Messages and Metagaming

[Eirikr]

Something has been bothering me for a while: Is it considered metagaming if you view messages as real or fake depending on their game mechanic format?

Let me clarify a few things in that very complex question:

• "Metagaming" is, essentially, using OOC information to make IC choices.
• By "game mechanic format", I mean anything ranging from scribe note links to manually copied and pasted letters. This includes other code-forced information, such as assassination attempt notices.
• The very nature of the game is to promote roleplaying, however, it seems to be a common thought that game mechanics trump roleplaying.
• Regardless of the consensus, I am certain that this is essentially impossible to change. Therefore, I'm just looking to ease my own mind.

Now let me provide an example of what I mean:

Report from Kepler   (8 minutes ago)
Message sent to everyone in your realm (10 recipients)

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts!

Kepler
Knight of Keplaria

star  [reply to sender] | [ignore] | [userdetails] | [vulgarity]

If someone copies this to you, as is, would you take it as real without a thought (pretend it has some controversial content)? Of course, someone could have altered it in the copy and paste, but the format makes it look like someone was too lazy to do that.

Another example:

Report from Kepler   (8 minutes ago)
Message sent to everyone in your realm (10 recipients)

Scribe Note  Scout Report (Keplerstan)

Kepler
Knight of Keplaria

star  [reply to sender] | [ignore] | [userdetails] | [vulgarity]

Assuming there's a link to an actual scribe note in there, is there anything besides the format and forced results of game mechanics that make your character believe it's true?

My point is this: We, as players, know that certain sources are reliable and can only occur via certain means provided in the game. Sometimes, it's due to the format. Other times, it's due to the knowledge that the information simply can't be forged. (Hence why I don't have a fake scribe note to link to. ;) ) When is it unreasonable to argue that a piece of information is fake? Alternately, would your character ever accept a roleplay that tries to establish a game mechanically created piece of information fake? What makes your character so confident in their opinon?

[Foxglove]

You're giving me a headache  ;)

I think it would just be silly to try to establish a piece of information that's clearly been generated by the game as fake (i.e. a scribe note; an assassination attempt notification; tax returns; etc). The game says hero Bob has been killed in battle. Your character says that the scribe who issued the notification was drunk and Bob is well and enjoying his breakfast. It doesn't change the fact that Bob's really lying in a pool of his own blood and soon to be heading to the family tomb. The fake version of events won't be accepted without equally convincing proof, which is impossible to obtain.

Characters accept this because they exist in a shared reality where the scribes sending out that sort of information never get it wrong. Questioning it would never occur to them because their reality would break to consider such a thing. Information generated by game mechanics are the laws of nature of their existance, thereby trumping everything else. The comparison in the real world is like someone saying to you that gravity has stopped working. So you throw an apple in the air and it comes down on your head. The laws of nature clearly don't support the fake argument.

Of course, letters can be faked because they're subjective. So a character might always be suspicious of something passed to them through a third party.

[Anaris]

You're giving me a headache  ;)

I think it would just be silly to try to establish a piece of information that's clearly been generated by the game as fake (i.e. a scribe note; an assassination attempt notification; tax returns; etc). The game says hero Bob has been killed in battle. Your character says that the scribe who issued the notification was drunk and Bob is well and enjoying his breakfast. It doesn't change the fact that Bob's really lying in a pool of his own blood and soon to be heading to the family tomb. The fake version of events won't be accepted without equally convincing proof, which is impossible to obtain.

Characters accept this because they exist in a shared reality where the scribes sending out that sort of information never get it wrong. Questioning it would never occur to them because their reality would break to consider such a thing. Information generated by game mechanics are the laws of nature of their existance, thereby trumping everything else. The comparison in the real world is like someone saying to you that gravity has stopped working. So you throw an apple in the air and it comes down on your head. The laws of nature clearly don't support the fake argument.

Of course, letters can be faked because they're subjective. So a character might always be suspicious of something passed to them through a third party.

I think this is an excellent breakdown of the issues here.

