Emoting Guidelines Discussion

There seems to be a lot of worry and concern among the playerbase, ever since I mentioned that we were considering potentially a character limit on emotes. Since then we've decided that it will be a lot better to just have stylistic guidelines on emoting, and not actually enforce anything. We do have a vision for what sort of roleplay atmosphere we'd like to see in the game we built, but what's the best way to approach that vision?

This thread is for players to give their ideas about what sorts of stipulations would make for good guidelines. Here's a couple ideas from me...
 

• Allow a long monologue (300+ characters long?) to be interruptible by pacing out your dialogue.
• Give other people a chance to respond, especially when they're addressed, without emoting on top of them -- either by rapidfire socials, or by writing a lot of things in a block paragraph that make the initial comment difficult to respond to.

These two ideas aren't necessarily well-phrased or set-in-stone as guidelines, but I think they could be a good start for the discussion.

Hi!

So, firstly, to clarify, what we're discussing here are proposed guidelines for public scenes? I think some valid points were made about letting people RP however they want in private, if they happen to peel off with someone else that matches their style. 

I also wanted to reinforce that guidelines aren't necessarily rules, and that everyone I've encountered on this game has a really lovely writing style. Most of them are totally unique styles, and I'd be really sad to see any of them decide to leave.

Disclaimers now firmly in place, here are some thoughts:

• Long monologues in big scenes mean that other players don't have an opportunity to interrupt, storm off, et cetera. It can also slow down the pace of big scenes as other players try to respond in a way that makes the first player feel seen. I'm not saying they're wrong, just that maybe we should bear this point in mind.
• Some players are going to gravitate to smaller scenes where they can really dive into big writing, and THAT IS GREAT. That said, scenes with 5+ people are, I think we're all aware, hard to keep track of even with short poses. A guideline I'd propose is just to shorten your poses a bit in bigger scenes. Also, I notice people already do this! <3 You all for that
• Aside from pose length, I really want to encourage people to continue to avoid force or closed emotes. Everyone here does a great job of that! A guideline that should be a permanent staple is to make sure that new players are also aware of what force emotes are, and why they should be avoided.

How does everyone feel about these? I want to stress that I think everyone here already obeys these guidelines, implicitly. These might be useful for maintaining the current RP standards, once the game opens.

All these guidelines seem fine to me and they're reasonable.

However, I can't shake off the fact that the intended culture that is wanted for the game is "improv acting" instead of "collaborative writing", which was stressed by Mistsparrow in the previous discussion. I really wish that stuff was painted on the Home page or something so that others would have a clue what they were getting into.

My suggestions though, so that this post is still constructive:

• Take turns emoting
• Emote at someone when you bump into them walking around, even if it's just a brief exchange
• Adjust writing as needed
• RP with the people you enjoy RPing with (that includes people whose writing style jives with yours)

I come from RPIs that aren't filled with rapidfire short emotes; typical posing would be short paragraphs at the minimum, but definitely never as long as your average SoA forum post (🥁). Collaborative writing is pretty much what I'm looking for.
Unfortunately, since it seems that this will not be the case for this game, I think I'll also be bowing out due to not being a culture fit. Wish you guys all the best!

Hello again!

I have no suggestions for, uh... guidelines I think you guys should adopt (because I am unhelpful)! What I do have are some suggestions for things you and Mistsparrow probably need to consider on how you would best like for us to handle certain RP situations.

Passive Aggressive Tone

What's the feeling here on passive aggressive tone? What I mean by that would be the following examples:

• Jill looks askance at Bob, squinting at the stupid question he just asked.
• Since everyone is clearly intent on ignoring her, Suzy flounces her way out of the bar.
• The only intelligent person in the room, Jack snorts to himself, smug in his clear superiority.

Okay, that last one was super extra. But those first two are examples I have spied in the wild in RP spaces, so. I've seen some MUDs with rules against passive aggressive tone and some that don't address it at all. Just something to think about. I personally really dislike passive aggressive narration. It feels uncalled for and it's never a great feeling when a player uses passive aggressive narration as a sort of "mic drop" before then walking out of a scene and logging out.

Setting Scenes

So, Bob and Jake just got into a fight on the deck. Harsh words are being said. Jake is winding up to throw a glass right into Bob's UGLY FACE. Jill is walking out of the cabin door and sees Jake and Bob and smiles at her two buddies, waving excitedly and hurrying over because, to her, she's just seeing Bob and Jake standing there. Neither have emoted yet even though Jill would have been walking right into a heated altercation. And then Jake smashes his cup into Bob's face and Jill's left scrambling to recover and emote accordingly to the actual situation she just blindly wandered into.

