Magi_Trelian said:
I agree that anything that happens on site, in-char, in another char's presence, is fair game for that char to know and act on.
Even the "but my char was whispering and your char was busy talking to someone else all the way across the room" doesn't really cut it. You can consider it bad RPing if that happens, but you also don't know all the enhancements the other char might have for their eavesdropping. Even what I've seen as "(closed)" or "*private*" thought balloons can be argued.
If it matters to you that things are truly private, both IC and OOC, then take them to PMs, or another room, or RP that part of it off-site. Or clear it with the other player(s) that it won't be used.
Or just not post them. Personally, I'm extremely dubious about just exactly what a closed thought adds to the roleplay. In my experience, the majority of them end up being used as a somewhat personal attack on either a character or, indirectly, a player... in stealth mode. In a way that "can't" be argued with - or even addressed or replied to. It's poor manners to do think closed thoughts such as
. o O ( (closed) What a total idiot, he doesn't even know that the golem doesn't talk )
but it's just as bad manners to 'read' a closed thought and 'know' that it was thought, meaning that you can't reply to it without being rude yourself - which rather lessens the impact of the person complaining about such thoughts. When done skillfully, these kinds of thoughts can, as above, be close to an OOC insult, too... but strictly, they don't break the CoC. Hence I have noted a certain popularity in their use, and consequently I personally never use them. In any case, I like to try to find more subtle ways to convey any closed, private thoughts my characters have - assuming they allow them to be conveyed at all. By and large, my character's closed thoughts are just that - invisible to other people. They have to guess what my character may or may not be thinking in the privacy of their own head, which increases the realism of the thing and therefore my own personal enjoyment of it.
Having said that, it is my considered opinion that doing the subtle approach that I take is hard, and often even harder to pick up on, meaning that less experienced roleplayers could have difficulty with that. This is, of course, a criticism I could level at myself - in effect, it's elitism and consequently snobbish. Buuuut... I find myself becoming increasingly closed off of late. I feel like in any case a lot of the newbie-friendly atmosphere just isn't there. I guess that could be just me.