Roleplaying your character's eating habits

[Sokotra]

I didn't realize canned Spam was available in the game.  Isn't that a bit futuristic for the game world?  (did someone make that joke already? I'm too busy spamming through the forums to read everything)


No, I try to space out taking a few bites between other commands unless I'm in a hurry in real life, which is rather frequent.  That's always been a problem with other aspects of the game.  Many people don't have as much time to role-play as others do... or as much as we would like.  Other times there are IC reasons like sitting out in the desert, not prepared to safely rest or whatever... you just have to scarf something down, take a drink, and move on to a safer area or get done whatever you're doing out in the wastes so you can get back into the city or village.

[Thunkkin]

New dwarf focus: The animated eater
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The grotty byn sarge says in sirihish:
    "Eat up, men! We ride at dawn!"

emote runs over to the stew pot, pants pee-soaked with anticipatory excitement.

ask cook stew

sit table (rushing over)

eat stew (hurriedly)

emote gulps down a generous bite, smiling significantly to those around him.

eat stew (taking another hurried bite)

phemote short leg jogs wetly with excitement.

eat stew (his spoon scraping against the bowl)

say (through a full mouth) Think we'll live?!

eat stew [licking his lips afterward]

emote finally finishes the bowl.

stand (Falling over himself with a clatter of crappy armor and bounding back toward ~cook like a hungry gortok puppy)

tell cook (waving his arms and expelling a bit of stew spray as he speaks) I'm still hungry! Hurry!

ask cook stew

sit table (falling back into his seat, barely able to get his legs up over the bench)

eat stew (slurping loudly)

emote swallows the food in his mouth, since that's normally how one consumes things if one is humanoid and not a weird mutant.

The grotty byn sarge shouts in sirihish:
    "Hurry up, runner!"

say (spoon half-raised to lips, which have no hair above them since #me is dwarf, and holding up four fingers) But Sarge! Ah got three mehr bowls t'go!

[Marshmellow]

Actually, one of Arm's selling points is a good amount of realism.  The staff expects us to, by and large, play realistically within the confines of the world.

How many bites it takes to eat a food object should not be something to be a stickler about realism on.

I never said it was.  I was simply stating that Lizzie's argument wasn't a good one because she said that realism comes in last place as far as the game is concerned.

[jhunter]

It's a matter of personal preference. It's something we're all not going to agree on. Our order of priorities in those regards are going to vary from person to person. That's a big part of why there are so many arguments about the way that things "should be" on the GDB.

[hyzhenhok]

Does it bother anyone else that people can just insta-skin things? Doesn't it get under your skin when your Byn unit's "tracker" insta-skins his 40-44th gortoks in 5 seconds? Obviously something has gone wrong here.

So I think we should change it so you have to type "skin [creature] for [part]" for each item until the corpse is fully skinned, to encourage people to more slowly roleplay out their skinning. Plus, it's more realistic. Have you ever seen someone touch a corpse with a knife and turn into a bunch of pristine animal parts? I sure haven't.

[Rhyden]

I think skinning should have a delay like forage does, giving the skinner enough time to drop off an emote or two.

The delay length would also depend on the size of the beast being skinned.

[SMuz]

I definitely never liked the insta-skinning. It's even worse when you're OOC/ICly pressured for time and someone tells you to rush it, which forces the skinning player to throw out some lame rushed emote. A delay would make it much better.

Don't think everyone would appreciate a delay on eating, though, since spam eating has its place in the game.

[a strange shadow]

I think skinning should have a delay like forage does, giving the skinner enough time to drop off an emote or two.

The delay length would also depend on the size of the beast being skinned.

Yes. This please.

(even if it does mean the Vashineration of Vultures wouldn't have happened)

[jhunter]

Meh, I don't care for adding more delays. I always try to emote out at least part of my skinning attempt if not the whole thing sometimes and I think we have enough delays to -everygoddamnedthing- in the game as it is. I try even harder to emote out the process if it appears any of the other pcs with mine are newer players in the hopes that it will inspire them to do the same. The kinds of delays I envision being added if they were would likely be so long I'd be typing out a book every time during the delay and eventually would become so bored with it that I would cease to emote at all. I'd likely just enter the skin command and flip over to my web browser during the delay. I find that after doing the same crafted item over and over again I end up doing this.

