[konamouse]

Obligations for a BTS person - listen to your PM.
Don't take your character out of line from your instructions.
When a character deviates too far from the original plan, or starts creating webpages on their own, the original story & preset puzzles may be corrupted beyond use. Then all the work that the PM has done in preparation for the game will be for naught.

[bill]

/me pulls steff back into reality.

Although those ideas certainly represent the ideal, life and ARGing tends to be somewhat messier. For example, how exactly do players know the intended direction of the story? Wouldn't that be discovered by trying a few things? If I wanted a static or linear experience, I'd be reading more novels.

There are certainly boundaries that should and will be explored players. PMs have an obligation to spell out those boundaries (hopefully in a mechanism that doesn't breach the curtain).

There are no hard and fast rules (AWARE made this brutally clear). There are guidelines based on what has gone before and common sense. Personally, I think the genre is a bit immature to start telling people "you stay over here, you stay over there." We know Unforums is out of game because Spacely says so. Other forums might allow some forms of player/character interaction.

Likewise, having distinct player and character chats falls into one of those common sense areas. If a room is commonly understood to be a PM free zone, PMs should be on notice that they tread there at their own peril. Furthermore, PMs that choose to discretely lurk should really make sure they mask their identities. Changing your nick isn't good enough when 70% of the room's occupants see your ISP, your IP and/or IP hash when you log in and out.

With the variance of opacity in the curtain from one game to the next, a PM is more in control of the player experience than they realize. Different levels of interaction, PM anonyminity, pacing, and RL involvement are all 100% in the control of the PM. Balancing just those few elements dramatically affects game play.

I can envision a game where the lines are blurred to the point where the players question everything and the boundaries are so indistinct as to be undetectable by most. In such a game, players might reasonably expect someone in their midst to be in-game. Part of making that work is setting expectations up front.

When someone takes the plunge and decides to PM a game, there are a LOT of things to consider relating to playability and boundaries. I think PMs and players need some wiggle room and not a set of rules cast in stone with prescribed punishments. We've already seen lots of different styles from The Beast, CTW, Acheron, Mu, and now AWARE. I don't think any are more right or wrong than others. Clearly, some are going to be more successful.

My advice to participants on both sides of the curtain - think before you act. Don't jump in blindly and don't make bizarre departures from expectations set earlier in the game. As a PM, consider where the boundary lies and make sure you have a mechanism to describe it in-game and deal with players who choose to push it. As a PM, you control what the characters hear, see, and know.

/me reserves the right to proofread this later and contradict myself if I see fit.

[MageSteff]

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