Could you give me a chance to say something??

[Bestatte]

Confessions of a speed typist:

The only time I've noticed that my fast typing has interrupted the flow of RP is when I'm trying to leave a room after a conversation. I've gotten feedback from a couple of people, who've said to me, "Hey - I had a "c-ya" say/emote all lined up but you left too fast!"

Because I -know- that I type fast, I try to be patient with those who don't. If my character is reporting information, she'll blurt it out as fast as she can, tell after tell after tell til someone tells her to shut the fuck up.

But that's when she's being asked to report something. She's going to expect (and so am I) that the information needs to be delivered quickly so the other person can get on with other things.

In a situation of casual conversation, however, I tend to be far more relaxed with my interaction, and have no problem slowing down my responses. I generally try to match my own responses with whoever I'm talking to. This also actually helps me with my RP, because it gives me more time to think about what my character is saying/doing.

For speed typists (anyone who types *English* higher than 60 wpm with a good grasp of standard American or British grammar), I would suggest relaxing during casual conversations or emoted interactions. In urgent situations, however, taking your time could result in someone getting killed.  I'd say to the slower typists in those situations, throw out your fancy emotes and just tell me what the hell you want to tell me. I promise not to get bent out of shape if you spell "the" wrong or add a comma where it doesn't belong.

The only time slow typing bugs me, is when the typist is taking 3 minutes to toss out a 4-line emote about nothing. If I have to wait 10 minutes from the time you walk in, to the time you sit at the table, I'm probably going to be out the door by the time you get halfway across the floor. Nothing personal - I just have more interesting things to do than hear the precise sound of your bootsteps.

[sarahjc]

Good Points all of them Bestatte.. and SpawnLoser

And how fast you type really does depend on what you are saying and who you are saying it to.. It is all relative to the situation..

I tend to blurt out stories or information that I am relaying with a bit of speed as well..Who wants to sit through a ten year update on what happened yesterday?

But in casual conversation I am a very say emotey kind of person. So.. some of my says can be a bit lengthy.. Plus My Character is the type that must be careful of what she says and how she says it..

And not that two minutes is way to long or way too short.. The basic gist was.. If you know that your railroading someone.. and that they are constantly a step behind you, Slow down.. They obviously for whatever reason aren't as fast as you..

I mean does the Rp have to flow like a spam scrolling screen??

Take a Valium, drink a beer and enjoy the scene. You may find that those who take a minute or so to say something.. May actually have something good to say..and/or may have a really cool way to say it..

[X-D]

I give benefit of the doubt first time, I'll even wait that 2 minutes, though it pains me, but, if after that 2 minutes I get a 3line emote on a tell of 4 words, specialy words that don't make any sense (really thick ic accents) I'm off like a prom dress, and don't expect my char to interact much with yours. Now, if after the two minutes it is a tell with 3 lines of info, I'll happily wait around for the next installment.

Now, if it is 1-2 minutes and it is a simple tell with few words, I assume slow typist or second language, either way, I'll stick it out, but I will be doing other things, emotes, way, talking to other people in the room, maybe even saying other things to the person typing slow, not that I expect them to answer everything, but it fills the space:)

Also, it feels to me, when I find somebody who constantly has to pull 2-3line emotes on a say and it takes that person 1.5-3 minutes every time, it feels selfish too me, that person -has- to be aware of the amount of time they are taking, they have to be aware that the other people around them are waiting on them, and it does not always mean just that room, other people may be waiting on the person they are talking to in other areas of the world/game, Not everybody has 10hours they can be on at a time, mostly it is 2-3 hours at a time, but one person can monopolize an hour for a 5 minute conversation, curtesy works both ways if you type 25wpm, you know it, this is not going to come as a shock to you, if you type 25wpm and do 3line emotes attached to your says that describe how your cloak is laying out behind your chair and you have to consult dictionary.com then rewrite it then finally hit enter after people have been waiting for what seems to them an eternity, then you are being selfish and not reguarding others.

[Quo]

In the field of human communication, there is a term coined for the variations in need of feedback. Subject is, that in any communication, the listening part is expected to give some kind of 'nonverbal keepalive packet'  (usually some sort of grunt or acknowledging "hm").
It was found that the duration of "silence" a listener was allowed before the speaker showed signs of irritation and eventually asked back varied a lot based on region and group.
Together with that came a different sense for how long a gap in speech had to be to allow the listener to actively start speaking himself. Not surprising, both time spans were closely coupled. With long intervals of acknowledging sounds went the need for long gaps to start speaking without being considered rude while fast-talkers needed frequent acknowledges and left only brief gaps for the other part to take over.

Something similar might come into play here, it seems to me. Some players feel ignored when the other doesn't respond immediately, and be it just with a brief emote preceeding a longer sentence. The counterpart feels rushed when the other side continues generating messages, or worse, speech without a chance for them to chime in. Digital communication inherits our speaking habits and models of communication.

Knowing that, a lot of effort can be made to make both sides feel comfortable, and I have had the luck of playing around chars whose players had been truly excellent at that. Not only did their chars feel in sync with their surroundings, they also managed to make me feel comfortable about my own playing, even if lacking.

To me, that is one of the best qualities a roleplayer can have (to answer another thread).

