The Infamous, Do-it-Yourself PSI Emote!

[Galdun]

Everybody, and I mean everybody - from your lowliest, egg suckin', spice shuckin', web toed grebber to your fancy-feathered, hoity toity Chosen Lord - knows what I'm talkin' about.  When certain folks feel the need to convey an emtion or the state of their mental presence, they find ways to separate the description from the actual message.  For those of you who aren't quite followin' me yet, heres an example.

The skinny waif sends you a telepathic message:
"**Their voice echoing angrily in your head** Where's my small'n'a half for the other night, Amos?  You better pay me up front next time or I'm gonna cut the damn thing off!"

The point is, that we don't have a sort of way based, Psi emote in place and yet people sort of handle it on their own.  Now this is of course totally cool and I haven't got any problem with it, but the fact that there isn't a coded PSI emote leads me to believe the player base is divided on this issue.

So what in Krath's name do you all think?  Are these little D.I.Y. Psi emotes ok?  Are they stupid?  Should people use them?  If so, should we bug the staff to code them? Would it be hard to code them?

Lets talk it up.

[Ghost]

I picture psionic communication as a transmission of images as well as a transmission of words.  And the mind's images can be colored with emotions.  I find it okay, so long it just represents the state of emotion of the other person, without forcing me to anything.  So:

psi *Colors of anger accompanying his thoughts* I hate you...

is okay.


But:

psi *His anger frightening you* I hate you...

is not.

[Dakkon Black]

I say that way emotes are A-OK.

It shouldn't ever be an actual emote, but I do like the way it's done if its a feeling.

so.

The waif sends you a telepathic message:
"*as she sits on a chair in her room* Thanks for the chair

Is bad, and should never happen.

The waif sends you a telepathic message:
"*with a flicker of hapiness* Thanks for the chair

Seems fine to me.

[Ardan]

I think they're ok once they're not overdone. I don't think words that convey strong emotion should be used as this is entering territory where normal people do not want to be. I always keep my psi emotes to be very slight things that would appear more like a faint or brief sensation. Saying something like, "I could sense he was as ferociously angry, mad as a Gaj Lord Templar!" is something that could drop both of you in a lot of unwanted trouble.

[Eternal]

Hmm... I'm almost unilaterally opposed to anyone but psionicists psi'ing anything beyond a message.  If I begin to feel what you're feeling, I think you're getting too close.  If I get 'You feel queasy' every time you contact me, then I'm going straight to the templars about your obvious Brainworm ways.  If I see a great dragon towering over me, or some other nonsense, you'd better be a templar yourself (and I'll assume you're some sort of strange mindbendy one!) or be really good friends with one who's willing to protect you from another.

I don't like it.

[bloodfromstone]

Personally, I've always liked it when it's done for emotions. I've seen people do images, and I don't like that so much, but I definitely think some way to add some feeling into psi's is good.

[Sanvean]

This is currently being discussed at the staff level.

Right now, it is fine to interject feelings and emotions, as long as they are your feelings and emotions.

example:

psi *with a wash of shame* I slept with your mother last night.

but psiing

psi *image of your mom doing her "O" face*

would be unjustified since (presumably) you don't know their mom.  If you do, go for it.

I would not expect people to give accurate visions of some place or to supply information they don't have in person.  You can convey your own emotion, but you cannot infuence the recipent's.

As I said, being discussed, and subject to change if we hash out something else.

[Eternal]

You know what would be nifty?

If the feel command gave you some sort of 'feel desc' which would be communicated with your psis!  This would get the feelings through without the need for emote or careful wording.

You feel nervous.

You send to the balding, one-eyed templar:
"With a nervous feeling:  Blah, blah, bladdy blah, Lord Templar."

Just a thought.

[jhunter]

I've been using them for quite some time now and I like them being used so long as it is only displaying your pc's feelings or an image they are picturing and sending via the way. The Way IMO, is more than just sending actual text to someone else's mind. It's a mixture of thoughts, feelings, and images to get the message across.

[Uberskaapie]

I do this on occaision, though very rarely, and I personally think that including personal emotions in the psi-emote gets a little too close to psionicist status. When I do use them, I use them to convey the way my thoughts are travelling. For instance:

If I live in Tuluk, but have gone to allanak for whatever reason, when I communicate with my friends back home I might say:

the skinny dude psi's:
 "*his thoughts distant* Hey, long time no see"

or if I'm in the middle of something:
the skinny dude psi's:
 "*his thoughts divided* Now's not the best time"

basically, conveying the psionic reception, rather than non-verbal communication.




if that makes sense at all...

[InsertCleverNameHere]

I like it. I do it quite often, when my character's feeling any emotion I feel ought to bleed through into a psi. While mining for obsidian/clay/glass, your craggy old dude finds a hidden gold deposit and has to tell somebody. "psi *with a joy bordering on the orgasmic* You will never believe what I just found."

