IC / OOC divide in gameplay

[Sedgistan]

This thread is prompted by a few things - the need for me to update the Guide to the Gameplay forum sticky to account better for "GP IC", the recent kerfluffle in the Liberty Gala thread, and also seeing some of the discussion around the eternal battle to keep the NSGP Discord server's #in_character_gameplay channel IC.

Gameplay over the last few years has evolved a much better understanding of truly OOC issues, and for the most part looks to have learnt to handle them well. But understanding when someone is speaking IC "within the game" or OOC-ish "about the game" is far less clear, not least because we tend to switch frequently between those ways of speaking even within a discussion, and it leads to misunderstandings particularly when statements intended to be IC are interpreted as not.

Therefore I'd like to open a debate on:

1) Whether this is actually a problem.

2) If so, what we can do about it.

As an example, it could be a case of adopting a convention of labelling IC / OOC posts (or assuming posts are one, unless labelled as the other).

While I'm thinking about this mainly from a "moderating the GP forum" point of view, it's also a wider community discussion that could apply to other NS activity whether on RMBs, offsite forums or Discord.

Thoughts?

[Mathuvan Union]

I don't rp nearly as much on the forums, anymore.
I don't think it's actually much of a problem, if there's IC and OOC threads, no, it's not a problem, but if there aren't, it should definitely be marked as so.

[Numero Capitan]

Not fully formed any thoughts on this yet but I really really don't like the pattern of moderation warnings of in-character hyperbolic statements. It's going to make people shy away from making any bold adversarial statements in Gameplay and further dampen the politics of this side of our political game.

[Mathuvan Union]

Not fully formed any thoughts on this yet but I really really don't like the pattern of moderation warnings of in-character hyperbolic statements. It's going to make people shy away from making any bold adversarial statements in Gameplay and further dampen the politics of this side of our political game.

Yeah, well, as [v] said in the OSRS, just because it's IC doesn't mean it can't break rules.
I get what you're saying--to a point.

[RiderSyl]

Just a heads up, this is going to be a very scatterbrained comment.

Approaching the IC/OOC divide in Gameplay is incredibly tricky. There is, of course, the fact that the line that divides IC/OOC is fairly subjective. There are things that the majority of the NSGP community can agree are IC, or OOC, but there's a large grey area where one player will see IC and one will see OOC. The Liberty Gala situation is a perfect example. Is a social event that involves OOC Discord chats and Twitch livestreams able to claim itself as IC? Is it able to fairly exclude a party entirely on an IC basis? Do the Discord chats and Twitch livestreams not affect this, because at its core the event planners never intended for it to be open to a certain IC group in the first place?

Another issue with the subjectivity is also on display in the Liberty Gala thread. Was the "raiders eschew compassion" remark by HumanSanity meant as IC or OOC when they typed it? Is "oh I meant it IC" the truth, or an attempt to invalidate those offended at the remark? This isn't intended to call HumanSanity's honesty into question in that specific case, to be clear, but more to illustrate how the IC/OOC divide can be used retroactively in a way similar to how "It was just a joke"/"I wasn't being serious" can and is used retroactively in NSG.

Now, outside of the subjectivity issue, there's the Defamation rule, and how it affects IC/OOC in Gameplay. I know a lot about this one. There's legitimate awful issues that NSGP tries to self-moderate through word-of-mouth blacklisting and public exposure. The former has been deeply effective, but the latter became a serious issue once the Defamation rule came into being. Now the way to pull off public exposure without running afoul of the Defamation rule is to be vague enough to avoid breaking it, but maintain a tone harsh enough to be convincing and also offer to show users evidence off-platform. This new method of exposure comes across like cancel culture, is much less convincing, and doesn't allow for the accused to dispute anything. That last bit is a two-fold issue. If the accused can effectively dispute the record, then it can allow us to question the source and possibly find someone awful on the inside that's using OOC to take down their political rivals or people they don't like. If the accused tries to dispute the record and fails miserably, then they've just dug themselves an even deeper hole. Because the accused can't dispute the record, because we can't show the evidence, it prevents either of those from happening.

