Roleplaying your character's eating habits

[Morgenes]

This is an offshoot from a common code request we get, which is to add an 'eat all <object>' command that lets you consume an entire food item in one message instead of spamming the room as you eat each bite.  I'm not really here to talk about the code idea, but more the reasoning behind why people are spam consuming food, or feel they need to, and why they aren't role playing meals, and making meal eating part of their social interactions.  I imagine as you get into the nobles and merchants (the more social types) integrating food and social behaviors is probably more the norm.   But in my opinion it should be part of everyone's role play.

I wonder why having to take multiple bites of a piece of food is viewed as such an inconvenience, and why you (those that are complaining about the spam) aren't treating the character's need to eat regularly with the same fanaticism that you practice skills or spells. Why are you spamming a bunch of eat commands together?  Why don't you take the time to make eating meals part of your roleplay of your character?  Why don't you share a meal with someone when you are sitting at the tavern, or taking a break while riding across the desert?  Eating is a major part of a person's social and physiological being, why is this not being carried into your role play?

So to bring it to the Role Playing forum, and not the Code forum, my questions to you guys are:

Do you have your characters eat a regular meal (or even better, meals) every day, or do you wait for the 'You are hungry' messages to kick in before eating? 

When you do eat, do you intersperse it with other actions, such as talking, or working on something as people do in real life?

If you are spam eating, do you have an in character reason for doing so?

[MeTekillot]

I wait for the 'you are hungry' messages before eating, unless my character goes to an event where the point is to eat/free food is provided.

I spam-eat if my character is very very hungry, but usually intersperse the spam-eating with command emotes of (savagely tearing into) (wolfing it down desperately) (like a starving street-urchin) etc. etc.

[Morgenes]

I wait for the 'you are hungry' messages before eating, unless my character goes to an event where the point is to eat/free food is provided.

I spam-eat if my character is very very hungry, but usually intersperse the spam-eating with command emotes of (savagely tearing into) (wolfing it down desperately) (like a starving street-urchin) etc. etc.

If you are spam eating, do you have an in character reason for doing so?

[MeTekillot]

Wait, like, spam-eating eat;eat;eat;eat? I don't really do that.

[Qzzrbl]

My reasons for spam eating are as follows:

I do it -alot-. If the need to eat were spaced out a bit more, I wouldn't have a problem RPing it out the best I can.

At times, I don't really have enough time to RP it out. If I'm in the mess hall in the Byn with a very hungry character, I'll quickly wind up getting bitched out for being late for training/chores if I try to think up a different emote for every "eat" instance.

I can only come up with so many emotes that involve eating, and if I focused on it and tried to emote it out every time, I'd wind up repeating certain emotes over and over and over, over the span of several characters. My imagination well has run pretty dry here lately. :<

I'm just lazy sometimes. If I couldn't be budged to emote using 'kick', I'm certainly not gonna be budged to write an emote for every time I eat something.

[Gunnerblaster]

I tend to wait until my character is hungry/a little hungry before actually eating. For me, from an OOC to IC perspective, I try to make food feel that much harder to come by so that I can really feel the grittiness in ARM. I handle eating IC as I do IRL - I typically eat when I'm hungry - and when I'm hungry usually tends to be around the set schedules my body has grown accustomed to. Sure, I have a rough schedule. IRL, I eat at dawn, high sun, and towards dusk/late at night.

Yes, I have - on occasion - spam-eaten food before. Yes, I have also used eating food for valuable roleplay.

Personally, I've never viewed the necessity to eat, in-game, as very tedious. Sure, there -are- some meals that take an obnoxious amount of time to finish off but those are very few in number.

On the occasions when I've spam-eaten food, it's typically after some intensive roleplaying or what-have-you. If I'm enjoying myself enough, I usually don't have the chance to just stop and munch down some food until afterwards - when I get the "you're very hungry" and think to myself, "oh shit - better get something to eat."

If I'm taking it at an easy pace, in-game, I take the time to eat. I'm not going to go out of my way to make some grand solo-scene out of munching on my travel cake but I, as a rule of thumb, try to throw in a few emotes whilst eating.

[Saellyn]

I'm not big on solo RP. Therefore, if I'm alone, I do tend to spam eat/drink. I do solo RP occasionally, but it's something that I find to be extremely tedious and boring. Sometimes.

When I'm with people, depends what they're doing. Usually I am trying to talk or say things or just do stuff that doesn't even use the eat command. And I eat. I also intermittently use the taste command if I don't want to be seen as chowing down like a crazed tok. So, I guess my reason is: Solo RP, boring, spam eat most of the time to get it out of the way.  With people? Very rarely spam-eat, usually chat with them, emote, stuff like that. And eat.

