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LadyOfTheWater

Spellbound

By Spellbound

    • Rules: Yes
    Referral: Google
    In your own words, what is powergaming, and why should it be avoided in roleplay?: Powergaming is giving oneself an unfair advantage over other players' agency and characters. One example would be an unearned or inexplicable character attribute. Another would be writing actions and outcomes without offering opportunities to interrupt. Powergaming should be avoided to respect other players' autonomy and right to enjoy and interact with the scene.
    In your own words, what is metagaming, and why should it be avoided in roleplay?: Metagaming is using out-of-character information to influence the setting. I use this broader definition because, in my opinion, metagaming is a spectrum. It can be OOC, IC, or both, with varying degrees of ethical problems.

    On the worst end of the spectrum, metagaming is any bad faith action using OOC information to gain an unfair advantage in the setting. Such actions include sharing confidential information, directing others to act, trading information, blackmailing players, or colluding ways for characters learn OOC information. All this can be purely OOC activity without the metagamer's character doing anything. The benefit need not fall on the metagamer's character either. The benefit can go to friends or co-conspirators.

    In the middle of the spectrum is a character unintentionally using OOC information. While punishable, this is usually an innocent mistake that the roleplayer can backtrack.

    The final end of the spectrum would be planning narratives and character arcs---but this is metagaming in name only. For example, you want your character to learn swordsmanship as part of their revenge arc so you ask a fellow roleplayer to mentor them. Yes, you are influencing the setting with plans the character themselves are not privy to. However, there is no ethical problem in good faith planning. It's actually good for the roleplay. Rather than creating unfair advantages the rule means to prevent, long-term plans create narrative richness while respecting the consent and autonomy of all players involved. And in good faith, "advantages" gained from the interaction---such as learning swordsmanship---reflect the character's journey rather than being an arbitrary gain to use against others. Ultimately, planning is just part of writing. Planning with others is part of writing with a community. The ACT of metagaming must be balanced against the REASONS the rule wishes to enforce. This end of the spectrum does not violate those reasons.

    On that note, metagaming should be prevented for:
    1) Narrative purposes, IE preventing plot holes and excessive unpredictability; and
    2) Community purposes, IE protecting players' autonomy; preventing unfair advantages and ensuing drama; and allowing players to discuss current events and their characters without fear of someone improperly leveraging that information.

(I tried piecing together the lore as best I could. Sorry for any mistakes!)

 

Born and raised in Len'miruel, Serelinde belonged to the respectable Laris'siol family. Her father served as a junior librarian under the Okarir'maehr, cataloguing submissions to the Eternal Library. Her mother worked as a silversmith who maintained the city. Serelinde was a naturally quick study from an early age. As a girl, she came to appreciate art, science, and order after watching her mother weave these concepts into Len'miruel. Her father also challenged her with concepts he'd learned sorting through books passing through the Eternal Library, as well as subjecting her to verbal sparring. This honed Serelinde's appreciation for knowledge into application and encouraged her curiosity. 

 

Serelinde had blazed through the Eternal College's curriculum faster than expected by the age of thirteen. However, her exposure to concepts from around the continent led to a silent, nagging question. She agreed wholeheartedly with the maehr'sae hiulun'ehya. Progress was a fact of life. But health---Serelinde could not understand why the Mali'aheral defined it as racial purity. Her culture taught her to think with unerring logic and yet she found no justification for the creed's latter half. 

 

Decades passed. Eventually, even Serelinde's taste for Elven science and art began to wane. She could only master so many theories and take the same tests so many times. Her thirst for knowledge hadn't waned though. She sought to quench it in a new field: magic. Maybe not so much doing it, but at least understanding it. Luckily, her father's position at the Eternal Library gave her proximity to restricted books the College had dismissed as primitive and dangerous. Subjects such as Druidism and Deity magic. 

 

Serelinde snuck in and began reading. She was amazed at what she saw, and started to realize that perhaps she was not bored of Elven knowledge---but maybe Elven life itself. She had always been controlled and dogmatically taught to think along the narrow step-by-step path of apathetic logic. Was that not itself an impediment to progress? 

