Lets make power emoting possible

[lordcooper]

I'd like to suggest a system where you can OOCly check the success of an emote before performing it, similar to good old fashioned D&D.

syntax: Chance [stat] / Chance [other character] [stat]
Possible outcomes: You fail epically, you fail, you just about succeed, you succeed, you succeed epically.

emote leaps off ~ladder, reaching out for ~chandelier
The tall, muscular man leaps off a rickety agafari ladder, reaching out for a steel chandelier of awesome rareness.

Chance agility
You fail epically

emote crashes to the ground, making a sickening thud as he lands
The tall, muscular man crashes to the ground, making a sickening thud as he lands.

Chance strength templar
You succeed.

emote barges past ~templar, shoving him to the ground in passing
The tall, muscular man barges past the skinny, evil-smelling templar, shoving him to the ground in passing.

[Qzzrbl]

This would be pretty neat.

[Seeker]

This would be very difficult to program and to play.  Did you take into account the Templar's two half-giant guards?  Did you remember to take into account his spiked amor before you rammed your shoulder into it?  Did you know that he had some invisible effect in place that would make it impossible to knock him off his feet?  Did you take into account his Absolutely Incredible agility?  How did you know about his agility score in the first place? Did you notice he was watching you and quite prepared for such shenanigans?

How can another player be confident that you took into account all of the pertinent intangibles such as the above?  My gut reaction is that such a code creation would not be robust enough nor open-ended and comprehensive enough to meet the needs.

Trusting the other PCs with open-ended options in emotes is still the best game in town.


Seeker

[Marshmellow]

I agree with Seeker.  Any system like this wouldn't be able to intelligently gauge what you're trying to do against relevant skills/stats.  You're making that decision and trusting in simplistic code to back you up.  I don't like it.

[Synthesis]

And it's not just that it's hard to code.

Even if it were easy to code, it would provide an avenue for judging another character's skills/stats without actually engaging them in an IC exchange that necessarily would reflect the information you've gained OOCly.

[jriley]

I'd like to suggest a system where you can OOCly check the success of an emote before performing it, similar to good old fashioned D&D.

syntax: Chance [stat] / Chance [other character] [stat]
Possible outcomes: You fail epically, you fail, you just about succeed, you succeed, you succeed epically.

emote leaps off ~ladder, reaching out for ~chandelier
The tall, muscular man leaps off a rickety agafari ladder, reaching out for a steel chandelier of awesome rareness.

Chance agility
You fail epically

emote crashes to the ground, making a sickening thud as he lands
The tall, muscular man crashes to the ground, making a sickening thud as he lands.

Chance strength templar
You succeed.

emote barges past ~templar, shoving him to the ground in passing
The tall, muscular man barges past the skinny, evil-smelling templar, shoving him to the ground in passing.

I like the original post.

I think that detractors from the idea are failing to take into account the following facts:

--Many players dislike power emoting, but power emoting is still a part of the game. 

--Since power emoting is part of the game, the most responsible thing to do is to ameliorate the problems associated with it.  The problem associated with power-emoting is that the players who do this are making very arbitrary choices and decisions about their own characters ability to manipulate the physical world that they live in.

--By adding stat checks and stat tests in a system similar to what LC proposes, you're at least encouraging people who are tempted to power emote to make their decisions less arbitrarily.  For example, if you want to beat my character at arm wrestling, that's cool, at the least just make a strength check.

For what it's worth, I challenge that something like this would be that difficult to code.

Also, I think that adding something like this would be the basis for expanding the game's physics engine.

[lordcooper]

It shouldn't actually be too hard to make this track several factors.

Stats could have a small amount of influence on each other.  Strength checks could also perhaps refer to agility / endurance, but the priority obviously being strength.
Add in height and weight.
Spiked armor wouldn't really make a difference unless it was razor sharp.  I doubt it is.
I'd quite like it if a 10% either way luck factor could be added in.
Skills wouldn't really matter in most cases, as this would be for the times there isn't a coded skill.

As for stat checking with this, why not echo it to the targeted player as well?  Someone rolls a chance gen and doesn't use it right away, just send a player complaint in.  This is probably a decent way to catch twinkers to boot.

[boog]

I hated it in SOI, I would hate it here.

I prefer to just roll with emotes. If someone emotes punching at my character's face, I will probably have that punch connect. It just -- god. It was so immersion breaking to see people roll vs <stat> OOCly and then emote their success or failure.

[Cutthroat]

The fact that there is so much to take into account besides one particular stat harms this idea the most.

A better idea, imo, would be to change the brawl code so that brawls are given open-ended success and failure messages and (ideally) the brawl code is put everywhere. If we see a message like "You successfully hit the tall, muscular man" we would then be expected to emote how, exactly, we tried to hit him. And presumably the brawl code already takes what it needs to take into account. Then at least that would handle emotive non-lethal hits from things like brawls to torture.  And this idea is already somewhat stolen from something that already exists...

RP NOTE: These strikes and misses are generic for a reason: you are expected to emote and roleplay during this game.

If this system is good enough for Descending Sun, it can be handled responsibly with the brawl code. And while this would only handle combat, combat is probably one of the few themes of power emoting that should depend on stats and skills.

As to emotes that solely focus on your own PC (like the first example in OP), you have the option of determining how successful you are with every uncoded task, and should be taking everything about your PC into account.

[jriley]

The fact that there is so much to take into account besides one particular stat harms this idea the most.

Disagree.  I think that what you're saying is that "Because this idea could not be implemented perfectly, it would be better if we didn't implement it at all."

What I think would be better would be if an imperfect system were implemented that improved on the existing imperfect system: your imagination.