So what's the "best practice" here to avoid that situation? I've seen some MUDs with guidelines that every time a new person walks into a room, everyone should update their pose to alert that new person to what is happening right in that moment that they walk in. I know on MUSHes (from like... the ten days I tried one out once!) that the thing to do is to fire off an emote to "set the scene" like the second Jill walked out, maybe Jake should have just fired off a quick emote like, "Jake looks like he's winding up to throw his glass right at Bob's face."

I've already had some pretty hilarious encounters on the ship thus far from people having had poses set that, when I entered the scene, no longer reflected the situation. But I responded to the poses because I assumed it was a current event. No harm, no foul. And we have some fun bugginess with poses right now, so just something to consider for the future.

When Someone Crashes a Scene

I didn't have a good heading for this. Okay, let's say me and my buddy George are two verbose mfers. All the words nom nom nom. So we're chilling in, granted, a publicish place. But we're the only two PCs chilling in that spot, RPing with each other. So we're throwing out all the words to our heart's content. And then Zac pops in to see what we're up to, joining the scene. What's the protocol there that you would like for me and equally-verbose-George to engage in? Since we were there first, can we continue on with our verbosity and Zac can join in the wordfest or go look for RP elsewhere? Or would the onus be on George and me to shift our writing style more toward the preferred norm and start rapid fire emoting so we don't potentially make Zac uncomfortable? I get the feeling the latter would be the preferred, but this is something you guys are going to need to actually spell out so we verbose mfers understand how to play in your improv sandbox without stepping on toes along the way.

Walking the Line Between Not Talking to Five People at Once and Excluding People

Wow, what a header. I didn't have a good one for this either. So, I ABSOLUTELY get that you guys don't want silliness with like... me carrying on five separate conversations at once in one emote. I actually am rather bad about this. Well, actually, I'm rather good at this, because this is a tactic I've often employed on other MUDs when I wander up into what is supposed to be a "party" event with 15 people just... standing in a room, I guess staring at each other, waiting for someone to do something. And then I panic because I'm one of those bleeding heart types and I'm like, "Oh gosh this party event is going to be a flop and then the host player is going to feel bad about themselves," and so I have my character go into social butterfly mode and I just start engaging with as many people as I possibly can at once to spark some life back into the room.

Is it realistic? No, of course not. I barely have the attention span IRL to carry on one conversation with my husband while my kids are Tarzan screaming and chasing each other through the house. But it's hella inclusive, I'll tell you that.

So, here? What do? I often end up feeling a bit bad as there have been plenty of times where I'll be standing on deck, in a room with a bunch of other people, but it feels like the only activity that is happening is my character talking to one other character while everyone else just stands there, spectating? I suppose? I dunno. Maybe everyone else went to go make a sandwich all at the same time. And my natural instinct is to start emoting at EVERYONE. ALL THE PEOPLE. Just to get them talking. Is it that you guys don't want me talking about five different things with five different people? Am I allowed to drag the five different people into the same conversation? I hate feeling like someone might be standing there, just zoning out, because they feel left out. But I also don't want to step on toes here with what y'all would prefer so, yes. Having this in writing would be great for my overthinking self.

-----

I'll try to think on some other stuff to ponder when I'm less braindead. It's been a long day 

I'm kind of curious what people think when they read 'improv acting' and/or 'collaborative writing'... because I'd thought our About page was pretty clear. Honestly, the whole point of that page is so people know what they're getting into, and to keep players from jumping in and then feeling betrayed. 

I like these points so far and to clarify for p of Rostam, yeah -- the guidelines would be for public roleplay.

Sad to see cool players go. Best wishes to you too, p of Jiraya!


To p of Zahra:

- passive aggressive tone
Passive aggressive tone is not cool. We do have a few guidelines here already, and I don't know if that's covered by 'thoughts in emotes', but it felt like it at the time. Maybe that could be made more clear.

- scene setting
Dramatic stuff should definitely be done with poses, but I think there's two things that could help with that. 

• If a pose broadcasts to the room, that would be good, like, "Pose set: Zahra is here, shaking a fist angrily at Pilgrim."
• If the pose bugs were fixed and so poses were more reliable.

- scene crashing
Due to the constraints of alpha, there aren't that many private places, unfortunately. If you're in a public space, it's better to conform to the quicker pace. That said, Zac should try to be a bit polite and not fire off a pile of socials. I think this is already covered in our original loose guidelines regarding trying to be considerate of people, but it probably needs some more specification.