Okay so.. I've never used that. But now that I've thought of it I might just... But *a burst of happiness* *irritation ebbing through the thought* *trickle of sly humor* *warm mental laughter*... All similar to things I've used, or seen other people use. And I'm totally okay with it. It's like talking to someone on the phone, in my head. Sure, you can't see them to see what emotions are on their face, but a voice (or mental voice) can inflict a lot of feeling by tone, volume, etc.

[MorganChaos]

I do emotes in it a lot. Very occasionally, if I'm waying someone who's right there in the room with me, I'll put something in describing that I say this to them at the same time as I'm smoking or drinking or winking at someone or whatever. Otherwise I do things like *thoughts racing confusingly* or *thoughts a litte fuzzy* or *seeming extremely content.* I'll also do simple images, but if I can't fit the image into one send then it's more complicated than I want to send through psi.

[spawnloser]

Eeek!  MorganChaos, please don't put actions in your psi's!  Emote or Hemote or Semote any actions, please.  If you're winking at someone or smoking, great...those should be things that people can see.  Just prep stuff up so that the two commands go through one right after the other, and then the person you're psi'ing too will see the psi come through at the same time as whatever you're emoting and it'll all be good.  Don't deny those others in the room the chance to interact with your emote by putting it only in the psi please.

[Vesperas]

When someone first struct me with the *does something*, I kind of stopped and stared for a moment, because it was just sort of jarring to see amongst all of the other coded wonders.

Now that I'm used to it, I'm perfectly okay with it.  I think, though, the way you 'emote' in a PSI is determined on how you imagine it.  

For me, I'm marching with all those people who view the Way as a series of sensations and brief (but unrecallable) images/sounds that ultimately convey an intuitive message.

People should NOT be able to broadcast recognizeable images that the reciever can clearly remember.  I believe that's in the realm of mindbenders, and if my character ICly suddenly discovers that she know exactly what your PC is phsically doing or seeing, she's either going to turn your PC in for being a worm or become EXTREMELY paranoid of herself.

When I say something is unrecallable... well, think of receiving a Way message like having a dream. In the short time that you are actually receiving it, you are experiencing flashes of vivid imagery and sound, but once the message has stopped (like waking up from the dream), the images fade, but the concept and sensation still remain.


Mmm, I had more to say on the subject, but my keyboard is making it a nuisance to type and spell correctly.

[joyofdiscord]

Someone once used a psi-emote to flash someone's complete sdesc (as an "image") at me, for a person he was trying to describe.  That's just not right, that's worse than the sdesc abuse we're already accustomed to.  Please don't do this.

[Synthesis]

Considering Sanvean just said "if you know his mom, go for it" with respect to sending an image over the Way, I'd say your opinion as to what is acceptable over the Way is a little off, joyofdiscord.

Further, I find it interesting that you're so certain, considering the fairly sparse documentation about the subject.  If they're discussing such things at the staff level, I find it a little unreasonable for anyone to be forming adamant opinions about it.

So...you might not like it, but so far, at least one staff member has expressed tacit approval.

[Nameless Face]

Someone once used a psi-emote to flash someone's complete sdesc (as an "image") at me, for a person he was trying to describe.  That's just not right, that's worse than the sdesc abuse we're already accustomed to.  Please don't do this.

Who says this is forbidden?  It seems that the transmission of images is not currently ruled out by staff.


(edit: see above... was slower on the draw)

[MorganChaos]

Eeek!  MorganChaos, please don't put actions in your psi's!  Emote or Hemote or Semote any actions, please.  If you're winking at someone or smoking, great...those should be things that people can see.  Just prep stuff up so that the two commands go through one right after the other, and then the person you're psi'ing too will see the psi come through at the same time as whatever you're emoting and it'll all be good.  Don't deny those others in the room the chance to interact with your emote by putting it only in the psi please.

It's not only in the psi. Example:

Code Select Expand

emote drags deeply off his spice, eyes half-shutting contently, and blows a smoke ring at ~man

psi *as he blows a smoke ring* He's the next target.

Other people still can react to me blowing smoke rings at them, and the person I'm talking to can react properly to my emote in combination with what I said. I only do this when I'm sitting next to a person who's paying attention to me, or should be.

[joyofdiscord]

So... you guys honestly think this is acceptable:

The guy ways you, "He's tall, bla bla bla, dragon tattoo, bla bla bla:

You way them, "I'm not sure I know who you're talking about"

The guy ways you, "*an image of the altitudinous, cadmium-eyed man appearing in front of you* well, maybe you'll figure it out"

I mean, honestly?  No fooling?  That doesn't sound like an abuse to you?

If that's so, why should we EVER bother describing people?  As long as we've seen them once, we can apparently psionically project a hologram of them using their EXACT sdesc and all but eliminate any chance of mistaken identity.

