INFORMATION MODDING

These’re actually matters established a priori, but we feel a bit of reminding has yet to hurt anyone, and we’re actually also experimenting to see how long ‘til ye’re all keeled by tl;dr. Do please suffer with ~ ♥

Bonnie calls it omnimodding.

I call it infomodding.

Most people would refer to it as “appropriating OOC knowledge ICly”. Yes, we’re slobs. Deal with it – omnimodding it stays. From “omniscience” – come on, sparkly word, who can resist?

…everyone, we’re hoping. And everyone in Poly should by now know, we hope, that omnimodding is simultaneously incorrect, frustrating and altogether frowned upon.

It is not all right for your character to possess knowledge that they have not obtained through any manner of consented communication. Contextually, by consent we understand the direct approval of the player of whatever character you want your character to know more about.

A public post is considered implicitly consensual. Anything else? ASK THE OTHER PLAYER. Yes, even if your character has the sort of ability that would allow them access to a particular type of information. You still have to ask, because that’s just courteous.

Likewise?

Something I’m personally very amused by, and that technically still counts as omnimodding? Sudden “intuitions”. It’s all right for it to happen once or twice, but when your character seems to always divine the real nature of a situation or another character? It gets dull. It’s cheating and a bit ‘bleh’, but mostly dull. More to the point, it tends to dissuade plotting, or encourage the formation of groups. There was a time, and to an extent it has still lingered, when the trend was for “good guys” to share cookies with the “good guys”, and “bad guys” to always have their sophisticated glass of wine with other “bad guys”. Dunno about you, but I’m thinking of some people’s teeth and others’ A.A introductions. Let’em mix. Your character? Does not always have to constantly get things right just because you OOCly know them to be right that way. This is not to say that they can never be right or that they should not be right if it is within their personality or have been given reasons to be right.

I don’t think you need telling that abusing plot information handed out OOCly to your characters’ advantage? Or googling additional information on City characters that your own character suddenly mysteriously “intuits”? Are just ugly. And by ugly, I mean that it strikes 5 am and people call us in afterwards. You want to be involved in this sort of talk as much as we want to solve the afferent subjective muddle.

In reference to this – the “deities” and their area of knowledge. Surely it must be by now apparent that part of the reason why they’re styled deities has to do with a pun take on Godmodding. This is what they do, after all – they have to know things and be able to grant things in order to facilitate transactions. Otherwise? We end up with some City residents being priced the lesser for the same favours others give a good chunk of their abilities/fortune/whatnot – just because the latter have publicly disclosed what the former haven’t. Then we get OOC drama, and people shouting favouritism. The deities’ level of omniscience? Is there so everyone is taken from a ground, equal level of full information. However, it is not meant to be used beyond and independent of trades, and we both apologize for instances where such abuse has been committed, and urge you to openly remark upon the issue.

We can’t fix it if you don’t tell us something’s wrong. And if you want to tell us someone has been omnimodding, either ourselves or other players, we urge you to do so at the Problems Thread and Character Complaint Thread. We thank you in advance and request that you please take the time to provide whatever suggestions you might have. We look forward to improving the unholy system to something as hopefully user-friendly as possible.