It is obviously the more experienced player, or the faster part who has more control over such a situation. Upon him I'd put the major part of the responsibility for timing a scene for an entire group. Seeing that one part is significantly slower, they have a world full of means to ease the situation for that player while including the char into the timeline of the scene without obvious breaks. It is up to their judgement (and the self-portraying of the slower char) to decide if the other player is hindered oocly or if the char is reacting slow in a faster environment. Often a combination will work well.
Also there's a lot that can be done without rushing the other player. The slow player gives you all the time you may want to portrait the world around meanwhile. Nice chance to do more about the conversation than just a ping-pong of communication-related commands. That kank-fly pestering you, the weather making itself noticed, vnpcs around rushing past - plenty of things as long as they're not overdone. Or, if you feel that it's the other -char- that is being slow, all kinds of things you can do ic about it. From discovering the inner secrets of your nose to shifting your attention elsewhere, you don't just have to stand there and wait until time itself comes to an end.

As a player who knows about his handicaps it can help to portrait the char itself as being slow to react, without necessarily reducing the commands per minute rate. A nod, a brief emote indicating that you intend to say something is often all it takes to make the others give you enough leeway to compose your message and bring it across in a thoughtful manner. Another possibility would be to shorten your sentences, or to split it into several commands at convenient breathing points.
Those situations when after a long pause, someone will speak with a 5-line monologue happen, but should be reflected by roleplay. If you're nervous in an interrogation, you can do all the fidgeting while carefully composing the message.
On a technical side, it helps if the client allows to compose a message without having to switch from keyboard to mouse, or other time-consuming tasks preventing reaction. If the client allows jumping to the beginning and end of a line typed as well as recalling previously typed lines from history (often by hitting the 'up' arrow, or Crtl-P), my own approach was to start typing my lengthy emote/say, and, if I needed to look up a word or do something in between (maybe to bridge the gap that was stretching already, or to react to a new situation) I would jump to the beginning of the line, invalidate the command by typing a letter that would make the mud just reply with an error message (such as -emote ..., or -say ...), do whatever I wanted to, and then recall the line from history and continue editing it. Sometimes little side emotes kept growing over an entire conversation like that, often I would discard something because it ended up being no longer appropriate, or done differently in the course of action.
Also, this allowed me to access webster. One of my most handy little things is to use the multiplaying capabilities of my client to connect to a webster telnet service. A simple "/def [word]" will give the illiterate foreigner me the help I need (and further scroll) without leaving my client or changing focus.

[Quo]

[...] occasionly pulling out a copy of a paper thesaurus to check for just the right word?

One of the things I never learned when I was learning a language at school was the first thing that hit me when I happened to learn french just by living in a french-speaking community:

It didn't matter if a word wasn't known, and it was perfectly understandable, and done by natives just as well, to replace that word with another. How often have you referred in speaking, in your own language, to "that big thing over there" and pointed at it just because a noun that was perfectly known to you happened to evade your mind right then? Feels silly, and happens all the time.
Don't be afraid of calling all kinds of '...things' to your aid. You're usually faster off describing them than you might need to look them up.

The webster is reserved for emotes. :-)

Good hints, AC !

Be imperfect.  You aren't being graded on your performance, and not everything has to be a masterpiece.  If you take two minutes to enter a response, you may be over-thinking things.

This last one I just had to quote. Nothing to add there.

[Akaramu]

I dont mind slow typers so far, I tend to just emote shifting my attention elsewhere for a moment, or adress a different character.

What really bugs me are people who afk very often, without any IC indication of being "absentminded", and do so during pretty much most of their play time. There was one person in my former clan constantly AFKing without indication, I was about ready to jump up the wall. He was my character's best buddy so I grit my teeth and worked around it.

As for myself, I seem to do better and better with my english vocabulary, so the emotes and says flow nicely most of the time. Whenever I try to do something a bit more fancy, I look up an online dictionnary. I also try to take notes about other people's emotes so I learn more different ways to describe that particular action my character wants to do.  :wink:

For complex scripts that will most likely not be affected by others, I have started to write them out in a word doc and then copy paste into the game when I need them. I copy them one by one, if someone reacts to it I make modifications to take the interaction into account.

Speaking in a Zalanthan way... ummm. I dont feel secure enough with my english to do that. I'd rather use no accent than a poorly executed one, I might try sometime in the future when I feel more secure with the non-slurred, non-accented speech.  

[Twilight]

Although I'm a fast typer, sometimes I am trying to figure out what my character, rather than myself, would say, given that he (or she) is a certain race, or a certain class, or has a certain secret... So I might delay a bit.

Now, as for a two minute wait or whatever, I don't think that is necessary.  I think based on your previous interactions with that character, you should form some idea of how fast the interaction is going to flow.  For new people, I would error on the longer side.

I've been in situations with two of us where we were both fast typers, so that even 15 seconds might seem a very long time.  It was perfectly fine, and we had great conversations because we had learned to expect the flow of conversation to be that fast.  However, I have been in situations where we each took five to ten minutes to respond.  Again, it was perfectly fine, and we had great conversations.

Just remember that in most cases the time you are allowing isn't for their character, it is for their player.  Who may not type fast.  Who may have to do some thinking to, oh you know, stay in character.  Or who may be at work, secretly playing Arm on the side, sneaking a peek at their screen every five minutes or so.

[Tmp]

Probably off-topic but it's not really a derailment, so here it goes anyhow:

I've noticed that people that get caught in a situation where their life is threatened, seem to freeze at their keyboards and take extremely long times to reply to simple questions like, "Hand over your sids or die."

(Needless to say, this are in situations where they can't spam flee and run like the wind ...)

So it's cool and all, and I make allowances for replies in situations like that. What was not cool was when one guy I was threatening to kill, didn't respond to any of my questions for like 5 RL mins or so, no emotes and whatnot ... until he suddenly went, "Muahaha, I've already Wayed all my friends that you want to rob and kill me, you're in big trouble."

Definately uncool. :roll: