Abilities/Skills 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!
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!