. whatever. But then again, maybe I am too laid back for all of this intensive RP.

>>There is not a GOOD solution here other than to try not to take it personally.<<


~~~
True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

It's because all PCs are orphans who learned on the mean streets...