- excluding people
This is actually something that I actively want people not to worry about, if at all possible. If you're ignoring someone who is talking to you specifically, then I do believe that should be emoted about if at all possible, because otherwise it's very rude and a bit hurtful on an OOC level. But if someone is just standing there, and there's no reason to include them in your emote, then it's fine not to. And I also think it's okay to address multiple people in an emote, as long as it's not some kind of unrealistic yo-yo'ing (I love this word to describe it, kudos to the guy who gave it to me, you know who you are). Something also like 'tmote glances around at the others present before hunching closer on the railing in order to mutter something to ~friend.' is also fine.

Last note -- it's also fine to have multiple emotes in a row. This is how I prefer to monologue, actually, so that I can be organically interrupted... it's really fun.

 

tldr: Fan talks too much.

---

Some thoughts (I reserve the right to have others later!):

Trying to match the rhythm of the scene you're in is a low threshold, high ceiling activity, where most everyone realizes it is worth attempting, but getting really good at it can be a lifelong journey. I think it is the essential purpose of this thread, and of emoting guidelines in general. I also think it's important to separate this consideration from concepts of "style" or "writing style" or "my style" because those are the notions that cause us to become precious and self protective, and to not want to consider doing things differently than we already do them - which precludes us from ever improving at how we collaborate.

Some things that seem relevant, to me, from my experience, below. (People intuitively know many of the things I'm going to say but I think it's worth spelling them out in order to practice dissecting these concepts, and to build a common vocabulary for discussing them.)

First:

I think the debate between "rules" and "guidelines" is a bit of a category mistake, personally. People get upset at the idea of being "forced" to do something by a "rule", and they feel comfortable with "guidelines" mainly because they are free to ignore them if they aren't immediately appealing. I don't think either of these approaches is the point, really. The point is that none of us is writing a book by logging into the MUD (although we can in our story arc! enjoy!); we are participating in a collaborative activity with other players. Yes, this is a particular type of collaborative activity, distinct from other similar types of activities, and the people who are building the world have (and should have) the opportunity to say what sort of activity that is intended to be, and to build mechanics to support that. But at its core it's much simpler than that, and mostly style-independent.

There are tools and practices which make effective and satisfying collaboration easier for everyone - and for the people struggling the most - and there are habits and practices that make collaboration harder. No one was born knowing what these are. We all have a certain intuition about many of them, from our experience playing these types of games. But it's worth discussing them, and discussing what works *particularly well in this specific context*, so that we can all have a mutual baseline of best practices to be starting from, or so that we can negotiate sticky situations as a community, if they arise.

Best practices aren't laws; no one is going to arrest you for putting your hand on the wrong part of the table saw. You might cut it off, though. Which is probably counter to your goals for table saw usage. ;)
 

On Emote Length

There are different types of "long" emotes, and they are differently in/appropriate in different situations.

* Long descriptive emotes are perfectly fine (IMO) in a medium-density (4-6 players) scene, because they do not create multiple dialogue or action hooks for everyone to juggle, and occupy the same amount of virtual time as a social. People may skim the loving description if they can't process fast enough, but that is largely only detrimental to the person who wrote it, so it's not a huge problem. If you want to talk about how you pushed your hair behind your ear for three lines, it's no skin off my nose.

These are not ideal in high-density (7+ players) scenes, because spam. If you can say it in one line, everyone will appreciate it, and they are more likely to respond appropriately because they are more likely to have actually read it.

* Multi-action or speechifying emotes are a completely different animal. It is useful to be mindful of how much virtual time these emotes take up, and compare that to how much virtual time the other emotes in the scene are taking up. In a medium-density scene, these should be avoided if at all possible. It's fine to be writerly, but taking up a lot of virtual time and giving the person who is writing *at the same time as you* *even more* to respond to after you hit enter before them is very problematic for establishing a group rhythm. It also risks you getting behind and just adding more and more and more clauses and actions as you feel obligated to acknowledge everything that has happened in the last 10 minutes in one giant emote. It's also very disruptive to the people who come AFTER you, who may feel they need to respond to everything you've just done in their own emote or else ignore you completely. Who is doing what when becomes very unclear very quickly here.

If you have 7 actions/dialogue responses in one emote, you can write 7 emotes. Then it will be clear when they happened, and people can respond to them in the time they emerge, naturalistically. The issue here is not one of writing style, but of recognizing that time in the MUD is REAL. It passes - whether you are acting or not. And if you claim to do 12 things in one second, it's awkward for everyone who has to decide on the fly how on earth to relate to that. Moreover, there are action situations where time is passing and mechanical things are happening, and trying to respond in this way will hinder everyone's ability to act in rhythm with the mechanics of the game world.

