On Abilities And “meta-speak"

[Birdsfoot_Violet]

This is not an official staff stance on the matter, but merely my personal opinion and exploration of the concept based on the work I've done. It's not necessarily something that should be enforced on others, or called out on, but just reflected on when one is looking at their own roleplay and how they go about things. It's also just my own 'take' on the matter, and isn't necessarily fact in spite of my hand in the project.


I tend to feel a lot of personal culpability and responsibility for the realization of the implementation of "Abilities" into RP. The project came about because when I was reading the vast pages of the wiki early into my presence on Massive, I noticed there were a lot of functional inconsistencies. Between something like the Sindhar and Altalar, their Racials (at the time) would utilize words varying from "Traits" to "Spells" to "natural ability." It should come as no surprise to anyone who keeps tabs on Special Permission documents that I like things to be internally consistent. With this consistency, however, comes the ground-work for more and more implementation of things. Because it's easy to start writing abilities via pulling the baseline from the Ability page, we can write more and more and they become more common in all aspects of RP. So when something goes bad in RP because of an Ability, or because of the mis-use of the ability, the wheels start to turn in my brain of what I can do to fix it. But the reason I am making this thread as me, personally, and not as a staff implementation is because I don't know how to fix this 'problem' or if it really is even a problem in of itself.


The problem is the idea of what I've dubbed "meta-speak." Meta-Speak, is in essence, not the act of downright metagaming, but the act of taking terms that are meant to be used in OOC and porting them into RP for use. This can be totally innocuous and have no effect on anyone, or lead to some advantage in combat RP or conflict RP. An example of meta-speak is: a vampire uses a mutation on your character that mentions it functions as a target curse. Your character, when talking to a friend, says "And then, that creature used a target curse on me." 'Target Curse' like nearly all of the ability classifications, is not meant to be an RP term. The term 'Ability' isn't even really meant to be an RP term. It should be magic, or occult powers, or mysterious hexes and powers. We see this come up a lot with Racial Abilities. These aren't considered unusual enough to be called out on. They're just things that a race can do and everyone universally accepts it as normal and not at all unnatural.


The disclaimer at the top of the "Abilities" page probably doesn't account well enough for discouraging this. It's not even limited to Abilities. I've seen it come up with the Aberrancy classifications, too. RPly using the term Primal Mage or Ordial Mage, or hyper-focusing on planar distinctions when it comes to Lingering Aberrant or Touched Aberrant. The reason why I think it is important to encourage vague-ness in RP, and coming up with your own terms and explanations is because not only is it just more fair for other people when it comes to trying to counter some ability they used (think of how much RP you get out of talking to many people about a mysterious ailment you've come down with, rather than putting out a call for anyone who can cure target curses), it draws a harsher line between things that are made for things to be fair OOCly and things that exist in RP. And 90% of the Ability distinctions are the former. They exist so it's easier for you to react in RP, not for them to supplant RP terms and theorycrafting.


This is the essence of my conundrum on the matter, as it's difficult to tell people "use this thing, but like this, not like that." There's plenty of reasons why each little example would work or wouldn't work, and I'm overall more concerned about the broader 'leak' of OOC information into RP. It comes up frequently with regards to Special Permission documents. In theory, something like a mage could do hundreds of different and unique things. But we have clear-cut documents with only 1-8 abilities because it's just fair OOCly. It doesn't mean the document should be taken into RP and parroted, but used as a guideline for how to Emote its use and how to Emote respond to it. It's why I frequently champion against writing down abilities in RP. Documents, wiki pages, all these things that explain abilities are not a Boss Guide in an MMO raid that need to be 'cracked' or 'solved' for how to defeat.


Anyone is welcome to respond, say their own thoughts or experiences on the matter, but I probably won't be responding. This moreso just to open-air the idea since it's been stewing in my brain for a while.

 

[KrakenLord01]

I really like that this was written about something I had thought of before but never could word properly. I've seen this as well and have even caught myself using mechanical terms IC a few times, and it's taken being conscious about it in order to prevent doing so. I think why this happens (from my PoV, I could be completely wrong about this) is for two reasons:

1. Many players don't realize that their characters wouldn't refer to certain abilities as their mechanical names, or not go by just the listed abilites, when they mostly just have the Wiki and perm docs to refer to. And sure, theoretically a mage is capable of a lot more than just the abilities on their perm doc, but the vast majority of players haven't really taken that in consciously as the only reference they have for what a mage is capable of is, well, the doc.
2. Regarding abberancy classifications, I feel like there's a stigma around a character not understanding an ability classification when having abberant experience, as if they would be considered stupid for not knowing what the difference is between Primal and Ordial.

I have also definitely been guilty of parroting ability descriptions in an emote, and I could do better about that. I've tried referring to Aq'uellos Enhanced Ritualism as "ritual power" or "blessing of the Void," though it can be tricky when using mechanical terms IC is a norm.

 

[bwmwags3]

I personally have had my chrs make up titles and names for their abilities. Especially for ritualists who would manifest abilities off of certain Religious beliefs since those are specific to them. They should be referred to with a name that indicates a religious belief for why the power manifests. Instead of calling it the set power name.

 

[evilyami]

I am going to cast my Ailor-Lexxons Racial Spell: Subtle Suggestion upon you. You will be unable to resist my guile and peer pressure, peasant.