Personally, I think it's pretty obvious that the example Sanvean gave is worlds different than what I'm describing.  I'm talking about characters bestowing psionic Obi Wan Kenobi style hologram powers on themselves to avoid the complications of identifying people.

[Ktavialt]

So... you guys honestly think this is acceptable:

The guy ways you, "He's tall, bla bla bla, dragon tattoo, bla bla bla:

You way them, "I'm not sure I know who you're talking about"

The guy ways you, "*an image of the altitudinous, cadmium-eyed man appearing in front of you* well, maybe you'll figure it out"

I mean, honestly?  No fooling?  That doesn't sound like an abuse to you?

Actually, in that particular example, I see the perfect reason why that is
acceptable.  Altitudinous?  Cadmium?  Ugh.  Really picking on one of my
pet peeves there, especially when the person beneath the hood doesn't
have either altitudinous or cadmium inside the mdesc, and are trying to
get away from having anybody target them.

- Ktavialt

[joyofdiscord]

Uuuhhh, that's a random sdesc given for purposes of example.  The sdesc itself doesn't matter, and we are NOT talking about sdesc-mdesc incongruity here, so I'm personally baffled as to how that cognitive leap was made.

Describing people is difficult.  When I was a teacher, I tried to refer to one of the 6-8 students in my class to another teacher with the same class and found it frustratingly difficult.  This is out of a pool of 6 to 8 people.  Without very specific identifying features to latch onto, it's no easy thing to describe a person.  Everyone focuses on some features more than others.  Few people truly have features so striking that most people notice that first.

Here on Arm, it's a necessary evil that everybody has the same "most identifiable features" to every person that they pass: their sdesc.  People that describe people honestly in-game often still have a hard time doing it, because describing people is hard.  People that kind of tiptoe around the two sdesc adjectives, maybe with a scar/tattoo or other mdesc feature throw in, (by far the most common type of player, in my experience, and a group I'm too often guilty of belonging to, due to necessity and a bad memory) have an easier time of it.  Those who are possessed of holographic imagery that uses the entire sdesc letter-for-letter as if their psi-emote were some kind of legitimate code echo have no chance of failing.

[MorganChaos]

Uuuhhh, that's a random sdesc given for purposes of example.  The sdesc itself doesn't matter, and we are NOT talking about sdesc-mdesc incongruity here, so I'm personally baffled as to how that cognitive leap was made.

The point there was that sdesc is ridiculous to begin with, and there's a lot of them like it. I would not object to that. If it were "the blue-eyed, dark-haired man" or whatever, you can just say "He's got blue eye, and kinda dark shaggy hair." But someone who says "altitudinous, cadmium-eyed man" (or something similar, with crazy words) is being an idiot and trying not to get targeted, so they shouldn't be surprised when someone ways their sdesc. If it were "tall, (i don't know what color cadmium is)-eyed man," then no, you shouldn't way that sdesc, you should just describe.

I understand it was just random, but in that particular instance, yeah, I'd think it cool. But with what you're talking about, sdesc-mdesc incongruity IS a big issue, when people have sdescs that have little-nothing to do with their mdesc and wear hoods all the time. I personally think I'd rather the person way an sdesc, because it's a much more vague image, than the mdesc or a list of features in the mdesc. For playability's sake and realism's sake.

[Nao]

On a side note, altitudinous is prety ridiculous for people... That's a word used in geography, seriously. Another instance where someone showed they could use a thesaurus but didn't bother checking a bit further.

[Ktavialt]

Uuuhhh, that's a random sdesc given for purposes of example.  The sdesc itself doesn't matter, and we are NOT talking about sdesc-mdesc incongruity here, so I'm personally baffled as to how that cognitive leap was made.

Are you and Agent137 related? Seriously?

Anyways, I figure that if every player can telepathically send messages
through the Way like Dr. Xavier from the X-Men, it isn't that hard to
believe that you can send images with the mind like Obi Wan Kenobi (though
thats kind of a bad example, since he did it with a device, not the mind.)

Playability trumps normality in each, I say.

- Ktavialt

[Marauder Moe]

I'm with you, joyofdiscord.

If psi was meant to convey images (or emotions, for that matter), I think it should be recoded to accept command emotes as such.  Or at least that staff needs to explicitly say in documentation that emotions and/or images are OK for the Way.  Sanvean said they're talking about this now, so we just have to wait I suppose.

The telepathy as pure thought argument isn't foolproof.  It's possible that the parts of the humanoid brain that enable the Way are tied directly and only into the speech centers of the brain and have nothing to do with the visual cortex.  So, the sender concentrates on words, those words go into the Way section of the brain, get transmitted through the Way and into the Way center of the recipient, and then are translated into his native language by his speech centers.  As a corralary, that would make a mindbender someone who's Way center of the brain is enlarged and has connections to other parts of the brain, thus allowing greater control and capability.