The truth is that there are some players who think that they can beat anyone at armwrestling, beat anyone at a contest of acrobatics, beat anyone at a contest of riddles, etc.  Having a bit of code in place would work better than having nothing. 

[Cutthroat]

The fact that there is so much to take into account besides one particular stat harms this idea the most.

Disagree.  I think that what you're saying is that "Because this idea could not be implemented perfectly, it would be better if we didn't implement it at all."

What I'm saying is that even if this idea was implemented, it would not provide a reasonable basis to determine success or failure in all cases. It would be a way to compare stats with other PCs. With this idea, after a roll nothing is really stopping the player from emoting whatever outcome is desired. The problem of power emoting isn't really solved. The original idea has good intentions, but it's missing a lot.

So I'm not saying what you think I'm saying. I'm saying "It would be better to find another way to determine outcomes of roleplayed situations than by comparing one statistic of one character to one statistic of another character." I'm saying that the original idea would leave too much to be desired.

What I think would be better would be if an imperfect system were implemented that improved on the existing imperfect system: your imagination.

The truth is that there are some players who think that they can beat anyone at armwrestling, beat anyone at a contest of acrobatics, beat anyone at a contest of riddles, etc.  Having a bit of code in place would work better than having nothing. 

As an example, we already have the brawl code, which is, arguably, imperfect. There are ways to improve it as a tool for determining how brawling RP goes. If you truly want code to reinforce RP for arm-wrestling, you would need to write special code for arm-wrestling. I think instead of adding dice-rolls, these are things that can be built on top of existing code. In the particular example of arm-wrestling, the code for this likely already exists. As for riddles, I'm not certain that should even be covered by code.

[Marauder Moe]

This already exists in some cases.

As mentioned, brawl is one of them.  If your brawl attempt succeeds, I think you're free to emote a little badass flourish.

Another one is subdue.  If you subdue someone, you have implicit permission to be more forceful with your emotes because they are now largely under your physical control.


That said, I think it would be cool if there was some sort of built-in dice-rolling command that could roll against your stats and/or skills.  I think it should only echo to you (not to the rest of the room), so it wouldn't give you the right to power-emote, but you could base the success of non-coded actions off it if you so desire.

[Gimfalisette]

Trusting the other PCs with open-ended options in emotes is still the best game in town.

[Reiteration]

Thinking on other terms, instead of attributes, chance it on an actual skill.

chance backstab cloaked.man

You chance backstab against the cloaked man and succeed splendidly.
whisper cloaked.man (sneaking up behind ~cloaked.man and pressing ~dagger to ^cloaked.man back) Mov' a step an' ye' neve' gon' mov' ag'in.

You chance backstab against the cloaked man and fail horribly.
emote sneaks up carefully behind ~cloaked.man while raising ~dagger, but trips over some abandoned debris and tumbles forward head over heels.

[Malifaxis]

Trusting the other PCs with open-ended options in emotes is still the best game in town.

Trans: Oh god fuck no.  Fuck this idea.

[lepxii]

If you want to power emote - play in a MUSH.

[Sokotra]

Yeah, I'm afraid these ideas are way to MUSHy.  Just role-play it out until it comes to actual coded combat, then you will see if you fail or succeed.  That's what the code and stats are for, and I like it that way.

However, I would like to see the brawl code improved and expanded beyond its current confines and restraints.... or maybe just attacking with fists won't trigger the crim-code unless it gets close to a life-threatening situation.   Being able to combat-brawl outside of the taverns would be cool, without having to use the brawl-code.  It would seem to me that a fist-fight out in the streets would be less disrupting than a fight in a tavern. 

[Gunnerblaster]

Yeah, I'm afraid these ideas are way to MUSHy.  Just role-play it out until it comes to actual coded combat, then you will see if you fail or succeed.  That's what the code and stats are for, and I like it that way.

However, I would like to see the brawl code improved and expanded beyond its current confines and restraints.... or maybe just attacking with fists won't trigger the crim-code unless it gets close to a life-threatening situation.   Being able to combat-brawl outside of the taverns would be cool, without having to use the brawl-code.  It would seem to me that a fist-fight out in the streets would be less disrupting than a fight in a tavern. 

Oh how I wish this were true.

Yet, in some places, you get insta-ganked (with no hope of survival or redemption) the moment the dreaded 'You're wanted' pops up.

[jriley]

Most of the rebuttals I'm seeing either imply that power-emoting should not take place, making code amendment unnecessary, or that existing combat-code covers all important situations.

First, let me counter that there are many non-combat situations where two people are testing their respective abilities.  Besides sex, negotiations, sports, etc there are probably a lot that I'm not thinking of. 

Also, let me remind players that power-emoting does not simply go away.  Much like computer-viruses, teen-sex, mexican immigrants, drug use or sexual minorities, a simple ban does not eliminate occaisional necessity or situational reality.  We're not voting on whether or not we like power emoting, we're voting on how to make it less arbitrary. 

In any event, disinterested parties would still have the nuclear option that they still have today -- if you don't like somebodies emotes, even their power-emotes, you're free to ignore them. 

People bring up the brawl code for the contra argument, but I'd like to bring up the brawl code to support the original post.  The brawl code works to support tavern brawl emoting.  It works well and hasn't broken the game.  It's popular with players.  I suggest we extend a similar system to cover other, non-combat situations as well.

If any of you don't like the original post for any reason, could you please suggest a different sort of code implementation?

[Marauder Moe]

 
I'm not sure why people who say "no, I think it's fine now" should be expected to come up with new solutions to someone else's perceived problem.


That said, I'm not against more brawl-like systems.  I am, however, not currently supportive of broad, over-reaching contest system like the OP suggests.

[jriley]

That said, I'm not against more brawl-like systems.  I am, however, not currently supportive of broad, over-reaching contest system like the OP suggests.