[Morgenes]

Ok, maybe I'm not being clear.

I'm not suggesting people emote between every bite.

I'm asking why not integrate it into your actions, maybe if I set a scene (pardon if this isn't exactly correct in output):

Interior: A dirty, run-down tavern
> say So I saw Amos kanking this elf down by the well the other day.
You say, in sirihish:
  'So I saw Amos kanking this elf down by the well the other day.
You are hungry.

>
The tall, muscular man, says in sirihish:
  'Amos, really?'

> get fruit backpack; eat fruit; eat fruit; eat fruit; eat fruit; eat fruit
You get a ginka fruit from your leather backpack.
You eat a ginka fruit.
You eat a partially eaten ginka fruit.
You eat a half-eaten ginka fruit.
You eat a mostly eaten ginka fruit.
You eat a remainder of a ginka fruit.

> say Ya, he was doin' her good.
You say, in sirihish:
  'Ya, he was doin' her good.'

And now again:

Interior: A dirty, run-down tavern
> say So I saw Amos kanking this elf down by the well the other day.
You say, in sirihish:
  'So I saw Amos kanking this elf down by the well the other day.
You are hungry.

>
The tall, muscular man, says in sirihish:
  'Amos, really?'

> get fruit backpack
You get a ginka fruit from your leather backpack.

> say Ya, he was doin' her good.
You say, in sirihish:
  'Ya, he was doin' her good.'

>
The tall, muscular man nods.

> eat fruit
You eat a ginka fruit.

>
The tall, muscular man says, in sirihish:
  'Go on, was he pulling her hair?'

> say oh ya, he had a braid in each hand and was riding her like a kank.
You say, in sirihish:
  'oh ya, he had a braid in each hand and was riding her like a kank.

> eat fruit
You eat a partially eaten ginka fruit.

...  

Why don't you space out your eating into the conversation, make it part of the flow of what you're doing.  Note I didn't add any emotes about the eating, that could be done (tastefully...pun intended), and spread out the eating into the conversation/role play scene even more.

Even better, why don't you make a habit of eating as the sun rises each day, or sets each night when you are inside anyway.  Share a meal with someone, communicate and eat together, make it a part of your character and their habits.

Is that any clearer on what I'm looking for?

[Spice Spice Baby]

Usually I try to feed my characters regularly enough to not see hunger messages.

When I do let my PC go codedly hungry, it's usually for a reason. Or their player has been too inept to make them enough money to feed them properly. Sorry, characters.

I almost never "spam eat" because I enjoy writing horrible, disgusting stuffing-my-face emotes that often leave me wondering if I should ask players near me for their consent.

It could just be the type of roles I tend to play, but I almost never see people wolfing down tons of food without emotes.

[Thunkkin]

Most people in RL don't eat unless they feel hungry. Granted, most people eat on a semi-regular schedule and so therefore feel hungry at similar times of the day each day. Thus, I think it's natural to wait until you get the "You're hungry" message from the game. We're used to feeling hungry and eating going together (because most of us are privileged). This is compounded by the fact that game time is wacky in relation to real time. It takes IC days to have the equivalent of an extended RL conversation.

That is where it becomes annoying. When you are having an interaction that would take 100 minutes in RL, but instead takes 180 minutes in play time since you have to type and wait for replies, and it thus equates to two days of game time ... it's obnoxious to stop and play out a food scene. Let's be frank. Most people don't pause sex in order to RP out a meal. Nor do they ask to put an important business meeting with their boss on hold while they chow down a day's worth of food. I'm 32 and I've never once said, "Baby, we've got to stop for a snack because I'm physically ill from hunger." Nor, in the course of my job, have I ever had to say, "Excuse me boss and coworkers, but I am about to enter a coma. I am going to eat a full meal now." (Yes, we've all been hungry during meetings ... but not actually STARVING in the true sense of starving).

So, take the oddity described above and combine it with the way that many common foods require four bites but only seem to fill you up 20% of the way or so. Care to take 20 emotes in the middle of your tense conversation? Care to weave 20 eating emotes into your passionate tryst? No. No I don't. I don't normally eat at all during important meetings or conversations in RL. I certainly don't want to spend 12-20 commands on it in the game when I'm trying to focus on other things. SOMETIMES it's great to share a meal. Sometimes it's a bizarre fluke brought on by the mismatch between game time and real time. Seems obvious to me.