It's related to the above, but... OOC policing itself needs its own paragraph. There are those that try to be the OOC police when an issue is actually IC (I'm guilty of that myself), people maliciously using claims of OOC misconduct against their IC political enemies, people who are ineffective at OOC policing trying to do so anyway, and a general stigma around OOC policing in general. It's only fair to bring up the Liberty Gala thread again here. Those that took offense to HumanSanity's remark, and made a fuss about it being OOC... were they legitimately offended, or was it a case of using claims of OOC misconduct against IC political enemies? Again, like with HumanSanity, I'm not intending to call anyone's honesty into question. It's just an example, nothing more.

Also, I'd just like to say that the fact that many IC gameplay terms have uses in hostile OOC contexts make the line between IC and OOC much more difficult to define, and lends itself to a lot of the subjectivity that exists in gameplay. Perfect example: fenda

My recommended solutions? Flesh out Defamation more so we know where the line is on that rule. If it means no discussing OOC mishaps on site, then so be it. If it means discussing them as long as they're not about criminal acts, then so be it. But flesh it out so we know where the line is when we're self-moderating that stuff. Also, adopt labelling IC/OOC posts like you said, and come down on those that deliberately misuse the labels (it will happen, trust me). I'd also recommend a thread in gameplay where users debate what is IC or OOC (like an IC/OOC Summit of sorts) so that we can finally get a general consensus on these things for the first time in the history of gameplay.

[Unibot III]

This was a moderation problem in the WA for many years: how to moderate in-character gameplay and distinguish the two. The reality is the WA was very heated in those days and some of us hid behind "IC" statements to bait one another.

I would suggest one standard for flamebaiting that would apply universally to both IC and OOC - so it doesn't matter if you meant it in-game or out-of-game, player-to-player, or invader-to-defender - you either broke the rule or you didn't. That renders the label meaningless as far as moderation is concerned.

What should that standard be? I think it should be relatively free. Players should be open to calling groups and players bad/evil/corrupt, but should not be allowed to call groups and players stupid/slow; players should be open to calling groups and individuals incompetent/lazy, but should not be allowed to call groups and players disturbed/deranged. The balance is allowing character attacks that facilitate political gameplay's raison d'etre and military gameplay's regular chirping but disallows personal attacks that culturally have no purpose in NationStates Gameplay.

What's interesting to me is there's usually hooplah when a defender, rather unwisely, calls invaders "evil," but there isn't the same hooplah when an invader calls defenders "corrupt" (which was always the charge in the ADN/FRA/UDL days - not so sure if it's still the go-to phrase anymore). Both are pretty personal and ethical attacks. Both imply you can't trust either to do the right thing. I suppose one distinction might be that evil implies harm to others, the harm from corruption is more nebulous, less defined. But I think character attacks are part in parcel of the political-moral system of Gameplay. Invaders are criticized for griefing and disrupting communities - for their disregard for others. Defenders are criticized as "world cops" for intolerance, incompetence, and political interference. That's been the deal now for two decades.

As for what RiderSyl has said, I've said for sometime now that I'd like to see the Defamation "Gag Rule" rule relaxed. Having all of these conversations about personal conduct done solely over Discord fuels gossip, making defamation far worse, and makes meaningful discussions more or less impossible about a player's inappropriate conduct.

(EDIT: I've also always thought the troll-naming rule was asinine. There's lots of GPers who troll, who don't qualify as officially "trolling" under the moderation's rules, but they're trolling - they're completely unserious - and it's bizarre not to be able to call it for what it is. I think if moderation needed to go to the lengths of creating a "troll-naming" rule, they should have just renamed their trolling rule to something more accurate: they're not really moderating trolling, they've banned a form of extreme trolling.)