[MeTekillot]

NO. BAD GDB. YOU PUT THAT DERAIL DOWN AND GO BACK TO THE TOPIC. NO. NO. WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT CHEWING ON DADDY'S DERAILS? BAD GDB. BAD.

[BleakOne]

NO. BAD GDB. YOU PUT THAT DERAIL DOWN AND GO BACK TO THE TOPIC. NO. NO. WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT CHEWING ON DADDY'S DERAILS? BAD GDB. BAD.

*whines and slinks off to his kennel*

[musashi]

WARNING: I did not read this entire thread. I read Morg's OP and then a few of the first replies. So sorry if this has already been said but I wanted to toss in my perspective.

The main thing that stuck out to me is the idea that having to eat things multiple times was not so much an inconvenience, but rather a consistency issue, and that's why people were complaining.

What do I mean by that? Well what I mean is that how many bites it takes to eat something, and the size of that something as portrayed in its description, can be pretty wonky sometimes. A lot of the "full course super meals" that nobles have hiding psionic and sorcerous aides whip up for them take fewer bites to fully consume than say ... a jallal fruit.

For me, the main appeal of being able to fully eat something in one go is that it would empower me, the player, to base how long it should be taking my character on what the item's description says, rather than what I OOC'ly know from past experience is the rough amount of bites it's going to be.

I hate getting caught in awkward moments like

Code Select Expand

> (popping the small fruit into ^me mouth) eat fruit
Poppng the small fruit into your mouth, you eat a part of your small fruit.
> eat fruit
You eat a part of your small fruit.
>eat fruit
>eat fruit
>eat fruit
>eat fruit
>eat fruit
You eat a part of your small fruit.
You eat a part of your small fruit.
You eat a part of your partially eaten small fruit.
You eat a part of your partially eaten small fruit.
You eat a part of your half eaten small fruit.

Equally annoying are these moments:

Code Select Expand

>taste meal (putting just a little on the tip of ^me tongue to savor the flavor)
Putting just a little on the tip of your tongue to savor the flavor, you take a bite of your now half eaten full course meal.
It tastes great, here's an awesome taste echo!

Is it the end of the world? No of course not. And a little OOC knowledge avoids the problem altogether if you happen to know already which food objects have whacky rates of consumption and which don't.

But my point is that I always thought people wanting to have an "eat all" command coded, wanted that to further enrich their RP by avoiding these situations. Not skip out on their RP in favor of spamming commands. At least that's where I'm coming from.

[chrisdcoulombe]

  Eat Brains;Eatbrains;Eat Brainz;Eatbrains
Say (chewing voraciously)  Mmm brainz!

[Naida]

If the problem is people not RPing their eating, then I'll say that I don't do it because generally I find it boring to RP out eating. Most of the food that my characters eat isn't going to be interesting or food to be savored. They're eating it to make the pain in their stomach go away. In the few instances where food is interesting or to be savored, I've noticed that I'll have my characters eat it slowly and take their time... until they get used to it, and then it's back to eating it to make their stomach stop aching.

I also like the idea raised elsewhere of "eat" giving a flavor echo. You should always taste your food, no matter how large the bite is, and my impression that the "taste" command was just to take a smaller bite. The same goes for sip and drink. I think with some expanded flavor echoes, that change would help to solve this problem. A lot of times I've had a character who asks someone how something tastes as they're eating it, only to have them use eat instead of taste before they realize the question asked. I can feel their player going "Oh, oops," with the resulting "Yeah, it tastes good" emote, because it makes no sense to say, "Oh, sorry, I have no idea how it tastes because I ate it too fast and took bites that were too big." This lends itself to some weirdness, because the answer is almost always a bland, "Yeah, it's good," no matter what the taste echo is. It can be strikingly sour, or succulent and juicy, or bitter, and almost all players in this situation will offer the same cautious response.

If players are given IC feedback about what they're eating, beyond it making them less hungry, I think that they'll naturally start to RP around that feedback instead of just scarf everything down. If you keep seeing "The fruit is startlingly sour" as you eat it, you're likely going to slow down and address that with RP, instead of just spam eating it.

