Do You Believe In Godmodding?

       When it comes to godmodding, the term has a wide spectrum in what it can mean.  It can mean doing something as simple as writing dialogue for another character, all the way to writing out entire action sequences involving all the other characters. As such godmodding is something that tends to be looked down upon by the RPG community, especially when it involves abusing other player's characters. Yet by striking it out completely forum based RPGs can become slow and tedious. As such in this post we will discuss a proper medium that RPGs should take to keep the progression of the story from slowing, while at the same time preventing character abuse.

       We live in a world in which we type out conversations on our phones, sending a message to a friend, before waiting minutes if not hours for a response. Eventually after a day or two a full conversation can be had through these simple texts. Now imagine writing out a conversation between two characters in the same format, one writer sends off a line, and waits hours if not days for a response. That is the world some RPGs exist in that take a hard stance toward godmodding, the result can slow down the story completely. For some players, a slow story is worth it just so that no one else can write for their character, that is a respectable point of view as they believe that only they should give their character a voice. However such a view would be better suited for a chat based RPG instead of a forum based one.

       That does not mean that different players should have free will over other player's characters when it comes to conversations or simple actions. What one player may feel as the proper response to something, another may not. Many skilled players will side step this, rewriting the response in their own ways that reflect their character but keep the spirit of the conversation. Other's may feel slighted by this, and create tension as the players feel others no longer should write conversations for their characters. As such the creator may wish to suggest that the players send their post to the other player if it involves their characters either through instant message or a message board's own private message system. This will allow proper editing for conversations and ease any tension that might arise from a player's post.

       However if a player steps beyond the bounds of writing simple conversations and actions, and into a higher form of godmodding, in which they are writing full events or important plot points by themselves, it is up to the creator of the RPG to gently remind them at first not to do that, and if they keep it up, ask them to leave.

       Godmodding is a tricky subject, especially for writers going from chat based RPGs to forum based ones, or for writers who are particular as to what their character would say or act. However like many things in life, proper communication between players can resolve differences, and hopefully leave everyone happy.