Genessia Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
plungeintofire) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
genessia_ooc2017-05-24 07:00 pm
plungeintofire) wrote in genessia_ooc2017-05-24 07:00 pm
Levels of Inference
Hi everyone! First off, we'd like to apologize for the confusion at the last post regarding Fanon/Headcanon. The phrasing was less than ideal and it caused a lot of stress and questions that we hadn't intended at all. While it was clear to us moderators because of some of the circumstances that had lead us to need to address the situation, our post had caused a larger misunderstanding with all of you. In order to improve clarity and hopefully decrease some of the anxiety that went around about that post, we've decided to redefine and rewrite it as "Acceptable Levels of Inference."
What is a Level of Inference?
A Level of Inference essentially is the scale of the information you are assuming about a character and utilizing within the game setting. We would like players to stick as close to their canon source as possible. Acceptable sources are the original series/book/movie/game/whatever the character is from, "Word of God" sources like interviews and panel discussions from creators, or out-of-series official publications such as art books, character books, shorts, documentary or supplemental information, etc. Essentially as long as it came from the people who created the character, it's a good source.
What is an Acceptable Level of Inference?
Inferring small things like birthdates, favorite ice cream, whether your character likes to sleep on their stomach, or other small behaviors or information that don't interfere with overall characterization so much as define your interpretation of the character are 100% acceptable. Inferring small details of backstory that are essentially flavor text (something that may add realism or depth to an existing detail, but doesn't change the context or affect the character in a meaningful way) are acceptable.
What is an Unacceptable Level of Inference?
An Unacceptable Level of Inference would be anything that changes what a character is capable of, changes the context of a character's characterization without due evidence, or outright makes up information that would have an impact on the characterization or story itself. This includes abilities that are not utilized or flatly stated to exist in canon, both supernatural and mundane, significant backstory, or information your character knows regarding the plot of their canon that is not outright stated.
Still unclear? Check out some examples.
Can characters develop abilities, learn new skills, or learn canon information in-game that they may not know in canon?
Yes, of course, but please keep it reasonable. Whenever characters are training in or learning new skills, make sure they are doing this in a believable way. What this means is if character A wants to learn martial arts but has never trained a day in their lives, they shouldn't become a master in it within a few months. If a character is naturally a fast learner or has an ability where they can copy a skill after watching a video, of course, what's reasonable for the character is going to be different but for the vast majority, this should be something to stick by.
How are the mods planning on enforcing this?
Honestly, mods cannot possibly be familiar with every canon in this game, cannot have CR with every character in the game, and don't have time to read through every thread in existence to actively police everyone, so we may not know or realize something is happening. It's a huge game; we all have lives, do other mod work, and would like to RP at some point too. As with any other rule, if you see someone in violation, please notify us and include the evidence that you saw of the rule violation. If you're just concerned about something, you can always contact us and we'll look into it, but without current (last couple of months) and clear evidence, we can't do much. This is a relaxed game and we do rely on self-policing a lot of the time, but we always encourage you to follow the same rule as the actual police department (at least where Tay-mod lives): "If you see something, say something." Just because it's not personally affecting you doesn't mean it's not negatively impacting someone else who may be too nervous or afraid to speak up because they don't want to cause trouble. It's not trouble, and we won't tell anyone who told us about a situation unless it's a specified contact restriction between players. This goes for any rule in the game. We're here to help and we're here to moderate, not police, but we're always open to contact from any player (and that goes for all three mods).
Link to mod contact page.
(Note: The only mod-related thing you should never contact us privately at is the mod plurk. Seriously, we mostly only log in when we're going to share something we posted and we just mark all as read on there, so we're probably not going to see anything if you send it that way. If it were an email, it would be noreply@genessia.com.)
That's it! Please let us know if you have any further questions and we hope this was helpful in being as un-vague and stressless as possible (we know it's a lot of reading but we wanted to make sure to address everything that came up as clearly as possible).
What is a Level of Inference?
A Level of Inference essentially is the scale of the information you are assuming about a character and utilizing within the game setting. We would like players to stick as close to their canon source as possible. Acceptable sources are the original series/book/movie/game/whatever the character is from, "Word of God" sources like interviews and panel discussions from creators, or out-of-series official publications such as art books, character books, shorts, documentary or supplemental information, etc. Essentially as long as it came from the people who created the character, it's a good source.
What is an Acceptable Level of Inference?
Inferring small things like birthdates, favorite ice cream, whether your character likes to sleep on their stomach, or other small behaviors or information that don't interfere with overall characterization so much as define your interpretation of the character are 100% acceptable. Inferring small details of backstory that are essentially flavor text (something that may add realism or depth to an existing detail, but doesn't change the context or affect the character in a meaningful way) are acceptable.
What is an Unacceptable Level of Inference?
An Unacceptable Level of Inference would be anything that changes what a character is capable of, changes the context of a character's characterization without due evidence, or outright makes up information that would have an impact on the characterization or story itself. This includes abilities that are not utilized or flatly stated to exist in canon, both supernatural and mundane, significant backstory, or information your character knows regarding the plot of their canon that is not outright stated.
Still unclear? Check out some examples.
Can characters develop abilities, learn new skills, or learn canon information in-game that they may not know in canon?
Yes, of course, but please keep it reasonable. Whenever characters are training in or learning new skills, make sure they are doing this in a believable way. What this means is if character A wants to learn martial arts but has never trained a day in their lives, they shouldn't become a master in it within a few months. If a character is naturally a fast learner or has an ability where they can copy a skill after watching a video, of course, what's reasonable for the character is going to be different but for the vast majority, this should be something to stick by.
How are the mods planning on enforcing this?
Honestly, mods cannot possibly be familiar with every canon in this game, cannot have CR with every character in the game, and don't have time to read through every thread in existence to actively police everyone, so we may not know or realize something is happening. It's a huge game; we all have lives, do other mod work, and would like to RP at some point too. As with any other rule, if you see someone in violation, please notify us and include the evidence that you saw of the rule violation. If you're just concerned about something, you can always contact us and we'll look into it, but without current (last couple of months) and clear evidence, we can't do much. This is a relaxed game and we do rely on self-policing a lot of the time, but we always encourage you to follow the same rule as the actual police department (at least where Tay-mod lives): "If you see something, say something." Just because it's not personally affecting you doesn't mean it's not negatively impacting someone else who may be too nervous or afraid to speak up because they don't want to cause trouble. It's not trouble, and we won't tell anyone who told us about a situation unless it's a specified contact restriction between players. This goes for any rule in the game. We're here to help and we're here to moderate, not police, but we're always open to contact from any player (and that goes for all three mods).
Link to mod contact page.
(Note: The only mod-related thing you should never contact us privately at is the mod plurk. Seriously, we mostly only log in when we're going to share something we posted and we just mark all as read on there, so we're probably not going to see anything if you send it that way. If it were an email, it would be noreply@genessia.com.)
That's it! Please let us know if you have any further questions and we hope this was helpful in being as un-vague and stressless as possible (we know it's a lot of reading but we wanted to make sure to address everything that came up as clearly as possible).
Examples
With abilities it means that you must use your character's abilities as they are stated within the source material. We'll use telepathy as an example. If your character has a vague description like "telepath," use the base description of that. A telepath is someone who can read minds, therefore, your character can communicate their thoughts and read the thoughts of others without using physical senses. An unacceptable level of inference with this ability would then be taking that ability to mean that they can change what someone is thinking, mindbreak someone, lock them in their own mind, put thoughts into their head that they believe to be their own, alter their emotions, control their thoughts or actions, etc. Though there are some telepaths who might be able to do this in their source material, unless your character specifically has actually done it or it has been stated that they would be capable of it in the source material, you should not assume they are capable of it here in Genessia. However, what would be acceptable in terms of usage would be how your character uses the gift they canonically have. Typically, a person may be able t imitate another’s voice in their thoughts, so while communicating they may be able to imitate a voice during the communication and make suggestions if they are well-practiced and have good concentration. While not strictly manipulating the mind, it could influence a character who is easily suggestible but would not be an overstep of power. Ultimately it would be up to the character to decide if they acted on that thought or not. You could have your character put their thoughts in their head all the time and try to convince the character that they were going crazy, but you couldn't just magically make them go insane.
