Reason: Many events in game are being influenced by new players OOCly referring to events they’ve heard on the forums, or even RPing suggestions that perhaps something might be astray, or perhaps to be wary of something, just for the safety of their characters or other OOC reasons.
External Examples:
-A certain character can not take over a town because of publicity even if he/she wanted to. OOC wariness of this character stopped this.
-What seemed a ‘feeling’ a character had which was in fact an OOC knowledge of a ‘pirate’
-Other random cases of new players learning stuff on the forums and 1) using knowledge slyly in-game, 2) RPing that their characters had an instinctive ‘gut’ feeling, 3) Attacking others verbally and physically IG because of OOC hatred, and just RPing madness or RPing that, oh, wrong person, etcetera.
Personal Examples:
-Witnessed an occurrence, inflicting physical damage to another character, as a result of the inflictor hearing an OOC event as the inflictor was only young, simply RPing it in.
-Enjoyment slash excitement slash fun ruined of a certain event as it was explosively posted everywhere- has occurred more than three times
-Difficulty to not implement what has been learnt OOCly
-Difficulty to determine what my characters know and what –I- know OOCly.
Discussion: If this were to be implemented, players would be ENCOURAGED to not post or chat about events to the point where it is no longer of any hurry or importance to spread the word on the forums. For example- an event occurs that is really interesting for the player. They get excited, but wait two days. Still excited after 5 days. It dies down after 6 days, and on the seventh day they’ve forgotten. They later remember, but don’t reveal as much details, nor can they ruin the event-causer’s plans.
Also, implementing another side-rule called the Event-Rule, which basically means that players can’t post about an event while it is still red hot or still unfolding.
For example, let’s say a pirate attack occurs. It’s an elaborate plan, and an elaborate attack.
They send several vans into a city, drag all those with crowbars to the vans, drive them away IN SEPARATE directions, after attacking as many people as possible. Then several ships, perhaps 5 or so longboats and a couple of galleons, finish docking and slaughter every civilian in sight. The surviving civilians are dragged inside. The two vans, driven by one young suicidal pirate, begin to return. However, the pirates have now all jumped on to two more vans, and gone after the lone van that went south. They go at the same speed as the van full of crowbar wielding people and eventually kill them all. Then they go north and kill the others. The town has been defeated and only remnants of survivors remain. The doors to homes are broken open, anyone inside is killed.
Now let’s zoom out of this… Pretend there is four days between the start, and when the next lot of vans chase after the singled-out van. If it was talked about or posted on the forums, anyone heading that way would turn around (who wouldn’t turn their character around?) and anyone inside a building would exit, break the lock to the prison, and flee north. Let’s fast-forward and pretend this all happened up until the people inside the singled out vans have been killed. Then what? ‘Oh, that town next door hasn’t sent a trader I … er… asked for. Let’s send an army of 10 or 20 people down and just see … er … what’s happened.’ Or more suttle ‘I’m going down next door to get some wood’ then returns ‘oh dear, pirates!’.
Either way, the Event Rule would stop any OOC influences – at least, those created through the forums.
Thankyou for your time to read this through. If you are reading this thankyou it’s either because you read all my hard work or you skipped the majority down to the last few lines… If the latter, Curse you!!