Cool.  So what's the most logical way in which the brawl-code could be extended to non-combat situations?

[Marauder Moe]

Which non-combat situations?

[Marshmellow]

Most of the rebuttals I'm seeing either imply that power-emoting should not take place, making code amendment unnecessary, or that existing combat-code covers all important situations.

You're misrepresenting all of the arguments against this suggestion, a strawman.  There are plenty of us that believe this suggestion wouldn't be able to properly take into account all of the variables.

That we think poweremoting shouldn't exist is secondary.

[Aaron Goulet]

It'd be nice to see something like this that ONLY takes your own abilities into account, and ONLY echoes to you, but mainly as a novelty for, say, acrobatics, or a wisdom roll to see of you remember some guy's name after a year.

The original implementation proposed has a hidden implication: it's okay to power-emote.  And that, in my opinion, leads to situations where players argue OOCly over the various interpretations and implications of a roll...  Or worse, poweremote wars.  Sometimes you see this in tabletop play, only in that situation, a DM is there full-time to mediate as needed.  Arm doesn't have that.

Poweremoting already happens, and it will continue to happen, but at least now you can either ignore it or "dodge" as you see fit, forcing the other party to resort to code.  Adding such a system not only encourages MORE poweremoting, it also removes the ability to force a coded resolution, which takes into account all of the relevant factors (including crim code, which OOC rolls would presumably ignore).

What kind of actions require a skill check on another character to perform that can't be done by the code, anyway?  Examples!

[lordcooper]

What kind of actions require a skill check on another character to perform that can't be done by the code, anyway?  Examples!

Pushing them over, arm wrestling, sneaking up on them (from within the same room), smashing a bottle on their head, tripping them up, flicking a small scrap of whatever at them, hearing the movement of a character that yours is not facing etc etc

I can see some valid arguments against this here, although my intent wasn't to promote power emotes, but to help make them more reasonable by providing a method of checking how possible an action would be.  If you're against the full concept, then how about being able to roll a simple check (echoed only to yourself) to check if your character succeeds at a given action.

[Reiteration]

 I do not like open-ended emotes, people always turn god-mode and try to become a hero.

http://www.armageddon.org/original/showSubmission.php?submission=354

[Marauder Moe]

Heh, most of those examples you just gave are implemented to some extent in the code.

Well, arm wrestling used to be but I think it got taken out for some reason.

If you're against the full concept, then how about being able to roll a simple check (echoed only to yourself) to check if your character succeeds at a given action.

As I've said, I'm absolutely for this idea.

[Marshmellow]

If you could take into account where my character is looking, whether my character is distracted by a conversation, your character's state of intoxication, our positions in the room, etc etc etc... until then, you don't get to poweremote you tripping or knocking over my character.

[Sam]

I'd say make it another command attached to the emote.

emote attempts to smack ~curvy upside her purny head. *agility check
So-and-so attempts to smack ~curvy upside her purny head. Agility check success.

[Aaron Goulet]

What kind of actions require a skill check on another character to perform that can't be done by the code, anyway?  Examples!

Pushing them over, arm wrestling, sneaking up on them (from within the same room), smashing a bottle on their head, tripping them up, flicking a small scrap of whatever at them, hearing the movement of a character that yours is not facing etc etc

I can see some valid arguments against this here, although my intent wasn't to promote power emotes, but to help make them more reasonable by providing a method of checking how possible an action would be.  If you're against the full concept, then how about being able to roll a simple check (echoed only to yourself) to check if your character succeeds at a given action.

Yeah, I'm totally down with being able to roll against your own stats and skills without an echo, but not versus other peoples'; otherwise, people will use it to try and sniff your stats and skills.

[Sokotra]

I'm not sure we have more than a couple of options:

Option 1.  Some sort of dice roll - echoed to everyone in the room would assure no cheating, but I think we want to avoid any sort of OOC echo... so I guess a hidden echo to yourself would be okay as a role-playing tool, but I'm not quite clear how that would work or make sense.  Simply having something like an agility check tagged on at the end of your emote seems a little too simple.  What if an untrained beggar with high agility is trying to push an expert combatant with a mediocre agility.  Too many other skills, stats, and factors come into play for this to work.

Option 2.  Coding things like arm-wrestling and stuff.  We already have some of these in the game and I'd hate to see any unnecessary code-work be piled on the staff.  But... Expanding and improving the brawl code would be nice.  Unless there are some other good ideas for specific games, matches, or tests of skill... or other little actions that would be neat to be coded into the game that would put all skills, stats, and saving throws into the equation when checking for success.

[aphex]

Right now the brawl code is pretty much the end-all be-all of coded character interaction within the city.  I really wouldn't mind some kind of system to check your rolls versus his OTHER than brawl code, which basically seems to be dependent on offense. E.G. the longest lived character wins.

[Marauder Moe]

Can you come up with some examples of specific situations?

[jriley]

Can you come up with some examples of specific situations?

I feel like we have, though.  And any time we try to add to the list people merely come up with questionable reasons why they're covered with existing code, or else are not relevant to game play.

What if you...want to hold a coin in your hand, and challenge your student to remove it before you can close your hand, ala Kung Fu?

...you want to shoot an apple off someone's head, and they try to duck?

...you want to arm wrestle someone?

...you challenge someone to a game of hop-scotch?

...you have a staring contest?

These sorts of things do tend to crop up from time to time.

But really, the purpose of the code change is to address those very sorts of situations that are not easily foreseable, and those that come up infrequently.  That's the real beauty of it.

[Kryos]

I am generally for an attribute test command, and one specifically that echoes to 2 people as a contest of attributes.

