Greetings folks!
As our game begins to get larger, I am sure all of the "good guy" archetypes will start to notice a criminal element among the PCs... be it stealing, murdering, necromancy, etc...
I cannot emphasize enough to keep IG IG and OOG OOG. Also, do not use knowledge you gained out of game to affect anything in game.
There was an incident years ago... I played a chaotic neutral elven rogue... I had been on the town guard and robbed them blind one day. I had been a squire on a team with a bad reputation... but I was a damn good believable actor and ******** salesman. People assumed I was on the team to redeem the bad element. So... after being part of a plot to murder someone and have my team rob them blind, I helped a paladin to "lead the investigation." I was a devious bastard. So good that I lead them totally astray and mentioned some sarr enemies that I knew she had.... and they fell for it.
After the event, I was at a restaurant and we were all eating and they were speculating about who killed the character (it was a 10% perm and we felt awful about it!). So, to the paladin, I was like, yea you guys are a bunch of suckers and I made up all that **** about the sarr. He couldn't believe it at all. After that, they didn't trust me with anything... information... investigations... helping out in general... nada. They used OOG info to change the way they treated my character IG. It was totally unfair. I think our players are better than this and that they will never use info gained oog to change things IG. An article recently linked to FB mentioned Bleed... yes sometimes Bleed happens accidentally and we forget what was learned ig or oog. When in doubt, assume it was oog. I have even done that with different NPCs I have played. Which NPC knew what bit of info on that topic? Argh!
My lesson learned - keep my mouth shut because some people can't leave oog oog.
Another incident that happened many moons ago was even more detrimental to my character...
I went on a module in a warehouse in Brooklyn... it was epic... one of my magic items was a dimensional portal item that was flawed to only carry weapons... in other words, you can roll up a weapon card into the item... and pull out a weapon if you needed to... so being the sneaky bastard I was, I kept it empty at all times... so I can steal weapons from my mod teams whenever I found them. So I was in a mod, and I told my team to back away while I disarm a trap ( I often did that to rob them), and found a silver strengthened long sword among the other bits of treasure. I told the marshal of the item I had in my possession and stuffed that bad boy in the rep.... we finished the mod, and while we were packing up and changing back into street clothes, an NPC came out and said, "Hey guys. Who got that sweet silver sword from the chest in the room with the thing?" He said it in front of my team!!! I was like wow dude. Really? That ONE incident ended my team ever doing mods together again. They didn't want to travel with me because I stole something... did their characters know I did it? NOPE. So they used OOG knowledge to affect the IG world, i.e. my character's reputation... this is called Meta-gaming and it is cheating.
If any incidents should ever arise in our game, I hope you guys will be cool about it and keep your yappers shut if you do find anything out about other players, even if you just heard it through the grapevine.
This has been a PSA from Jesse.
Brought to you by the Letters J and G, and the number 2.
As our game begins to get larger, I am sure all of the "good guy" archetypes will start to notice a criminal element among the PCs... be it stealing, murdering, necromancy, etc...
I cannot emphasize enough to keep IG IG and OOG OOG. Also, do not use knowledge you gained out of game to affect anything in game.
There was an incident years ago... I played a chaotic neutral elven rogue... I had been on the town guard and robbed them blind one day. I had been a squire on a team with a bad reputation... but I was a damn good believable actor and ******** salesman. People assumed I was on the team to redeem the bad element. So... after being part of a plot to murder someone and have my team rob them blind, I helped a paladin to "lead the investigation." I was a devious bastard. So good that I lead them totally astray and mentioned some sarr enemies that I knew she had.... and they fell for it.
After the event, I was at a restaurant and we were all eating and they were speculating about who killed the character (it was a 10% perm and we felt awful about it!). So, to the paladin, I was like, yea you guys are a bunch of suckers and I made up all that **** about the sarr. He couldn't believe it at all. After that, they didn't trust me with anything... information... investigations... helping out in general... nada. They used OOG info to change the way they treated my character IG. It was totally unfair. I think our players are better than this and that they will never use info gained oog to change things IG. An article recently linked to FB mentioned Bleed... yes sometimes Bleed happens accidentally and we forget what was learned ig or oog. When in doubt, assume it was oog. I have even done that with different NPCs I have played. Which NPC knew what bit of info on that topic? Argh!
My lesson learned - keep my mouth shut because some people can't leave oog oog.
Another incident that happened many moons ago was even more detrimental to my character...
I went on a module in a warehouse in Brooklyn... it was epic... one of my magic items was a dimensional portal item that was flawed to only carry weapons... in other words, you can roll up a weapon card into the item... and pull out a weapon if you needed to... so being the sneaky bastard I was, I kept it empty at all times... so I can steal weapons from my mod teams whenever I found them. So I was in a mod, and I told my team to back away while I disarm a trap ( I often did that to rob them), and found a silver strengthened long sword among the other bits of treasure. I told the marshal of the item I had in my possession and stuffed that bad boy in the rep.... we finished the mod, and while we were packing up and changing back into street clothes, an NPC came out and said, "Hey guys. Who got that sweet silver sword from the chest in the room with the thing?" He said it in front of my team!!! I was like wow dude. Really? That ONE incident ended my team ever doing mods together again. They didn't want to travel with me because I stole something... did their characters know I did it? NOPE. So they used OOG knowledge to affect the IG world, i.e. my character's reputation... this is called Meta-gaming and it is cheating.
If any incidents should ever arise in our game, I hope you guys will be cool about it and keep your yappers shut if you do find anything out about other players, even if you just heard it through the grapevine.
This has been a PSA from Jesse.
Brought to you by the Letters J and G, and the number 2.
