@notes
...how should they be used?

A couple days ago I talked to **** down at Location and asked about a job. He mentioned he might be able to hire me on as a waitress but also hinted at possibly knowing where I could find a another job. I left him my SICalias "*****" for him to contact me.

I just recently went in and let him know my papers have been approved so we can talk in a more offical manner.

A lot goes on which GM's actually don't know about. Using @notes to let us know about what your own character wants and needs is the classic usage, but using them to set up another baka for the fall is something "power user" could do :)

Just don't LIE in them. That would be metagaming, powergaming and otherwise cheating.

Nothing is necessarily more wrong than right, as far as style, format, point of view, etc.

What matters is whether it's something a GM can act on.

Things which GMs cannot act on:

-> Missing details. It is useless to note "I talked to Raymond." without saying why, what motivated your character to do so, informing me whether Raymond knows how to reach you back or whether you'll try again, whether you have other avenues you'll pursue to reach whatever your character's goal is.

-> RP-less giveaways. I won't act on a note which simply says "Can I have a ... !?" when you aren't lifting a finger to act ICly to pursue . Roleplay it and let us know how you roleplayed it.

-> Unrealistic expectations. We don't have a lot of resources to build/invent/create people/places/things which don't exist, just because your player describes an elaborate plot idea and sends their PC off to set it in motion. If it's awesome and can potentially involve other players, it might fire us up and you'll see IC results after we spend some effort setting things up. If it's a thing which is only going to do anything for one person's RP, we're not likely to put much effort into it, depending on the amount of preparation needed.

-> Usually, diaries. Your @notes aren't your character's memory, you have other IC tools for recording things for the character to remember. Goal-less journals of day-to-day happenings MIGHT wind up including the occasional bit of plot fodder for GMs to pick up on, what happens more often is that a journal winds up including a lot of "I did this" and not a lot of "I want/plan/fear this". Also remember, @notes are OOC and are not your character's memory, so, if your character wants to journal or remember stuff, there are IC ways to do this.

So beyond that, just try to think about what you can @note which GMs CAN react to. It has to be ICly plausible and based on actual RP which you either have done or are planning to do, purusing your character's goal. Notes aren't a shortcut around RP, they're a way to let GMs know what you now need or will soon need, to get/keep your RP flowing. What do you know that GMs might not know? As stated above, there is a LOT we don't know. Even if we see some of your RP, there may be dots we can't connect. And we definitely do not see every bit of every PC's RP.

What questions do you have, after reading this post, about when/how to use notes?

Usually no news is good news in this regard, so use @note as much as you feel like you need to, and if you don't have an admin telling you to not clog the system over XHELP, then you're fine, and I'm sure they appreciate all the detail and the effort you put in documenting your character's RP.

Retroactive notes are probably fine for anything that might be important in a plot now that you missed.

You should note NPC interactions. The cold facts of what happened are most important there but everything's fair game.

I @add-note goals, things my character is working on at their job, -anything- that might get them in trouble whether I think they were caught or not (that's important) and in general any plots, schemes, and scams they're running.

The GMs will never get involved in your plots if they don't know about them, @add-note often.

Sindome is a Role Playing Game with a handful of GMs and hundreds of players. Us GMs can not and do not see everything that every character does all the time. Even those of you that assume your character is big and noticeable: we still do not monitor everything your character does all the time.

There is SO much that we simply can not see. This is where notes come in. I encourage you all to use notes as a way to help us GM for you. Did you have a meaningful interaction with another PC? Tell us about it! Did you attack an unpuppeted NPC ganger? Tell us about it! I strongly encourage you to note anything that is interesting or significant to your character.

I want to stress that, just because no GMs were on to see what your character did or because they were busy with other work and didn't notice it, the IC world DID notice it. Or should have. This is why it is key for you all to keep us informed.

Attacked that unpuppeted ganger? Cool. Now note it. Tell us when it happened. Where it happened. Who all was present. Who did what. What your character was wearing at the time. What they looked like and sounded like at the time. How they fought at the time. Anything you think that the NPCs and/or ambient population present might have noticed.

When you do this we can help make your story more interesting. A story where you just do all kinds of crazy and never even have the chance of facing consequences because you are flying under the GM's radar will be a boring story. Worse, eventually we will see what you've been doing and it might make us think that there was metagaming involved.

Flying under the GM radar is not a good thing. Instead, keep us informed so we can decide if the world needs to react to your character's actions. We will consider what is in the notes and decide how much NPC elements know given the circumstances. We will consider your character's skills/stats. And we will try and use that information to make your character's story better by having the IC world react to them.