Temporary Banning for OOC Gaslighting

Out of all the issues we've had reported so far, this player was reported more than anyone else. Every time we'd investigate, and give a warning if applicable, and otherwise leave it be. None of that stuff was bannable. But this now is just something we can't cope with anymore, and it does potentially help to know that the player (or perhaps just the PC) made multiple people uncomfortable in multiple ways.

OOC Gaslighting is essentially the act of lying to other players out-of-character in order to have them believe things about in-character ongoings that are not true.

We'd recently given a serious warning to this player about the issue of OOC gaslighting, and talked to them a great deal... over the course of three days around last weekend, for pages upon pages of correspondence, to the degree that sometimes I was unable to do much of anything else. This discussion included a seven-page character concept manifesto, but later we discovered that this concept document left out crucial details to the degree that it was unclear whether the ommission was accidental, as the player claimed, or an attempt to gaslight us as staff, too.

So what are the takeaways from this?

•  Don't OOCly gaslight people, especially when IC gaslighting may be going on.
  • Use thoughts and feels to establish your character's goals and state of mind.
    • Use tells that correspond to these thoughts and feels, rather than using tells to intentionally mislead people.
  • Minimize OOC communication regarding sensitive IC events.
    • Do not cherry-pick your communication from staff discussions with you in order to tell other players things in the interest of "full disclosure" while actually leaving vital parts out of the equation. 
    • Do not discuss in-character events out-of-character in such a way that might make other players uncomfortable with their perceptions of whatever real emotions you may or may not have invested.
    • Seriously, it's best just not to talk about any IC drama at all, save for maybe an 'are you okay' question that might be answered with a 'yes' or a 'no'. There can be too much temptation sometimes to sway things towards your IC goals, especially in an immersive environment. We really don't want this; it is a type of metagaming, and when dishonesty is involved -- even dishonesty by omission in the middle of supposed full-on confession, it is just too much.
  • Remember:
    • We have logs of everything. Some of them may be a pain to dig up, and may be time consuming to read. We can even look up OOCMails if we have to. If our attention is called to the problem due to player reports and issues of the like, we will investigate, and if facts just do not line up with what you are saying, we will be forced to conclude that you are being dishonest with us. 

This is a temporary banning until beta phase, because maybe it was actually accidental dishonesty, as claimed. We just can't risk that during alpha, and spend more time being on-edge about this situation. We can't prove intent, but we can prove facts, and these facts are just too troublesome.