* Because none of this is an issue of style, but rather of practicality, what you do in a low density (1-3 player) scene is almost completely a matter of taste. It often makes sense to slow time down a bit in these types of scenes, and under most circumstances there's no reason not to do that. Obviously if someone needs life-saving intervention or similar, reverting to time-sensitive emoting practices is probably best. Otherwise, whatever works for all players involved is probably fine.

On Speed

* On the subject of things working for all players involved, it's courteous to try to maintain an awareness of one's time usage, and how it may be affecting other players. If someone seems to be struggling to respond in time to everything that is happening, it may be a good idea to include fewer actions or details to accommodate them - to cover a smaller span of time with your emotes, or emote less frequently per a given a span of time. This way a person who types more slowly or has a harder time processing information can manage smaller chunks at a time, and will be less likely to get talked over. When you're playing with someone who responds more quickly, it's fine to speed up again, of course.

* By the same token, MUD time is real time - you don't have to wait for people who are distracted or AFK or very slow, if time-sensitive events are occurring. I personally think it's courteous to wait a little while, but if the bomb is going off in 57 seconds, the bomb is going off in 57 seconds. If necessary, descriptive context can be back-filled later.

On Subjectivity

* Personally I have a fair bit of tolerance for people including thought-like subjectivity in their emotes, although the games I started on considered this to be Out Of Bounds. But as someone who often (read: always) plays characters from the margins outside typical social norms, I do find it extremely grating when people tell me, even implicitly, what my character's reaction to something "is" (usually by implying that a certain reaction would be universal), mostly because it's never actually true of my character. This is something to keep in mind. I think most people would say "I totally agree, and would never do that!" but it can sneak up on us: when it's something we take for granted, and think "everyone" "agrees" about, we often don't see it as subjective. Socially marginal characters can do this as well, when telling everyone how objectionable their antics "are". When you look closely, what may seem like a stylistic choice can be experienced by others as a subtle type of force pose.

* That said, too much description of the whys and wherefores behind a character's action create conundrums in which my character doesn't know this, because he's not psychic, but I do know it, so I'm no longer curious. Also, it's very hard to keep straight all of the small discrepancies between what I know and what my character knows. Odds are I just won't pursue asking why a character flew off the handle, if you told me about it in the emote description. This is regrettable, I think. Also, someone else may make a different choice, and feel that they DO know why that happened, and we're suddenly living in fractured timelines, where our senses of what Happened and what is Real don't line up. Jane is suddenly mad at Pedro because he isn't giving Julie a break when her throwing the china was obviously an understandable reaction to her miscarriage. Pedro doesn't know that! And frankly, neither does Jane. And wouldn't it be more interesting if they had these actual conversations instead of just feeling weird toward one another and out of sync and awkwardly failing to get along going forward?

Anyway, these are not guidelines. They are just some observations, from my time in the MU*sphere.

Edited to add:

Erm also I realize I didn't think to add - this post assumes from the outset that we all agree that being courteous is a good thing, and something we want to try to improve at. It does not address Behaving Badly or acting in Bad Faith because I don't think those are issues to be addressed by community guidelines. If someone needs to be told that being a jerk is against the rules, they are a bad fit already, I would very much hope?

Edited again to add:

From Pilgrim:

I'm kind of curious what people think when they read 'improv acting' and/or 'collaborative writing'...

The collaborative writing style:

I'm speculating here, but I suspect that in MUSHes, or perhaps in games where roleplay happens outside of the normal game mechanics, during downtime, or the like, there is, perhaps, a feeling of elastic time, and every character's time is their own. I may have said I did 12 things, and in my mind this took 12 minutes, while Joe and Judy each did 1 thing, which took 1 minute each, and these two incompatible facts just exist side by side, without any real sense of conflict. I'm TELLING a story about my character first, and interacting with Joe and Judy as virtual people second. I take what time I need, and I consider each character's story (when I am the audience) independently. In a high stakes character development scene between me and my paramour, we may sync up and get into a rhythm but the rest of the time I don't worry about this.

The improv style:

This style is not about TELLING, it's about BEING. I AM my character, and I have a moment-by-moment *experience* of all the things you say you did, or I should have, if you tell them to me one by one. I should have 15 things to say about your 15 things. If you stack them all together it prevents me from having my organic experience. The rhythm is experience, describe, experience, describe. Not experience, experience, experience, experience, describe describe describe describe. The telling is not the end in itself, it is a means, it's how I communicate to you what I am feeling and doing. More like LARP in words, less like forum RP.

