Alndys
Mercenary, Artist.
Okay, so, there's been some confusion as to what, exactly, constituted God Modding and @ opened the floor if anyone wanted to write a comprehensive guide. So, as someone who's been actively roleplaying half of my life, here's my attempt to define and explain God Mode.
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What, exactly is God Mode - or Godmoding, Godmodding, Powergaming, Metagaming, however you decide to spell it - in the context of forum RP? Simply put, it is when you play God. It's something that most of us have done in the course of our careers of Roleplayers and writers, and although it is almost universally considered bad form... much like the Dark Side, it is a seductive power and you may find yourself slipping into the behavior without even knowing it until someone calls you out. Well, I believe whole-heartedly that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!
Here are some examples of behavior that would be considered playing in God Mode, and why:
Example: Jedi Joe saw Darth Buttmunch's flurry of blows and backpedaled, watching the attacking villain's blows slide right by him harmlessly. Spotting a hole in Darth Buttmunch's defenses, Jedi Joe lunged forward and struck, severing Buttmunch's saber hand at the elbow! The hand floated through the air, landing atop Darth Buttmunch's Doomsday Machine Mark I, and rolled to one side - shutting the machine off via the finger print reader!
Acting quickly, Darth Buttmunch hit the 'report' button and retconned the whole thread.
The usual logic:
We all put care and love into our characters. We make them cool and fun and interesting, because that makes them fun to RP. We remember every training thread our characters have been in, every battle that contributes to their skill. After all, if we rolled our character to be the ultimate stealth recon sniper, what fun is it if everyone in the thread spots us on our first post? No, we're here to kick butt and chew bubblegum, and there are no gum trees in the known Galaxy.
How to avoid this:
Okay, so, you want to be cool and capable and win fights. But you can't just drop this on people and expect not to step on toes. In the words of a wise man of our times, the key is to Stop, collaborate, and listen. Before you launch into combat with any other Player character, have an OOC chat with them. Have a defined winner before you even begin, so that when Darth Buttmunch's nefarious plans get foiled, it's because he OOCly acknowledged that he couldn't REALLY blow up half the galaxy and -you- were the hero to stop him.
But on the other hand, you can't win every fight. And you certainly can't do so unscathed. Darth Buttmunch loves his Sith as much as Jedi Joe loves his, and he's going to want to win some, too. He deserves to get his licks in as much as Jedi Joe does, even if - as we've established - he can't really blow up half the galaxy. Just like we all learned to share our toys in kindergarden, you should share the limelight - and the victories.
The Solution:
So, using this information, the invincible Jedi Joe sends Darth Buttmunch a private message before the Dominion thread starts and they have an OOC conversation before the IC heated battle. Darth Buttmunch agrees that his character must be stopped, but he doesn't want to be curbstomped! He and Jedi Joe agree to a pitched battle where both combatants barely limp away, but with no dismemberment or super-serious injuries. Jedi Joe and Darth Buttmunch battle for three pages, and the fight is considered one of the cooler ones in the thread; both players walk away satisfied, and more people want to RP with them because of it.
Example:
Darth Buttmunch glared down his hated rival, Jedi Joe, after the pitched battle they'd just had in front of his doomsday machine Mark II. "You can cut ME down, Joe, but the machine is still running!" He cackled despite his wounds, knowing that the only way Joe could stop the process now would be to enter the access code: name of Darth Buttmunch's corgi, repeated thrice, a secret known only to the Emperor and Buttmunch himself.
"You shouldn't have picked such an obvious password." Jedi Joe smirked at his foe. He strode to the control panel and typed in twelve letters - DOGE - three times. With an anticlimactic whirr, the machine shut down.
Darth Buttmunch, who knew for FACT that Jedi Joe didn't even so much as know the hair color of the reclusive emperor, could only gape as Jedi Joe typed in the secret name of his beloved pet. And then he hit the report button.
The Usual Logic:
Intuition only goes so far. Sometimes, you just gotta know stuff. Jedi Joe has an OOC reputation as a philanderer, and it's a running joke on the boards that he'll flirt with anything that has a pulse... but ICly, he's always behaved himself in front of his girlfriend, Smuggler Susie, and their mutual associates. Susie, OOCly sick of this, decides that she has an IC list of every woman he's ever so much as winked at and marches right up to Jedi Joe in the middle of a battle to confront him, because of course she knows exactly where he is. Funny, right? Everyone loves a deconstruction?
No. It's obnoxious and rude.