[Sandaoguo]

As far as forum moderation goes, the vague "IC/OOC divide" really shouldn't come into play at all. Flaming is flaming. Trolling is trolling. Doesn't make any difference if it's a defender saying raiding is evil, or a player accusing another player of being a toxic person. If the rules on flaming are applied to prohibit things like commonplace "good vs evil" type of game rhetoric, then there's a problem with the mods' intention, not the rule itself. (It doesn't help that NationStates itself has eschewed any formal narrative to R/D as part of its game design.) You have to be able to look at something and just know when something is intended to be personal vs tribal propaganda. Both can and should be shut down if it becomes too much and too disruptive. "Somebody found this offensive" isn't a legitimate basis for a rule, and going that route just means mods will be adjudicating whether or not people are crying offense in good faith. Rules exist to prevent disruption, not to force everybody to pretend to get along.

NSGP the community has no coherent idea of what's IC and what's OOC. The lines get blurred because NSGP is just a social club and having almost all community interaction on Discord cements that every day. The way the Discord channel works is, "If you're talking about game mechanics and roleplay, do it here. Otherwise, don't." But in terms of behavior, there's no consistently applied principle. What's "OOC" changes based on the (un-)popularity of the person saying or doing it, or relatedly the popularity (and thus deferred authority) of the person complaining that something crosses an ill-defined line.

About the only agreed definition of the divide is that things that are problematic in real life are clearly OOC-- racism, homophobia, sexual harassment, etc.

[Roavin]

I've talked about this several times recently, and I'm very glad to see this topic brought up in such a way. TL;DR: Yes, there's a problem; but I don't know the best way of dealing with it. This is a bit rambly, I apologize.

I have tried to get away from using IC/OOC and use other terms, and have settled on the following: What's traditionally considered OOC is the meta, while the IC stuff is what we do to craft the lore of our game world. Looking at it this way has a number of advantages. For one, it avoids the confusion between the RP definitions of IC/OOC, which are different than the GP definitions. Second, they're better terms for those players that don't choose to play a sort of character in GP ("I'm just myself in-game"), because the line between what is lore and meta applies to them just as well even if their in-universe manifestation is a replica of them as a player. And last but not least, they also help to better define what is "IC" and what is "OOC".

Using "lore" and "meta" makes it much simpler to intuitively grasp in which realm a statement is made: Assume somebody is making an in-universe history book of the events that happened, akin to (say) Lord of the Rings. Those are the things that constitute the lore of our game, so "GP IC". Anything beyond that (and this includes Deadpool-esque fourth wall violations) is not. I concede that there may be edge cases here and there (i.e. the in-universe character moving regions because they want to hang out with a befriended player), but I hypothesize that the vast majority of our interactions here can be easily and intuitively categorized by thinking of them in these terms (and if I think back to 2016, we generally have a better understanding as a collective of where the line is, even if it's still very imperfect).

As an aside, it helps to briefly consider what our "GP IC" characters actually are. They aren't the players, because players may play multiple characters (and there are many well-documented cases of this). They aren't really nations, because the nature of GP means it's not unlikely that a player will have multiple nations attached to the same persona (the most trivial example here being puppet nations used for military gameplay). In a way, our "GP IC" characters are the leaders of our respective main nations, with an iron grip on the other nations; or we can just disassociate ourselves from any representative manifestation and just consider GP personas to be their own kind of thing. One of those latter two should probably be it; I have a fondness for the former, as it matches game mechanics closer.

Now, addressing the actual topic: The forum moderation rules as-is put a sort of damper on the lore. Because, quite frankly, the leader of the nation Roavin does consider raiders to be legitimately evil and bad. The player of the nation Roavin, of course, recognizes that we play a game where the ratio of asshole players to decent players is probably about the same on all sides. Within the lore, the leader of the nation Onderkelkia (to just pick an example) should legitimately consider defenders to be corrupt egocentric subversives and be able to express it, whilst on a meta-level, the player controlling the nation Onderkelkia ostensibly does not automatically think the same of the players controlling defender nations.

However, we don't have an easily discernable and commonly-used way of delineating between one realm or the other. That leads to confusion - The Liberty Gala thread recently is a perfect example of the former, where statements and views made in context of the lore (but expressed poorly) were interpreted to be meta-level accusations. I have also seen this used for ostensibly malicious purposes, where a perfectly "GP IC" accusation (such as, say, blackmail) was deliberately interpreted to be an accusation aimed at a player. That blackmail is a valid in-universe action should be readily apparent.

