Suggestion Reassessing Roleplay Etiquette: Metagaming, Metabaiting & IC vs. OOC

[Cindy]

Dr. Cindy, PhD. elaborating on her investigations into roleplay theory circa 2023, colorized.

Spoiler: Preamble

This thread is going to be making some pretty large suggestions for the overall culture of roleplaying at Nebulous. Rather than recommending amendments to any one particular rule, instead I seek to addresses the underlying spirit of perhaps several rules, and the way administrators facilitate roleplay and the way roleplayers approach the server.

In this thread, I intend to call into question some core ideas that make up the fabric of how roleplay is meted out. I'm going to be making some very big claims and some even bigger suggestions, and I can understand that those suggestions are going to be met with warranted skepticism. I would however like to highlight that the only reason I go the length to try and convey these ideas to you all is because I care for the health of this server and community. I think what @Numbers, @Appetite Ruining Kebab, @Señor Jaggles and others among the staff team are fostering for this new iteration is wonderful, and the server genuinely could not be in better hands as far as having an open-minded, ingenious attitude for what the shape of this new endeavor could be. I, like you, want the server to be the best it can be, and I would not be making this thread were it not something I believe is an important step towards taking Nebulous into the next era of its HL2RP adventures.

With that in mind, I do not ask you to blindly accept what I have to say simply because I can Write Word Good. Rather, I invite you to read this text, understand this text, infer upon what you know about how you as a roleplayer or admin approach these principles in the way you involve with the server, and join me in this discussion. I welcome your skepticism and even your hesitation, if only to synthesize a greater understanding of the rules that shape the very medium we roleplay in.

Let's get into it.

Suggestion: A Reassessment of Metagaming, Metabaiting & IC vs. OOC

Why it would be worth adding:

The idea of IC vs OOC, which separates roleplay from roleplayer, is abided by far too strictly in the terms of disallowing OOC communication in benefit to the experience of roleplayers. While it is important to discern the differences between the two as a roleplayer, over-adherence to this rule becomes restrictive and counterproductive to a healthy roleplay community.

Through my forum posts in the past, I've made no secret of my fascination and subscription to GNS Theory (strike those Cindypost bingo cards, she mentioned GNS Theory) as a tool to frame a better understanding of how to characterize different types of roleplayers and, by extension, how to look into ways to make the server more appealing to all stripes of roleplayers. (Reference 1/Reference 2) The philosophy behind attempting to assess the server through that lens is because we, as a community, are coming together in equal collaboration to benefit from a shared experience that we all hope to derive enjoyment from. It is a mentality that stems from wanting to utilize communication to contribute to a healthier experience— and it is that mentality that serves as the bedrock for this idea.

Metagaming is a rule, or idea, that OOC information is not to bleed into IC information. They are to remain utterly separate; sharply dividing the real world from the roleplay world. As a beginner roleplayer, metagaming may have been the concept that was the hardest to grasp in the earliest phases of your journey as a roleplayer as you struggled to differentiate actor from character in this virtual theater. It was that conditioning into understanding the difference between those two entities that cemented your understanding of one of the core principles of the roleplaying medium: Out-of-character information endangers the integrity of the experience and can not only provide unfair advantages to those who abuse it, but also soil entire plotlines and character arcs. No matter whether you favor Gamism, Narrativism or Simulationism, you understand that the in-character experience of the server is to be treasured with the utmost respect.







Which is exactly why a thread like my roleplay connections thread didn't establish much of a following here as it has in other communities. I believe Nebulous as a community is too literal in that interpretation of the principles of differentiating IC from OOC, insisting that the act of searching for roleplay is merely part of the experience itself. There are concepts such as "Metabaiting" which effectively condemns attempts to communicate— not as an abuse of OOC information, but to enhance and improve the foundation where the IC experiences can flourish from.

IC vs. OOC

If roleplaying is to be met with a new era of communication-based enjoyment, the idea that roleplaying is exclusively an in-character experience must also die.

