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.