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Great discussion, glad I asked!
Okay now here's a few golats worth from the asker <grin>
As I mentioned, I started out in an RP-encouraged game. At the time, it was (and still is) advertised as an RPG. To me, RPG means roleplaying game. It doesn't mean RP-encouraged, or RP tolerated, or RP accepted. It means roleplay is the primary focus. Unfortunately, their policies were very loosely written, and specified that roleplay was encouraged and being in-character was required. Well, that just made no sense at all. If you're not roleplaying, you're not being in character. If you are roleplaying, then you are being in character. So which was it? RP, or not RP? The answer, was that there was no answer.
It was a roleplay-encouraged game. The staff would "poof" into the game as GMs and not as NPCs, so if you needed help from a staff member everyone in the room would see:
>GM Tollhouse crashes through a cloud on a chocolate chip cookie!
And yet...if a player did something like...
>Delirioso says, "hey u going to the mets game this weekend"
they would be subject to bring brought into the consultation lounge by a GM or given an "official" warning.
I found this RP-encouraged atmosphere to be so inconsistent that I eventually left for a "real" RPG. In the game I play now, hunting and crafting provide the "standard" advancement abilities, just like in other "encouraged" MU*s. But RP is supported by the staff, and there is 100% consistancy. Someone saying what Delirioso said in my example would be told privately by other players to keep it in character.
In-character was equally as important as in-genre, the two go hand in hand. One is pointless without the other. And so while..
>Delerioso says, "wilt thou makest it to the mets game anon?" is in genre speech, it is not in genre for the world since there IS no mets game in that world, nor is it in character, since the character OF that world would have no knowledge of a mets game.
Not talking about real-world things doesn't constitute IC behavior. Being IC means immersing yourself into the world enough that you actually take on the role of your character, thus being IN- character. OOC doesn't necessarily mean only talking about real-world things.
Someone pretending to drop-kick a misalen down the stair, while the misalen character is standing there plain as day, is being OOC as well. Someone taking an in-game relationship out into real life, and then being jealous "in character" when their in-game mate kisses another character *in the game* is being OOC as well.
Any instance of crossing the lines between in-game and out-of-game is out of character, precisely because the character has no knowledge of anything beyond the confines and limits of the artifically created textual world. The same goes for a character that dies, the player logs off, 10 minutes later another character suddenly appears at that location who just so happens to be capable of resurrecting the corpse, the dead character reappears, and lives happily ever after. To me, that's cheating. It's bringing info out of the game, and taking OOC knowledge into the game to prevent "bad things" from happening to your character.
In a RP-encouraged world, things like this might be allowed. In some, they're even perfectly acceptable and standard fare. The ones who want to RP are limited, because "everyone else" is cheating in ordered to advance, yet they don't want to cheat. They want to play within the confines and limitations of the game.
But I think, like I've read in a few other folks' posts, that many of us start out in an RP-encouraged game, and determine based on our experiences there which way we are heading, and then head there.
Maybe that's why I'm in the RPG now instead of the RP-encouraged. Maybe that's why some folks are in the pure-PK games and not in the RP-encouraged. The "encouraged" seems to be more of a stepping stone to wherever we will ultimately end up.
R
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