Edit: I say this as someone who had a character that built many meals and food scenes into an extended relationship and flirtation with another character. And yes, when I'm on my own, etc., eating as part of my character's routine isn't a bother. But the most important moments in my character's life often don't fit well with chowing down.

[BleakOne]

Only problem I can see with eating a meal at a set time every day, is being too full to eat any more quite quickly, at least in my experience. Time's a bit out of whack too, so people usually don't sleep every night, or usually every other night either.

Having said that, if my PC is in a room with others who are also hanging around, I do try to represent a normal meal but spacing out my eats between talking and emotes. If I'm out on the sands, alone or doing something more interesting, I will just do a few command emotes.

A final, poor excuse of mine is I often miss the time progression if I'm indoors and don't regularly check it, so I would certainly fail to meet the routine time of eating, or be busy at the time, and probably forget altogether. That's mostly because I'm forgetful about such things, though.

[Saellyn]

Only problem I can see with eating a meal at a set time every day, is being too full to eat any more quite quickly, at least in my experience. Time's a bit out of whack too, so people usually don't sleep every night, or usually every other night either.

Having said that, if my PC is in a room with others who are also hanging around, I do try to represent a normal meal but spacing out my eats between talking and emotes. If I'm out on the sands, alone or doing something more interesting, I will just do a few command emotes.

A final, poor excuse of mine is I often miss the time progression if I'm indoors and don't regularly check it, so I would certainly fail to meet the routine time of eating, or be busy at the time, and probably forget altogether. That's mostly because I'm forgetful about such things, though.

%e in your prompt, that's the code for "current time, if available".

[BleakOne]

%e in your prompt, that's the code for "current time, if available".

Cool, thanks. 

[Barzalene]

There is a huge difference between eating and spellcasting.

If you are a minion and you are tasked with standing at someone's arm while they sit, or if you're on the road or whatever you don't have to spellcast. You don't get messages insisting that you have a burning urge to cast. If you wait too long, you don't get a physical penalty that further enforces that need.

You choose you moment.

Often you're not free to go off and have a leisurely emoted meal. You're not rping eating. You're making the annoying hunger prompts go away.

I'm not saying that's good. I'm not defending this. I'm just explaining it.

[Samoa]

Well, I eat in two different ways.

Here's the thing: In-game, we can sometimes have conversations that last OVER A DAY. Like, sun up to sun down and then sun up again. That's ridiculous. That *doesn't* really happen, but we just kind of ignore it for the sake of working through the game -- the scenario, the story, the roleplay, is more important than the coded response from "time" in that case, right? I'd be willing to wager we ALL kind of feel that way.

If I am in the middle of a 'scene', frankly, I just ignore the hunger messages. I just straight up don't care. If my character is in the middle of having an emotional breakdown, and I get "you are hungry," I really don't think she's going to stop, whip out a travel cake or mekillot steak, and just dig in. What if I wind up in this situation when I'm at "very hungry," and playing it out turns to famished, or even starving? It's not important. It really isn't. Much like having a nervous breakdown conversation doesn't take *TWO DAYS*, I just have to assume that my hunger level has not increased by a factor of two days. I'll finish my scene, and then when the scenario, the little story-fraction, is over, I will eat. I will eat playing it out as if I'm really fucking hungry, but the messages, I'm sorry -- they're not important to me when compared to playing out a scene where it's not plausible that I'd stop and break into some food.

If I am not in the middle of a scene, I eat when I'm hungry, or at the LATEST, when I'm "very hungry." If I reach a point of being 'famished' or 'starving', I will act famished or starving (because there was no implausible time lapse, as above), but I try to avoid reaching this point. I will emote having the food and eating it bit by bit in conversation, and if it is a food item that is eaten in a 'single bite', I will actually emote having more food than really exists. If, for instance, I have a mug of ale that is emptied even with one 'sip' instead of one 'drink', I will emote drinking from it several times, eventually use the drink command (which, codedly, empties it) and then continue to emote drinking it until I feel like my character would've finished it. I view the ale and its volume as just a prop (which, really, is all ANYTHING here is). If it's better, story and roleplay wise, to have more than one "drink ale" worth of ale, then I'm just going to have more ale; I don't care. If it's a food item that is consumed in a single "Eat food," then I'll emote about nibbling on it during conversation, picking pieces up, whatever, and then I'll eat it, and then a bit later I'll emote finishing it.

So, to answer your question: I never spam eat, I always roleplay out my eating, but in MOST CASES, I don't really care at all about the messages the game gives me; GENERALLY, I just view them as guidelines. To me, "you are hungry" is often the same as "you are famished," because most of the time I'm involved with a scene and the scene is better served by ignoring the food message because time passes unrealistically fast when you are engaged in conversation or extended emoting.

