Shattered Kingdoms

I hope this isn't a question that is addressed elsewhere, but I've searched everywhere I could think to and still found nothing specifically pertaining to it. I stumbled across Shattered Kingdoms a few months ago, enjoyed it greatly, and pulled a few friends in along with me. We are all still pretty much lost in the abyss of newbness, and are all brand new to the RP required environment.

Now for the question! Is it illegal to create characters to roleplay as siblings? We think it would be fun, we have developed a rough outline of the background for this family, but we do not want to continue development if it would be considered wrong. Is it too much OOC information?

Obviously for this sort of thing, there is OOC information, so we know where we're coming from, and who we are. (We need to all know if Mama died when we were young or if Papa was a drunk.) We think it would be great fun to RP. Especially since we're new to the environment, it would be a guideline to keep us in mind of who our characters are rather than random, soulless, homeless, aimless personas who blunder around blindly. (Yes, instead there would be a whole family of us. C'est la vie.)

Your kind input is much appreciated.

-Threnody (and co.)

It's perfectly legal to create such groups. They, in fact, happen fairly often, though most of them die out quickly. Many players, vets and newbies, create chars at the same time that RP as having being siblings/neighbors/etc.

Btw, welcome to SK!

I am not authorised to officially answer this one, but I think it is perfectly legal, since you simply OOCly design your charaters' background, and it stays up to that. Afterall, this is how I started in SK, playing Izion Xan, Aesarom Xan's brother (elf mages). And yes, it was incredible fun. Hope you have the same, too.

As long as you, yourself, the person behind the keyboard doesn't control two characters that know each other, all is good.

At least I think one player having two chars that know each other is in violation.

One player making two characters that know each other is frowned upon, in general, if both characters are 'active'. A lot of people have played one character and then that character's child, which is generally OK.

Where it ceases to be OK is when specific information, particuarly information about the game itself, is transferred from one character to another, including (but not limited to) quest solutions, item locations, PC affiliations, and so on. There's a lot of gray area here, but in general if your character would have no way to know something, but still acts on it either to their benefit or the harm of someone else, it's illegal and if caught, you can expect to be punished for it.

In the case of Threnody's question, it sounds like all the information which will be shared is information that the players will be making up, not information contained within the game. In this case, I'd see nothing wrong with it.

Sharing In-Character information via Out-of-Character means is illegal, however the information that you are sharing with each other is character *history* -- events and so on that happened prior to creation are not what I would consider information that has been leaked *from* the game out into the out-of-character arena. In fact, my opinion is that such a shared history adds depth to all of the characters involved.

The challenge for you all is not to 'chat' to each other outside the game about what has happened on a day to day basis with each of your characters -- that is unmistakeably sharing IC info OOCly. If you need to talk to each other, be sure to find each other in the game (use tells, etc) or if you're not on at the same time, post a note on a noteboard addressed to the correct person.

Hope that helps explain the intent behind 'not sharing IC information via OOC means'. Read HELP RULES and HELP MULTIPLAY if you haven't already, and of course feel free to ask more questions here in the newbie forum.

I was given to understand that it was not taking IC information ooc, but rather the taking of ooc information IC that was against the rules. There are several log pages filled with IC information from SKs, and if the taking of IC information ooc is against the rules, wouldn't that mean you'd have to delete every single character whose player posted a log somewhere?

Likewise, I'd always assumed that talking oocly about what's happened to you ICly is fine over IMs, and that it only became a problem if somebody used that oocly-obtained information IC somehow.

Sure you can take stuff IC to OOC, its what bragging logs are all about. But if you take that now-OOC log back IC, that's whats frowned upon. Sure, as IC brothers that are friends OOC you can talk about what's happened as common talk, but you are not allowed to make any decisions or act upon any of that knowledge IC'ly.
Example:

Brothers A and B are friends and room mates.
BrotherA gets home from work early and logs in
xxx kills brotherA.
BrotherB gets home.
A can show B the log about how he got owned.
B logs in.
B CANNOT deal out revenge until A tells his IC'ly what happened.