I'm sure this comes as a radical statement to some of you as this fundamental principle has existed to extinguish attempts at metagaming and using OOC information to an advantage, but as a community dedicated to one another's enjoyment of the same medium, discussing our goals, be it narrative interests in the setting overall or our own character's developmental arc, it becomes important to make strides towards communicating with one another to meet those goalposts. This is as simple as telling someone in GOOC where all the roleplay is instead of allowing them to wander aimlessly (or an admin teleporting them to the current roleplay spot for the day) and as complex as sitting down with a roleplayer whose character has been taken into Combine custody and discussing possible ways forward to serve the experience of both the captive and the captors. We can't please everyone, but we can craft an environment that attempts to accommodate the roleplayer experience rather than abide by archaic notions of forcing character death where it is unneeded and unbeneficial.

Take for instance the idea of finding roleplay in the first place: We are expected to search for other characters to engage with in an exclusively in-character manner, which sees us often blindly combing the map and suspected roleplay hubs for people to find. With any luck, you will run into some people eventually and establish an interaction. But it is also equally possible that you will find no one or run into trouble in the search of something else entirely. This is where we find our first issue with the concept of metabaiting and the strictly IC vs. OOC doctrine: We are asking players to engage the server in a way that is diametrically contrary to the pursuit of enjoyment. If a player cannot find the roleplay, how will they engage with the server? And if they cannot engage with the server, they are not likely to remain— something that comes with increasing consequence as the noose closes around Garry's Mod's dwindling population. Accessibility is paramount.

The alternative to this is to then instead welcome OOC communication. Not to be used as a means to obtain advantage over one another, but as a way to facilitate people's characters meeting and initiating roleplay in the first place. This goes as far as allowing people to ask in GOOC where the roleplay hub (or a place where characters are congregating) might be for the moment, or even going as far as allowing people to /help for directions or even a teleport to said hub. This behavior shouldn't just be allowed: It should be thoroughly encouraged.

The truth is though that there are many players who already practice this in closed circles. I've had people add me on steam to pre-organize roleplay, inform me where I can find where everyone was roleplaying at so I could participate in the passive conversations around the campfire and engage my character with theirs. It is clear to me that this already transpires, but entirely unsupported and even scrutinized by the surface-level roleplay culture. Why force this behavior to the underground when it can be benefitted from greatly as a community?

Of course, the inappropriate use of OOC information should always be scrutinized.







Another instance where we could greatly benefit from OOC communication is in regard to the practices pertaining to captured or detained characters. I do not believe in utilizing a strict formula for how these characters should be handled, but rather I suggest a more flexible and adaptable approach.

You may not be aware of this, but the concept of "evading roleplay" being something that's punishable through server rules is a uniquely Garry's Mod phenomenon. In World of Warcraft, Project Zomboid, Final Fantasy 14, text RPs and so on, if you, the roleplayer do not consent to the roleplay presented to you, you are under zero obligation to participate in it, and it is an accepted part of those medium's RP cultures to respect that decision. The reason it exists in Garry's Mod is as a result of the unique nature of servers being isolated microcosms that vastly differ from one another, and how said servers are self-contained worlds that, should you do something in said server, its consequences will ripple through the environment and begin to affect other adjacent players, factions and so on.

As a result, it is understandable why Garry's Mod would establish this kind of etiquette as a result of how one interaction can affect the entire server. But in a medium where we are all participating for one another's enjoyment and fulfillment, it is important to still exercise consent despite maintaining the interconnectedness of the setting. Civil Protection capturing, interrogating or questioning other characters should open an OOC dialogue that explores the options, opportunities and interests of all parties involved to allow a mutually accepted outcome to occur rather than fixate on an arbitrary desire to exact “consequences” on characters (and by extension, the player behind those characters) for simply fulfilling what is both their faction’s role and fantasy. Civil Protection's connection to the Combine allows them to maneuver with great amounts of jurisdiction over other roleplayers in the setting, and it's important for such jurisdiction to be handled responsibly and considerately when participating in a mutual roleplaying medium such as our own.