Currently, the way we discern between the realms is by choice of language. We have an emergent set of words, phrases, and grammatical constructs, shaped by a combination of site rules and social interactions, that signify the realm of a particular statement. Saying something is "harassment" automatically marks a sentence or paragraph as "OOC", for example. This is a problematic approach for a number of reasons. One, it means that the lore and its commentary are easily intertwined and hard to distinguish, and I suspect that this in particular is a big reason for the existance of this thread. Two, the set of constructs is not documented anywhere, but rather established by implicit convention for the most part, with some of it guided by the OSRS. You just have to kinda "know", and anybody that didn't automatically know is quickly considered an idiot. Third, sometimes words have distinct definitions in both realms and that duality can be used in less-than-ideal ways. The perfect example here is "griefing": There is a site rule against griefing, but purging a region of natives is also considered "griefing" within the context of the lore. Time and time again, defenders will pull out the griefing rhetoric for an emotional response to get more liberators, while invaders will claim that there is no griefing as they did not break the griefing site rule. Both are, if I think about it, kinda shitty (and I've absolutely been guilty of it). And last but not least, sometimes words carry such strong intrinsic meaning that it's hard to emotionally separate how they would apply within the lore from their meta-level connotations ("harassment" once again comes to mind).

RPers delineate their posts by having no prefix for IC and a "OOC: " prefix for OOC. That works well for them, probably because they have such an obvious separation between their lore and their lore building. This also makes it easier for site moderators, because while sometimes the content of RP is moderation-actionable (see the recent rulings on sex in RP, for example), for the most part there is a clear separation and therefore a clear point where the site rules regarding flaming and flamebaiting apply in that part of the game.

Putting it all together, what can we do? I propose that we begin, as convention, to mark which part of our posts belong in the lore, and which parts are meta-level commentary, and in addition, we have a list of words that are bound to a realm and not to be used outside of it (such as, again, "harassment"). There are many ways we can do our marking - Putting "OOC" in front of it like RPers is an option, of course. I've also experimented by using a separate font color and/or putting things in square brackets. A stupid example of what that could look like: "Our Minister of Foreign Affairs is currently not at their office {busy with school exams} and will speak to you about the embassy next week".

[Blackbird]

[OOC]

This is all very simple to fix, and the rules should be the same as it in every other forum. Everything is IC unless someone puts OOC tags on it.

Look, we are all people who play a video game. The video game has constructs. "Invaders" and "Defenders" have no real-world analogue. They are names we give in the game for players' nations who do certain things in the gameplay. Much of the moderation policy is based around traditional semi-legal (or pseudolegal) notions of flaming and protected groups: you're not allowed, for instance, to say "All [insert a real world sex, ethnic group, nationality, religion] are bad and evil and should go screw themselves." But "invaders," "defenders," or any other groups, are not real-world groups; they are constructs we, players, have created to describe in-game, as in in-character actions.

My points about this moderation policy are not new; I have been on this high horse for years. The current moderation policy kills gameplay. What is invading? What is defending? It's war. And you, the admins made war possible in gameplay. It is totally crazy to me, that our nations are permitted to go to war, but we can't hate each other over it! People don't go to war over minor things. People are not polite during war. People say things like "invaders are scum" when invaders invade and grief their regions. That is a 100% understandable IC action. The moderation policy that requires Gameplayers to tiptoe in their IC rhetoric diminishes the excitement of conflict, which is ultimately what drives activity.

