Metaposing: Your Thoughts Are Your Own

Posted by: Mylor Clearspring on 2004-12-01
Category: Roleplay

"Metaposing" is a term I have seen in reference to posts that describe a character's thoughts or intents. Such posts are distinct from Emotes that describe a character's actions, postures, gestures, or facial expressions.

In chat, you should present your character as others are able to perceive him/her. Thoughts and intents cannot be heard and they cannot be seen, and I need not bother listing the other senses. To expect such posts to affect your interaction with other characters is to expect other players to play OOC.

"**Bodo thinks Ermitrude is nice.**"
"**Bodo wishes he had lots of potions.**"
"**Bodo wants to become an enchanter one day.**"
"**Ermitrude thinks Bodo is nuts.**"

It's so much more artful and appropriate to indicate your character's thoughts through dialogue, postures, gestures, facial expressions, actions, and descriptions of tone of voice.

"**Bodo smiles at Ermitrude. 'You always have something pleasant to say, Ermitrude.'**"
"**Bodo digs in his pack and pulls out a small bottle. 'I wish I had more of these, but Pete charges too much.'**"
"**Bodo lifts up his head to gaze at Houdini, a gleam in his eye. 'One day. One day I will wield magic.'**"
"**Ermitrude scoffs and turns away from Bodo. She points a thumb back over her shoulder toward him, shakes her head and rolls her eyes.**"

Dialogue, actions, postures, gestures, and facial expressions make a strong impression and constitute role playing. Posts that describe thoughts or intents fail to portray a character and fail to provide other players appropriate access to interacting with that character. Metaposing is one of the false directions a would-be role player can wander in. Beware of such traps.

At the end of the original post a year ago I called it a trap. Though I touched on how it is a trap, I do not think I made clear the trap it constitutes for other players.

As a player in a scene with another, I want to interact, but posts of thoughts or feelings offer me no easy way to do so IC. As I noted then, to react to a post of another character's thought or feeling risks being OOC because our characters cannot read minds. The other clear choice is to ignore such posts. That maintains the integrity of the RP, but it also shows the emptiness of such posts for those who try to maintain character.

The only way to put them to use is to interpret such posts as facial expressions, postures, or talking out loud - which not coincidentally is similar to interpreting another player's OOC real world references in chat, which is a common method of dealing with blatant OOC posts. This can be troublesome though for a variety of reasons, including the irony of having the metaposer accuse you of OOC play.

I also want to point out that making good RP use of such posts by such a method would be to the credit of the interpreting player, not the player who posted the thought or feeling. I must also point out that such reinterpretations offer no guarantee of turning others' metaposts toward good RP.

My point - my plea! - is and always has been for better role playing. As a creative endeavor, it has no ceiling on how good each of us can be, but like other creative endeavors it involves techniques and tools that can be used well or poorly. I hope this causes reflection in a few minds.