 

By her fifty-seventh year, her father raised Serelinde's academic record to the Silver Council and recommended that she join him as a librarian under the Okarir'maehr. They agreed. Sere spent two years in the role---to learn what it entailed and, most of all, to make her father proud. She tried to want it. Tried to enjoy the functions she was expected to attend as someone being groomed for the position. At the same time, she gained nearly unfettered access to forbidden texts. She continued to learn.

 

By sixty, Serelinde realized that she would never force herself to want this life. Her passion lay in the books she'd seen---and most of all, the wonders of the world they alluded to. Places she hadn't seen. Peoples she'd never met. Topics she wanted to discuss with flesh and blood rather than parchment and ink. So she made the hardest choice she'd ever made, and one she wasn't sure was right. She penned a carefully worded letter to the Silver Council asking for leave to explore beyond the city. She was not rejecting the role; rather she needed more worldly experience to better serve as a librarian. And thus, Serelinde left the only home she had ever known. 

 

Her travels showed Serelinde things she couldn't possibly imagine. All the while, her desire to learn magic grew as she realized that magic could not be understood without doing it. She missed home though. Not so much the control, but the familiarity and her parents always being there for her. 

 

She was fifty seven when word of the Massacre of Haelun'or reached her. Suddenly Serelinde's world shattered. She had left, and now the home she loved was gone, and the life she knew would never return. Nightmares began to plague her that she had made the wrong choice. 

 

Now she heads back to Len'miruel to see if her parents still live. 

Character Name: Serelinde Laris'siol
Character Race: High Elf
Character Gender: Female
Character Age: 57
Physical Description: Serelinde is approximately 6'1" and 150 lbs. She has silver hair and blue eyes, and usually wears a flowing purple dress and gold hair jewelry.
Roleplay Scenario:

The traveller has just arrived in a small town. As they look around, their gaze is met with run down houses and shops. They duck into one of the shacks, illuminated by a series of candles suspended in the air. At the back of the small room, an old hag raises her head, “What brings you to this dingy town?" She begins, then pauses to study their face—”Ah, it’s you. I’ve been expecting you. Sit,” she gestures at a chair, “Where do you come from? What do you hope to make of yourself?”

"Expecting me?" Serelinde's smile was all her hood left to sight. She stepped inside slowly, eyes darting between shadows and over the tops of pitiful excuses for furnishings. "I don't suppose you're acquainted with the thieves who ambushed my caravan? You can find their, ah, bodies on the hill overlooking the gate---in case you want to bury them. I'm not sure people do that sort of thing here." 

 

She watched for a reaction. Any reaction. None came, and against her better judgement, Sere sat at the woman's small round table. A glance at the filthy tablecloth already had her choking down a gag. Her nose wrinkled at the damp petrichor odor of old human. Even her pointed ears recoiled as if they could shut before the smell seeped in. 

 

"Forgive my rudeness," she began gently, not really meaning it, still studying the room more than her host. "A few days traveling have sewn much distrust in me. Especially in your kind."

 

Only when she was satisfied with her inspection did Serelinde slouch and turn to the old woman. Deep blue eyes studied the hag's wrinkles and warts underneath dancing candlelight. Such afflictions rarely affected Mali'thill, though the stranger's stonefaced stare could earn her a tenure at one of Len'miruel's joyless academies. 

 

For a moment, Sere tried to mimic it.

 

She allowed a beat of silence to pass. Waited for the woman to say something. That's how these conversation things work, after all. Yet, still, that face refused to move. 

 

Sere surrendered with a sigh.

 

"I can't---or rather, won't---tell you where I come from. I pray you find consolation that I answer your other question though." Honestly, the old woman had likely guessed Serelinde's heritage from her accent. Sere's height did her no favors either. Riding through towns had taught her that her cloak did as much to hide a High Elf as smoke did to hide a fire. "Well, maybe you won't. It's something you humans say say too much yet far too little." Her grin returned. "I. Don't. Know." 

 

And then she leaned forward. "But that's what makes it exciting, no?" 

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