At the end of the day, we are all here to participate in the fun, and when you are in a position of great power over other characters, disregarding the experience of others to fulfill either your own fantasy or adhere to your own interpretation of Half-Life 2's loose lore concepts is an irresponsible handling of the faction's role in the setting.

When you consider that being captured is oftentimes only the result of a character on the other side of the faction war pursuing what their faction is supposed to be pursuing, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify insisting that these players be punished. Certainly, their character should be met with an in-character consequence, but out-of-character you have an opportunity and, perhaps, an obligation, to sit down with the player of the captured character and discuss possible routes forward in the interest of making the experience of being captured less of a dead-end or undesirable experience and more of a situation that provokes thought on how to make this instance a benefit to all parties' roleplay experience.

Handling "Consequence"

When a rebel gets caught out by the Combine, or a Civil Protection officer is cornered by a band of unruly citizens, we often go to consequences as a means of deterring missteps and thus facilitating a game-like back-and-forth between these two factions. However, the act of pursuing consequences in roleplay in such broad strokes can, ironically, emerge consequences of their own. We want our resistance to feel encouraged to fulfill its mechanical role of resisting, but the threat of elimination of character- something that ultimately should lie in the hands of the roleplayer behind said character (unless acting in extreme negligence)- is far too discouraging to the faction's purpose in the overall setting.

Character death is something we all handle differently. Some people are capable of forging new characters on a whim, while others take meticulous care to develop one over long periods of time. When we begin to accept that HL2RP is equally a game as it is a narrative medium that we all participate in, we can begin to deconstruct the habits of old and start establishing new habits that benefit the health of the server.

I think there's also so much room for nuance in what can become of characters who're captured, especially in a setting where both the Combine and the resistance are each desperate to get people on their side either through leverage or bringing them around philosophically.

Characters could be rescued in some later occasion, there could be roleplay to be had while imprisoned (assuming the Combine players are capable of providing an experience regularly enough that their character isn't just sucked into the void of "waiting for X person to get on"). Characters could get memory replacement, turned into willing or unwilling informants, etc.

I remember even an instance where a character was captured and turned into a sleeper agent to be let back into the resistance later on, and it served a much larger plot that was going on. Those are just a few examples that I could think of off the top of my head, I'm sure you all could come up with tons more between you and the admins/faction leaders.

As curators of a setting that lies within the palms of our hands, we are capable of tailoring unique and enjoyable experiences to those that fall under the detention of another faction. Obviously, they must make sense and be reasonable to the context of a given situation; a captured character can't just say "just let me go lol", and there are some things that would be befitting in some scenarios and unbefitting in others. And of course, there must be an inherent understanding of the idea of characters (or players) acting negligently, to always ensure the sentiment that while detainment can be a method of developing character it is still ultimately something that a player's character would want to steer from.

Keep opportunities for these characters within reason, gauge the interest of the roleplayer of the captive character, and discuss possibilities. Leaving these situations open for adaptation depending on the situation and interest of parties present has historically been much more effective than a one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with these characters.







Lastly, I have one more suggestion that I know will be met with the most resistance out of all my proposals here, but given the topic of this thread there was no way that it was not going to be mentioned: I believe the name recognition system which filters who a character does and does not recognize is archaic, counter to the philosophy of communication amongst roleplayers and should be left in the past.

Beyond just being extremely difficult to sort out who is talking to who (and rendering S2RP scenarios effectively impossible and undesirable), it's a feature that becomes increasingly vestigial with a more thorough understanding of metagaming and it's quite obvious when someone has or hasn't given someone their name from the perspective of logging (be it admin logs or potential player logs). In the end, we are only setting up unnecessary walls between roleplayers to communicate amongst one another in an attempt to simulate real-world social mechanics which do not translate well to our medium.






