Charity wrote:
Something helpful to RP would be to turn back on the ability to see where other people are if they're in your party. That way people who want to be left alone just don't go in party and you don't check the entrance hall and then have nfi where anyone is.
I took out party locations at the request of several players.
Party locations are off because there was massive, albeit unintentional metagaming. People would see where others were and assume they were busy, and not bother attempting RP. People would also somehow know what's going on between characters based on their locations. Or just as bad... someone may refuse to RP their character legit figured something out, out of fear of metagaming. It's not new; this has been happening since the dawn of NWN.
Party locations can tell a whole lot more than just a location. It can tell what someone is up to, and more importantly, with whom. Where someone is, why, and who they are with is actually a -lot- of information to just "know" at a glance. Sometimes your mind puts pieces together that there's just no way you could have otherwise known: Who's cheating on who, who's hiding in the dungeons all the time, who's working on some IC project or plot. In many cases this ends up with people getting found out much easier than they would have been. While the metagaming isn't intentional, it still happens, and often. Even -I- am susceptible to this kind of metagaming when I can see locations. Quite simply, it's a matter of supporting the FOIC concept.
These things improved literally overnight once locations were turned off.
Everyone is not only welcome, but -encouraged- to ask in party chat "hey where is everyone," or something similar. I encourage the type of "metagaming" that allows people to RP accidentally bumping into each other, but it should always be OOCly cooperative. Even more ideally, just RP sending an owl if that would be IC. Getting everyone's location at a glance -was- causing some major issues, and forcing people out of party just so they can ICly be keeping some secret (which is also rather telling) isn't fair- they want to spend time with their friends OOCly as much as anyone else does.
I will admit that even I was not so sure that the removal of party locations was a great idea at the time I did it. But it's shown to have been the right thing to do, as people have been able to RP much more freely. It's easy enough, and encouraged, to simply ask in party for locations of RP and if anyone wants to respond they can. By all means, "metagame" in order to RP accidentally bumping into someone your character may not owl. It's the rest of the stuff that came along with party locations that was the issue.
