Help Topic: Emote
Category: Roleplay -- You must be alive to use this command.
You can use the EMOTE command to express many actions of your character. Speech
in emotes will use coded mechanics for speech and languages, and you can even
append customized emote to mechanically-expressed roleplay actions.
Using the plain EMOTE command is good for an action such as:
Aleph casts a dour stare around the plaza, then heaves a loud sigh. "Where are my
snacks?" trumpets the chimaera, with great dismay.
However, if Aleph wanted to punch Donna, it wouldn't be a good idea to use the
EMOTE command. "Aleph punches Donna" is called power-emoting. Even "Aleph hugs
Donna" is power-emoting. What if Donna doesn't want a hug?
In the same vein, using EMIT would be good for an atmospheric note such as:
The flickering flames in the fireplace grant a cozy sense of serenity to the
inside of this cottage.
It would not, however, be good to use for something like:
As you step into the cottage, you suddenly have the feeling that you are
cozy and loved. You want to relax and unwind. Ahh. Such a nice and comfortable
home.
EMIT is a good tool for roleplayers to add a little extra atmosphere to the
scene, but again, it's not for power-emoting.
Whenever a mechanic exists for an action, use the mechanics, and append custom
emotes as you please. If a mechanic doesn't exist or you don't know about whether
it exists or not, just use open-ended emotes that don't force any conclusions
or depict the actions or feelings of other characters.
If Aleph wanted to punch Donna, a good way to do that would be by entering
the command:
> punch Donna emote Suddenly, $me leaps at $Donna. "It's your fault I don't have
any snacks!" it bellows, while clawing towards $her with a taloned paw.
Then, the code will be engaged for Aleph to attempt to damage Donna. The custom
emote would show in place of the "Aleph throws a punch towards Donna" type of
generic message, and then the next message of "It connects!" or "It misses!" will
display. If it connects, Donna will be appropriately damaged. Everyone can
proceed with the scene knowing that everything has happened fairly (or unfairly,
but in an in-character sense and not an out-of-character frustration).
Many mechanical commands such as STAND, EAT, DROP, GET, and so on will allow you
to add parentheses or adverbs to your command for customized expression of the
coded action, in addition to being able to replace the message with a completely
free-form written emote.
These commands would work either with a custom emote:
> eat snack emote shoves a snack into one of its mouths with a glower at $donna.
Or, with an adverb, a parenthetical clause, or an adverb and parentheses together in
that order.
> eat snack (with a glower at $donna)
> eat snack dourly
> eat snack dourly (with a glower at $donna)
The top of a command help file should contain some notes that tell you what
custom emoting features are available with any given command.
And regular free-form emotes are available at all times!
Usage:
emote <text>
(either automatically starts with your name, or it has $me somewhere in it)
emit <text>
(does not need to have $me in it at all)
rumote <text>
(make a regular emote, but it will be added to the rumor system in the sense
that if you are in a public place, VNPCs may repeat your emote to others)
Example:
emote $me looks around.
rumote Nodding to $aleph, $me points at $its multiple heads. "Cool heads," says $me.
emit Wind blows around.
In order to address others in emotes you can use these pronoun markers to translate
to the accurate word for each gender.
$his, $hers, $its, $their => "your"
$him, $he, $her, $she, $it, $they, $them => "you"
$herss, $hiss, $theirs, $itss => "yours"
These pronouns should refer to the last person of that gender that you directly
named in an emote reference.
If you are not familiar with using the $ symbol to demarcate targets in
your emotes, you can use / or ~.
TMOTE, HMOTE, and WMOTE are all extentions of the emote command that work the same
way syntactically, but provide the expression of that information in different ways.
To color-code parts of emotes (such as speech or references to people), check CONFIG.
These configurations will also allow you to toggle the 'emote_start' option which will
make all EMOTEs always start with "$me", just in case you prefer it that way.
Recommendations: Tells, Say, Whisper, and Rumors
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