Disbelieving information given to you by the game that is never wrong (note: some information given to you by the game has a chance of being wrong: for an obvious example, see the precise details of CS in scout reports) is foolishness, and its logical extension is that your character cannot believe anything that happens around him, because it's all reported by messages. Nor can he believe that any of the letters sent to him are real.

So...yeah, that's stupid, and leads to pointless frustration when you try to interact with people who are playing the game in a sane manner.

If you're having trouble with the disconnect between what real people can believe and what BM characters can believe, remember this: Real people can meet in person and hand each other gold coins.

[Eirikr]

What about more complex cases, such as the obvious infiltrator in the same region as a noble, yet he is 'not identified' after the attack? We all know who did it, but he wasn't actually caught... Does it become metagaming to link the attacker through a scribe report placing him in the region?

Or torture reports, where it is impossible for the information itself to be fake unless it was fake for the original recipient?

You guys have said basically what I was thinking, but I've seen it played differently. "Should" doesn't always translate into "does".

[Anaris]

What about more complex cases, such as the obvious infiltrator in the same region as a noble, yet he is 'not identified' after the attack? We all know who did it, but he wasn't actually caught... Does it become metagaming to link the attacker through a scribe report placing him in the region?

I don't see how. All that is completely IC information.

Or torture reports, where it is impossible for the information itself to be fake unless it was fake for the original recipient?

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you asking whether it is metagaming to believe the messages obtained through a torture report without question?

If so, I'd say that's more of a borderline case, particularly given what we know today about the unreliability of information gained through torture. However, in general, I would say that yeah, it's acceptable to declare that our characters "know" that such information can never be false.

(At least until we coders can figure out a way to make some of it be false...)

[Eirikr]

I don't see how. All that is completely IC information.

Oops, I meant to make that more absolute; is it metagaming to claim scribe note evidence as undeniable proof? That is, if the attacker isn't ID'd, but is game mechanically obvious, would our characters take it as obvious as well?

I understand that this will ultimately fall to how the characters play it, but is it right to get fed up (IC) when someone tries to deny this kind of proof? Or should we (potentially) accept the RP description?

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you asking whether it is metagaming to believe the messages obtained through a torture report without question?

Yup.

[Anaris]

Oops, I meant to make that more absolute; is it metagaming to claim scribe note evidence as undeniable proof? That is, if the attacker isn't ID'd, but is game mechanically obvious, would our characters take it as obvious as well?

I understand that this will ultimately fall to how the characters play it, but is it right to get fed up (IC) when someone tries to deny this kind of proof? Or should we (potentially) accept the RP description?

The scribe note is undeniable proof that the noble is there.

It is not undeniable proof—either IC or OOC—that they are the ones who did the deed. (Unless they're the only noble in the region, and there's no way another noble could have gotten out of there in the meantime.)

[Indirik]

It is not undeniable proof—either IC or OOC—that they are the ones who did the deed. (Unless they're the only noble in the region, and there's no way another noble could have gotten out of there in the meantime.)

Various people take a different positions on this. In particular, some people claim that just because a scout report shows that a particular noble was in the region doesn't prove that *they* were responsible for the explosion that destroyed the fortifications, even if they were the only noble there. After all, there were 10,000 other people in that region. Who's to say that one of the other people in the region didn't do it? "I was there, but I didn't do it." These people sometimes argue that you should believe another character (who is of the high nobility) over the word of a minor, possibly non-noble, functionary. So if the noble says "I didn't do it", but the functionary (i.e. game generated message) says "He was spotted at the scene of the crime", obviously the functionary is lying, and to believe them over the word of the noble would be bad RP.

Others will point out that a lifetime of experience for our characters has proven that these things never happen except when a noble is present. If it doesn't happen except when a noble is present, then only nobles do it, so therefore the noble is responsible. They argue that this is something that their characters would notice, and that to have their characters ignore the connection would be to play their characters as being stupid. These people point out that the minor functionaries (i.e. geame generated messages) have never lied or been wrong in the past, so trusting them is an obvious no-brainer, and to doubt them would, again, mean their character is an idiot.