In closing, I want to reiterate that I am aware of the sweeping suggestions that this thread carries within its text. Edging on borderline heretical to the current approach to roleplaying at Nebulous, I propose this forward because I truly believe it to be something that would open far, far more doors than it would close and would be an incredible boon to the new iteration of not just new ideas and a new setting, but a new foundation to pursue roleplaying.

As I stated at the start of the thread, I am eager to hear the skepticisms and concerns. I do not think myself infallible or without err, but as the length of this thread suggests, I have done enough research to feel comfortable in ushering out these suggestions because I truly believe the server & community would benefit. If you made it this far, thank you for reading.

Necessary content: Rules changes in regard to metagame/metabaiting, adjustments to faction protocol on captures, the revocation of the name recognition feature (all players innately recognize one another OOCly) & an overall new perspective on communication to the benefit of the RP experience.


And maybe a microwaved casserole.

​

 

[Cindy]

I apologize for the fact that this thread is as big as one of my typical essay threads as I would have certainly loved to make this a bit more digestible (given it's something I'm submitting to be reviewed), but I felt given the weight of these suggestions and their implications it would be best if I didn't pull back with my full rationale.

 

[Señor Jaggles]

Me 3 hours into my 8 hour workshift knowing Cindy's doctoral thesis awaits me at home

 

['77 East]

the revocation of the name recognition feature (all players innately recognize one another OOCly)

the only reason I cannot agree with this (unlike the other features) is that this community has always shown it cannot abide in good faith with knowing characters out of the bat.

there are too many cases where people have learned identities over misinformation, lies or outright abuse and gone on to do horrible things (often over minor or outright ridiculous 'problems' to begin with, look at the recent farmer shootout); the fact descriptions exist also serves as a cloak to idiots who create characters purely to show up and shoot people.

the only plus with this idea is that hitman characters will never exist again, they won't need to when everyone is off killing each other over trivial crap and changing your description/outfit doesn't stop a 12-man clique from getting an identifying callout from Johnny Bluesuit, cue the sprinting across the map to gun you down.

 

[Deleted member 61]

There are reasons we can't have nice things.

Human nature and even worse, human nature on the internet.

 

[Cindy]

the only reason I cannot agree with this (unlike the other features) is that this community has always shown it cannot abide in good faith with knowing characters out of the bat.

there are too many cases where people have learned identities over misinformation, lies or outright abuse and gone on to do horrible things (often over minor or outright ridiculous 'problems' to begin with, look at the recent farmer shootout); the fact descriptions exist also serves as a cloak to idiots who create characters purely to show up and shoot people.

the only plus with this idea is that hitman characters will never exist again, they won't need to when everyone is off killing each other over trivial crap and changing your description/outfit doesn't stop a 12-man clique from getting an identifying callout from Johnny Bluesuit, cue the sprinting across the map to gun you down.

There are reasons we can't have nice things.

Human nature and even worse, human nature on the internet.

While I don't believe you're wrong to an extent, I have to wonder whether it's simply the difference of the cultures within communities or if it's because there are systems in place that allow this kind of information to be extremely exploitable, because there are unfortunately people who will play-to-win in pretty much every community— even ones that don't have a name recognition system. It's something I've talked a little about to @Appetite Ruining Kebab & @Rabid in the past in regard to the differences of communities that spawned from the Lemonpunch/Nebulous side of the fence & the communities that spawned from the TnB side of the fence, especially since the latter does not facilitate gameplay, gunplay and scriptplay as much as Nebulous for instance does; S2K pretty much does not exist in any meaningful fashion other than to simply offer a quick pressure release to roleplayers and doesn't impact anything roleplay wise at all.

So I guess in my mind I'm trying to discern what are the systems that might be facilitating the ability to abuse that information so much in Nebulous. Would love to hear from ARK, Rabid & @Erkor on that in particular since they're three people that I know who have had ample experience dipping their toes in both sides of the Gmod HL2RP sphere.