I think Roavin and I are pretty much making the same points, though I think he's overthinking a bit to discuss the "meta" and the "lore." It's just IC and OOC. There's nothing else. If we're talking about invading a region, it's IC. That's how it works. If I'm talking about me, the player behind Blackbird, going for a walk in my neighborhood and going to the store, well, that's OOC. That's not my nation. That's not NationStates. Things that happen in the gamplay of NationStates is IC. And that's why IC should be the default. Anything that is OOC should get an OOC tag

I entirely disagree with Unibot's notion that we can't call in-game groups "evil." I'm sure some of my much older friends, including those in moderation, well remember successful invasions where scores of natives were kicked out of their home region. Do you think, in a gameplay context, those natives shouldn't be allowed to call invaders evil? How can that possibly be? In the gameplay world, being invaded is like having your home razed and salt plowed into your field. Why would moderation truncate the full range of political expression in IC rhetoric?

***

This doesn't make moderation hard; it makes it easy. It's very easy to tell when someone is abusing IC to go OOC. If someone says, "Blackbird is a fucking asshole and I hope he dies," that's pretty clearly OOC. If someone says, "I hope the people of the United Socialist States of Blackbird are crushed in this war," or "I hope all defender alliances and nations are crushed," then it's obviously in-character. And if a defender says "Invaders are scum" that's fine, because that's how IC ideologies develop. If someone says, "All the jews must die," that's clearly not an IC statement, because "Jews" are an OOC group, not an IC construct. This isn't hard for moderation; it's better for players; and it makes a better game.

[/OOC]

[Flanderlion]

[OOC]I agree with what Blackbird said[/OOC]

[The Blaatschapen]

[OOC]

Though when the two things get mixed for example "defenders are QAnon enablers"? What then? I tend to go for the OOC being the stronger version there, since QAnon doesn't exist ICly (I hope)

[Mathuvan Union]

[OOC]

Though when the two things get mixed for example "defenders are QAnon enablers"? What then? I tend to go for the OOC being the stronger version there, since QAnon doesn't exist ICly (I hope)

[OOC]
there are variations of such in P2TM

[Unibot III]

I entirely disagree with Unibot's notion that we can't call in-game groups "evil." I'm sure some of my much older friends, including those in moderation, well remember successful invasions where scores of natives were kicked out of their home region. Do you think, in a gameplay context, those natives shouldn't be allowed to call invaders evil? How can that possibly be? In the gameplay world, being invaded is like having your home razed and salt plowed into your field. Why would moderation truncate the full range of political expression in IC rhetoric?

Just to clarify, I was saying "evil" should be allowed.

I know my post was oddly written. I was saying I don't think tags (IC/OOC) are necessary and they're cumbersome - and they encouraged players in the WA to game the system and frequently flamebait others hiding behind an IC tag. We all knew what we were doing.

Moderation can just have one standard of moderation across the GP forum: calling groups "evil" is fine, calling groups "corrupt" is fine, calling groups "stupid" is not, calling groups "incompetent" is fine, calling groups "retarded" is not, calling groups "deranged" is not. If the behaviour, which otherwise would be considered flamebaiting in normal circumstances on this forum, serves Gameplay culture purposefully - allowing players to discuss its politics on an ethical level, or chirp battlefield opponents - it should be permissible; if it serves no real purpose culturally except to flamebait, it's flamebaiting.

Saying "UDL is a bunch of morons" is just flamebaiting, for instance - you'd just be attacking a group of players' intelligence for no real value to get a rise out of them. Saying "UDL is corrupt" is a classic attack line that was deployed for years by its opponents - it helped to articulate the "world view" of players - who is good and bad. I raised corruption as an example because it's kind of the other side of the coin: invaders get accused of being evil in NS Gameplay, defenders often get accused of being corrupt - both are big charges to make OOC, but common IC.

[Blackbird]

[OOC]

Though when the two things get mixed for example "defenders are QAnon enablers"? What then? I tend to go for the OOC being the stronger version there, since QAnon doesn't exist ICly (I hope)

[OOC]That's easy. QAnon doesn't exist in NS. I suppose there could be a QAnon region, and maybe defenders could enable them. But right now, as it stands, that's an OOC comment.[/OOC]

[Elegarth]

I have simply never understood how or why GP is OOC. We aren't in reality the leaders of nations, regions, empires or political organizations... It has never made sense - to me - that GP is considered an OOC forum. Yes, it is not RP in the same sense as the RP forum is RP, but it IS some form of more political less narrated RP, where we pretent to be nation and regional leaders and rulers...

