Emote Envy

[burble]

So I'm around some major-league players and notice they all have these huge emotes they sling around, using them creatively to describe every situation in perfectly appropriate detail.

Then I look down at my keyboard and realize.. I have a tiny emote. 

It's not the technical part, all emotes feel good and size really doesn't matter, right?
The creative part is where I have trouble. I feel below average and unable to satisfy others.

I think the problem is translating the picture in my head into words - a very slow step for me so I usually just dumb it down in order to get something out quickly (premature emotation?).
Then again, sometimes I completely draw a blank (emotile dysfunction?).

Anyone have any pointers on how to be more creative and satisfying with their emotes? Maybe it's genetic and some people were just born with huge creative emotes..

[Disclaimer: This is a serious discussion and any allusion you derive regarding the above text is purely of your own construal.]

It sucks when I think of something really cool and the response is so much better that I feel completely illiterate.
Or worse, around Miss (you know who you are) whose emotes are so elegant I feel like I'm reading a novel and I'm thinking 'Shit that's good' and draw a complete blank when I try to come up with a response.

I swear, this must be what impotence feels like. Want, want, want but it's just not there. So how the heck do you learn to be creative with words? And be fast about it?

Dammit Jim, I'm a math person not a wordsmith. Help, I'm really frustrated. 

[boog]

Don't worry about it! Seriously. I think we all feel illiterate or self-conscious of our emotes from time to time.

Why flower up something you can easily, readily emote in fewer words? Me, I have specific words I use in specific emotes for my characters that might make them flashy at times. But seriously, I think (as a clannie ) you're doing a fantastic job. There is no need to feel like a fop around people who throw out huge emotes. Just think - they might be envious of your ability to exude a character in less.

But to answer your question (HAH I DIDN'T SEE IT), I feel a lot more confident and quick with emotes or flowery shit when I read, and read a -lot-. I read at least a chapter of a book each day, and I can tell my emotes suck or my creativity blows when I haven't been reading regularly.

[Gimfalisette]

I hope you get some good tips, because I still have emote envy after 4+ years playing There are just some players who are better at emoting than I am. I accept that. There are other aspects of roleplay that I am better at than they are. That is OK too. We each have our talents and all we're required to do is to bring those particular talents to the table and play to our full. When we all contribute like that, it's a perfect Silt Sea stew of tastes.

I do have a few tips that might be helpful.

Props: Use them. A spice tube, the hem of a garment, a flower in the hair, an earring, a crossbow you're pointing, the edge of a knife. Using props can give your character something to do beyond "emote nods."

VNPCs: Use them. Bump into them, get a drink spilled on you by one, shy away from that mul, sneer at a breed.

Environment: Emote it. Time of day, weather, flora, fauna, buildings. Look around you, find what's in the environment, and put it in your emotes. Players who do this are so cool. (I do it sometimes, because I'm trying to be cool too.)

Physical characteristics of your PC: While it's really irritating when the cold-blue-eyed man emotes about his cold blue eyes in every single freakin' possible place, I think it's otherwise pretty neat when players use the physicality of their characters in their emotes. Scars, tattooes, hair, lips, fingers...and not just for mudsex! Remind me what your PC looks like, it's part of the whole visual thing.

Reach out and touch someone: Players frequently fail to physically interact with the PCs around them. I know we're all afraid of poweremoting. But this is very easily done in a way that gives the other PC the power of choosing their reaction: "emote aims a playful slap at %pc cheek." They get to decide whether the slap lands, whether they duck, or what. Smack, slap, kiss, caress, touch.

Don't worry about pretty: Some players are elegant or unique with their emotes, the rest of us can barely get past nodding. That is OK. Just keep emoting. It doesn't have to be fancy or pretty to get the job done. Maybe your personal style is more succinct or more gritty. It can still be interesting or engaging!

But do vary the presentation of your emotes: Emotes that always start with the PC's sdesc are eventually boring. Learn how to put your @ in the middle, so you can "Deeply, @ nods" instead.

Hidden emotes: Learn them, use them, love them. They are sexy. Sexy players use them. In a spammy tavern scene, or when your character really has nothing to say, they are also very useful.

[Old Kank]

There was a brilliant thread on improving your emotes a few years back.  I looked, but I couldn't find it.

Just throwing that out there in case someone else remembers it, and knows who wrote it, or where to find it.

[spicemustflow]

Now I'm scared to nod.

[Barzalene]

Ugh, dude, me too. And I'm a writer, I've played for eight years, I staffed and me too!

I suspect one reason my PCs don't get laid more is because I secretly sabotage them, because all that emoting is so fucking daunting.

