Making Linebreaks in Emotes

This is just a pre-caffeine PSA.

Do you sometimes get verbose and wish to split your word dump into manageable to consume bites? Never fear! There is a way. Observe the following example:

Here are some cool words.|/|/Here are even more cool words.

The linebreak symbol is |/ so you will need to use two to make a new paragraph. 

Side PSA: Have you always wanted to impress your friends with this knowledge in-game but you feel like a goober when you try? Never fear! You can do that too! The next time you wish to show off on gamehelp when someone asks how to do this, type: ||/

The first | is literally escaping :')

Happy wording! Here ends this PSA.

While this is a great tip for breaking up in-game writing like in books, and for some special emoting circumstances, I would like to take the opportunity to remind everyone that individual emotes are not supposed to need to consist of a large number of lines. If you can emote quickly enough to include a few lines of descriptive flavor text along with your speech and action, and you want to break up some of the flavor into chunks, that's perfectly fine, and this may well be what's being thought of here. But that aside, people should continue to keep in mind that emotes should flow back and forth between player characters in a relatively realistic way that allows them to react to one another in more or less real time.

This isn't to say that people may not need to slow down the overall pace of roleplay sometimes -- there are various perfectly legitimate reasons for doing that, and we've seen some great use of the xcard system for these situations. But what we still DON'T want to see is single emotes that incorporate multiple actions or conversations in way that is not realistic. A single emote should not address several people sequentially, so that you're having several different conversations with multiple others in the same emote. A single emote should also not incorporate multiple actions that would realistically take a few minutes to perform sequentially and/or would normally allow for other people to act or react in between them.

Can you, in one emote, nod to Akil, say hello to Samia, and pick up a delectable pickled egg from the galley table in one emote? Sure thing. Should you, likewise in one emote, say hello to Akil and good afternoon to Samia and ask how Samia's sick aunt is doing, pick up a pickled egg, insult Cook Alif's mother, walk over to the hearth to warm your backside, tell Sharif you like his hat, and then decide to throw your egg at Akil because you've suddenly realized how annoying he is and that you never liked pickled eggs anyway? No, no you shouldn't (and not just because it's a deplorable waste of precious pickled eggs).

In situations like that last one, converting a single one-long-paragraph emote into a single multiple-short-paragraphs emote is still not breaking up your emote in a real-time way. All the lines are still being output at the same instant, which doesn't give people a chance to respond to each action in a realistic, more or less in-the-moment way. This runs contrary to the norms we've discussed wanting to see, and which for the most part we definitely have been seeing. Again, this doesn't mean that people need to write super-short emotes all the time, just that individual emotes should not consist of multiple actions or conversations which would realistically take place sequentially over a short period of time, not all at once.

Sorry to derail the tip, but I thought it was a good opportunity to drop a reminder, and also clue in our new players who haven't even had a chance to learn the culture yet!

An excellent reminder, Mistsparrow! Personally, I only split up my emotes like this in more detailed one-on-one RP where I'm not worried about the pacing :)

And I was just making this PSA as I saw that this question had been asked on gamehelp again last night (it seems a common question!) and there was some struggle to explain how to do it.

EDIT: In the spirit of helping our new players become even more aware of the expected RP culture here, if you look at this now locked thread and scroll to the bottom of the page, you will find my summary of the previous emoting guidelines discussion, in bullet point form, for easy reading! Click here!

When I have been hit by these, they have often made me feel as though I am denied the right of reply. I know this is probably not the intention, but that's how it makes me feel. Even in one-on-ones, I want to give my partner space to react to things, rather than forcing them into the dilemma of "Okay, do I now respond with an equally long emote, in order to respond to all seven of those things that my character WOULD HAVE reacted to? Or do I just have to let the moment go, since it's literally already passed by virtue of there being no pause ICly between those things, and only react to the most recent thing, for realism's sake?" This is even more true with "confrontational" sort of RP - in a few scenes, there have been instances of very long two and even three paragraph emotes thrown at me where someone was listing grievances, and I felt almost assaulted, as though the player just couldn't tolerate the risk of being interrupted in justifying themselves and explaining themselves ICly. This makes me shut down and not want to engage at all.

Emotes don't have to be one line. I get flowery with it sometimes too for funsies, and multiple lines offer a very cool option for occasional pacing emphasis or other flair effects. But they do need to offer a right of reply, rather than being an uninterruptible monologue. And yes, sometimes you can't predict that someone will want to react to one particular part of what you're saying or doing - but if that one thing isn't buried in ten others, it's a lot easier to access.

I definitely think it's important for people to be aware of their RP partner's preferences in writing style, even in one-on-one scenes! For example, I only get verbose with specific people in one-on-ones -- people I know want that and are expecting it from me.

Maybe this needs to be in its own separate discussion? I honestly just posted this PSA to answer last night's question on gamehelp! But if this is a pressing concern for some people, it could surely use its on discussion in a separate thread!

This is another good point: even if you're having a conversation with just *one* other person at a time per emote, please try to avoid doing single emotes where that emote is basically a multi-line monologue. Having more than one sentence of dialogue in an emote can be just fine, but unless someone is giving an actual speech (HI YASIN), people should break up their talking to give others a chance to naturally respond.

I don't think this needs another discussion thread, as all of these points have been discussed and agreed upon previously. I do think we may need a pinned post outlining these guidelines as a please-read reminder for older players and a heads-up for new ones. It's easy to drift off course over time on some of these guidelines, and it may be helpful for everyone to have them posted separately where people can readily see them. So I'll work with Pilgrim on that.

I definitely think it would help to have the emoting guidelines finalized and posted somewhere official! (Maybe on the wiki and here as a pinned post?)

Thanks, Mistsparrow!