OOC rule discussion/amendment

For as long as I have been here and more, the rule about OOC has always been no IC chatter about the current TL. It’s been up for debate a few times. and now I think it’s up for greater discussion as a whole.

The discussion and proposed amendment is this:

What do you all think of amending the rule to only govern current era?

Leave your thoughts so the IMMs can make a decision on whether it stays the same or moves on.

I think it should be the whole TL. I always look forward to it at the end of everything. I might be up for it, I guess, as long as spyapp still applies and some sort of common sense rule if something involves ongoing IC stuff.

I think what the game has shown is that people will do all they can to exploit the semantics in a rule, no matter its intent.

Often times past events will relate to current ones, even across eras.

My only concern would be how it could affect characters that live through multiple eras.

Many characters survive for several eras. Relationships that are still present and in play might become “OOC” info, despite persisting ICly. I like the idea but it could make a lot of things awkward.

For as long as I have been here and more, the rule about OOC has always been no IC chatter about the current TL. It’s been up for debate a few times. and now I think it’s up for greater discussion as a whole.

The discussion and proposed amendment is this:

What do you all think of amending the rule to only govern current era?

Leave your thoughts so the IMMs can make a decision on whether it stays the same or moves on.

That’s a hard no for me. The reason it extends timeline to timeline rather than era to era is that because previous and current eras have had and can still have an IC effect on the eras after it. Thus previous eras are still considered IC info regardless of how seemingly pertinent or impertinent it is to the current or future eras. So it should never be spoken of in OOC matters while the current timeline is still ongoing. Obviously this won’t stop the AIM/Skype relays, but that doesn’t mean that the rule should just be super-relaxed just because there is an out of game, unenforceable exploit.

I wasn’t going to respond to this because, well, what does the new guy know about how things play out? But I was initially completely against it for exactly the reasons above my post. However, Shub-Nullgurath made a post about it on Discord that made me see some benefit to the other side as well.

It would be nice as a new player to have a better understanding of the history leading up to where you are now. For example, as a new player entering into era 3 of a timeline, I have no idea on anything that’s happened and so just have to play it off as my character’s world not being overly affected and he had his head in the sand. In some regards though, that’s preferable to what my last RP Mud had, where there was a veritable novel worth of stuff you were expected to read to avoid players criticising your character’s lack of history knowledge. And let’s be honest, you’ve gotta be hooked already to even consider that much reading.

If people could be trusted then it would be great to be able to get some better surface-level info on the state of the galaxy and events leading up to it, so I could incorporate them, but it’s honestly not the biggest issue. Perhaps it’s something that the imms and RPC, as more highly vetted people (I’m assuming!), could be allowed to do? And if other players feel they need to interject with corrections or clarifications, they can send it via tell to those people and let them decide what of that is suitable to pass on?

But otherwise, general feeling is to err on the side of caution with a no.

On one hand, that is what the news command is for, though as a new player, you may not know about that command (perhaps something pointing to the news command should be added to the Academy). On the other hand, the RPC are there to help orient new players which includes questions they might have about the general state of the current era including pointing out the news command along with some helpful news numbers in case they don’t show up on the news history.

Choice messages would be good. 153 news reports is quite an intimidating count to look at. I was thinking more about the generic state of the world (and how it differs from the movie/canon world, for those of us that do know Star Wars but don’t know THIS version. For example, my experience of Czerka is from the KotOR/TOR series, which isn’t quite the same as this version), than specific incidents.

I’m somewhat on the fence with this one too with a lean toward no, but Aphatrea did bring up a rather cogent point in regards to things that should be common IC knowledge and the fact that the news archive can tend toward being both dauntingly bloated and lacking in relevant information for newcomers.

In general I wouldn’t be against rundowns of the noteworthy bits of past eras being permissibly discussed on ooc. X and Y clan engaged in a skirmish/war during era 1 for disputed (or very occasionally clear) reasons, and the ending was Z. Something to that effect.
Less so on events with a nature like Character A murdered Character B for trying to steal his IC girlfriend that was played by his ooc buddy.

I would like to see era rundowns on either a wiki or forum thread that have topics open for discussion. I like the idea of being able to talk about a war in era 1 when it’s era 3. Individual characters aren’t as big of a deal to me unless they make a deep impact (Bugh, haha).

I would not be adverse to a very general summary of important events that took place leading up to the current era. The MOTD is usually good for that, but is far too general most of the time. Perhaps an IMM can set up a helpfile at the start of an Era that will detail a general timeline of important events that took place during the previous era.

The problem with the proposal of leaving the matter in imm hands is that they have lives too and are often busy with other things and don’t even think about doing so. Throwing another thing onto the pile of what they should maintain isn’t really a solution when players can just as easily do so.

This is a tricky topic and I see both points of views. Sometimes it’s annoying not to be able to talk about something that happened a year and a half ago, that has no bearing on the current IC ecosystem, especially if it was a mostly well known event in the first place. On the other hand, I could see people getting out of hand with information that actually IS relevant to a current era and talking about it OOCly could be disruptive.

If something like this were to change, we’d need to iron out some guidelines for what is and isn’t acceptable and probably make policing the OOC banter another duty of the RPC.

As an example, I think talking about anything to do with all of the era 1 clans, in a broad general sense, is mostly irrelevant to what’s happening right now. The Republic, the Trade Federation, the pirates, Sienar, SeerTech.. all of that stuff is so far in the past it may as well be from another timeline.

However, there is probably some information from Era 2 that actually might be disruptive to talk about on OOC, as it’s more intimately tied to the beginnings of Era 3. I really don’t have any good suggestions for guidelines right now, but I would like to see some loosening up on this particular set of rules. I think talking about IC situations in an OOC context, and reminiscing about past events, is one of the more enjoyable parts of Lotj.

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by Xavious.
• This reply was modified 7 years ago by Xavious.
• This reply was modified 7 years ago by Xavious.

The problem with the proposal of leaving the matter in imm hands is that they have lives too and are often busy with other things and don’t even think about doing so. Throwing another thing onto the pile of what they should maintain isn’t really a solution when players can just as easily do so.

Add it to the things for the RPC to do then. They don’t do much other than judge cases and help newbies, and this can fall under the “help newbies” purview. Let them decide what should and should not be put down in a general era overview, submit it to the staff, and the staff can post it up. The RPC are supposed to know how to interpret the rules anyway. They should know what could be allowed and what shouldn’t be allowed.