Alright. What's this about? Why are we here?
I've lately been browsing the Moderation forum of late, morbidly curious as to why some threads get locked, and wanting to find out the full story. During my exploration there, I've seen quite a number of folks scream Godmod for things which to me do not deserve the label.
This appears to be one of those "Rules" that is being either mis-interpreted or has so many definitions that it's no longer a rule, but rather a loose collection of conventions and customs.
I will start off the discussion by listing what I know of the subject, and in case you are wondering, I have been engaging in freeform roleplaying on over a dozen sites for roughly fifteen years now. I hope I understand the subject well enough to meet your approval.
What exactly does it mean to Godmode (AKA Godmod)?
Godmod originally got it's name from the old DOOM "God Mode" code. Said code allowed one to play the game without ever taking damage from enemy attacks.
1. To God-Mode in Roleplaying is to never take damage or disadvantage, while righteously trouncing everything in sight.
What this means for NationStates often amounts to a player who declares a war, and never takes any losses in that war. There are many other examples, but this seems to be the most prevalent one on NationStates.
2. To God-Mode is to control another player's creations.
Another common event on NationStates, sadly. Since this is free-form roleplaying, there are very few rules as to what we can create, and what we can do with those creations. In fact, there are no real rules to how we play at all. There are only conventions and customs. One such convention is that we can only dictate the actions of our own creations and characters. This includes a restriction against dictating damage or effects on another player's creations and characters.
For an example, let's take Player Bob and Player Dave. Their characters are in a gunfight. Bob decides he wants to shoot Dave in the head. In Bob's post he writes a beautiful scene of the character jumping out from cover and "curving" the path of his shot around Dave's cover and hitting him right between the eyes!
This is clear God-Mode action. Bob has given Dave absolutely no chance to avoid the attack, since both the attempted attack and it's outcome on Dave are written by Bob.
Instead of the above, Bob should have described the attempt to hit Dave between the eyes. This allows Dave the chance to either say "No, you can't do that!" or to say "Wow, that was written so well, I'm going to allow it."
3. Godmod is anything that constitutes unfair behavior in play.
Aha! Now we get to the really controversial one. Just as an example, I have seen a player in Moderation complain that mixing Future-Tech and Modern-Tech elements in the same RP is Godmod. I disagree, strongly.
Is it unfair? Unless both players have agreed to this, then yes it probably is very unfair. The player using FT toys will likely be able to walk all over the MT player. Even this however is not absolute, otherwise it goes right back to God-Mode number two above. You can claim any advantage you want. Your technology could be a thousand years more advanced than another player, but this means absolutely nothing until another player decides to agree with you that your technology gives a massive advantage.
Many are the stories of MT-era humans surviving and even throwing back an invasion or attack by a vastly superior FT-alien force. If it works in those stories, why can't it work in ours? All it requires is cooperation, communication, compromise, mutual consent, and mutual respect by all involved players.
Here's another example. What about the player who claims a massive MT army in the millions, when their NS nation is brand-new. Many times I see older players crying "Godmod! Godmod!" for this. Is this really a Godmod?
Again, I don't think so. What this is is a violation of a long-held NationStates custom that your NS-pop be used as a measure of a nation's IC power. Not everyone agrees with this custom, and I would like to remind people that this is not a rule any more than the above definitions of Godmod. The population (and thus army/space fleet size issue) is purely a custom that most players on NationStates accept and agree to.
I'd like to open the floor to constructive debate at this point. Share your thoughts on the subject of Godmod please, so we can all be a little the wiser for it.