As a secondary note:  I'd love to see brawl code both fixed(I don't think racial qualities are considered, I could be wrong, and more potent over all) and expanded to usable in any room.  In the desert you grab a rock and throw it instead of a bottle, etc.

Then again, if we're talking about improving the quality of RP, I believe a number of things need fixed, including flee and movement mechanics.  Nothing ruins the scene like a power emote about how awesome you are + flee.

[Marshmellow]

All of those situations have too many variables, jriley.  How can you boil those down to a simple stat roll?

[hyzhenhok]

All of those situations have too many variables, jriley.  How can you boil those down to a simple stat roll?

The fat, bearded man says, OOCly: "That's not an agility roll! Let's roll strength."

The lithe, zippy youth says, OOCly: "Hells no, its definitely agility!"

The frail, wizened old elf says, OOCly: "Guys, there's strategy involved. It has to be wisdom."

The fat, bearded man, the wizened old elf, and the lithe, zippy youth are here, power emoting each other.

[Aaron Goulet]

All of those situations have too many variables, jriley.  How can you boil those down to a simple stat roll?

The fat, bearded man says, OOCly: "That's not an agility roll! Let's roll strength."

The lithe, zippy youth says, OOCly: "Hells no, its definitely agility!"

The frail, wizened old elf says, OOCly: "Guys, there's strategy involved. It has to be wisdom."

The fat, bearded man, the wizened old elf, and the lithe, zippy youth are here, power emoting each other.

I'm slightly worried about that (and the new cyclical GDB debates that would inevitably follow), but I'm even more worried about people trying to power-emote "grabbing" people without using subdue, or otherwise trying to impose themselves on another PC without factoring in skill or the criminal code.  I doubt that is jriley's or the original poster's intent, but I can promise you that some people will use it that way; some players will do anything they can to get an advantage, codedly or otherwise.

Don't believe me?  Watch three or four people scan in a busy tavern the moment "someone" emotes.

[Malifaxis]

If this goes through, I'm going to play nothing but mul warrior/thugs and fucking heinously murder anyone who ever does this to me, ever, for any reason.

Fact.

[Case]

I hated it in SOI, I would hate it here.

I prefer to just roll with emotes. If someone emotes punching at my character's face, I will probably have that punch connect. It just -- god. It was so immersion breaking to see people roll vs <stat> OOCly and then emote their success or failure.

After seeing the abuse it gets in SoI, this.

And it's not coded well in SoI either.

[Kankman]

Haven't read the whole thread, but we used to have a perfect solution for this but it was removed.

The command 'touch' would check whether or not your PC would be able to hit/flick/poke/whatever their intended victim.

You could then:

> emote reaches out and tries to whack ~jerk on the back of the head.

> touch jerk

> You reach out and touch the jerk-faced man.

or

> You reach out to touch the jerk-faced man but he avoid your nasty unwashed fingers.

It was great.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Yeah, I'm totally down with being able to roll against your own stats and skills without an echo, but not versus other peoples'; otherwise, people will use it to try and sniff your stats and skills.

This is a little paranoid. Yes, it will happen. No, it will not happen often.

I support the idea of being able to roll stat-and-skill specific checks against other players. This opens up an entirely new avenue of code-supported RP.

[Qzzrbl]

roll amos emote suddenly lashes out at ~amos and slams a fist across ^amos jaw (emote suddenly lashes out at ~amos, ^me fist missing ^amos jaw by inches)

Check it out.

The original command, "roll".

It encompasses all stats, condensing them into a single variable, and perhaps a random variable as well.

Using "roll amos" targets Amos, rolling your condensed, summed up stats against his condensed, summed up stats.

The first emote, "suddenly lashes out at ~amos and slams a fist across ^amos jaw." is what would echo if there's a success.

The second emote, set within parentheses, "suddenly lashes out at ~amos, ^me fist missing ^amos jaw by inches" is what would echo if you fail your stat check.

There would be no "visible" ooc check that echoes, but one can use a command something like... "check roll" to check the last use of the "roll" command against his/her own character to make sure some asshole doesn't put a success emote echo in both parts of the command.

Example:

> Roll check

Last roll made against you: emote suddenly lashes out at ~amos and slams a fist across ^amos jaw (emote suddenly lashes out at ~amos, ^me fist missing ^amos jaw by inches)

And if a player catches abuse-- it can be reported to staff.

Thoughts?

::Edited to add::

Abuse of the feature (should anyone find a way to abuse it) will lead to the feature being unavailable to the offender.

[Marshmellow]

So... Qzzrbl, just so that I understand what you're saying... take all of my stats and all of your stats and come up with some sort of median or total or something... and when I want to do something to you, roll me against you?

[Qzzrbl]

So... Qzzrbl, just so that I understand what you're saying... take all of my stats and all of your stats and come up with some sort of median or total or something... and when I want to do something to you, roll me against you?

More or less.

Perhaps add a little bit of a random variable or something in there.... 'Cause even the strongest, fastest, smartest, toughest motherfucker gets unlucky every now and then.

And maybe, MAYBE have offense/defense play a small part in it.

I just shat this idea out of my brain, so I'm sure it could be improved upon. o:

[Aaron Goulet]

So... Qzzrbl, just so that I understand what you're saying... take all of my stats and all of your stats and come up with some sort of median or total or something... and when I want to do something to you, roll me against you?

More or less.

Perhaps add a little bit of a random variable or something in there.... 'Cause even the strongest, fastest, smartest, toughest motherfucker gets unlucky every now and then.

And maybe, MAYBE have offense/defense play a small part in it.

