Special Thanks to Chrismasi@aol.com for developing this Miss Manners Guide to Netiquette! :)
If you've never been flamed, you may have a natural touch for it. If you have (frequently), chances are you don't care. Within a sim, however, good "netiquette" -- minding your cybermanners -- is essential... for your sake, and your character's.
Simming is a team sport. When one member of the team is rude, foolish, or downright nasty, the rest of the team finds their job that much harder, and much less fun. Before long, they band together, and the offending member is cast out of their society. Shunned. Banished. ::cue weepy violin:: Poor sad player... if only he'd known, all this could have been avoided.
"Somevhere here ve hass a failoor to commoonicate..."
1. Know what to say, and how to say it. "Smilicons" or "smilies" are one of the greatest creations in all of text-based speech, second only to the acronyms of "cyberspeak" (see glossary). They let people know if you're joking or not. Sarcasm and some dry humor doesn't take well to text... and without verbal tone and facial cues, you might find that people think you've said something entirely different than what YOU think you've said. It's happened before. It ain't pretty.
2. Wash that mouth out with soap. In general, profanity is like cayanne pepper... used sparingly, it can flavor a character nicely. Overdone, it burns. If every f-----g word out of a person's @#&&### mouth is a f-----g swear, it's generally a sign that SOMEONE's vocabulary is seriously lacking. Within a sim, it's not appreciated. Save it for people who don't care.
BTW - "creative sensoring," such as demonstrated above, isn't much better. You could be putting those fingers to better use on the keyboard.
3. Text nasties. Sometimes, a player might feel that he's not getting the attention he deserves and decides to grab the spotlight in any way possible, such as scrolling (filling the screen with repetitive gibberish, such as loinjb8r89qhnfoa9ruiq345ir[ujfawu0tqanarhngio3[qafhofda) or TYPING ALL IN CAPS, WHICH IS GENERALLY CONSIDERED SHOUTING, AND IS ONLY DONE BY HOSTS TO SET THEIR TEXT APART FROM OTHER PLAYERS, or by doing and saying things so blatantly obnoxious that other players throw up their hands in disgust. It's all childish behavior, folks, and is beneath any serious simmer.
4. RSVP, if you please. If you're a regular player on a certain night, other players and hosts come to count on your presence. They may even have your character in mind when developing a plot. If you're not going to make a sim, drop SOMEONE a line to let them know. This doesn't mean to go scurrying for e-mail when your grandmother's sick and you're suddenly called out of town - that's a genuine emergency. Accidents happen and real life DOES call, and your fellow players WILL understand... it's just a nice touch to warn them, if you can.
5. Cut some slack. If another player's getting on your nerves, take a moment before snarling out a reply. Could it be that this person doesn't know "the rules?" Maybe they're new to the neighborhood? It's always best to approach an offensive player with a soft touch first - "Hey, listen, I know you probably didn't mean that, but..." Flaming is poor manners, in any case.
Who Are You?
::ahem::
Obligatory reality check, beginning now. PLAYERS are those flesh-and-blood entities on the business side of the keyboard. CHARACTERS are free-ranging entities within the ether. While characters may possess many of the qualities of their players - as many as said player feels comfortable writing into the profile - they are, for all practical purposes, imaginary. Please, for the sake and sanity of your fellow players, remember that words and actions directed at your character in the course of a sim do not necessarily reflect that player's attitude towards YOU.
Simming is playing a role. Just as David Duchovny bristles when someone calls him "Mulder," some players may find it uncomfortable if their identity is confused with their character's. (Also, you wander into that nasty area where people start questioning the sanity of gamers who start to dress, speak, and act like their character...)
Just remember... if you hit the wrong key in your file manager, YOU aren't the one who can be deleted! :)
"If there's an iced tea in there, it could be love..." -- Mulder to Scully, "Tooms"
Nope... this isn't a "SEX! ...now that I've got your attention" gag. It's a fact of life, and simlife... so here goes nothing.
In the Real World, the DOJ officially discourages agents from engaging in romantic fraternization on or off the job. It's a sound policy... aside from the personal tensions and general nastiness that tend to radiate when those sorts of relationships go bad, it's like Chris Carter once said of a Mulder-Scully tryst: "Nothing would get done... they'd just sit around gazing into each other's eyes." (Poorly quoted, my apologies...)
Within the sim, it's generally wise to play inter-character relationships in a way that is similar to the Great Creator's guidelines for HIS characters. Translation: If Mulder and Scully can do it on-camera, it's fair game for the sim. Teasing, flirting, subtle innuendo... fine. Leering, harassing, groping... NOT fine; take it to a private room, folks.
And please remember, of course, that ANY inter-character relationship, either inside the sim or in a simfic piece, should be treated with tact and respect. What happens between consenting adults - note the use of the term ADULTS, as some of our best players may very well be... well, the term "jailbait" comes to mind - should be of mutual consent, and an agreement made before any "moves" are made. Translation: don't go developing a romantic attachment without telling the object of your character's affections first! See "Putting It Down On Paper."
There may come a time in a simmer's life when role-playing just isnt' enough. Creative persons all, most players are also writers - and simming provides the literary equivilant of EZ-Bake prose. The characters are already there... just add plot!
SimFic is always welcome in the X Files gaming circle, and the rules are few and far between, more resembling common courtesy than cast-in-iron bylaws.
What's good for the sim is good for the fic. UNLIKE X Files fanfic, which can leap wildly away from any version of reality and all too often degenerates into "triple-X" files with a "Where's Waldo?" find-a-plot, the sim characters you'll be working with belong to those who are (technically) near and dear to you. If YOUR character wants to engage in a sordid affair or go on a killing spree, fine... that's YOUR business. It would, however, be incredibly poor taste to try to write the same for someone else's character. In an actual sim, not even the host can control the actions of another player character. To try to do so in your simfic, without asking the permission of the character's creator, would be the act of somebody who's A) clueless as to what proper "writer's etiquette" entails, B) incredibly rude, or C) all of the above, and a control freak as well.
In brief: Ask first. Most players will entertain a wide variety of notions, and might very well give you permission to walk on the wild side with their alter-egos. They might even want to help. If they're friends of yours and your character's, they're more likely to say yes - which makes the business of asking all the more important. Ask first.
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