Advice/Help Dealing with misunderstandings

Upton O Goode

Catastrophic Success
So let me give you some clarification; let's say hypothetically I have an RP where some people have posted something that misinterpreted something that happened in the RP. For instance, let's say my character gave out some information, and then another person's character came up and asked a question that was covered by said information already, or at least might have been. Obviously, it could easily be a misunderstanding on the part of the player that posted it, so I wanted to ask; how do you feel that misunderstanding should be addressed?

Now, on top of that question, picture this; my response to dealing with said post is to post again, with my character treating the character that asked like a moron for asking and reiterating what they already said. What do you think of my method of dealing with the situation? Would you do it differently?
 
I don't understand.

Your solution is probably good if your only option is IC communication, but I'd find it kind of dickish (not saying it is or that others might feel that way, could just be me). When a minor misunderstanding happens to me, I let it go and roll with it. With larger ones, I just drop a quick little OOC note.
 
I would roll with it but if it is really a serious misunderstanding (or if it bothers you a lot- I know some things would bug me), I would talk to your partner about it. Communication is always important in a RP.
 
Assuming I understand the question, here goes.

Misinterpretation happens all the time. It happens in real life, even when we're standing in front of each other and we can read body language, hear tone and pitch, and pick up on all the nonverbal cues. All of that is missing in a text game. Frankly, it's a miracle a place like this works as well as it does. :)

The classy way to deal with situations like this is to just ask OOCly "Hey, this is what I meant to say and this is how what you're saying comes across. Is that your intent?" 90% of the time, genuine misunderstanding and a little bit of post editing smoothes over a conflict before it gets ugly or festers. The other 10%? Maybe their character has their own agenda and they expect to profit by going against what's said (or convincing other characters otherwise). In which case, fair game and you've got a source of drama to create plot and tension and reaction and all that good stuff.

In both cases, you avoid player conflict. Character conflict can be fine in its place but it tends to be destructive to the RP if the reason for the character conflict is really player conflict.

Generally, using IC reactions to deal with an OOC situation tends to promote player conflict so my advice for next time is to not use your character to react until you've confirmed with the other player that how they're reacting is on purpose.

Good luck!

Edit: "Hey, this is what I meant when I said x, y and z. You just said a, b and c and this is how that sounded to me. Is that what you meant?" Asking this or something like this will also solve about 90% of any RL relationship drama you'll ever have.
 

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