I just shat this idea out of my brain, so I'm sure it could be improved upon. o:

I still don't support a command like this, but even if I did, I would have a problem with this particular suggestion: It would work in mock-combat situations, but why would someone's wisdom, agility, and defense play into something such as arm-wrestling?  Someone with a really high wisdom and agility but low stength could then, in theory, out-armwrestle a burly, high strength PC with not much else going for him (or her).

Furthermore, such actions such as the one you used in your example are already covered by the brawl code, unless you're not in a tavern...  And if you're not in a tavern, the crime code should kick into effect in most places.

[Sokotra]

Not perfect, but an interesting idea...  but it just makes me think even more that we should just expand and improve the brawl code instead.

Edit:  Oh, and also maybe we could get the arm-wrestling code turned back on for competitions of strength.  For agility or other stats, maybe, if time allows, code other little games like "snatch the pebble from my hand"... or "catch the grasshopper (or cockroach)". 

[Marshmellow]

I still don't think I'm down for that either, Q.  Someone that has all exceptional stats but a poor strength against someone with an exceptional strength but the rest are all poor... in a contest between the two, the first would likely always win, even at arm-wrestling, something that arguably takes nothing but strength.

[Kryos]

Hidden rolls v one stat, or compared stat rolls hidden to all but the competing players.  This is a beautiful RP tool.

The simple truth is, responsible players who are more about playing the game then winning it or oocly trying to be 'awesome' would find such a tool incredibly valuable.  There's always going to be those who pee in the pool.  Let the lifeguards kick them out.

[Nahara]

Must I ask it...

If you have a hidden roll using agility...

What are you rolling against anyway?

[Kryos]

As a guess, I'd say the racial range of the applicable stat for solo checks, and a modifier plus standard die for contests.

Edit:  Though it'd be great if you could roll say, agility v easy/normal/hard as a flat range for all races.  HGs might make an easy now and again, and it'd be hard for quicker races to fail on normals.  Reverse is true for str, and so on.

[Qzzrbl]

I still don't think I'm down for that either, Q.  Someone that has all exceptional stats but a poor strength against someone with an exceptional strength but the rest are all poor... in a contest between the two, the first would likely always win, even at arm-wrestling, something that arguably takes nothing but strength.

It's certainly arguable....

Endurance could be taken into account, it's quite possible to just barely "hold on" until your opponent wears himself out.

Agility could come into play, if for nothing else, as reaction time when someone says "go!" could be a factor.

Wisdom is important too.... Because I don't care what you say-- you could juggle trucks for all I care, if you don't -know- how to armwrestle, you're not going to beat someone who's done it for years.

There are very few things that wouldn't take all stats into account.

[Sam]

I am okay with people poweremoting on me.

So what if they grab my shoulder?

As long as the emote doesn't do something the code should, I am all for it.

[Lithium]

I don't want to see dice rolls for just any action. The outcome of most physical interactions is already covered by the code, but I trust the playerbase enough to fill in whatever else slips through the cracks. Poweremoting just isn't cool, coded or not, imho.

[Qzzrbl]

I don't want to see dice rolls for just any action. The outcome of most physical interactions is already covered by the code, but I trust the playerbase enough to fill in whatever else slips through the cracks. Poweremoting just isn't cool, coded or not, imho.

I see what you mean, but there are alot of things that simply aren't covered by the code.

Like in Marshmellow's example, armwrestling.

Simple things like trying to kick someone's chair out from under them before they sit down, reaching out to slap someone after a lewd comment, brawling that doesn't totally suck balls, etc., etc., etc.

I don't really trust the playerbase, because I've seen "emote <insert action that totally dodges whatever you're doing to me because I'm faster, even though my agility is poor and yours is absolutely incredible, hahaha, eat it.>" entirely too many times to even bother with "poweremotes", no matter how much they could potentially add to a scene.

I personally believe some system to code these sorts of things in would add a great deal of depth to the game.

::Edited to add::

And I know the system was clunky on SoI, but on another mud that used their engine, it was pretty sweet.... Even with it's visible OOC rolls that echoed to everyone in the room.

I remember boxing with someone in said game.... The other person emoted lunging forward at me, and then made the roll against agility-- critical failure.

So I rolled against his agility with a critical success, which allowed me to emote stepping back, grabbing his head, and driving a knee into his face.

It allowed me, the player, to emote things like that without questioning, "Would my character really be able to do this?"

Again, I know their system was clunky at best, but if Armageddon's staff ever took an interest in something like this, I know they'd do it right.

'Cause that's just the kind of shit they do.  

[boog]

Why can't we all just play and get along and let our characters lose some and win some? :/

I mean, the idea of the thread is ... good, in part... But everyone can already do these sorts of things. I consider it a fault on both players' ends if they try to power emote offense or defense or -anything- ---

Okay. I'm not making any sense. I'm just trying to say that we should, as players, be courteous to one another and realize that our leet ninja assassin replica IG is not always going to be able to cleanly slice someone's kidneys from their backs, mmkay? This goes for both ends - your character who is getting stabbed at isn't always going to be able to dodge the damn dagger, either. Buck up and handle it and quit giving reasons for people to make threads like these.

[Qzzrbl]

Why can't we all just play and get along and let our characters lose some and win some? :/

I mean, the idea of the thread is ... good, in part... But everyone can already do these sorts of things. I consider it a fault on both players' ends if they try to power emote offense or defense or -anything- ---

Okay. I'm not making any sense. I'm just trying to say that we should, as players, be courteous to one another and realize that our leet ninja assassin replica IG is not always going to be able to cleanly slice someone's kidneys from their backs, mmkay? This goes for both ends - your character who is getting stabbed at isn't always going to be able to dodge the damn dagger, either. Buck up and handle it and quit giving reasons for people to make threads like these.

You know as well as I do that there will -always- be 1337 Ninja McEvasion types around, until code steps in.