After playing BattleMaster for a while, it is pretty clear that the people who follow these different philosophies are pretty well entrenched in their beliefs. If Bedwyr were here, he could launch a pretty extensive diatribe about it. (He's in the "my character isn't stupid" camp.)

Which play style is "right"? I personally don't think there is a right or wrong. Play your character however you want, and let other people play their character their own way. If you want your character to be fooled by another character's clever tale, go for it. If you don't, then don't. And don't expect some other player to play your chosen way.

[Dante Silverfire]

Various people take a different positions on this. In particular, some people claim that just because a scout report shows that a particular noble was in the region doesn't prove that *they* were responsible for the explosion that destroyed the fortifications, even if they were the only noble there. After all, there were 10,000 other people in that region. Who's to say that one of the other people in the region didn't do it? "I was there, but I didn't do it." These people sometimes argue that you should believe another character (who is of the high nobility) over the word of a minor, possibly non-noble, functionary. So if the noble says "I didn't do it", but the functionary (i.e. game generated message) says "He was spotted at the scene of the crime", obviously the functionary is lying, and to believe them over the word of the noble would be bad RP.

Others will point out that a lifetime of experience for our characters has proven that these things never happen except when a noble is present. If it doesn't happen except when a noble is present, then only nobles do it, so therefore the noble is responsible. They argue that this is something that their characters would notice, and that to have their characters ignore the connection would be to play their characters as being stupid. These people point out that the minor functionaries (i.e. geame generated messages) have never lied or been wrong in the past, so trusting them is an obvious no-brainer, and to doubt them would, again, mean their character is an idiot.

After playing BattleMaster for a while, it is pretty clear that the people who follow these different philosophies are pretty well entrenched in their beliefs. If Bedwyr were here, he could launch a pretty extensive diatribe about it. (He's in the "my character isn't stupid" camp.)

Which play style is "right"? I personally don't think there is a right or wrong. Play your character however you want, and let other people play their character their own way. If you want your character to be fooled by another character's clever tale, go for it. If you don't, then don't. And don't expect some other player to play your chosen way.

Well, one I've heard recently in-game, is the idea that a peasant could have been the one that did the assassination attempt, even though there was only one other noble in the region.

[Anaris]

These people sometimes argue that you should believe another character (who is of the high nobility) over the word of a minor, possibly non-noble, functionary. So if the noble says "I didn't do it", but the functionary (i.e. game generated message) says "He was spotted at the scene of the crime", obviously the functionary is lying, and to believe them over the word of the noble would be bad RP.

I find this to be one of the most pointlessly aggravating arguments in the game.

Like I said before, if you do not trust the word of these "functionaries" here, why should you ever trust them? Why should you believe them when they tell you that the fortification was even damaged? Why should you believe them when they tell you the noble is there? Why should you even believe the letters you receive, which were penned by a commoner scribe and delivered by a commoner messenger? Why, in short, should anything in the game be trusted?

That way lies madness. I wonder if we could fight this absurdity by making it explicit somewhere in the game's text that the people responsible for all these reports are minor, NPC nobles. That would certainly gut the "would you believe me or a dirty commoner" argument.

Which play style is "right"? I personally don't think there is a right or wrong. Play your character however you want, and let other people play their character their own way. If you want your character to be fooled by another character's clever tale, go for it. If you don't, then don't. And don't expect some other player to play your chosen way.

I do think there's a right and wrong. And the problems come when the two camps collide. Generally, the people who accept game-generated messages as just being part of the game, and thus trustworthy, have no expectation that there will be any disagreement, because it's obvious what happened. So they're blindsided and often have to take some time just to adjust to the fact that there are (from where I sit) a bunch of trolls just trying to get someone off for a crime that he obviously committed.

Imagine the scenario where you've got a dozen players who subscribe to the "game-generated messages are trustworthy" camp, and two players who subscribe to the "just like in real life, no one can be fully trusted (and if you RP your characters to believe otherwise, you're obviously an idiot, which is usually implied)" camp. One of those is the actual culprit in the attack, and the other is the Judge.

