TLV - Godmodding and Metagaming -- When You're Doing It And How Not To
Godmodding was briefly touched upon in our rules already, but let's talk about it, and its lesser cousin, Metagaming, here at greater length for a few minutes.
Godmodding involves giving your characters random advantages and/or crazy maneuvers to ensure they win/avoid dying/whatever. This can involve a lot of things:
1. Randomly defying physics to dodge an attack that they shouldn't be able to dodge.
2. Taking a hit that should hurt them but doesn't phase them in the least.
3. Moving or manipulating or doing harm to another player's character without their permission.
4. Giving your character abilities/powers/immunities that are not posted in your original application. This is important, especially for Inmates, since we expect their abilities to be significantly hindered, and have to approve whatever it is you put down that they can still do.
5. Metagaming -- which here means your character knows things they have no business knowing.
There is some give or take in fourth wall issues. Some characters here will inevitably come from fictional places according to other people. That's fine. See our post on Fourth Wall issues for more details, and for a list of posts by players detailing what they will allow to be known about their characters. Here's where it's not okay though: if your character has no reason to know it, they don't know it.
The Library is not an excuse for metagaming. In fact, if there isn't published literature on characters there that doesn't exist now, in the real world, you will not find it there. (And by literature, I do mean strictly literature. Not comics. Not movie/episode novel adaptations. Not screenplays.)
Godmodding involves giving your characters random advantages and/or crazy maneuvers to ensure they win/avoid dying/whatever. This can involve a lot of things:
1. Randomly defying physics to dodge an attack that they shouldn't be able to dodge.
2. Taking a hit that should hurt them but doesn't phase them in the least.
3. Moving or manipulating or doing harm to another player's character without their permission.
4. Giving your character abilities/powers/immunities that are not posted in your original application. This is important, especially for Inmates, since we expect their abilities to be significantly hindered, and have to approve whatever it is you put down that they can still do.
5. Metagaming -- which here means your character knows things they have no business knowing.
There is some give or take in fourth wall issues. Some characters here will inevitably come from fictional places according to other people. That's fine. See our post on Fourth Wall issues for more details, and for a list of posts by players detailing what they will allow to be known about their characters. Here's where it's not okay though: if your character has no reason to know it, they don't know it.
The Library is not an excuse for metagaming. In fact, if there isn't published literature on characters there that doesn't exist now, in the real world, you will not find it there. (And by literature, I do mean strictly literature. Not comics. Not movie/episode novel adaptations. Not screenplays.)