[boog]

Why can't we all just play and get along and let our characters lose some and win some? :/

I mean, the idea of the thread is ... good, in part... But everyone can already do these sorts of things. I consider it a fault on both players' ends if they try to power emote offense or defense or -anything- ---

Okay. I'm not making any sense. I'm just trying to say that we should, as players, be courteous to one another and realize that our leet ninja assassin replica IG is not always going to be able to cleanly slice someone's kidneys from their backs, mmkay? This goes for both ends - your character who is getting stabbed at isn't always going to be able to dodge the damn dagger, either. Buck up and handle it and quit giving reasons for people to make threads like these.

You know as well as I do that there will -always- be 1337 Ninja McEvasion types around, until code steps in.

But wouldn't this be a good time to use the request tool? I haven't yet experienced the twinkiest of twinks, I'm sure, but if I ever come across epic badass Chuck Norris-Jack Bauer-Bruce Lee-never-fail types, I'll say something about it.

You're portraying, for the most part, humans here, people! Things with flaws. I know it sucks to have to play a game with realism in it, but if you already have to eat and drink to not die in game, you might also want to fail. Just a couple times. At something.

[Qzzrbl]

If the request tool had an option to critique other people's roleplay, then sure... But if I remember correctly, the player complaint option is only for reporting abuse of code or somesuch. I doubt complaints of, "This asshole keeps dodging my power emotes!" would get much audience staff-side.

[perfecto]

I don't want to see dice rolls for just any action. The outcome of most physical interactions is already covered by the code, but I trust the playerbase enough to fill in whatever else slips through the cracks. Poweremoting just isn't cool, coded or not, imho.

I agree fullly... play the game.. don't let the game play you.

[Qzzrbl]

It would help if it wasn't thought of as "power emoting".... As the phrase itself has a number of negative connotations.

But the thing is, we have a large number of hard-coded commands, kill, skin, bash, etc., etc., etc.

Which if enacted upon an object or player, the target has no choice but to accept the results, as it's based off stats and skills.

But then we have emoting-- which is entirely up in the air, especially when it comes to emoting actions upon other players.

Neither player knows the other player's stats and skills, or any of that, so it all falls on "trusting the other player".

Though "trusting the other player" is silly in and of itself, because you can't tell what the other PC's actual chances of evading or getting hit are, so what exactly are you trusting the other player to do?

For example, if someone emoted sticking a foot out and trying to trip my PC.

I've got a choice to make!

Will my character take the fall?

Or will I hop over it like the goddamn ninja badass I am?

I, the player, don't know! And as it stands, there's no way for me to know.

And that's why I'd like some sort of system such as this to be added.

So I can be absolutely sure that the outcome is as it should be.

[Marauder Moe]

It's still of my opinion that code arbitration should be added in a situation by situation basis, not with a single, all-encompassing stat-glob roll command.

However... I'm willing to let ideas evolve some.


So... what if a stat contest required permission from your opponent?

Code Select Expand

>emote tries to yank %amos chair away.

>contest amos

You have beaten the tall, muscular man!
Amos sees:

Code Select Expand

>
The stocky, rugged man tries to yank your chair away.

The stocky, rugged man  wishes to challenge you.  Type 'accept' if you wish to meet his challenge.

>accept

You are beaten by the stocky, rugged man!

Other see:

Code Select Expand

The stocky, rugged man tries to yank the tall, muscular man's chair away.

The tall muscular man is beaten by the stocky, rugged man!


Additionally, I think you should be able to (or required to) specify which stat(s) or skill you wish to contest.

Code Select Expand

>contest amos strength

Code Select Expand

>contest amos endurance agility

Code Select Expand

>contest amos subdue

Would this work?



Additionally, I would be in favor of extending brawl code to more areas (minor streets, alleys) and adding some more brawl moves/commands (trip, slam, grapple).

I think also think arm wrestling would be cool if separately coded.  Make it a drawn-out series of strength, endurance, and offense rolls to approximate the back-and-forth suspense of real arm wrestling.

[a strange shadow]

The more we involve the code in situations like this, the more cans of worms we'll open.

I'd really rather leave it up to responsible roleplay!

[Sam]

I dont think we should be able to roll against specific attributes. Since there are so many ways to interpret things and 4 stats account for an entire humanoid. K.I.S.S. Let each player decide how they win or lose.

[Drayab]

I'm in favor of code arbitrated contests in specific situations like brawling, arm wrestling, and dance offs, but trying to come up with a generic 'contest' command that will acceptably simulate any emote-type action that players can come up with is a fool's errand because there are just too many variables to consider. This sort of thing works in table top games because you've got an intelligent GM to decide what's the best way to do it.

I wouldn't mind if the game had a feature to let me roll against my own character's stats/skills privately, though.

[MeTekillot]

Honestly, I just wanna armwrestle somebody.

[Qzzrbl]

This sort of thing works in table top games because you've got an intelligent GM to decide what's the best way to do it.

Which.... More than likely consist of a few rolls of dice against stats....

[Aaron Goulet]

This sort of thing works in table top games because you've got an intelligent GM to decide what's the best way to do it.

Which.... More than likely consist of a few rolls of dice against stats....

If it were that simple, this idea wouldn't have generated so much debate.  Who decides what stats to roll?  If someone rolls a strength hit, can someone roll an agility dodge?  How much can someone get away with in one action?  Implementing such a command will also require implementing an accompanying set of rules, or you may see stuff like:

Code Select Expand


The burly, thick-necked man rolls against your strength, and passes.

The burly, thick-necked man punches you in the face, knocking out one of your teeth!


[Qzzrbl]

This sort of thing works in table top games because you've got an intelligent GM to decide what's the best way to do it.