Oh and by the way... You know that player who everyone on the boards is always complaining about- the one who mistypes all the homophones and leaves off the final punctuation on a regular basis? Yep. Sorry.

But, they still let me play. Some people are huge emoters and rock. Some are short ones and rock. Some of us are the appreciative audience and maybe we rock too. If not fuck them They can kiss our asses.

[DustMight]

I remember San writing that huge emotes were nice and all, but it was the emotes that built the environment around the player that really developed the scene.  Reference the world around you.  The emote is less about you and more about the world, but do so in a way that doesn't focus on the character but does develop the world.  IMO, anyway.

[Aaron Goulet]

I've struggled with a similar thing, OP.  Instead of trying to compete, I've taken to making up for my non-fluent emotes with my strength: dialog.  Chances are, you probably have your own "strong area" outside of emoting you can capitalize on too.

Otherwise, Gimf's advice is amazing advice, and she walks the talk (sexy player).  Listen to her.

[hyzhenhok]

Don't worry about emoting too much. You only need to use emote when you want to do something that isn't supported by the code. You can give your character plenty of characterization simply by post and pre-emoting your basic coded stuff. You can make an interesting character without using anything more than >sit bar and >talk.

If it's length you're worried about, make sure you're emotes always contain two things: an action and an object. If there's no object (besides yourself), you're not really interacting with anything; just hemote and move on. If there's no action, you probably shouldn't bother unless you are wanting to draw attention to yourself despite not really having anything to do, which can be useful depending on the circumstances but in general I would avoid.

As far as I'm concerned, emoting is about communicating non-coded actions to other players, so long, flowery emotes can actually be detrimental. They can be easily overlooked in crowded scenes, or read incorrectly, or even simply be wrong in their portrayal of others or the environment. All the power to those who like to flex their creative muscles with their emotes, but I definitely prefer concise emotes that effectively and easily communicate what's occurring.

It's your character's actions that define them in relation to the world and others around them; emotes are just one of the tools we use to communicate those actions.

[Voular]

Find a nice hook. A fall-back emote. If your character has braided hair, play with your braids. If your character has  a limp, emote moving your weight from one leg to another and so on. I always found that helpful. The tips given so far are awesome, emote with your equiped items. (Usually players have so much shit equipped, if you have something nice I am glad if you make it pop for me in an emote.) Another thing is to combine overall appearance, sometimes you don't have to emote out every wrinkle in your face to make me understand you're angry. Just throw a "emote looks angry as shit as he slaps ~dumbass", works too (at least for me). Using your enviorment is always nice. (Echooing your voice in a cave is always cool.) Also, you can practice in your mind a bit. Look at yourself in your chair, if you're sitting down somewhere - copy some of the stuff you're doing IRL. We do a shit ton of stuff without giving it a second though.. (rub a foot at the ground, fiddle with something in our hands, look away when someone is talking, rub at an eye.. And so on.)

Also, emote how you move! If we're moving together, throw me an emote how you walk. Remember the "he walked, talked like a..". Well - how you talk and walk is important! >_>

[Gimfalisette]

Don't worry about emoting too much. You only need to use emote when you want to do something that isn't supported by the code. You can give your character plenty of characterization simply by post and pre-emoting your basic coded stuff. You can make an interesting character without using anything more than >sit bar and >talk.

I wish I could agree with you, but I don't. Sure, to quote an ARM truism, "emoting doesn't equal roleplay." But when you do not show me how you are sitting, how you are talking, how you are taking a swipe at me during sparring, then basically you are not illustrating your character. Make it succinct, short, gritty, or whatever, but please please please do it. I cannot think of a single character I have ever found "interesting" when their player did not bother to emote. Emotes turn a character from a 2-D talking robot into a 3-D breathing person.

[Lizzie]

Long descriptive emotes don't excite me, or intimidate me. I use them on occasion, and if someone else does them, I'll read them on occasion. Really it depends more on the context of the emote than the quality of the emote. If all I'm seeing is 3-line descriptives of someone flipping their golden tendrils, I'll ignore them after the first two or three. If I'm seeing a plot move along with cooperative interchange of emotes, then that's what will engage me in the scene. I really really REALLY prefer to see a mix of simple and complex. Simple without any complexity is boring. Complex without any simplicity is too much effort to decipher non-stop.

The people who impress me most with their emotes, are not people who focus exlusively on dishing out 3-line after 3-line. The people who impress me the most, are people who draw my attention through the context of what their emotes are trying to convey.