Other than that, I agree with all Blackbird said.

[Twobagger]

[OOC]

Though when the two things get mixed for example "defenders are QAnon enablers"? What then? I tend to go for the OOC being the stronger version there, since QAnon doesn't exist ICly (I hope)

[OOC] I think perhaps a better example would be either "defenders are scum," or perhaps the stronger "defenders are nothing more than a cancer within NationStates, a cancer that has been allowed to fester and grow for far too long."

Out of character, either of these things seem like they'd be trolling, as well as just (IMO) generally gross things to say. In character, it seems both statements would be permissible. It's probably fine in general, but I feel like it enables bad behavior. Like for example, if TGW refound my region and I get mad about it, I feel like I shouldn't be allowed to respond in their thread with something like

No one cares what scum like you say or do; you're all pathetic and will never amount to anything.

But it's not immediately clear to me how you'd handle this, especially if things are assumed to be IC. It seems pretty clear to me that the above is meant to anger other people. It seems equally clear that if we're assuming things are IC, following the line of thought of some of you in this thread, that this can't be actionable: IC, I can just say that I'm saying every nation in TGW is evil and that they will always be insignificant. These things, while dumb, would be reasonable thoughts for a nation on the wrong end of a military conflict to express.

[Vilverin]

I was gonna ‘stream of conscious’ my opinions about IC/OOC, but my brain started tripping over its shoelaces and I lost the motivation lol

Also, I don’t post in the forums; like ever, but I go about my business off-site and lurk here enough to have generated a couple of hot takes. I’ll try to keep it in short, snappy sentences.

1. IC and OOC are completely intertwined, and it’s difficult to untie the two or affect one without disturbing the other.
2. I think IC and OOC tags might be a good idea.
3. I personally think it’s a really bad idea to have GP as IC unless stated otherwise.
4. IC off-site stuff don’t make no sense; unless its sensitive enough for opsec or you’re roleplaying.

I had other things to note but I forgot them by the fourth bulletpoint. Also, it should be kept in mind that although we all might be in on the rules of conversation, not everyone is. Kid-on contempt has the potential to look like a serious opinion to newbies and enables toxic cultures to flourish, like some sort of petri dish.

[The Church of Satan]

I've been known to refer to other player's (under very specific conditions) as scum but I usually reserve that sort of rhetoric for blacklisted players that did bad stuff like blackmail or doxxing. And yes I admit that in that context I refer to the player rather than the persona they are masquerading as. Despite site rules strictly forbidding such things I think in rare instances as that I would do it again. Suffice to say that's a matter of morality for me. I accept that such talk is a violation of the rules and frankly it should be. I wouldn't want the GP forum casually throwing around such comments because it would definitely be abused by players if they thought they could get away with it.

That said I have to agree with Blackbird (among others) that players should be allowed to use phrases like "fenda scum" or "raider scum." It's not really used as a deragatory statement but more in jest or even as part of R/D propaganda which to me sounds more like a means of encouraging activity from opposition, "poking the bear" as it were (come at me bro.) I don't see anything wrong with a little playful banter between enemies. Yes it can be construed as an OOC attack but I believe that's generally the result of misinterpretation and rarely as an attack on the person sitting at their computer. That's just what people do once in a while. They might see how something is phrased and misinterpret a player's intent but it's like meeting up with an old friend and saying " How ya been, dumbass?" You don't mean to insult them, you're just bustin' balls, even if some others might not know or see it that way.

Sure, tags might help make the distinction but it'd actually make posting in GP far more tedious than it should be because Vilverin is right about IC and OOC being intertwined in GP. Posts would end up being broken apart and scattered about, a veritable puzzle for both poster and reader.