Which.... More than likely consist of a few rolls of dice against stats....

If it were that simple, this idea wouldn't have generated so much debate.  Who decides what stats to roll?  If someone rolls a strength hit, can someone roll an agility dodge?  How much can someone get away with in one action?  Implementing such a command will also require implementing an accompanying set of rules, or you may see stuff like:

Code Select Expand


The burly, thick-necked man rolls against your strength, and passes.

The burly, thick-necked man punches you in the face, knocking out one of your teeth!


For the exact same reason you can't do that with regular emotes, you wouldn't be able to do this with a "roll whatever" command.

Some posters in here seem to trust the playerbase at large-- but suddenly wouldn't do so if this idea were implemented.

>_>

[jriley]

If it were that simple, this idea wouldn't have generated so much debate.  Who decides what stats to roll?  If someone rolls a strength hit, can someone roll an agility dodge?  How much can someone get away with in one action?  Implementing such a command will also require implementing an accompanying set of rules, or you may see stuff like:

Code Select Expand


The burly, thick-necked man rolls against your strength, and passes.

The burly, thick-necked man punches you in the face, knocking out one of your teeth!


Maybe, but I still think that you're overcomplicating this.  I don't understand why a group of posters can't seem to grasp that code-assisted power-emoting is non-binding, the same way that non-code-assisted power-emoting is non-binding.

If some noob rolls up on you and emotes:

emote punches you in the face so hard that you fly backwards and crash through the wall into the next room!

you're completely free to roll with the result if you want, but also completely free to:

emote moves out of the way of the crazy attack at the last second!!

At least that's what I do when someone tries to power emote against me.  Or I just roll with it because I'm an adult and we're all just playing a game.  Other options include ignoring them, logging off, walking away or if they're really really being a tard, then reporting them to the staff.  I don't understand why you think that adding a slight layer of coded support will break anything.

With the exception that some players seem to have a nagging suspicion that people will use this to sniff out your stats...but then that's more or less realistic.  For example, if I walk up to you suddenly and grab your arm, your response is going to give me some indication of how strong you are.  Also, if I throw a knife at your leg, your response is going to give me some indication of how quick you are.

And if someone does something that's really unrealistic, then it's just good old fashioned code abuse and we're supposed to trust the staff to deal with that kind of stuff. 


Heh.

[Marauder Moe]

I don't understand why a group of posters can't seem to grasp that code-assisted power-emoting is non-binding, the same way that non-code-assisted power-emoting is non-binding.

Making it binding seems to be the entire point of this thread.  Otherwise... what's the point?

[jriley]

Making it binding seems to be the entire point of this thread.  Otherwise... what's the point?

Good question, and I can certainly understand the paranoia about forcing players to accept binding power emotes.  In fact, I'd feel the same way.

But that's not what the idea is about at all, otherwise it would have been titled "Hey let's screw up the game by making power-emoting binding."

What it is about is making power-emoting less arbitrary.  Meaning that if you want to shoot an arrow through an apple on my character's head, there will be at least some basis for you emoting this out.  Right now we're just stuck relying on our imaginations, which causes conflict because different people imagine stuff differently.  Adding a splash of code would make the idea a bit less arbitrary.  Although people would still disagree with power emotes, and arguments would still take place. 

[Drayab]

If the results are non binding, then how can we even say that power emoting is possible? The loser can choose to ignore the roll, and we're right back where we started, except now we have the results of dice rolling on our screen.

[Marauder Moe]

I dunno, jriley.  Maybe that's your idea of the idea (and honestly I'm in agreement with you for the most part that a broad enabling of power emotes is bad), but I don't think that's what lordcooper and Qzzrbrlblrbzzlrb have in mind, judging from their posts.

Also, for clarity sake, shooting an apple off someone's head is not a power emote.  A power emote is forcing actions and/or (negative) consequences on another character.

[Sam]

Well, there seems to be a lot of confussion as to what power emoting is.

Perhaps we could make a pretty good list of examples of both good and bad power emoting? Let us all give an example of what we think is good power emoting and bad power emoting.

Good:
emote walks up to ~person and pats !person on the back. (Good because it doesn't assume anything about the other character.)

Bad:
emote walks up and punches %person front teeth out. (Bad because it alters the other PC without any input from that other player.)

[lordcooper]

To my mind:

l

A place:  This is a place full of stuff the author cannot be bothered coming up with. There is a thing here.
The (person) the author has no interest in describing is sat on a chair, looking away from you and towards the thing.

Roll str vs (person) agi.

You succeed.

Good = emote Kicks ~(person)'s chair out from under them.
Bad = emote kicks ~(person)'s chair out from under them, causing them to fall, slamming their face into ~thing.

If my char is strong enough to do this, before (person) has time to react physically, then fair enough, I can kick the chair out from under them (as in RL).  No stat roll would justify taking control of their subsequent actions.

[Drayab]

What if they are low agility but an amazing huge tub of lard? What if he's got a backpack full of rocks? Weight should affect the difficulty of the strength roll required to kick the chair out from under him. How do you decide how high to set the bar? When rolling versus his weight, what happens if you are trying to lift the chair he is sitting in instead of just kicking it out from under him? Intuitively, that is a more difficult roll, so how do you take that into account?

[MeTekillot]

Roll str vs <person> weight?
Roll str vs <person> weight, str?

[Drayab]

Okay, now make the difficulty adjustable. 

[RogueGunslinger]

And it's not just that it's hard to code.

Even if it were easy to code, it would provide an avenue for judging another character's skills/stats without actually engaging them in an IC exchange that necessarily would reflect the information you've gained OOCly.

Like the brawl code does?

[BlackMagic0]

And it's not just that it's hard to code.