 

[Gwyndo]

As a little side thing, I wonder if anyone else shares this pet peeve-

Calling Sorcery Spells specifically by their names. It's odd to me that two people born on opposite ends of the continent would both refer to Elemental Orb as Elemental Orb and not - for example - one of them knowing it as a "Fireball" since their chosen element is fire or something.

Shadow's Embrace being called Shadow's Embrace and not "Void Step" or "Holy crap that guy just f*cking teleported?!" and so on.

I agree 100% with your post, especially "coming up with your own terms and explanations". That person isn't using Forced Betrayal, they're "using some kind of foul puppetry on that person's shadow!"

I actually wish the sorcery wiki had a little disclaimer encouraging players to use their own made-up IC names for the spells. Maybe that's already a thing, though I've encountered way more people using the regular names for that stuff than I have using made up ones.

Bit of a poorly formatted opinion / reply but idk- With me it's just always been most noticeable with sorcery.

 

[ZiggyStarDusted]

Its just more to the point and easier for the vast majority of people to understand in a relatively quick way that doesn't halt RP too much. People like slapping these labels to things for that reason.

With that said, as you said, this 'meta-speak' demystifies virtually everything. Something you can refer it to is maybe the way in which the characters in The Mandalorian refer to the force/ Jedi, (concepts the audience is fully aware of, much like the terms of target spell, racial, so forth- but the characters are not) in juxtaposition to how it is referenced in the other trilogies. They all have their own terminologies, and bits and pieces of understanding based on who they are/ where they come from. - And that divide between the characters can really highlight their backgrounds/ differences in a show-not-tell fashion.

I really don't know how you'd convince people to move towards this style of avoiding meta-speak etc, but I think if a couple of us personally begin to do so, maybe some other people will take to it? I don't believe everyone will unless it is hardline enforced/ announced, however.

 

[bwmwags3]

Something that might also help is asking yourself "How would my character explain how they do this?"

like does your sorcery act to them as just a academic subject they learned in school or is it something more. Is what others call a curse something they would rather sound less dangerous. For example a character might tone down the potency of their ability when they explain it to a newcomer.

Instead of "this target curse will force you to fall asleep"

They'll say "I'll just say a few calming words and you'll fall asleep."

the second description works for both chrs tricking others or who genuinely want to help. Since it makes the ability more natural and nice sounding then. This Target curse will do X.

 

[skullpanda90]

I'm a bit late to this post, but I would like to throw in my own piece related to this on "meta-speak". I'm not entirely sure if it's classified as what you define as "meta-speak" but it really drives me crazy.

My issue is when people use not widely known terms in combat rp (usually in fist/wrestling combat, although there may be cases on sword combat, but I simply haven't experienced it). I don't mean to call anyone out here specifically, but I have found it difficult in the past when engaging in crp when someone uses words for attacks such as grappling, haymaker, leg lock, any form of "locking" a body part really, arm bar, ground and pound, and more, which are only really known by someone who has done a bit more studying or engaged in these kinds attacks in real life wrestling or boxing.

This is why I think this may be apart of the term "meta-speak" due to the terms only really being known by someone who oocly studied fighting styles and words for them or people who actively engage in these styles and know the words. However, it isn't spoken per say, just used in emotes to describe attacks.

Often times I feel this leads to fighters on the receiving end either giving up, struggling due to the complicated terms, or having to look up the term itself (which is rather annoying). In the past personally, I very often gave up in these situations when fought by a certain player who often used complicated words to intentionally overwhelm anyone ooc.

When it comes to describing things in crp, I think it's best to go for the most simplistic descriptions for people to understand (like with sorcery abilities too!) aka instead of using these terms, to instead describe the act and what they are doing with their arms, legs, body, and etc.

TLDR: Is using complicated terms to describe attacks in crp a form of meta-speak? I think so, and people should try to use easier ways to describe their attacks instead of summarizing it in not widely understood terms. OR, I'm a bit of a snowflake who just doesn't enjoy looking up descriptions when I'm in crp.

 

[Mad_Gadfly]

Is using complicated terms to describe attacks in crp a form of meta-speak?

Click to shrink...

I would say it's closer to powergame because it makes it harder for us to know what's happening to our characters and how to counter it.

 

[ZiggyStarDusted]

I would say it's closer to powergame because it makes it harder for us to know what's happening to our characters and how to counter it.

Click to shrink...

There are a lot of pretty respect rpers that are amazing writers and to a point I think forget how nuanced/high end their writing level is, and in that tend to choose fanciness and complexity as opposed to having an emote that is communicative of their action.

Sometimes you break these paragraphs down and you start to realise it's a lot of talking a lot without saying anything. In my opinion this is something fine and tolerable in regular casual Rp situations. By all means flex your writing skill if that's what you feel like doing when it doesn't directly effect someone else.

But in CRP, everything your character does is directly effecting someone else's. So when people start choosing to be wordy and fancy with a lot of unnecessary filler. It actively disadvantages the other party on the receiving end when they get a giant confusing 2-3 paragraph emote in response to theirs.

Idk what there is to be done about it other than hoping people that read this and feel that they fall into doing it come to maybe reconsider their approach in CRP rather to favouring simplicity and communication, the same problem with this meta-speak ordeal in that's its not inherently wrong, per say, but a shift in etiquette could go a really long way.

Yeah. Had this on my mind awhile through a bunch of interactions but haven't really had a place to voice my ramblings in a constructive way!

 

[Greys_n]

That's why I loved and hated early magic that was much harder to misinterpret but easier to abuse.