Another thing to watch out for is what I call 'panic buttons'. When something happens IC'ly, and there is an OOC consequence. Another Example:

xxx kills yyy.
yyy logs on to IRC/AIM/YIM/MSN/any other online messenger
zzz is on said messenger and has some influence IC
yyy talks to zzz ooc'ly, "hey, this guy killed/offended me, and I don't like him, punish him for me?
zzz logs in and coincidentally yyy imeditelly sends him a tell with a complaint
zzz tarnish/blemish/kill xxx.

while the pseudo-IC complaint occured, the multiplay is acting from ooc info.

This next part is shady for me, I've heard its ok, and that its not ok, but I still avoid it to be on the safe side.

xxx dies.
xxx goes to messenger
yyy is on, and gets a message from xxx 'hey rezz me'
yyy logs in to SK and brings back the dead xxx.

Hope it helps, more importantly hope the info is correct, if anyone knows any of the above is wrong be sure to correct me, wouldn't want to give wrong advise.

Don't touch this with any length pole. Such use to be a lot more common place, but if you're logging a character on simply because you were told to ress someone you're acting purely on OOC motivation. I believe it was an IMM that first posted of the badness of this action and that it was punishable by deletion. Further if you are in game with another character and are told 'Hey log your priest on, I'm dead,' that person is also now deletable, as they are using OOC knowledge of you as a player directly in the game and asking you to cheat. <- Such has happened. And of course double dumb*beep* on you if you actually do as someone tells you in such a case.

Of course contact/being contacted by someone off game, with a vast amount of RP it might not appear so horrid, and be harder to trace, unless of course you always seem to appear at the most opportune of times.

There was however a period in long ago times where these act was much more common place. A person or group would log in, ress (or just PK someone) and then log out without too much of a word or a trace.) all because they were told to do something quick via a IM/phone call/nudge of an elbow in a computer lab.

This also goes in the same spirit of PKing someone (reasons IC valid and just unknown to victim, or otherwise) and logging off as soon as the pulse goes to avoid further RP/interaction, or logging out simply to get rid of an undesired spell effect and logging back in. 'Winning ESKAY' should never be about who has the best OOC timing to be logged in and out of game, based on their own timing of the moment, or having someone log in a priest just to avoid the Afterlife.'

How else not to multiplay:

Also, one should not be making characters simply to attempt to handle what they think is cheating or hoarding between two other young players. While you might come up with some highly original RP to justify what you're doing, (in making a character to deal with the situation) its a lot easier for the administration to do its job if you simply log the situation and send it into an administrator (wizlist is a list of their email addresses, and generally the best way to contact them is by email). While there may be various shades of gray and opinions surrounding this action (and I won't speak against the most recent one accused of this - cos well those who have really have been trying in another forum here just wound up seeing more who can [REDACTED] more in the cup without the valid exchange of any actual valid or factual information). I have previously been in the situation watching of someone cheat. I prayed about it, heard no response, and continued to just attempt to RP with this person in the mean time to get them to modify their bad behavior without success. Repeated attempts at prayer and trying to RP a cheater to stop his actions had no success.

At this time, the whole law system was fairly new to the game, and I wasn't in the mood to get jailed for attempting to 'handle' this character's rule breaking. I made a newbie with the adjective Taslamaran, made him a giant barbarian, just to max out the chances I could PK this individual if it came to it, levelled up to 5 quickly, and headed out to see if this person was still causing trouble (he was). A bit of RP and a couple of PK's later, I'm contacted by staff to hold off. The individual in question was then taken aside and was dealt with separately. I was informed at that point pretty much 'Thanks for trying to help, two wrongs don't make a right, and tend to interfere with what we need to do in cases like this. That's why we can't support you or this action.' I was told to delete my newbie, and never repeat such an action (creating an alt to try and stop cheaters), as any other characters I had would be punishable by deletion.

Now, while this may or not have happened in the more recent case, my advice is to just steer well clear of the grey line in this situation. It may very well spare you your own run-in with staff, and certainly dodge a very colorful metephored forum.

Riley