Even if it were easy to code, it would provide an avenue for judging another character's skills/stats without actually engaging them in an IC exchange that necessarily would reflect the information you've gained OOCly.

Like the brawl code does?

I do not think brawl code really gives anything away that is not learned during the brawl.
If you beat the snot out of someone.. they are most likely weaker then you.

Honestly. I just think power emoting is a terrible idea. Do not want!

[Bogre]

I don't think its a good idea, either.

[Qzzrbl]

And it's not just that it's hard to code.

Even if it were easy to code, it would provide an avenue for judging another character's skills/stats without actually engaging them in an IC exchange that necessarily would reflect the information you've gained OOCly.

Like the brawl code does?

I do not think brawl code really gives anything away that is not learned during the brawl.
If you beat the snot out of someone.. they are most likely weaker then you.

Honestly. I just think power emoting is a terrible idea. Do not want!

The system I proposed isn't really any more power emoting than the brawl code is....

It just covers more bases.

[Drayab]

Honestly, I just wanna armwrestle somebody.

See, the nice thing about restricting what you're going to code to a specific situation is that it is decided before it ever comes up in the game what the important stats/skills will be. You can make arm wrestling depend on strength for raw power, agility for trying to surprise your opponent with a sudden surge, and endurance for those long, drawn out matches. Code it nicely, and you've got a fun game for people to play and bet on. All of the dice rolls are handled off stage, and there is no questions in the players' minds that everything is being handled fairly and, hopefully, realistically. Having to pause for OOC communication to discuss the proper dice rolls breaks the flow of the scene, to say the least.

[Qzzrbl]

roll amos emote suddenly lashes out at ~amos and slams a fist across ^amos jaw (emote suddenly lashes out at ~amos, ^me fist missing ^amos jaw by inches)

Check it out.

The original command, "roll".

It encompasses all stats, condensing them into a single variable, and perhaps a random variable as well.

Using "roll amos" targets Amos, rolling your condensed, summed up stats against his condensed, summed up stats.

The first emote, "suddenly lashes out at ~amos and slams a fist across ^amos jaw." is what would echo if there's a success.

The second emote, set within parentheses, "suddenly lashes out at ~amos, ^me fist missing ^amos jaw by inches" is what would echo if you fail your stat check.

There would be no "visible" ooc check that echoes, but one can use a command something like... "check roll" to check the last use of the "roll" command against his/her own character to make sure some asshole doesn't put a success emote echo in both parts of the command.

Example:

> Roll check

Last roll made against you: emote suddenly lashes out at ~amos and slams a fist across ^amos jaw (emote suddenly lashes out at ~amos, ^me fist missing ^amos jaw by inches)

And if a player catches abuse-- it can be reported to staff.

Thoughts?

::Edited to add::

Abuse of the feature (should anyone find a way to abuse it) will lead to the feature being unavailable to the offender.

Not to say my idea here is "OMG PERFECT!!"

You'll see there is very little OOC communication here, if any at all....

Get SoI out of your heads folks-- there are other ways to do it. :p

[Drayab]

I mean this in the nicest way possible, Qzzrbl, but a bad simulation is worse than none at all. Just taking an average of stats and throwing in a degree of randomness will allow ridiculous power emotes, like agile whelps beating mountains of blubbery fat and muscle at arm wrestling if the whelp is more agile than the tub of lard is strong.

[Qzzrbl]

I mean this in the nicest way possible, Qzzrbl, but a bad simulation is worse than none at all. Just taking an average of stats and throwing in a degree of randomness will allow ridiculous power emotes, like agile whelps beating mountains of blubbery fat and muscle at arm wrestling if the whelp is more agile than the tub of lard is strong.

I get what you mean-- which is why I'd like to get people to perhaps offer ideas to make the idea better, rather than, "No, that sucks I'd never ever want to see this ever."

Remember how many people hated the idea of a "Mud school" at the start?

I think that's what's going on here, mostly.

Just as people had a preconceived idea of what "mud school" is, people have a preconceived idea of what a system like this is.

[Drayab]

Well, first off, if you want to make this command as generic as an emote, you have to be able to tailor it to the specific situation. We want people to be good at some actions and bad at others, because that's how it is in real life. At a bare minimum, the command needs to:

1) Offer a selection of stats/skills that are important for the given situation. A non-exhaustive list would include things like strength, agility, height, weight, and all of the various skills.

2) You have to be able to pick any permutation of those skills to fit the situation.

3) You have to be able to balance their relative statistical weights to fit the situation.

So, an arm wrestling contest might look something like,

contest amos strength endurance agility weight 4 2 1 1

That's if you could get Amos to agree that strength, endurance, agility, and weight are the important factors in an arm wrestling contest, and that strength is twice as important as endurance, which is in turn twice as important as agility and weight.

With an intelligent GM, they would size up the situation and make a judgment call on the spot. The GM would weigh all the factors in a split second and come up with something like, "Okay, roll versus strength at a minus two penalty if you want to kick the chair out from under the fat slob on the slippery floor. Just be glad it's slippery or else it would be a lot harder." This is more difficult to handle in MUDs because the staff can't be watching all of us all of the time. I've never heard of this kind of on-the-spot arbitration happening in Arm, though I know some other MUDs do. Of course, it is a very common occurrence in table top playing, but that's because the format of the game favors it. To do this in a MUD, it's going to be left to the players to decide how to make the rolls fair, and I don't see how that can be done without some OOC communication. Even worse, the players that are trying to craft a fair roll will need to have some OOC knowledge of how to tweak it so that the roll fits our intuitive notions about the relative chances of success/failure for the situation.

That's why I say it is better to code specific situations instead of making a generic command. That plays to the strength of MUDs.