[Cutthroat]

Do you have your characters eat a regular meal (or even better, meals) every day, or do you wait for the 'You are hungry' messages to kick in before eating? 

When you do eat, do you intersperse it with other actions, such as talking, or working on something as people do in real life?

If you are spam eating, do you have an in character reason for doing so?

My characters with access to plentiful amounts of food usually eat regularly. Otherwise, they're more likely to be conserving their food and eating when they feel hungry.

If my PC has something to do or talk with while eating, they do those things or talk with those people. If eating is going to be "solo RP", then it's much more convenient (to me, at least) to throw out one or two command emotes about eating something per every two or three 'eat' commands, and quickly find some interaction afterward. Sometimes it's possible to set up a meal with other people, but unless your PC has something unique to offer there isn't much of a point to doing it repeatedly.

[valeria]

If my PC has something to do or talk with while eating, they do those things or talk with those people. If eating is going to be "solo RP", then it's much more convenient (to me, at least) to throw out one or two command emotes about eating something per every two or three 'eat' commands, and quickly find some interaction afterward. Sometimes it's possible to set up a meal with other people, but unless your PC has something unique to offer there isn't much of a point to doing it repeatedly.

This is pretty much me.  But more specifically:

Do you have your characters eat a regular meal (or even better, meals) every day, or do you wait for the 'You are hungry' messages to kick in before eating?

My characters that have access to food eat regular meals.

Sometimes, the really busy characters will go way, way, way past 'you are hungry' though.  Either because they forget to bring food with them (and either they aren't in an area where you can purchase food, or it is ridiculously-fucking-expensive and they can't justify buying it), or because it would be socially inappropriate to dig out some food to eat, or for any number of reasons.

When you do eat, do you intersperse it with other actions, such as talking, or working on something as people do in real life?

Sometimes.  If there are other things my character would want to be doing, like talking, working, etc.  But most of the time my character is going to be in a designated eating location, and most of the time there is no one else around, so they are going to be focused on eating so they can get back to doing whatever else it is they do.  Kind of like I do in real life.

My general problem with social eating is that if you're not crafting your own food or don't have portable-type clan food, you will have a harder time coming up with wanting to each socially, because it is generally ridiculously-fucking-expensive to buy any food in any of the taverns, and if my character is eating burned tuber/meat/bread #552 because they can't afford to waste it, why would she want anyone knowing she's poor enough to eat that crap?  Unless the character doesn't care or wants to be thought of as poor.

If you are spam eating, do you have an in character reason for doing so?

I only rarely spam-eat in public, like one of your examples, but when my character is spam-eating her reason is usually that she needs to bolt this food down so she isn't late to chores/work/etc.  Or... there really is no other way to eat Byn stew, you just have to open your throat and let it slide down.  Or my character is literally about to pass out from hunger, and they want that food right now.  And even then I'll usually toss on a couple command emotes, but that doesn't make the spammy nature of the eating any less spammy.

The necessity of obtaining food is one of those things that makes Armageddon very Armageddonesque, and I would never want to do away with food or hunger requirements.  But sometimes you need your character to just have that food eaten.  Kind of like you need your character to get across town in a hurry.  Other times I might chat, do other emotes, etc, while walking across town or eating food, but sometimes you and your character just need to get from point A to point B quickly.  As someone who spam-eats in real life, I don't think it's that unrealistic to quickly bolt a meal down so you'll stop being hungry and so you can go on to something else.

[Chettaman]

I love Morg.
I remember once. Just one of my mates IC wanting to sit down and actually have a meal with me other then the usual, "chuckle-chuckle, good joke to mudsex" scenario. I think that was awesome. And I send her kudos for this!
Ha. The funny part is it lasted as long as mudsex.

[boog]

Edit: I say this as someone who had a character that built many meals and food scenes into an extended relationship and flirtation with another character. And yes, when I'm on my own, etc., eating as part of my character's routine isn't a bother. But the most important moments in my character's life often don't fit well with chowing down.

You mean I'm not the only one who paused in between scarfing down jallals so I could eek out more RP time? Schweet.

Personally, each of my characters eats differently. Some eat nicely. Some only eat some things nicely. Some scarf things down because of IG reason: not wanting others to get their food, not wanting to share, very hungry bellies ...

But I hate spam eating. It makes me angry. I dislike seeing "soandso eats <blah>" x10 rolling on the screen. But it's their choice.

[Feco]

I dislike when people spam eat a fucking steak the size of a dwarf.  Then act like a "emote licks his fingers" makes it okay.  It's jarring.

