Coded Puking, NPC Interactions, & Development Notes

I feel like it's time for me to swoop in here, because, quite honestly, it's not fair for me to leave Pilgrim out to dry as if limiting emote length is their particular pet idea. Pilgrim may agree with this to a good extent, but I am the real tyrant lurking in the shadows on this.

To me, a MUD is more like a play than a novel -- it's focused on quick-paced dialogue and action, with far less in the way of narration or detailed description. Of course there's no script to go off of in a MUD, which makes it improv acting instead of a formal play. And unlike the play script, which leaves most of the gestures and motion and the action itself up to the reader to simply imagine for themselves, we as writer-actors write that out too -- enough to bring our characters and their scene to life in a vivid and immediate way, but not so much that it detracts from the pace of the acting. For me, too much emphasis on writing detracts from the immediacy of the acting, and from the sense of inhabiting my character.

To me it's a huge impediment to my feeling of being my character, and acting and reacting in the moment, to have to carefully consider the flow and style of my every line of text. Is it pretty enough? Does it employ enough difference in phrasing so it doesn't sound too much like my last emote? Does it have a pleasing rhythm to it? Does it take into account, all at once, everything that is going on around me? Is it as lovingly crafted as the emote before mine?? Or is it stylistic trash??! Once I'm having thoughts like that, I'm not concentrating on the experience of being my character anymore and just saying what I think they would say and doing what I think they would do. I've gone off into the realm of prosecrafting rather than improv acting.

It's equally an impediment to my feeling of being my character to wait minutes in between responses -- either my mind is going to wander to something that is not my-character-in-the-world, or else I'm going to be thinking about my next several lines of prose. And then there's the awkwardness of having several lines -- of either speech or action -- which ought to take place over a few minutes and allow for multiple opportunities for reaction, instead all taking place in a single emote all outputted at once. And once it's done, you often feel that you have to react in kind, by writing several responses in one to respond to everything that was going on in the previous emote. To me, this no longer feels like a play, with action and reaction, speech and reply, following upon one another in quick interplay, back and forth responsively. It feels instead like time is proceeding in fits and starts, the play being perpetually paused, rewound a little, then unpaused, then paused again, over and over. And for me, all that is hard on my sense of really inhabiting my character.

If it were me emoting Illi's sample text, I would simply take exactly what was written and break it up into separate emotes:

Illi frowns, pensive. "I tend to model my emote style after my character and the game I'm playing," and here he pauses for a while, struggling with what to say.

"But specifically," he goes on, "the separate number of dialogue strings makes me QUITE uneasy."

"I feel much more comfortable splitting up my dialogue than I do with a giant block of text," he explains. "'You can't talk that much in one emote'," he furthers, though he's less bothered here. 

"This also feels a little iffy, too, but removing the ability to split up my dialogue into more manageable chunks would really hinder me, at least." In the end, he shrugs.

Obviously there are any number of other ways to accomplish the same end -- which is to avoid long blocks of text of ANY kind, and instead put out shorter ones, at a faster pace, that give people a chance to respond and react in the moment. Because to me that's what gives a MUD -- or at least the MUDs I used to play -- their wonderfully unique sense of dynamism and improvization.

If your character has a long pause in the middle of saying something, why not have an actual pause between your says/emotes? If you have to stop and think about what to say or do, it's very possible your character would need to do so as well -- and that other things might happen or be said in the meantime. Separating things out into shorter emotes keeps dialogue and action more or less in real time, and other people can interject, interrupt, or go on with whatever they happened to be saying or doing in the meantime. Can this be a little bit chaotic? It can! But to me, it's chaotic in the way that a real, in-the-moment interaction with a bunch of people can be chaotic -- there is natural overlap and interplay, interruptions and misunderstandings, all created on the fly. To me, this feels natural and dynamic and wonderfully lively. For me, this is the heart of what I enjoy about roleplay.