I'd still consider it a victory if it were only the first two suggestions that end up getting pushed through, but I still believe the name recognition system is equally as important to address.

 

[Erkor]

I am wholly of the opinion that the issue at hand is borne from community, and not from gamemode. I think people can change, and if we were able to remove the stigma of certain aspects of roleplay on one community, we can remove the stigma of other aspects of roleplay in another. The only thing that needs to be done in that regard is to put a clear line in the sand on what metagaming really is and not what situations might lead to metagaming. The difference here seems pretty vauge, but let me explain:

Metagaming is the act of using OOC information for IC benefit. IC benefit, however, is a largely competetive concept. OOC benefit, that is to say, enjoyment from roleplaying in this example, should be encouraged. Is this metagaming? Would you consider it metagaming to ask where the roleplaying people are, because they're hidden away? I don't think so: I believe it only becomes metagaming when someone uses that OOC information to perform an action that benefits them over others. Example:

John Doe asks where the RP is. Jane Doe answers "It's at the rebel base, in the caves". Civil Protection officers use this OOC information to find out that the rebel base is where the cave is (in this hypothetical, they did not know beforehand). Civil Protection officers stage a "random sweep" fueled by this information. This is worthy of a report.

Sure, you can consider many other things "metabaiting" and "metagaming", but I believe sometimes it borders on paranoia.

 

[Señor Jaggles]

So I guess in my mind I'm trying to discern what are the systems that might be facilitating the ability to abuse that information so much in Nebulous. Would love to hear from ARK, Rabid & @Erkor on that in particular since they're three people that I know who have had ample experience dipping their toes in both sides of the Gmod HL2RP sphere.

Quick answer since I'm still at work: Searching for reasons to PK and ease of access to the names on the scoreboard to point fingers at people and get them killed. There's no specific system, it's just how it worked for ages, it was never changed for everyone to see the names right off the bat, and stood like that; add the reasons we've had against showing them directly (resistance undercover anonymity, bluesuits pointing fingers, general toxicity and obsession over PKs which we still deal with, etc) and you have an answer.

 

[Cindy]

Quick answer since I'm still at work: Searching for reasons to PK and ease of access to the names on the scoreboard to point fingers at people and get them killed. There's no specific system, it's just how it worked for ages, it was never changed for everyone to see the names right off the bat, and stood like that; add the reasons we've had against showing them directly (resistance undercover anonymity, bluesuits pointing fingers, general toxicity and obsession over PKs which we still deal with, etc) and you have an answer.

Would you not argue then that the issue lies not in whether or not this OOC information is readily available to people, but rather individual players that need to be reprimanded for being PK hungry? That to me seems to be the more glaring detail there than how they obtain this info.

 

[MaXenzie]

Would you not argue then that the issue lies not in whether or not this OOC information is readily available to people, but rather individual players that need to be reprimanded for being PK hungry? That to me seems to be the more glaring detail there than how they obtain this info.

its shockingly hard to find irrefutable proof of metagaming
you cant find a log of something not happening

accusations of metagame tend to just be he said/she said situations

 

[Señor Jaggles]

Would you not argue then that the issue lies not in whether or not this OOC information is readily available to people, but rather individual players that need to be reprimanded for being PK hungry? That to me seems to be the more glaring detail there than how they obtain this info.

Oh yeah I wholly agree but it's what Max mentioned

It is very hard to prove stuff and all that

In fact we added /setnickname for that very reason, so people could see other people with the name they know them for. I used it a lot as a rebel. Also for the funny and friendly nicknames my char would have with friends and all that.

 

[Cindy]

its shockingly hard to find irrefutable proof of metagaming
you cant find a log of something not happening

accusations of metagame tend to just be he said/she said situations

I definitely understand where this sentiment comes from, but having been an admin myself, I disagree.

