[Feature] Prepending words while posing

[Noel]

I get super self-conscious about my /me / pose commands looking very samey, because they always start with my character’s name. I was wondering if there were plans for a feature to prepend words/phrases to the beginning of a pose command, like so:

Input:

pose (Glancing about the room,) surreptitiously slips a cookie into one of his tailbags.

Output:

Glancing about the room, Noel surreptitiously slips a cookie into one of his tailbags.

I think it’d be a nice bump to expressiveness and variation, and I’m hoping it wouldn’t be too much trouble to implement!

[Accipiter]

@Noel

I was wondering if there were plans for a feature to prepend words/phrases to the beginning of a pose command

Welcome to the forum, Noel!

There hasn’t been any such plans (but I can surely consider making such plans). I guess it is because I tend to use describe for that purpose myself:

describe Opening the package, Accipiter finds a cookie missing.

which gives:

I understand it is not perfect for the purpose; the styling is different, your name is not highlighted for others, and you must hover the message to see who sent it. This is because the purpose of describe is to tell of events not necessarily directly related to the character. But it can still be used for sentence structures not starting with the name.

Is describe an option meanwhile?

/Accipiter

[Noel]

Yeah, that’s understandable! It does feel a little different stylistically, and part of the reason I asked this instead of simply being happy with describe is that I feel the stylistic distinction between character-based actions and statements removed from the character (e.g. assertions about how an aspect of the environment looks, feelts, etc.) is useful!

But also I totally understand if this is the preferred method for RPing without starting with your name, esp. if it means less unnecessary work. Thanks for responding

[Accipiter]

I am not yet done considering it.

This is the type of suggestions I love. It is more geared towards: “I think this would improve roleplay”, rather than “I am used to this function in my previous chat, and I would like it here”.

Both types of suggestions are fine, but the second type can sometimes forget about how some new features might impact RP.

There are two “concerns” I have with you suggestions, that I might need to discuss first:

Unclear chat log
By keeping the name first, you know directly where to look to see who said/posed a message. If the name is not first, it may make the chat log less clear.
Is this a problem? I don’t know for sure.

Also, one must consider how we style OOC poses. But that is a minor thing.

Command structure
Your suggestion of putting the “prefix” within parenthesis (pose (prefix) suffix) might collide with naturally written poses. Eg: pose (still being hungry) reaches for the cookies.

I think we should consider some placeholder instead. Example below using %% as placeholder:

pose Opening the package, %% finds a cookie missing.

Or maybe just skip the name all together, more like a describe?

::Opening the package, Accipiter finds a cookie missing.

The last one would act like a describe, but with styling like a pose.

What do you think?

[Noel]

Hmm, a variant on the pose syntax that uses a placeholder makes the most sense to me: and if it’s styled similarly (with highlighting on the name, etc.), it can help with some of the clarify concerns stated earlier.

Admittedly, I haven’t been in many situations in which there’s been such a large volume of RP input that clarity has ever been an issue; but I understand that scalability must be considered as well.

[Xetem]

I definitely like the :: syntax and making it more like a describe (looking and Væd and Vœg for instance using that) but possibly having the substitution option could be nice for those with longer or harder to type names.

[Tlancaalek]

I like the substitution option, but I could certainly live with the :: version, as well. FurryMuck doesn’t have an option for poses to start with anything other than the character name, so I’ve lived with it for quite a long time now; the alternative is spoof, which works similar to describe, but obviously with much less sophisticated formatting options.

That said, the say on FM (and most Fuzzball servers I’ve run across) does allow for a couple of options that don’t put the player’s name first, split says and ad-hoc verbs, although the syntax is a little arcane.

[Blutinj]

I like that double colon idea. Perhaps a way to signify who sent the message would be syntax similar to the little ooc above ooc messages?

[Talon]

Furrymuck actually has this functionality, using double commas to ‘split’ the line, in which the “(name) says,” is slipped in. Or you can manually do it with splitting and %n for name.

It is a -cool- feature but I only see it used about once a year.

[Windchaser]

It’s possible to put a newline in the middle of a pose on FM or Tapestries. I don’t usually spread around how I do that, since I’m unpopular enough with Taps admins. :3 But it lets you get a line without your name in front directly after a line with your name on it.

[Tlancaalek]

@Windchaser — does that involve MPI, by any chance?

[Finis]

So Taps structures their spoof/describe so that a room owner can specify how the spoof looks, whether that’s in parenthesis or just open, so it looks more like a pose. It might be enough to do that so people can at least have describe in whatever format they like (in private).

[Windchaser]

Yup! I rebound ; to some MPI, which has the additional advantage that if I hit ; instead of : I don’t accidentally OOC.

I mostly use it to be a doof and fake @rolling impossible dice.
`>> Clearsong rolls 1dTlancaalek, getting confused.