We do have people from a lot of different roleplay cultures here, and everyone brings something valuable to the scene. There are wonderful little modes of expression that I've seen different people use, and pithy turns of phrase, both in dialogue and in describing action and expression and tone, and I love the thought that people clearly put into their characters. No two players are going to have the exact same roleplaying style -- unless it's horribly bland -- and there's a lot to enjoy and be inspired by in people's different ways of expressing themselves. So in short, it's not really anything about style per se -- it's about responsiveness and reactivity, and a continuous flow of interplay among characters all interacting in the moment.

I have to say I really appreciate your elaboration, Mistsparrow. I really relate to so many of the feelings and considerations you expressed, and hearing you talk about them as reasons for preferring a certain approach to posing has really helped me to clarify my own feelings.

There are such good prose writers here that although I am typically a fairly confident roleplayer, I had found myself feeling concerned that I wasn't pushing myself enough to maintain a minimum standard of stylistic (in the sense of prose style, not in the sense of play style) excellence, and it was making me squirrelly and detracting from my ability to do what I do best to the furthest extent of my ability, which is to stay very deeply and immediately immersed in the inner world and experience of my character. Thinking about how to describe his eyelashes takes away from thinking about what he does with them and why. Of course I am a human creature so I will always worry at least a little bit about whether or not I am performing adequately or being judged inadequate by others, but this analysis of competing imperatives helps me to understand that my true play style is a valid choice and I don't need to jeopardize it by trying so hard to do two essentially incompatible things at once. 
 

This is probably not very useful to anyone else, lol, but I do want to express support for this vision, so I will leave it here. 🤪

I'm the opposite you of you, Mistsparrow. I find one-liners flying by to be impossible to keep up with, and I prefer at least small blocks of text because to me, they add richness to the world/everyone's characters. This is a very cool game, but unfortunately, I'm not a good culture or RP fit for it. I'm a big believer in letting people RP how they want and letting the chips fall where they may on that, and it's clear you guys want a more stylized way of play. Which is fine! It's your awesome, well-made sandbox.

Thanks for the fun times, fellow players, and the kindness shown to Dalila. If there's someone who didn't get into the Alpha who wants my spot, feel free to give it to them. I wish y'all the best.

I just wanted to slide in with a few thoughts of my own with a quick disclaimer that I am not feeling any kind of way about anything. I still love this game and what you guys are going for and you're stuck with me  I just wanted to throw that out right quick as I recognize I am one of the prose-y... er players and I didn't want anyone to think I was offended by Mistsparrow's take. I'm not!

Most of my experience in MUD spaces is on RPE (roleplay-enforced) MUDs as opposed to RPIs, so I'm quite used to most of the front-facing RP being very snappy and quick and then, you know. As a naturally overly verbose person, I normally keep in the back of my mind some people who I know will smother me with paragraphs if I pull them off for one-on-one RP and then I do that when the mood strikes. Both? Both. Why not both?

I would personally prefer a style guide as opposed to coded limitations around emote or dialogue length, though I'll be honest: I'll just command stack emotes/says to get around any coded limitation if one is put in. Within the privacy of my overly verbose one-on-one RP with people who want me to slap them in the face with a mini novella, of course.

One thing I would also like to note is that, since what you're wanting is snappier RP within public spaces (I'm just saying public as I really hope it won't be frowned upon if two verbose people want to go off and be verbose without it slowing down anyone else's scene as it won't be harming anything) is some sort of etiquette for potentially writing someone out of a scene by mistake. This has happened to me once already. I was in a scene with just two other people. Person A asked my character a question. And while I was typing up my two line response to Person A, Person B fired off five quick one-line emotes and pushed the conversation far beyond where we were at, which would have made my character's response... null and void and very silly if I had hit enter at that point in time. So I just deleted it. And sat there and watched the scene continue on without me. It wasn't meant maliciously and my feelings weren't hurt. But this inevitability might be something to consider when writing a future style guide or community expectations.

Should there be some sense of turn taking? Should people be encouraged to not throw out five emotes back-to-back? Or should it just be a free-for-all out there? I can't answer those questions, but I'll be happy to adjust my public RP style to suit the community's needs based on the guidelines set.

