Shattered Kingdoms

It has come to our attention that the amount of out of character (OOC) communication happening in-game is having a detrimental impact on many players' enjoyment of the game. We would like to strongly encourage you to stay in character as much as possible. Dropping OOC tends to break the RP illusion for the other people you're playing with, and it makes it harder for players who want to avoid external drama to simply immerse themselves in their chars and get on with the game, which is always our recommendation. You don't have to be an amazingly creative and literate individual to simply stay IC pretty much all the time, and other players -- the kind you like to play with, admit it -- will appreciate you for it.

Our official policy is that we always stay in character on SK, except to help newbies learn how to play the game. For example:

"tell newb ooc Welcome to SK! Check out "help newbie", and feel free to "reply" to me with any questions."
"tell newb ooc OOC = Out of Character. We do our best to stay in character (IC) on SK."

Another traditional use of OOC has been to explain circumstances on your end of the wire which may be affecting your char's behavior. We strongly encourage you to spin these circumstances using IC explanations. For example:

You went afk because your daughter woke up crying.

"gt Sorry, my mind wandered there for a moment."
"gt Whoa! I think I was possessed by a demon. Any priests around?"

You just fireballed a party member whose name starts with "Sw".

"gt The elements are proving difficult to command this day. Apologies."
"gt Watch yourself, Sw***! Those fireballs are hot."

Get creative. You're cut from finer cloth than players on lesser MUDs.

There may be some other rare occasions where OOC is acceptable, but long OOC conversations about where you went to school or who you used to date or how you feel about certain other players are really not. We're not looking to police every conversation you have in-game, and I'm sure no one on the staff wants to sort through logs of excessive OOC communication. So please police yourself, and make the game more enjoyable for yourself and for players who really enjoy the RP aspect of our SK cocktail.

However, in case you can't police yourself, we will reluctantly accept prayers and logs of players going OOC and spoiling the experience. If we confirm OOCness which is outside the scope of helpfulness to newbies or brief explanation for actions which are inexplicably OOC, the culprits may find themselves on the receiving end of stern words or more serious punishment at our discretion, particularly in the case of chronic offenders.

An addendum to Nashira's post:

Please leave your blatantly OOC RL slang outside of Pyrathia. It detracts from the environment of the game to see people exclaiming "oh schnap," asking if they "can has a cookie," talking "for reals," and "[having] your back like butt crack." Logging off of the game does not constitute "poofing out," and while bawling is perfectly acceptable, "ballin'" is not. Regardless of your character's situation, these are not acceptable phrases for the fantasy setting of SK.

(Yes, ALL of those actually happened.)

Further, characters witnessed or reported for using modern-day terms (in and out of character) that are offensive on the basis of race, gender, creed, religion or sexuality will be punished. We have an open game with a diverse, global player base: Be nice.

Metagaming is any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed rule set, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself.

In simple terms, it is the use of out-of-game information or resources to affect one's in-game decisions.

There are some recent instances where people have referenced a log site or how a certain player might make repeated characters with the same enemies. Both of these are obviously improper use of OOC knowledge inside the game. While the first is simply personal knowledge share the second could easily be established as a pattern of behavior and thus punished if it were found to be so.

I thought I would add this addendum to the previous announcements in order to be crystal clear. Thank you.