Shadows of Isildur; Laketown is a roleplaying game. It is played only at middle-earth.us, port 4500. It is not played over ICQ, AIM, IRC, or any of the other chat/IM clients out there, nor is it played with your roommates, circle of friends, or real-life beer buddies. Information regarding in-character happenings in the game needs to stay solely between the players and the administrators involved; if we as Staff learn that any information gained OOCly has been exploited by a player to shape the outcome of in-game events, we will take measures to rectify this, up to and including possibly reversing said events.
Likewise, carry-over of in-character information from one character to the
next is strictly forbidden. You may not play a relative of a previous PC, or
any other acquaintance that would entail the sharing of IC information, without prior staff clearance.
Metagaming is defined at its simplest of terms of being a crossover of IC and OOC - where the player uses information from one to bring into the other which can imbalance the delicate ecosystem of the game. Here are some examples:
- Using who to figure out OOCly where a character is and bringing that information ICly
- Using who consistently to see if Staff is on/watching
- Using sdesc or ldesc to definitely identify a character such as when describing a criminal or enemy - do not just copy and paste their entire desc into the port either
- Using gear of a cloaked and hooded person to identify them - just because you know Jack wears black leather pants doesn't mean that only Jack has them or that you could see them under a full cloak
- Outing an NPC as an animated NPC
- Using OOC knowledge of secret or hidden locations ICly
- Using OOC knowledge of secret information ICly
- Using OOC knowledge of how a craft works, the materials needed, etc. ICly
- Using OOC knowledge of where materials are located in the wild ICly
- Using any IC excuse to target a character you OOCly know is a criminal
- Using any IC excuse to target a character who killed your PC or a friend's PC
- Using any IC excuse to target a character of a Player you OOCly don't like