Long /me's

[Ketamine Kowboy]

1 hour ago, yerro said:

Well, everyone's got a preference but that serial "action after action" roleplay seems too robotic for me. You don't need to specify that you're returning the bottle, and I'd rather you used that space to describe your character's touch when working the bar. They can be wiped out after a long shift, or they might be energetic just getting started, they might be in a mood, and so on.

 

My best interactions with bartenders and people working the bar when they had character. I don't think we gotta treat bartenders like drink dispensers, could honestly implement a bot to do those /me's like the car wash ones. ;c

 

(this is to address @Свето above)

Fair point, fair point, personal preference of mine, robotic or not, but each to their own. Glad to see people on both sides being reasonable, and this not turning into the "snow" discussion which became a shit show real fast

[yerro]

6 minutes ago, Свето said:

Fair point, fair point, personal preference of mine, robotic or not, but each to their own. Glad to see people on both sides being reasonable, and this not turning into the "snow" discussion which became a shit show real fast

Yeah, I get you. As one of the people involved there, things get a little heated, but it's not the subject itself that was grinding my gears, it's the way people treated each other.

 

And on the subject of /me lines, I agree with this:

Quote

someone describing drinking in so many words whilst crowded with people who they don't know, can be frustrating. 

This is a valid issue in some areas of roleplay, and people usually share the opinion that your RP needs to be readable. Overloading your /me's with a plethora of technical terms that don't really say anything to an average reader doesn't do anything but make one look like a show-off. That being said, I definitely wouldn't side with the point that RP needs to be dumbed down — field-specific lingo is good, it just needs to serve a purpose.

 

 

I only have a single screenshot of the drink Sarah Williams created in the XS Nightclub for me two months ago. I wish I had the process screened as well, but to me that felt nice because as a person rather unfamiliar with cocktails and alcohol in general, that gave me an understanding of what kinda drink my character was having.

Edited November 23, 2020 by yerro

[Chipsdose]

15 hours ago, yerro said:

 

 

I only have a single screenshot of the drink Sarah Williams created in the XS Nightclub for me two months ago. I wish I had the process screened as well, but to me that felt nice because as a person rather unfamiliar with cocktails and alcohol in general, that gave me an understanding of what kinda drink my character was having.

That's not a drink she made for you, that's the brewery from which they bought the drinks from. They set the names of their items and sell them like the one you posted to the businesses, where they just give you the item like in this case the Mount Gordo brewery.

Edited November 23, 2020 by Chipsdose

[yerro]

8 hours ago, Chipsdose said:

That's not a drink she made for you, that's the brewery from which they bought the drinks from. They set the names of their items and sell them like the one you posted to the businesses, where they just give you the item like in this case the Mount Gordo brewery.

Well, she roleplayed creating that drink as well, I just don't have the process screened. But if that's a standard of the nightclub, then I'm sorry for misgiving credit to a single person.

 

Still makes for a good example to Diana talking about examples of good bartender RP. 🙂

 

I understand why you're aware about this, iirc you roleplayed Chip as a bartender at a few venues yourself, so I'm sure you have experience to share too!

Edited November 24, 2020 by yerro

[tchotchke]

kipps said it best here:

On 7/20/2020 at 1:52 PM, Kipps said:

2) Avoid purple prose. No one cares. Really. If your character is swigging from a beer bottle then just say that - don't dedicate three paragraphs to the process. Good roleplayers say what they need to and they do it succinctly. They use as many words as necessary. They avoid tired or clumsy metaphors. They can turn a phrase when it's needed, but they also show enough restraint to keep a scene moving.

sometimes less is more 

 

 

[Foo bangin]

On 11/16/2020 at 3:25 AM, Свето said:

/me consumes a  plastic container of dihydrogen monoxide, before lowering it down onto the table, gaining assistance from the 9.807 m/s gravitational pull of the planet Tellus which we currently reside on, allegedly.

 

🌚

Edited November 27, 2020 by Foo bangin

[bonk]

As repeated thousands of times before in this thread, short /me's definitely are the way to move forward but if you also enjoy writing out semi-descriptive role play, go ahead.

 

I will point out, it's a huge immersion breaker when I role play with someone and I see a /me be just under the 250 character limit, I'll be honest, I am not bothered how you extended your elbow or in the method you used to grab onto something, a /me especially in a flowing role play scenario shouldn't extend more than a line, most people want swift /me's that they can quickly comprehend and work with. However, this does not mean your vocabulary should be plain too, plain vocabulary and the length of /me's are a whole different topic and argument, but I am sure the majority of people would vote for "spicier" vocabulary over basic words.

 

Furthermore, if you take like 45 seconds to a minute or so to write a /me that also breaks the immersion, as I said role play scenarios, good ones at least, they need to flow and to not have large gaps of empty time. I understand not everyone has a 100 WPM type speed but writing snappy /me's that get to the point really does help with that rather than attempting to script a whole novel.

[Stephen]

I think long /me lines are absurd, that's my honest opinion. The purpose of a /me is not to explicitly explain whatever your character's doing and what's on their mind when they're doing it. What you should do then is be more spontaneous with your character's actions. That is to say don't over-complicate it in an attempt to make an impression. In other words, don't be the intellectual elitist in the room trying to argue his way between the lines. Then in that sense I don't think /me lines are the biggest of your concerns, they're only detrimental as far as giving people an impression of the scenario you have in mind, helping them get immersed in your environment. And thus interesting them in role-playing with you.

[Garras Up]

3 word /me's over 250 word /me's...

[yerro]

Well, unsurprisingly there's a lot of people that think that emote quality is dictated by its length. I think that's the main misconception here, anyway.

 

There are bad /me's, there are good /me's. I don't think the point is to ask whether emote length is acceptable but whether the character is portrayed properly. I may sometimes find myself doing longer emotes, and I may follow up on them with /ame's for shorter and instant reactions, like smiling, smirking, nodding, scowling and whatnot.

 

It'd be a shame to see longer /me's get dismissed as verbose when the person is trying to tell you something through them. You're probably picturing the overblown emotes about sipping a drink, but I'm willing to bet a lot of people speaking up against longer emotes often overlook the actual message behind longer emotes that other roleplayers are trying to convey.

 

Don't judge people over longer /me's, they're doing it to give you a better understanding of their character.

Edited November 29, 2020 by yerro