How to Avoid this:
Don't do it. Even if it's just a little thing, even if you're RPing a person with Holmesian levels of deducitve reasoning, nobody likes being completely revealed in seconds. Jedi Joe has been slipping towards the Dark Side ever since his last battle, but does that mean that every Padawan from Coruscant to Tython knows him by voice and that he kind of maybe enjoyed beating up Darth Buttmunch a bit too much for his own comfort? Of course not. Find it out in RP, or ignore it. It's just good manners. If you feel like you can figure something out through logic, show your work! Include it in your post, so we know how your thought process worked.
The Solution:
Before the climactic battle in front of Darth Buttmunch's Doomsday Machine MK II, Jedi Joe delves into his foe's psychology and tries to find out what made him so... well, so much of a Buttmunch. One shady night, an envoy sent by one of Darth Buttmunch's rivals in the Sith Order comes to Jedi Joe and offers him information that'd prove to be useful: the name of Buttmunch's only friend in the universe, his beloved Corgi, and how Buttmunch has unwisely used the canine's name in repetition for every password since he was a teenager.
Loath to accept help from a servant of the Emperor, Jedi Joe nevertheless files away the information for future use. "The ends justify the means." He grumbled, unsure of himself.
The Example:
Darth Buttmunch howled with laughter as he drop-kicked through a window into Jedi Joe's bedroom, carrying his Doomsday Machine MK 3 under his arm. "Our final show down, Jedi Joe!" He laughed madly. As alarms went off at the intrusion, Jedi Knights began to rush in. Darth Buttmunch pointed to Jedi Joe's bed and grinned. "This man has fallen to the Dark Side - I can sense it. Can't you?" He asked. They all could, and moved in around Jedi Joe... and the next thing Joe knew, he was waking up in a Republic prison cell, restrained, with five Jedi Shadows around him waiting to hear his side, give him a fair trial, and then execute him.
Jedi Joe, stunned that he'd gone from sleeping to under arrest before he could even post, hit the report button.
The Usual Logic:
Look, we get it. Sometimes people aren't doing what you think is best, sometimes you just want to move past the boring parts and get to the juicy bits. Sometimes, everyone else is a total moron and you're the only one who knows what to do. Certainly they won't mind if you just move things along a little bit - it's not God Mode if you just move them down the hallway in your post, right?
Yes, yes it is.
One small caveat here, is that RPers who trust each other will sometimes just simply allow this sort of behavior - like skipping a thread forward a couple of weeks to get to things going on, or assuming that a character's beloved spouse will accept a hug and kiss. Think of this like pinching someone's behind IRL: If you have to ask if it's alright to do it, then it's likely not alright to do it. Either plan it out ahead of time, or hope your rapport with that writer is strong enough that it's no big deal.
How to Avoid This:
Most of us as children were taught that we're not allowed to just put hands on each other whenever we like - can't go around shoving and punching and shanking our classmates, because that is bad. Nobody may touch you without your permission. And this is true of RP, too! Nobody should touch your character without your permission! And neither should you touch anyone else's. Just like the GOD OF WAR needs to learn that not everyone thinks it's great to be beat up by his character, The Hand of God needs to learn that very few people want him to control their characters for them, even in tiny amounts.
The Solution:
Darth Buttmunch, wanting to ICly expose Jedi Joe's recent trend of quiet corruption and ruthlessness, works out a plot OOC with Jedi Joe - Darth Buttmunch will confront Jedi Joe where he lives, reveal all he's observed, and push Jedi Joe further into despair and darkness. The two hash out the plot, then agree on the details, then go about RPing it with no problems whatsoever! With both Jedi Joe and Darth Buttmunch working together, the plot winds up being totally cool and fun to read! Newfound friendship established, Dark Jedi Joe and Darth Buttmunch plan together how they're going to use the Doomsday Machine MK III - but a new hero rises to stop them!
A Conclusion:
Alright, thank you for wading through all of that. I know I can be long winded. In summary, God Mode is almost invariably a result of inconsideration. When you're removing control or choices from another Roleplayer, you are playing in God Mode. When you play so that you are invincible and know everything, you are playing in God Mode. Remember: Winning every battle is worth nothing if nobody wants to Roleplay with your superpowered invincible Warlord! And the golden rule is, if you wouldn't want it done to you, do not do it to anyone else!
By being patient, understanding, and sharing, you'll be drowning in awesome Roleplay for as long as you want it. The keys are simple:
Don't rush.
