Two-Bit Con Artist
I don't normally wade into these, but there's a facet of this that I feel has been getting over looked recently, in a number of situations across a number of individuals.
So I am going to put a gentle reminder here that not everyone is always going to agree on just what is sufficient for 'IC motivation'. What one person thinks is good motivation for their character to do something IC may not match up with another's. And that is not the same thing as having 'no IC reason' to do a thing. It's very easy to look at someone's stated IC reasons and dismiss them because they do not match up with how you (collective) would do it- or worse, assume that because you have not personally been told their IC reasons, that therefore they have none.
This comes down to a two-fold issue of assuming the worst and lack of communication, and both of those things impede RP. Many, many times (not always, because there are certainly occasions where it's cut and dry), issues like this end up boiling down to assumptions and lack of communication, rather than one side of the complaint being right and the other side being wrong. This can lead to rulings that folks are unhappy with on both sides, because deciding who has the 'correct' IC motivation to justify an action is not how it works in a free form RP of this size.
There are a hundred thousand ways to play this weird game we have, and a hundred thousand potential motivations to act it out. Most of the time, people actually aren't trying to be deliberate jerks. But the assumption that 'I don't like this, therefore this person is clearly in the wrong/clearly trying to wrong me' is a matter of attitude adjustment and communication. Sometimes, someone will just be being a jerk. But actually communicating with them and going 'okay, is this actually something wrong or just not how *I* would do this?' is a necessary component to figuring out how to move forward.
So I am going to put a gentle reminder here that not everyone is always going to agree on just what is sufficient for 'IC motivation'. What one person thinks is good motivation for their character to do something IC may not match up with another's. And that is not the same thing as having 'no IC reason' to do a thing. It's very easy to look at someone's stated IC reasons and dismiss them because they do not match up with how you (collective) would do it- or worse, assume that because you have not personally been told their IC reasons, that therefore they have none.
This comes down to a two-fold issue of assuming the worst and lack of communication, and both of those things impede RP. Many, many times (not always, because there are certainly occasions where it's cut and dry), issues like this end up boiling down to assumptions and lack of communication, rather than one side of the complaint being right and the other side being wrong. This can lead to rulings that folks are unhappy with on both sides, because deciding who has the 'correct' IC motivation to justify an action is not how it works in a free form RP of this size.
There are a hundred thousand ways to play this weird game we have, and a hundred thousand potential motivations to act it out. Most of the time, people actually aren't trying to be deliberate jerks. But the assumption that 'I don't like this, therefore this person is clearly in the wrong/clearly trying to wrong me' is a matter of attitude adjustment and communication. Sometimes, someone will just be being a jerk. But actually communicating with them and going 'okay, is this actually something wrong or just not how *I* would do this?' is a necessary component to figuring out how to move forward.