[spicemustflow]

Not being a native English speaker, I often find it very hard to do anything more than nod or shake head or make my character do anything that a tin wind up toy couldn't do. Especially when you involve real or perceived time limit. I always question if the phrase I'm typing anyone actually uses in the English language, sometimes even typing it into google to see if it shows up anywhere.

So, templars and people in power, I will bow, don't worry, just give me some time.

[Bogre]

Voular and Gimf had some awesome points. Finding something your character does often is a great way to always have something to emote or throw out there. And don't worry, everyone struggles with repetitiveness and stuff all the time. And using VNPC's and the world around you is a must- seeing people emote around the room description is my favorite. I mean, for me, I tend to use a lot of description in says or tells, and I nod slowly -all- the time, heh. Remember that Arm tends to have medium to short length of emotes (if you ever played a MUSH or some of the emote-for-XP muds you'll be pleased we're not tossing out 3-5 lines regularly).


As far as building description in emotes goes, its not necessarily the beautiful adjectives or verbiage that really shows well. It's description of where your character is, what they're doing, and how they're doing it. Best advice I can give is something I got a long time ago when I was doing theater in high school: do things naturally. Don't just emote sitting at the bar or at the couch- is your character slumping down, sitting up straight, leaning over, legs kicked up ? Are you breathing heavily, softly, speaking clearly, loudly, thickly, roughly? Where are your hands, what's your posture, how do your features change with your expressions?

Thinking about some of those can give you some extra meat.

[Twilight]

Some of the folks I found really awesome rarely emoted.  They talked.  And it was the nuances in the talking that was really cool.

[Armaddict]

Some of the folks I found really awesome rarely emoted.  They talked.  And it was the nuances in the talking that was really cool.

Recently told someone who was discouraged from arm by their character limit on emotes (they come from storyline roleplay) that it would fade, because roleplay here is largely -dialogue- driven.  It's something I see in few other games.

[jstorrie]

I generally don't get too emote-heavy unless the 'scene' is lacking in either dialogue or action. If those are missing, I pick up the slack.

[Ampere]

While I agree that florid emotes are often fantastic, their length can often dilute its impact. I try my best to be an emotional player, and focus on the tone of a scene as opposed to describing its mechanics. My absolute favortitist trick, no foolin', is to punctuate a particularly strong reaction by making the emote as short as possible.

This too:
Props are a great for filling in the gaps and keeping a conversation interesting, but again it's the meal that's important, not the garnish.

[Feco]

Some of the folks I found really awesome rarely emoted.  They talked.  And it was the nuances in the talking that was really cool.

Recently told someone who was discouraged from arm by their character limit on emotes (they come from storyline roleplay) that it would fade, because roleplay here is largely -dialogue- driven.  It's something I see in few other games.

Agreed.  Dialogue and atmosphere are much more important than lengthy emotes.

[DustMight]

Some of the folks I found really awesome rarely emoted.  They talked.  And it was the nuances in the talking that was really cool.

Recently told someone who was discouraged from arm by their character limit on emotes (they come from storyline roleplay) that it would fade, because roleplay here is largely -dialogue- driven.  It's something I see in few other games.

Agreed.  Dialogue and atmosphere are much more important than lengthy emotes.

Clearly it's not about length of emote, but content.  Atmosphere generated by emotes is important.

[Barzalene]

I don't believe there is a hierarchy of importance. As long as you're rping, your doing you're part. How you rp isn't important, just so long as your aim is to join the effort to bring the world to life and you do rp.

[Rhyden]

Two things help me out with emotes.

Firstly, read lots of books.

Secondly, write/print this and stick it to your monitor.

              Symbol    Reference         Target Sees
              ------    ---------         -----------
                ~       (sdesc)           you
                !       him/her           you
                %       (sdesc)'s         your
                ^       his/her           your
                #       he/she            you
                &       himself/herself   yourself
                =       (sdesc)'s         yours
                +       his/hers          yours

[Marshmellow]

Emotes are as important as speach.

[Aruven]

Emotes are as important as speach.

Pshh. It's all about THINK these days. 

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

To add to excellent points already made:

A deep vocabulary is great, and it helps depict things in a way that a shallower vocabulary can't. But if you throw too many grand words into an emote, it is hard for the other player to work with at times, particularly when the scene is busy.

Nobody will fault you for not having grand emotes. Just because I use big words from time to time, doesn't mean that I dislike the character who portrays themselves in few words. I'm not envious of them, heh, but I am not disappointed. I do as I do because I can - they do as they do because they can. Don't worry about not being grand enough. I'm glad you're here, period.

And even though people who won't use capitals and punctuation piss me off, I'm still glad they are here.