[Varanius]

[OOC] I largely agree with Blackbird on this one. This is a game. We all acknowledge that this is a game, I hope. And most of GPers usually agree that there should be a separation between OOC and IC, that the nation Varanius is separate from the person behind Varanius (me). And so logically, if you attack or insult the nation of Varanius and say “Varanius is moronic raider scum and too inexperienced to understand what they’re talking about”, that’s different from going “Varanius the person is a stupid moron who should just leave the game”. Varanius is the “person” I pretend to be every once in awhile. And an attack on that fictional “person” isn’t an attack on me, and it shouldn’t be treated as such. Most of us acknowledge that strict IC/OOC lines are important, and (I think) that acknowledging that IC and OOC insults are different, and should be interpreted and dealt with differently, is an important part of that.

(Oh look, I am capable of having a serious opinion )

[Sedgistan]

Thank you for the input so far. I'm deliberately not posting after every contribution here, as I don't see this as solely a moderation matter - it's as much something for the wider gameplay community to work out if there's a way to better understand/present how we talk amongst each other, as it is a question of NS rules enforcement. I don't want everything to get hung up on the defamation rule or on whether we can call each other scum, as there's a bigger discussion than just those (neither should be swept to the side though).

Blackbird's argument is seductively simple - but I just don't think the reality of how gameplayers interact fits within his simple IC / OOC divide. How would we categorise a region's government putting out a statement comparing another region's leader to Trump? It's got a real-world reference so is that OOC (as it would be considered anywhere else)? Or is it IC, because it's a purely in-game dialogue with our "roleplayed" regional governements commenting on each other? There are plenty of other similar examples of the lines being blurred in how we commonly interact.

I'm open to a trial of treating the Gameplay forum as IC (and labelling threads/posts as IC/OOC when appropriate) if there's support for that, but I don't see it as being an easy transition. I'll also note that any decision from the moderation side of things is not made solely by myself and would be made by the wider team.

I'm not going to say more for now, as I know there are others still intending to post their thoughts here, so I'll wait to hear what they have to add.

[Sedgistan]

It's been raised elsewhere that my post wasn't entirely clear, so to clarify:

I'm open to a trial of treating the Gameplay forum as IC (and labelling threads/posts as IC/OOC when appropriate)

That should read "assumed to be IC as default". It's not meant to suggest enforcing all content in Gameplay is IC, or to prevent anything being posted that is currently posted in the forum. It's just about potentially making clearer what is what.

And it's just a suggestion that is by no means a foregone conclusion. If you disagree with it, please do feel free to object.

[Mathuvan Union]

It's been raised elsewhere that my post wasn't entirely clear, so to clarify:

I'm open to a trial of treating the Gameplay forum as IC (and labelling threads/posts as IC/OOC when appropriate)

That should read "assumed to be IC as default". It's not meant to suggest enforcing all content in Gameplay is IC, or to prevent anything being posted that is currently posted in the forum. It's just about potentially making clearer what is what.

And it's just a suggestion that is by no means a foregone conclusion. If you disagree with it, please do feel free to object.

So, everything now is IC instead of OOC unless tagged so?

[Jar Wattinree]

It's been raised elsewhere that my post wasn't entirely clear, so to clarify:

That should read "assumed to be IC as default". It's not meant to suggest enforcing all content in Gameplay is IC, or to prevent anything being posted that is currently posted in the forum. It's just about potentially making clearer what is what.

And it's just a suggestion that is by no means a foregone conclusion. If you disagree with it, please do feel free to object.

So, everything now is IC instead of OOC unless tagged so?

I'd be happy with this.

[Jakker]

So this has sort of been alluded to thus far, but it is important to acknowledge that trying to label something as IC vs. OOC in gameplay is not straightforward for several reasons. For one, gameplay is not like other parts of NS. A major reason why people engage in gameplay is because it involves the player behind the nation. There is a tangible nature to being involved in region-building, foreign affairs, R/D, etc. Nearly everyone (and I see nearly because I am sure there are a few outliers) does so as the player (the human who is playing the game). You are interacting on off-site forums, on discord, and to other players as the player. Sure you are called your NS name and sure you are going to be pushing certain beliefs, agendas, or values that cater to your goals in the game, but calling it "in-character" is too simplistic in my mind and is not actually what that term means. I think anyone who has a region with a forum or a discord can attest to having new players join and think as though it is in-character and talk like the leader of their nation. And I personally have never seen that last more than a few days because that just is not how the majority of gameplay functions in its interactions. I would also say that with the increase of interactions among players via discord, this has made OOC more of the default. The way players engage or think of themselves and each other is not the same as it was 20 years ago.