Don't assume.
Do communicate.
Do sometimes lose.
Don't be a karking God.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What, exactly is God Mode - or Godmoding, Godmodding, Powergaming, Metagaming, however you decide to spell it - in the context of forum RP? Simply put, it is when you play God. It's something that most of us have done in the course of our careers of Roleplayers and writers, and although it is almost universally considered bad form... much like the Dark Side, it is a seductive power and you may find yourself slipping into the behavior without even knowing it until someone calls you out. Well, I believe whole-heartedly that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!
Here are some examples of behavior that would be considered playing in God Mode, and why:
- The Behavior: GOD OF WAR
Example: Jedi Joe saw Darth Buttmunch's flurry of blows and backpedaled, watching the attacking villain's blows slide right by him harmlessly. Spotting a hole in Darth Buttmunch's defenses, Jedi Joe lunged forward and struck, severing Buttmunch's saber hand at the elbow! The hand floated through the air, landing atop Darth Buttmunch's Doomsday Machine Mark I, and rolled to one side - shutting the machine off via the finger print reader!
Acting quickly, Darth Buttmunch hit the 'report' button and retconned the whole thread.
The usual logic:
We all put care and love into our characters. We make them cool and fun and interesting, because that makes them fun to RP. We remember every training thread our characters have been in, every battle that contributes to their skill. After all, if we rolled our character to be the ultimate stealth recon sniper, what fun is it if everyone in the thread spots us on our first post? No, we're here to kick butt and chew bubblegum, and there are no gum trees in the known Galaxy.
How to avoid this:
Okay, so, you want to be cool and capable and win fights. But you can't just drop this on people and expect not to step on toes. In the words of a wise man of our times, the key is to Stop, collaborate, and listen. Before you launch into combat with any other Player character, have an OOC chat with them. Have a defined winner before you even begin, so that when Darth Buttmunch's nefarious plans get foiled, it's because he OOCly acknowledged that he couldn't REALLY blow up half the galaxy and -you- were the hero to stop him.
But on the other hand, you can't win every fight. And you certainly can't do so unscathed. Darth Buttmunch loves his Sith as much as Jedi Joe loves his, and he's going to want to win some, too. He deserves to get his licks in as much as Jedi Joe does, even if - as we've established - he can't really blow up half the galaxy. Just like we all learned to share our toys in kindergarden, you should share the limelight - and the victories.
The Solution:
So, using this information, the invincible Jedi Joe sends Darth Buttmunch a private message before the Dominion thread starts and they have an OOC conversation before the IC heated battle. Darth Buttmunch agrees that his character must be stopped, but he doesn't want to be curbstomped! He and Jedi Joe agree to a pitched battle where both combatants barely limp away, but with no dismemberment or super-serious injuries. Jedi Joe and Darth Buttmunch battle for three pages, and the fight is considered one of the cooler ones in the thread; both players walk away satisfied, and more people want to RP with them because of it.
- The Behavior: Omniscience
Example:
Darth Buttmunch glared down his hated rival, Jedi Joe, after the pitched battle they'd just had in front of his doomsday machine Mark II. "You can cut ME down, Joe, but the machine is still running!" He cackled despite his wounds, knowing that the only way Joe could stop the process now would be to enter the access code: name of Darth Buttmunch's corgi, repeated thrice, a secret known only to the Emperor and Buttmunch himself.
"You shouldn't have picked such an obvious password." Jedi Joe smirked at his foe. He strode to the control panel and typed in twelve letters - DOGE - three times. With an anticlimactic whirr, the machine shut down.
Darth Buttmunch, who knew for FACT that Jedi Joe didn't even so much as know the hair color of the reclusive emperor, could only gape as Jedi Joe typed in the secret name of his beloved pet. And then he hit the report button.
The Usual Logic:
Intuition only goes so far. Sometimes, you just gotta know stuff. Jedi Joe has an OOC reputation as a philanderer, and it's a running joke on the boards that he'll flirt with anything that has a pulse... but ICly, he's always behaved himself in front of his girlfriend, Smuggler Susie, and their mutual associates. Susie, OOCly sick of this, decides that she has an IC list of every woman he's ever so much as winked at and marches right up to Jedi Joe in the middle of a battle to confront him, because of course she knows exactly where he is. Funny, right? Everyone loves a deconstruction?
No. It's obnoxious and rude.