I've had fun playing with most people in this game, and I haven't really seen most people exhibit the sort of purple prose and topic yo-yo'ing that any sort of boundaries (coded or not) would effectively limit. However, I respect those who are choosing to leave over our vision in this regard, because it's good to know what you want and pursue that in your free time. That goes for us all, including me and Mistsparrow.

While it's sad for me to see people leave over our expressing our vision in this regard, it's also heartening to see that other players feel more seen and at home here because of that. <3 Hopefully we can foster a friendly and cozy environment, and maybe someday others will want to join us, and maybe even enjoy playing this way too. 

There's nothing wrong with any sort of playstyle, and I am happy that there are many games in the world, so that everyone can find their RP homes.   The fact of the matter is that even if everyone leaves through alpha, Mistsparrow and I will no doubt continue quietly working on this project until perhaps it has met a new set of standards with documented guidelines that make it comfortable for anyone who wants to hop back into, and hopefully less bugs, and maybe more things to do in the world.

Edit to Zahra: These are good questions. And I've always wanted to preserve the capability of people to be as verbose as they'd like when having deep, introspective character development, so I think to a degree the pace is something quite variable between different people. But it depends on things like the amount of people in the room, and the general speed of the scene, too. I don't want someone to fire off five short socials at a person when they are trying to type a reasonable-length emote, either. But I don't want people to worry about turns as much as they consider each other in the area and try to give each other a reasonable time to respond, if that makes sense? Last night I was animating a NPC in a room with four-five PCs and sure, I had to wait a few times and not type like a demon maniac in order to let people have a chance to let their character respond appropriately. But i also wasn't counting people's turns or something. I believe a lot of it really is culture, and a lot of it will just take time to settle.

Oh, for sure! I just wanted to clarify that the questions I posed in my last post weren't like, "ANSWER THESE FOR ME NOW," *cracks the whip* but were more just like... something it might be good to consider for when those community guidelines or etiquette guide or what-have-you ends up being written up. I can only speak for myself, but I'm quite happy continuing to plunk along and figure things out as we go in terms of expected RP style and community culture and all that. It's pretty standard across MUDs to match one's style to the current scene (I can't think of a single MUD where it wouldn't be considered a bit, "Eh," for someone to bust up into a rapidfire exchange like the Kool-Aid man and try to dump out a huge paragraph on top of people) and that's definitely what I've seen happening here (as in everyone seems to be very considerate about matching their style to those already writing with each other in the room) so I'm happy with that just continuing while we patiently wait for more established guidelines!

No worries over here. I'm a happy camper.

This will be a slightly more negative post than my usual M.O., and for that I apologise. But I feel the need to express that I am really quite sad, because I just joined this game late, feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and excited to RP with friends who hyped up this game, and now no less than 3 of them have told me that as a result of the discourse on this thread, they’re quitting. Further to that, I know in total 6 who said they would quit if emote lengths were in any way codedly restricted. Since I don’t know everyone on this game, and multiple people I don’t know expressed similar discomfort publicly on this thread, I have to imagine it’s more than 6.

I’m personally of the mind to stay put because to me, opinions are just opinions. Whilst I have no reason to suspect this, it wouldn’t offend me to discover staff might not like my natural RP style. This is fine, I’m a firm believer that you should RP with whomever you like to RP with. I’ve been in this hobby for nearly two thirds of my life, and plenty of the people I love RPing with don’t love RPing with each other. This is fine, to each their own, we all like what we like. The thing is that if Jack were to drive off Jill because he prefers to RP with Bob, Bob might also leave because he likes both equally, and now he has fewer RP partners to keep him hooked. This is a cannibalistic approach to a communal hobby, and in the end you’re left alone on a throne of bones.

It’s nice that a lot of people also feel “seen” by the discussion; it’s clearly been very polarising and made some people feel more comfortable than others. But I think that the attitude of wrongfunning should be discouraged. It’s not only bad for the people you do it to, making them feel less at ease in the community — to the point where the mere suggestion of clamping down on their style, even without having been codedly implemented, is making them walk — but it’s also bad for you.