Time for me to toss in my two sid-worth.  First of all, I love Celest's idea.  I've always thought 'taste' was more of a coded thing to check to see if something was safe to consume, and that eating it -should- echo the flavor text to the eater.  Or even better, for some foods - esp mastercraft cooking - echo progressive flavor text to the dining pc, so each bite gets a little more into the food and experiences the flavour combinations the maker envisioned.

Example:  An heirloom Steinali tuber in escru cream, with vordac and ginka reduction
1) Seared perfectly, the tuber's skin is crisp and light, mixing well with the succulent tidbits of purple fruit.
2) The flesh of this well-cooked tuber is soft, combining into bursts of sweet creaminess with the accompanying sauces.
3) etc..

It might mean a little more thinking on the part of new creators... but I don't think that's a bad thing.  I'd also like to see this for drinks, giving subtle variations between the initial pour/drink, body, and dregs, or multi-layer coctail type drinks.


I've always loved food in Armageddon, and most of my characters have been either rangers or scavengers for all the fun things they can gather up to cook, eat, and give to others, or been merchants who could afford to buy things to cook.  But I've learned to cook decently with every character I've played (except my first, who died in 5 days), and you don't have to be a crafter to learn to do it.  I enjoy rp'ing over cooking and eating, and if I have the means to have food (either coin or foraging) then I tend to eat every so often mixed in with what everelse I'm doing.  Which is kind of like my RL as well, I tend to snack on something every couple of hours.  Giving people presents of food is just as fun as annoying my fellow clanmates by pulling out a centipede during crafting and casually emoting about spitting out spare legs as I noisily munch its segmented shell, then ask if anyone wants a nice roasted sandhopper?  Or describing a pallid grub wriggling frantically trying to escape as I eat it.  Food is great for rp, wether you're being seductive, friendly or disgusting with it.

To answer the original questions though, I (as mentioned above) tend to eat a little frequently, instead of getting all the way to very hungry or starving.  Its led people to say that I'm always eating, but at the same time doing this means I don't spam them either.   Do I ever spam eat?  Sometimes.  Especially if I've been rp'ing out a scene where it didn't seem right to eat, like if being questioned at length by a Templar, then I probably wouldn't start pulling things out of my pockets and munching away like I would when passing time with clanmates.  When I do spam eat, generally I'll step into another location alone though so I don't text-spam people, and I'll still emote something at the start at least.  I agree with others here that its not necessarily ooc to spam-eat..   I have eaten entire sandwiches, chicken breasts, bowls of spaghetti, etc. in less than a minute in RL when in a hurry or very hungry.  I don't think its good to do all the time, but not a problem on occasion.  Though, there are some commands I'd like to see added dealing with eat that would make things better.

The eat-all command for instance, I don't think is unreasonable if used with proper rp.  For example:
sit (Stretching out on the sand as she watches the dancers);eatall (laying it upon the ground before her) melon [savoring the moist pulp and smiling];change ldesc lounges upon the sand, eating a melon.
Then the melon is completely consumed already, dealing with any pressing hunger-code at the time, and without spamming the gathering where I'm watching dancing goin on.  I can still pose now and then for rp sake, eating the melon, without inflicting a series of eight 'X takes a bite of her fir, ripe purple melon' on the room which is probably already spammy from more meaningful RP.  I know I get overwhelmed in hrpts where so much unimportant code output is going on that I can't see the important parts. 

So I think an eatall command would help, or a hidden-eat command (heat) so one could take a bite with the usual code-generation, and then finish it off with hidden eating commands to not spam the room, and pose at leisure enjoying and finishing the food.  It would also be good in other situations, ducking into the shadows of your cloak to eat that tandu sausage you just swiped.  If someone was watching you then they'd see it, but otherwise people would just see your emotes of crouching back into a crevice and pulling your cloak around you.  Good for stealthy types.  I just don't think its necessary for every single bite of eating to be echoed to the world.  When I'm eating with a bunch of people in RL I don't notice every bite that every person takes..  I'll notice one person eating.. whatever,  a few moments later someone else in the group taking a drink.  I don't focus on it all, and I'd like to see that in Arm so the code didn't get in the way of the rp. 

Mind you, I don't want to lose the code elements - if we didn't get hungry and thirsty and sick and covered in dust or stench, then it just wouldn't be Arm.