Hey there, Ay here!
This isn’t a tutorial, but more of an explanation as to what God-Modding and Meta-Gaming are. There has been a lot of confusion in the Tumblr RPC with this and I just want to really make these two things clear.
They are NOT the same!
You will see a lot of groups and even indie RP blogs tell you that you shouldn’t god-mod/meta-game. Please be very mindful of this because not everyone knows that these are actual huge “no’s” in the RP community.
Let me explain God-Modding first since that’s a doozy of a problem still and I have no idea why it is.
God-Modding is making someone else’s character do something without the player’s permission. Think of it like this: if you were talking to someone and all of a sudden they made you do something you wouldn’t normally do, how would you feel? Miserable, right? That’s God-Modding. Sure, there are players who don’t mind it...but they want you to talk to them first before it’s posted. This isn’t forums where you have to go back and forth in an inbox for days on end to get through a post. People like to be asked about these things. Back on IMVU, it drove me crazy when I’d have friends invite me into group rooms and sit there and read through T1 posts (those are considered several multiple-paragraphs/pages in Tumblr/Tabletop standards) just to make sure someone wasn’t god-modding. I once spent eight hours reading and refereeing the entire interaction. In Tumblr, this would bring concern to the Admins and it could mean several consequences for you and your character. If you say you’ve been RPing for years, then you know this is a huge nopeity-nope on practically everyone’s rules. So, please, God-Modding is a NO unless you get the okie-dokie from the other player(s).
Now, as for meta-gaming. This gets confused for god-modding so often and they are slightly similar but not the same thing. Let me explain.
Meta-Gaming is knowing something OOC (out of character), like information about a character that was given to another player, but then used IC (in character) without the other player’s permission. Let’s say a character has a secret that no one knows, but you have your character knowing it and talking about it to the other character. That, there, is meta-gaming. Or another great example is a character knowing the weakness of another character. For instance, let’s say you’re playing a person who just met someone who’s super rude. You and the other player are friends and they disclose their character’s greatest fear. You use that fear IC to gain the advantage. That is Meta-Gaming. You can’t use OOC information in the game. You cannot, I repeat, CANNOT do that. Imagine if you were that player, the one who trusted you with that information and it was just all blown away because it was used IC. You’d feel pretty crappy, right? Imagine how the other player feels when you do that.
Neither of these are fair, and I get it...life isn’t fair. But, really, this isn’t life. It’s a game. You play fair in sports, you play fair with boardgames and card games. It’s why it’s called a Roleplaying Game, not life.
So, in conclusion: be respectful, always ask for permission, and don’t assume anything is IC unless stated otherwise. Are we clear? Good.
Thanks for taking the time to read this!