Listen, everyone has preferences and that’s fine and dandy. I would be a massive hypocrite to pretend my shit don’t stink, that I don’t also see styles that differ from mine and sometimes experience a resulting culture-shock, or even that satisfying sense of personal superiority in comparison. But it is beautiful to challenge yourself. My opinions about “good RP” change like the wind, every time I encounter a new style that manages to challenge my preconceived biases, and feel inspired to try something new. I save a lot of my old RP logs, and I often marvel at the way my writing style changes year to year in different communities. It becomes unrecognisable. And that’s beautiful. This hobby has so much to give you, so much to teach you, if you let it. But if you climb to the top of the hill and yell, “this is the way,” chasing off anyone who disagrees, you will never get to experience that; you won’t learn, you won’t grow.

I think this game is a labour of love run by people who really care about what they’ve built, and that it shows. I also think that the degree to which the current approach can seriously haemorrhage players, as well as stifling personal growth, is underestimated. I find great value in academic discussions of personal preferences — this is also a great way to have one’s mind and preconceived biases challenged — but there is a difference between, “Here’s what I love, and why,” and “your way is wrong, and unwelcome”. The latter does not promote growth and the former does. Now perhaps some people are just more sensitive to tone than others, and could stand to grow a thicker skin. The thing is, plenty of those sensitive people are also terrific players, gifted with fantastic creativity, whom I love having around and wouldn’t trade for the world. They should not be discarded.

Nobody is saying that anyone else's style of fun is "wrong" in and of itself -- but certain types of fun are better suited to some environments than others. If you walk into improv club and start giving a speech, and all the improv folks are thrown off by that, it doesn't mean that giving speeches is bad -- the speaker is just in the wrong venue. There's also little point in telling the improv club they need to learn to enjoy speeches because one can learn a lot from a well-written and inspiring speech -- that may well be true, but giving a speech is still not what an improv club is about. Speeches can be enjoyed in many other venues outside the improv club, but there aren't too many places outside the club to do improv.

I made this thread so people can weigh in and be heard about the emoting guidelines. We genuinely didn't intend to address this anytime soon, and didn't consider it to be that serious of an issue -- we weren't trying to reprimand anyone, or institute anything immediately. It was just something we were thinking about,and we welcome players to think about it with us.

Emoting Guidelines Discussion

When I first moved from the MUSH environment where I started, where long poses and taking turns was the norm, to my first RPI mud, which had more of the rapid fire style that seems to be the style intended for this game the culture shock was huge. While I was struggling with figuring out how to interact with coded objects a player came in, fired off three quick emotes while I was still writing my scene setting pose and I felt totally overwhelmed.  To say that I got over it is an understatement (reader, I married him.)

In the last game I played, I frequently struggled to hit the character minimum to get xp for an emote.  Different games are built around different styles.  There I tried to take a little longer and stick what would have been multiple smaller emotes together (it didn't always happen).  Here I need to learn to try and remember to hit enter when my character pauses his speech (again, won't always happen).

I think it's extremely unfortunate that any number of players is considering flouncing, rather than trying a new style, particularly given that both players and staff seem pretty open to a fair amount of diversity in playstyles.  I also think there's a reasonably good chance their concerns are unwarranted.

At first I *hated* the idea of coded restrictions, because it would be prohibitive to my style.  And because I'd just been on a game where, to a certain extent, that style was learned because I had to teach myself to "play in their style."  Realizing that I did learn reminds me that I really can just copy paste my long blocks of text into notepad and fire them off in acceptably small chunks if a coded limitation was imposed.  Annoying, not the end of the world.

I haven't actually seen anything in game that I think the staff would really take issue with, some people say more, some people say less, but because we're trying to play together, it settles out into a sort of middle ground.  That said, I'd like to try giving the whole "hit enter when my character pauses" thing a try, and see what it's like.  I anticipate being extremely bad at it.  Would it help if I were nudged by the code?  It almost certainly would.  Frankly I find it a bit mindboggling that people are freaking out so much about it. 1) Just learn to hit enter.  2) Green card if things are going too fast.