RP - God-mode

Sources:

Own role-play knowledge collected over the years. Note: it has been very hard for me to collect correct information about this, as there are a lot of misconceptions swimming around in the role-playing pool.

Internet sources:
Donovan Rodriguez (MySpace), RP Battle Rules, link.
Urban Dictionary, God mod / Godmodder / God modding / God-mode / God-moding and similar pages, link.

Other sources:
...


Content:

• Definition of God-Moding
  
• To avoid confusion

Definition:

God-moding comes from the word 'God-mode', when a character is in the mode of a god. A god-moder's character might know everything, but will in the first place have an untouchable character, someone who cannot be harmed by any attack because that's just how their characters are.

When you bump into this thread and you notice one of your characters meets some of the described criteria, you might be mad at me, but please, do edit your character into a legit being. Being god-mode is special and awesome, and might be allowed for a game master or ruler of an entire community, but in an open community it will be no fun for your fellow role-players.


To avoid confusion:

As people often use god-moding for about everything that breaks the rules in role-play, I would like to enlighten the difference between god-moding and other types of rule-breaking. That way, hopefully, people will be able to address another role-player more accurately about their actions if they do something outside the legit.

God-moding or god-modding? As already mentioned in the definition, the 'mode' part in this word is quite essential. Your character enters in the mode of a god, becoming untouchable and almighty. In the case of god-modding, the 'mod' indicates moderating, or changing. Both of the own character (adding traits or skills as you go, with the mind set of 'oh, I had not thought about that yet') or of the other person's character (making things up or describing them as doing something differently than stated), it is considered god-modding.

God-moding is often used as interchangeable term for 'power-play', even though god-moding is rather wearing an 'unpiercable armor' or using an 'unbreakable sword' while power-playing would allow a character to 'wield all elements' and 'blow up planets'. Other people (mostly the ones who already confuse god-moding and god-modding, too) tend to confuse it with auto-hitting: the act of forcing blows on players instead of attempting to strike them, or already including how their opponent will react in their post.

Surprisingly enough, however, I have seen only a very small amount of people confuse god-mode with the act of metagaming. Meta-gaming and god-moding can still overlap, in the sense that a god-mode character might know 'everything about magic' or have 'unblockable mind-reading abilities'. In that case, however, the god-moder as metagamer is still limited to only the knowledge his wielder has obtained or can obtain.