I've had to sort out innumerable situations like this before. They're certainly the most annoying of situations and they're a needle in a haystack, but players having the ability to provide their own RP logs, admins checking through their admin logs, and inquiring through conversation have always allowed for an accurate (within certain margins) triangulation of the truth.

That, combined with heightened scrutiny for the misuse of OOC information, have done enough good to have established that as part of a few server's overall approach to dealing with metagame.

 

[Cindy]

I definitely understand where this sentiment comes from, but having been an admin myself, I disagree.

I've had to sort out innumerable situations like this before. They're certainly the most annoying of situations and they're a needle in a haystack, but players having the ability to provide their own RP logs, admins checking through their admin logs, and inquiring through conversation have always allowed for an accurate (within certain margins) triangulation of the truth.

That, combined with heightened scrutiny for the misuse of OOC information, have done enough good to have established that as part of a few server's overall approach to dealing with metagame.

I would also add that, while certainly not free of obnoxious situations, I think people who've experienced a server without name recognition systems have come to accept those pains for the greater good of the benefits not blotting out people's names provides.

 

[Komchan]

Oh yeah I wholly agree but it's what Max mentioned

It is very hard to prove stuff and all that

In fact we added /setnickname for that very reason, so people could see other people with the name they know them for. I used it a lot as a rebel. Also for the funny and friendly nicknames my char would have with friends and all that.

why was setnickname disabled???

 

[Señor Jaggles]

I definitely understand where this sentiment comes from, but having been an admin myself, I disagree.

I've had to sort out innumerable situations like this before. They're certainly the most annoying of situations and they're a needle in a haystack, but players having the ability to provide their own RP logs, admins checking through their admin logs, and inquiring through conversation have always allowed for an accurate (within certain margins) triangulation of the truth.

That, combined with heightened scrutiny for the misuse of OOC information, have done enough good to have established that as part of a few server's overall approach to dealing with metagame.

We have an additional issue, which is we don't have "talking" logs. Or we didn't before. Didn't notice if we have them now. So we can't see if someone has not said someone's name or smth.

It's just hard to prove.

 

[Señor Jaggles]

why was setnickname disabled???

Huh????

 

[Komchan]

Huh????

it never works for me for some reason, i set the nickname, then it doesn't save

 

[Tinbe]

why was setnickname disabled???

Huh????

it never works for me for some reason, i set the nickname, then it doesn't save

It's not disabled, it's bugged. The nickname only shows up if the person you are using it on F3's for you.

 

[Cindy]

We have an additional issue, which is we don't have "talking" logs. Or we didn't before. Didn't notice if we have them now. So we can't see if someone has not said someone's name or smth.

It's just hard to prove.

I think if my other suggestion ends up going through, this would help in such cases.

 

[Rabid]

Would love to hear from ARK, Rabid & @Erkor on that in particular since they're three people that I know who have had ample experience dipping their toes in both sides of the Gmod HL2RP sphere.

Neb's metagame tends to be more directly harmful in-the-moment. Someone will use it to PK someone else, for example, but it rarely goes a lot deeper than that because of the relative lack of info the average player has access to.

TnB's metagame is/was a lot more insidious and hurtful long-term by contrast. While it might be occasionally used to PK someone in the short term (like what happened to me on 138) TnB's setup made this impractical, so it was usually strung along for a lot longer to unravel identities and conveniently be where people needed them to be to maximise the chances of someone being kidnapped or captured which could then lead to the desirable outcome. Not to mention despite what I'd have thought previously, TnB had a much higher ratio of staff doing this sort of thing than I ever saw at Neb.

That isn't to say TnB is worse, it was just different. On TnB you were expected to 'play dumb' with information you had, and quite a lot of people wouldn't do that. On Neb you literally just don't have the information to play dumb about in the first place.

It certainly is cultural though, you're right, and has its origins in shit rebels were doing as far back as 2014 to fuck one another over.