Just stop it.  I realize in dangerous situations you don't want to sit there and have a meal... but just take one or two god damn bites of that fruit, stick it in your pocket, and go on your merry way.  You can eat the whole thing later.

I'm not immune to having sucked down a fruit in 10 seconds, but I try to avoid doing it, and I don't think I've done it in a long time.

[SMuz]

I roleplay it, but there are times when it's just not really the focus of the roleplay. There are times where there are more interesting things, like the conversation or when someone is giving a speech. Eat all strikes me as something to do when eating is just not part of the roleplay. There's a time when I downgrade my emotes to hemotes (just because it's so crowded), that's when I don't roleplay eating.

Same goes for some other things. I mean, roleplaying salt foraging is sometimes the prime of my character's roleplaying day. But there are times out there, with friends, when I don't really bother with the salt foraging roleplay, and focus more on the conversation.

Compare it to RL. Sometimes I'm eating a bag of potato chips. Or popcorn. I'll eat it slowly, throughout an hour or so. But it's not really something that should 'echo'. And sometimes I'll just spam eat a bowl of cereal before I run off to class. It's not much different than a Bynner scarfing down the remains of that stew at dawn. It's just fading out on the eat roleplay, because people are not interested in that right now.

There are times when eating is a social activity, like on an interview, on a date, or just plain hanging out. That's fine, but not applicable all the time.

[Marshmellow]

If my character is in a social situation with other characters, I will often roleplay eating.  In private when I'm doing other things and not trying to create an engaging scene for anyone but myself and I just want to get sit done?  Yeah, I'll spam-eat sometimes.

[Lizzie]

I spam-eat buttered popcorn in real life with zero emotes. It's a weekly ritual. Nuke popcorn. Melt butter. Turn on America's Next Top Model two minutes before the show actually starts. Before they can get through the "Last week, we saw this" segment, the popcorn bowl is empty. I feel no compunction to do otherwise in game with my character. Unfortunately, there exists no popcorn in game. And so I substitute for uncooked meat, raw roots, fruits, and the occasional mek steak from the local grocery store/apartment/festival/clan compound.

I do avoid spam-eating in social settings - and I have actually gotten up and removed myself from the social setting, just so I can take care of the hunger echo without causing screen scroll for other people. I also do use (and enjoy) the emote functionality of the eat/drink/taste/sip commands, when I'm not spamming them.

[hyzhenhok]

I don't view "spam eating" as a jarring thing. Some people view eating as a chore: something that has to be done, but not necessarily needs to be made into a ritual. I imagine lots of Zalanthans fall into this: they don't have time to waste on actually eating a "meal"; they need to spend that time earning their 'sid for their next meal. So they eat quickly.

And what's with this accusation of "spam eating' anyway? If I could eat the damn fruit or bowl of soup in a single command, I could attach a command emote to very easily indicate how I eat, how long I take, etc. Instead of having to worry about codedly eating it over a set period of time and having to enter the eat command over the correct interval, I could issue a single command and then spend the rest of my effort grappling with the code on actual roleplaying. Whenever I "spam eat" that's what I'm treating it as: the damn code forces me to tell you I'm eating the fruit five times, but please just pay attention to my emotes if you want to know how I'm eating.

In general I'm in favor of allowing a degree of abstraction into the game. Say my character is hungry, so they stop by the grocer to buy a fruit to eat on the way home. Yes, I could spend a lot of time and effort crafting a beautiful scene of how my 'rinthi breed slowly ate through the rotten petoch as he moved through the alleys. I don't, because it is not terribly interesting, I've probably done it before 10 times with this PC alone, and doing so means spending too much time and effort that would be better spent elsewhere. So I emote "eats the fruit as he walks down the alley" and spam eat it until it is no longer in my inventory, and move on to the next order of business.

[Celest]

I think it really depends on context. If you're a noble in the presence of a Templar having a meal together, with a character who likes to savor things who has little coded hunger then emoting out the eating would be more appropriate. However, if you're a (ICly and codedly) starving rinther who just found a stale, moldy piece of bread who just wants to get it down without it coming back up again then I can see spam eating, though obviously it's a good idea to emote why your PC is spam eating. Usually, spam eating it done because of the code time constraints and weirdness.

If it's a big problem, however, why not add a short delay before you can eat? Something like 2 seconds between each usage of the eat command seems fair, and I think would send the message that it's not very realistic to spam eat, especially with the proper echo.

Code Select Expand

eat fruit
eat fruit

You take a bite of the fruit.

Slow down, you can't swallow it whole!

Edit: 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.