Please Learn IC Information ICly
Posted by Pax on 06/13/19
Well, this news post is a little less cheery than the last one.
In general, it's not great form to learn about IC events OOCly on Discord or WhatsApp or whatever else, and then just ask "Can I know that ICly?" and act on it.
True, in a lot of cases it /probably/ won't become a problem; if someone OOCly goes, "Man, I have been spending all my time at the Shrine of Vellichor lately; it feels like this task I've been doing will take forever," or "oh my god, I just ICly found out that Sir Frank sleeps with a plushie white dragon he's had since he was 4," asking "Can I know that ICly?" does no harm. Things like that.
(Well, Sir Frank might not like the resulting IC mockery, but no /real/ harm.)
But now let's say it's information which can actually lead to the loss of someone's character. If someone mentions to you somewhere that "hey, so I just ICly found out Sue is going to commit treason" and you go, "Man! Can I know that?" and they say "sure" and you run off to tell people? Now there's a huge problem. Someone asks you when you learned that, or the details of what the person who told you actually said? You will not have an answer to give them. I don't know, when /did/ the other person ICly tell you? What exactly /did/ they say? All you have is an OOC summary, no actual accusation or sequence of events. And if someone else's character is on the line, there really need to be concrete answers to those questions, rather than hand-waving "I was told OOCly but they said I could know ICly."
And if the other person changes their mind and goes, "Actually, no, we're not going to talk about that." things become /super/ complicated. If there was a scene, it's not like that can be retconned; the information has ICly changed hands. If there was just an OOC exchange of information, there isn't an actual event /to/ be retconned, and now it's really unclear. You say, "Jane said she'd tell me ICly!" and Jane goes, "Yeah, but we never scened about it and I changed my mind about whether I'd do it or not." Now staff has a huge mess to untangle; Jane figured she meant "sure, I'll tell you about that ICly in a scene" and has every right to change her mind, you figured she meant "yes, you can assume that I told you off-screen right now" and have already RP'd about it and the cat's out of the bag.
Now Jane insists she never ICly told you, but you have ICly acted on events as if she had. Does this ICly mean you made up the information? ICly lied? It becomes a huge mess to resolve.
So please, please, /please/ actually put RP behind any IC exchanges of important information. For the sake of those who are affected by it, for your own ability to RP coherently around those events, and for the sake of staff's sanity when we have to untangle the nearly-inevitable mess that results.
Thank you.
In general, it's not great form to learn about IC events OOCly on Discord or WhatsApp or whatever else, and then just ask "Can I know that ICly?" and act on it.
True, in a lot of cases it /probably/ won't become a problem; if someone OOCly goes, "Man, I have been spending all my time at the Shrine of Vellichor lately; it feels like this task I've been doing will take forever," or "oh my god, I just ICly found out that Sir Frank sleeps with a plushie white dragon he's had since he was 4," asking "Can I know that ICly?" does no harm. Things like that.
(Well, Sir Frank might not like the resulting IC mockery, but no /real/ harm.)
But now let's say it's information which can actually lead to the loss of someone's character. If someone mentions to you somewhere that "hey, so I just ICly found out Sue is going to commit treason" and you go, "Man! Can I know that?" and they say "sure" and you run off to tell people? Now there's a huge problem. Someone asks you when you learned that, or the details of what the person who told you actually said? You will not have an answer to give them. I don't know, when /did/ the other person ICly tell you? What exactly /did/ they say? All you have is an OOC summary, no actual accusation or sequence of events. And if someone else's character is on the line, there really need to be concrete answers to those questions, rather than hand-waving "I was told OOCly but they said I could know ICly."
And if the other person changes their mind and goes, "Actually, no, we're not going to talk about that." things become /super/ complicated. If there was a scene, it's not like that can be retconned; the information has ICly changed hands. If there was just an OOC exchange of information, there isn't an actual event /to/ be retconned, and now it's really unclear. You say, "Jane said she'd tell me ICly!" and Jane goes, "Yeah, but we never scened about it and I changed my mind about whether I'd do it or not." Now staff has a huge mess to untangle; Jane figured she meant "sure, I'll tell you about that ICly in a scene" and has every right to change her mind, you figured she meant "yes, you can assume that I told you off-screen right now" and have already RP'd about it and the cat's out of the bag.
Now Jane insists she never ICly told you, but you have ICly acted on events as if she had. Does this ICly mean you made up the information? ICly lied? It becomes a huge mess to resolve.
So please, please, /please/ actually put RP behind any IC exchanges of important information. For the sake of those who are affected by it, for your own ability to RP coherently around those events, and for the sake of staff's sanity when we have to untangle the nearly-inevitable mess that results.
Thank you.