How to Avoid this:
Don't do it. Even if it's just a little thing, even if you're RPing a person with Holmesian levels of deducitve reasoning, nobody likes being completely revealed in seconds. Jedi Joe has been slipping towards the Dark Side ever since his last battle, but does that mean that every Padawan from Coruscant to Tython knows him by voice and that he kind of maybe enjoyed beating up Darth Buttmunch a bit too much for his own comfort? Of course not. Find it out in RP, or ignore it. It's just good manners. If you feel like you can figure something out through logic, show your work! Include it in your post, so we know how your thought process worked.
The Solution:
Before the climactic battle in front of Darth Buttmunch's Doomsday Machine MK II, Jedi Joe delves into his foe's psychology and tries to find out what made him so... well, so much of a Buttmunch. One shady night, an envoy sent by one of Darth Buttmunch's rivals in the Sith Order comes to Jedi Joe and offers him information that'd prove to be useful: the name of Buttmunch's only friend in the universe, his beloved Corgi, and how Buttmunch has unwisely used the canine's name in repetition for every password since he was a teenager.
Loath to accept help from a servant of the Emperor, Jedi Joe nevertheless files away the information for future use. "The ends justify the means." He grumbled, unsure of himself.
- The Behavior: The Hand of God
The Example:
Darth Buttmunch howled with laughter as he drop-kicked through a window into Jedi Joe's bedroom, carrying his Doomsday Machine MK 3 under his arm. "Our final show down, Jedi Joe!" He laughed madly. As alarms went off at the intrusion, Jedi Knights began to rush in. Darth Buttmunch pointed to Jedi Joe's bed and grinned. "This man has fallen to the Dark Side - I can sense it. Can't you?" He asked. They all could, and moved in around Jedi Joe... and the next thing Joe knew, he was waking up in a Republic prison cell, restrained, with five Jedi Shadows around him waiting to hear his side, give him a fair trial, and then execute him.
Jedi Joe, stunned that he'd gone from sleeping to under arrest before he could even post, hit the report button.
The Usual Logic:
Look, we get it. Sometimes people aren't doing what you think is best, sometimes you just want to move past the boring parts and get to the juicy bits. Sometimes, everyone else is a total moron and you're the only one who knows what to do. Certainly they won't mind if you just move things along a little bit - it's not God Mode if you just move them down the hallway in your post, right?
Yes, yes it is.
One small caveat here, is that RPers who trust each other will sometimes just simply allow this sort of behavior - like skipping a thread forward a couple of weeks to get to things going on, or assuming that a character's beloved spouse will accept a hug and kiss. Think of this like pinching someone's behind IRL: If you have to ask if it's alright to do it, then it's likely not alright to do it. Either plan it out ahead of time, or hope your rapport with that writer is strong enough that it's no big deal.
How to Avoid This:
Most of us as children were taught that we're not allowed to just put hands on each other whenever we like - can't go around shoving and punching and shanking our classmates, because that is bad. Nobody may touch you without your permission. And this is true of RP, too! Nobody should touch your character without your permission! And neither should you touch anyone else's. Just like the GOD OF WAR needs to learn that not everyone thinks it's great to be beat up by his character, The Hand of God needs to learn that very few people want him to control their characters for them, even in tiny amounts.
The Solution:
Darth Buttmunch, wanting to ICly expose Jedi Joe's recent trend of quiet corruption and ruthlessness, works out a plot OOC with Jedi Joe - Darth Buttmunch will confront Jedi Joe where he lives, reveal all he's observed, and push Jedi Joe further into despair and darkness. The two hash out the plot, then agree on the details, then go about RPing it with no problems whatsoever! With both Jedi Joe and Darth Buttmunch working together, the plot winds up being totally cool and fun to read! Newfound friendship established, Dark Jedi Joe and Darth Buttmunch plan together how they're going to use the Doomsday Machine MK III - but a new hero rises to stop them!
A Conclusion:
Alright, thank you for wading through all of that. I know I can be long winded. In summary, God Mode is almost invariably a result of inconsideration. When you're removing control or choices from another Roleplayer, you are playing in God Mode. When you play so that you are invincible and know everything, you are playing in God Mode. Remember: Winning every battle is worth nothing if nobody wants to Roleplay with your superpowered invincible Warlord! And the golden rule is, if you wouldn't want it done to you, do not do it to anyone else!
By being patient, understanding, and sharing, you'll be drowning in awesome Roleplay for as long as you want it. The keys are simple:
Don't rush.
Don't assume.
Do communicate.
Do sometimes lose.
Don't be a karking God.