Or something. 8)

RE: "Improv Acting"/"Collaborate Writing"/About

If you're expecting the "About" page to suggest that certain writing styles are what is going to be supported, and that alternatives may even have development to limit them (The discussion held regarding character lengths), there is nothing on that page to suggest that. There is a lot about themes, engaging in the story as a whole with the support of mechanics and other players, and that a lot of reading/writing is involved. The only thing I'll say, which I thought was nicely worded is "simultaneously valuing the sensibilities of other players", which I've seen people doing, including those who prefer to be more verbose. From someone who comes from an exclusively RPE background, I've found it pretty easy to slot in because it felt like there was a lot of room for all of it as long as people were sensible.

About Page & Enforcement Thoughts

Just some general thoughts on how/why confusion may have cropped up. I think there are many more experienced MU*ers here who are offering great perspectives and insightful comments.

I would like to respond to this posed by Pilgrim; "I'm kind of curious what people think when they read 'improv acting' and/or 'collaborative writing". IMO 'collaborative writing' does read as implying a long-form emote style. This was a daunting piece for me when I first planned on joining the game, as I am decidedly NOT incredibly verbose, and much prefer a shorter style. I can certainly see how it may have felt like a 180 for folks who came in attracted to that. To a lesser extent- calling it 'improv acting' reads a bit... silly maybe? Almost takes away from the deep, serious storytelling that can and will occur in such a wonderful setting. (I am also incredibly unfamiliar with improv, so this is SUPER surface-level. I am so sorry if I have offended any improv folks).

I also have some reservations about how it is hard to enforce something this ambiguous. If it's a hard 'you MUST do it this way' I think it will likely leave many feeling anxious and over-monitored. On the other hand, if these are posed as guidelines with wiggle room, enforcement becomes difficult. My hope is that these would live as recommendations or best practices.

As always, much love for the team that has built this wonderful world, and I plan to stick around no matter what is decided here <3 

EDIT: I see above that it was addressed that these things won't be enforced. This alleviates my worries! Sorry for missing that originally, my reading comprehension is iffy sometimes. 

Well. I feel a little as though I forgot to turn the stove off when I left for work, and have returned to a smouldering ruin.

When I wrote my post, I had no clue that 'collaborative storytelling' was a controversial phrase, much less one that might then be adopted as the name of a faction against which to make war. I wasn't trying to launch an attack against writers who trend towards shorter-form emotes. I was attempting to express concern for the potential for pushing out writers who trend towards the longer-form.

But with that phrase in particular, I was genuinely referring to all of us. Everyone who shares this creative space. We collaborate to tell stories together in a written format.

As for fast, slow, big, small, dynamic, measured, showing, telling... This is all style preference, and it doesn't need to exist on a black-and-white battlefield, where we fight to justify our idea of how to conduct fun roleplay. There's an entire sliding scale between the points of any two extremes.

Reviewing the posts made since, it looks to me more-or-less unanimous that while individual preference varies from player to player (as is only natural and expected), we're all prepared to meet somewhere in the middle, in a healthy compromise where everyone can feel welcome to participate. Presumably, that's the purpose of this guideline thread -- defining that middle ground.

To sum up: I don't subscribe to this artificial division of the playerbase, nor to the idea that any one specific example of style preference is inherently superior to any other, is more destructive than any other, or that they can't happily coexist. I think we're all here hoping for a roughly similar experience, and we all bring something a little different to the pursuit of that ideal. Some enjoy certain flavours better than others and will naturally gravitate in the direction of compatible styles. There's nothing wrong with that. But I accept that staff don't feel the same way.

tldr; A MUD is like a potluck to which everybody brings a different meal, because nobody cooks the same. I don't see why we can't all eat at the same table, even if we load our plates up differently. Observe good table manners, and eat without yucking anybody else's yum.

I've always thought of the styles being discussed here as short and long form. That's not really what sticks in my head about this - you can call writing styles whatever you want. Improv to me means doing what feels right in the scene and moves it forward. At its foundation, I think improv involves there being no mistake but not running with the ball when you get it. Collaborative writing involves caring deeply about correctness, doing the required reading, and being ready to receive edits.

After spending some time in SoA, it feels closer to LARPing than either improv or collaborative writing. You go out for a weekend, get seriously and immersively into character, have required reading on a deep theme and specific style of play, and will be corrected by people who care deeply if you get facts or play wrong. 

Edit: I tried to quote just a snip of the post (the bit at the top) but it looks like it quoted the whole thing! It might be a good idea to let people quote segments to signal that's what they're responding to.