In a more mundane example, if your character is a thief, an Acceptable Level of Inference would be to assume that they know a few slight of hand tricks or how to pick a lock or that they're very good at hiding things on their body where no one would think to look. Perhaps (depending on the type of thief) they might be excellent at intimidation techniques. An Unacceptable Level of Inference would be to assume that they're fully capable of performing a bank heist on their own without any evidence that they have knowledge of security systems or how to drill into vaults or fight off armed guards. Do not assume your character is going to pull off a high-speed car chase because they've pickpocketed a senator before. But if they've gotten that close to a senator, you can sure as heck assume that they know how to behave in political circumstances (a social skill) to have gotten that close. This of course, goes with more from-the-left-field examples as well. If your character has super strength, they can't have laser beam eyes just because they wear sunglasses like Cyclops. If your character is an investment banker and there is no evidence in canon, don't assume that they're a firearms expert.
Backstory Examples
Backstory is a little trickier because a lot of us might make-up 'one time in bandcamp' stories that help flavor our character. (Though typically much less risque than band camp stories, but not always.) If your character is a rich kid, they might have backstory flavor stories you can add in like how they had a favorite nanny growing up who used to always make them chocolate parfaits and they would always watch, so it's the only thing they really know how to make in the kitchen. Or a character might make a lot of pop culture references and be kind of a loner-type, so you can add in a backstory element about how they used to like to sneak into movie theaters when they were a kid when their parents were out of town because they liked the escapism. These sorts of stories are fine and totally fall under Acceptable Levels of Inference as long as it doesn't contradict anything in canon.
On the other hand, if your character is a detective and their story is essentially focused on their adult life so you don't know much about their childhood at all, an Unacceptable Inference would be that they were a child soldier and they decided to become a detective so they could bring justice to the world. That's a huge difference of scale for assumed information and would drastically change the context of the character's entire world. Even if there's specific nothing that could contradict it in canon it absolutely does not make it acceptable.
Context and Informational Examples
This one is a little bit tougher to example, particularly because it gets close to infomodding in terms of what it is but may sometimes be misconstrued as acceptable because a large number of people think someone might know information. An example of this that covers both context and information that I gave in the Plurk discussion was of Milly from Code Geass. For those who aren't familiar, the main character of Code Geass has a secret identity as a masked vigilante/terrorist (depending on your POV). Lelouch, the main character, grew up with the character named Milly and as a result have a very close relationship in the canon’s present timeline. There is zero canonical evidence that Milly knows that Lelouch is Zero. Despite this, a vast number of fans assume that Milly knows his secret just because she knows Lelouch well enough to have figured it out. This changes the entire context of the character Milly within the series as well as assumes she knows information vital to the plot that could've been vastly influential had she spoken up. While it's fine in fanfiction or fanart, etc. in RP you do have to play with other people, so playing Milly as if she knew all along could potentially affect every single character in the cast and puts this Inference on the "Unacceptable" level because of the potential impact.
An Acceptable Inference, however, would be assuming that she’s aware that Lelouch might’ve been acting differently than normal. It’s not significant enough to have an impact on the context, but still allows Milly to be aware that something’s up with her childhood friend- she just may not be aware of what. In a non-Code Geass example, if a character is typically selfless and canonically aware of a significant amount of suffering in the world, it would be acceptable to infer that their motivation for a significant action that they took would be those factors even though it’s not explicitly stated in canon.
If you aren't sure if something would be acceptable or not, you're always welcome to ask a moderator!