The Only Warning You Are Going To Get

You might want to copy this down somewhere.

There may come a day where you’ll want to paste this into your text box or send this via PM or FPM.

“Hi there. There is a thing that I want to tell you that may have slipped your mind.

I don’t know you.

See. That’s kind of important.

 I don’t necessarily know your sex or your ethnicity.

I don’t know your orientation or whether you are short or tall.

You might even be a “Bot” for all I know.

And I’ve got news for you.

You don’t know me either.

You have no way to know if I’ve got a Nazi flag on my wall

You have no way to know if I’ve been taking my medication.

You cannot knowledgeably speak to any of my motivations or attitudes.

We are, not to put to fine a point on it, STRANGERS.

Now, that being said, My CHARACTER may not like your character much. May consider them a stumbling block to most of their plans and might consider taking them off the count before starting any serious enterprise.  The fact that I might want to kill your character might even be a subtle compliment.

After many years of this kind of gaming, I have come to the inescapable conclusion that In Character Soap Opera is almost always good.  By this same token, Out of Character Soap Opera is almost always bad for chat games and larps.  It wrecks games. It wrecks friendships. It divides communities.

I make an effort to keep my attitudes and the attitudes of my character separate.

In fact, generally speaking, It’s one of the reasons why I tend to avoid the foyer altogether if I can help it.

I’m not averse to making friends out of character. Don’t misunderstand me.

But I am dead set against making enemies out of character. If you have ANY sense at all, you should feel much the same.

This is not to say that all people feel this way. Certainly, I have witnessed people being bounced from games for being raging assholes, racists, sexists, and militant jerks of every stripe.  But that’s their business. and if they want to be that way, they are certainly entitled to be that way. Far away from here.

Look, all you need to know about me is that I am here to play a game and have fun.  If we can agree on that we’ll be fine.

If we can't, I am going to decide you are a troll, or mentally ill, or quite possibly both.

If that IS the case, I am not going to conspire behind the scenes against you. I'm simply going to have nothing to do with you altogether.

I've got drama of my own. I don't need yours.