The culprit, when challenged on his actions, says, "No, you must be mistaken, you can't believe these dirty commoners when they tell you it was me!" The judge backs him up. The rest of the realm points at the culprit's history of flouting orders, doing whatever he damn well pleases, and causing trouble. The judge, who wasn't particularly sympathetic to the shenanigans before now, just says, "But if we punish him for this on the word of a bunch of commoners, we may as well just abandon the whole system of nobility."

Ladies and gentlemen, the story you have just read is paraphrased from truth. Only the names have been removed because I can't recall all the details.

...In fact, I've seen this scenario play out multiple times, the most recent being when Galen Perth tried to get out of responsibility for auto da fe-ing a fellow Zonasan in good standing, and Vellos not only stood up for him, but agreed with his multiple wild claims of having received different reports than what the game actually generated, and having done things in different orders than what actually happened (and thus, different than the order in which we all received the messages).

[Ender]

I have a question to add that seems related, though if it isn't I apologize.

What happens when two game related messages more or less contradict each other in a RP sense?

For example, earlier in the FEI war Edmund was sent reports via Greater Aenilia that said the Arcaean army in, erm, Nahad, I think, was murdering peasants, pillaging, burning, etc. Since the reports shared with Edmund looked official, he assumed they were and applied the appropriate outrage to what he saw as unnecessary violence. When confronted a few turns later with the fact, however, Velax was able to provide a scribe report that noted that the population of the city and it's infrastructure was relatively unchanged.

Now, it's possible the reports of pillaging and murdering were falsified, but they looked legitimate (I never looked into it, so if anyone reveals it now I suppose my question is invalidated, though at least I'll know). The scribe note obviously wasn't falsified since it can't be. So, here Edmund was stuck with two seemingly legitimate sources that totally contradicted each other. I played it off as Edmund disbelieving an Arcaean's ability to count so many people for a report at once, but I didn't particularly like doing it since a scribe note obviously isn't going to be wrong but I have every IC reason for believing the earlier takeover reports saying villagers were being slaughtered wholesale.

[Anaris]

There's not necessarily any contradiction. Just because there's been some looting doesn't mean there's going to be massive depopulation of the region being looted.

That usually takes several turns of sustained, focused slaughter.

[Ender]

Well, the takeover messages specifically mentioned that peasants were being killed, though I can't remember it entirely since it's out of my message history by now. Then the scribe report said that population went down by one, I think. Again, this is all by memory, so I might be remembering something wrong.

Shouldn't we assume that if multiple nobles (which the reports Edmund were sent listed more than one noble) are attacking and killing peasants during a takeover that a scribe note would reflect more than 1 death? Or given the game mechanics, we ignore it since we know it takes a while for actual depopulation?

[Shizzle]

The 'your character must believe functionaries because after a lifetime of experience they have never been wrong' argument can be easily avoided, if you adopt a different way of perceiving your relation to BM.

Imagine there BM is an actual working world in another dimension, and the only way we perceive it is through this website. The only messages that manage to get through to our side are the messages that are true. We never learn about the fake messages.

It's not hard to imagine your characters to be busy doing daily things even if you don't roleplay them doing it. It is equally easy to imagine that these characters are bombarded by fake messages all the time. Where you as a player receive a single scribe note, it's not hard to imagine your character actually received a dozen, had them verified (?), and in the end concluded one of them was right.

Looking at it this way I think it is quite easy to continue believing in the game mechanics, but also for the player to decide not to believe them when suitable (such as for RP reasons, to keep things interesting, or to gain an advantage).

[Scarlett]

This discrepancy is built into the game design and there is no getting around it - you pretty much have to do one of the two things described above.

The only way around it would be to integrate infiltrator actions to things that can happen for other reasons. You'd need some kind of crime/control system where your warehouses could get sabotaged by NPCs if they had reason. That's not a small undertaking, but until it happens, the only people who do sabotage warehouses or assassinate nobles are other nobles. That's just the way of the BM universe.