From my understanding, the term "in-character" applies to interactions as your nation's leader/ambassador, etc. And that works for several parts of the game like roleplaying, the GA, issues, even cards. "Out-of-character" is when you are interacting as you the person behind the screen. I think it is important for gameplayers to own up to the fact that rarely are we actually speaking in strict "IC" terms. I will also make the point that the bounds of IC on its own simply does not fit gameplay. If you are interacting with other players about tangible stuff like recruitment, training new members, FA, R/D, SC writing, and all of the other aspects of gameplay, it is impossible to do so without some level of OOC. Because the acts themselves are literally you the player doing them as a player and interacting with others who are doing them as a player. Also let's not also forget that there are a lot of players (many newer ones) who don't even play as a "character." They are just playing and acting as themselves.

Now this all is not to say that there is not a layer of IC within gameplay. I totally acknowledge that. But trying to say that people should just notate when they are speaking IC vs. OOC and that will somehow change much seems to neglect the nuance of GP. With that said, explicitly stating those labels may serve the purpose of letting people outside of the gameplay community get a better idea of the speaker's intent. And while I don't see it doing too much within gameplay either, I imagine it at least is a marker to say that someone is attempting to speak a certain way.

Another important aspect to acknowledge is that everyone has a different definition of what IC vs. OOC actually means. Some people seem to regard "in-character" as actually meaning "in-game" where if it is something related to NS, then it is IC. Others will argue that if an in-game action like raiding has an effect on other players, then it is an OOC action. And then there are people who simply say that if someone does something good or bad in the game, it speaks to who they are OOC and therefore, the people are OOC good or bad based on those actions. Given that there are so many different ways people view these terms, I don't think it is as simple as saying "label this as OOC" or "label this as IC."

I personally think that a reframing of these things might be helpful. Not sure if it is possible to do objectively though, but I think there is so many differences and history with what IC and OOC means that it takes away from the conversation. I would also say it is important to take a step back and think about "Why does this matter?" I see some people saying there is a loss of the political game if we don't separate the two. I have always been all for the political dynamics and having conflict in the game. I think that is important. With that said, I also think it is possible to have these dynamics under some structure. Thinking that anything one says is okay as long as it is "in-character" has never been a thing in the game. Older moderators can correct me if I am wrong, but if you say something to attack a group in a certain way like calling them murderous has never been okay. There is a spectrum of tolerable behavior like anything else. Now I know a few years ago, moderation got a bit further involved in gameplay and its name-calling and I was not a huge fan of that, but I also recognize the challenge with creating what terms are objectively okay and what are not.

Going back to the why, I think another reason why there is such murkiness about what is seen as IC vs. OOC has been the application of RL morales and rules into the game. Now, I get that this is impossible to not happen since the way we all think is framed in the real world. But NS is not the real world. So when we try to apply a universalism framework of RL rules of what is bad vs. good and use OOC language (griefing, harassment, bullying, etc), it makes things more complicated. I will use an example of how I have seen some defenders characterize raiders since that is something I have decent knowledge about. When raiders are regarded as bullies or other words related to that, this creates an OOC image of what players who raid are. Now I get that this makes it easier to recruit for liberations and all of that, but for those who are not active participants in GP (and even to some who are), it perpetuates the idea that the people who raid are bad people (OOC). That isn't me saying that moralism or other IC philosophies that push OOC beliefs should necessarily be removed, but I am saying things like that adds to the murkiness.

I'm not sure if there is a clear answer to addressing all of this. I would say though that I don't think a strict dualistic mentality where we are placing labels on everything makes the most sense.

[Mathuvan Union]

So, everything now is IC instead of OOC unless tagged so?

I'd be happy with this.

Yay, I made a relevant point.