Posting on the IN-game tavern boards

[Bestatte]

In IRC today, someone reminded us that newbies make ungodly amounts of mistakes trying to post in the in-game message boards. I know how frustrating it is, and I know also that even veterans mess up sometimes.

To the Staff: If you feel this is as important as some of the players do (not all players, certainly), would you kindly add this as a sticky to the Code Discussion category?

First, the actual help file - you can type HELP EDITOR in game to see it at a glance.

After the quoted help file, I am including some made-up examples so you can see how it's actually implemented by the player and the resulting post when it's all done.

EDITOR                                                            (General)

  The online text editor is a relatively simple device that is used to
store long input from users. The following commands are available:

 /Rx
   Remove x number of lines back from the cursor. There must be at
   least x lines already in the buffer.

 !
   Copy the last line (producing two identical lines).

 ~
   End the editor and save the text.

 .c
   Clear the current string.

 .f
   Format the current string to 80 chars wide.

 .i
   Format the current string to 80 chars wide, indenting three spaces
   at the beginning of paragraphs.

 .s
   Show the string so far.

 .p
   Spell check the string. (not perfect)

 .d <command>
   Do the following command.

See also:
  bulletin_boards, syntax, write

Now - some general "rules" for posting: Remember, your reader isn't really reading a post on a board, but instead, a character is overhearing conversation. You can do this in simple narrative form, which states that someone was overheard talking about this or that or the other thing. You can do it in conversational form, which includes quotes and actions of PCs and VNPCs and NPCs. You can also include a -brief- ooc note at the bottom if it's an RPT, or if you want to let people know what time in the real world your character is available to deal with the context of the post. Be SURE to keep that OOC thing seperate and preface it with "OOC"

Try not to simply list what you want to state - such as, "The pale blue-eyed girl is looking to be hired by the Byn. She hangs out in the Gaj. She is a hunter." This makes for boring reading, and though you -do- want to make sure your message is clear, you also want to try to entertain your reader. Using that as the example, here's a pretend post:

A pair of half-elves huddle at a secluded corner of the tavern, snickering.

"His name is Siggy I tell ya!" says the green-haired breed to his blue-skinned friend. "Nah, it's Thiggy, Ah heard'im maself, ya fekkin moron," says his companion.

The green-haired breed rolls his eyes and continues, "Lissen, ya fekkin son of a kankfekkin whore. The man wit the yella hair had that tug on'is lip. Hairlip I hear tis called. Makes'im talk funny, so his "s" sounds like a fekkin "th." The blue-skinned breed arches a brow at his friend and asks, "So when he was sayin he were lookin fer the Thai Byn Thargent, was on account o'the man's lisp, yer sayin?" The green-eyed man laughs, and after a long pull on his bottle of ale, responds, "Yeah, fekkin Siggy, he ain't gonna last long if he hitches up with th'Byn I tell ya."

The conversation changes to other mundane topics as the pair get up and wander out onto the road.

(ooc) Siggy is usually around between 5PM and midnite, GMT.

The shorter paragraphs are easy to do, and will line up nice and easy once you're done posting. The longer paragraphs take some finesse; you can either count characters and hit the "enter" key, or type .f when you're done with the post. Typing .f, however, will format the entire post and you'll lose all the paragraphs. Typing <enter> between paragraphs adds that blank line, by the way.

Remember to type .s fairly often to see how things look so far. Remember that .c will clear the entire thing, and /Rx will clear only the last "x" lines, with "x" being the number you enter, such as /R5.

When you're done writing your post, type ~ on a seperate line, and this will enter the post to the board. If you want the post to remain indefinitely, be SURE to type WRITE after you type ~. If you only want the post to be temporary and be deleted at the next game crash or reboot, simply omit the final WRITE.

Remember also when you begin your post, to -not- type <write board>. Write already comes with "board" implied. You want to <write Looking for a Byn Sergeant> or <write Byn Wanna-be laughed at> or <write Breeds laugh at Lisping Would-be Bynner> for example, and whatever you type after the word "write" and before you hit the enter key will become the title of the post.

[Bestatte]

Here's another example, in narrative form, using the same general information without the VNPCs talking about it:

A few people have been snickering about a man with yellow hair who's been hanging around the taverns lately. Words has it, this man has a hairlip that causes him to lisp, and when he asked the patrons where he could find a Tzai'Byn Sargeant, the crowd burst out laughing at his mispronunciation. It's said he told them his name is "Thiggy," but some argue that was just his lisp, and his name is really "Siggy." Regardless, a couple of Bynners were snorting at the idea of a lisping recruit while they were walking out on their way to telling their Sergeant of the man.

[Alamos]

This won't help everyone, but for those who use the best MUD client, Portal, there is a great feature built in that works beautifully with Armageddon's editor.  If you have Portal, I suggest pre-writing your post (this always works great in character creation) in Word or some editor of your choice.  Proof-read everything, then copy-paste the text into Portal's AUTOTYPER.  When the Armageddon editor is ready to receive your typed post, simply click the autotype button in the Autotyper.  Everything will be typed out perfectly.  No fussing with editing lines or paragraphs.  After the autotyper spits everything into the in-game editor, simply terminate with ~

[Larrath]

zMUD has a similar and better feature, called the Command Editor.

Press Ctrl+Shift+Enter and just type your prettified message, proof it all you like and voila.

[Carnage]

I hate messages about people looking to get hired. Why would people in taverns give a damn that you're looking to get hired, unless you're a big, famous figure (at which point you'd have several other people leaping all over you anyway)?

[Larrath]

It _can_ be plausible to use the IC boards for recruitment, but it will have to go something like this.

"As you step into the tavern, an [sdesc] guy walks over to you, bugging you repeatedly with bad sirihish about employment and asking whether you could hire him, Amos the Famous, as a scrab hunter.  Before you can even reply, the man walks to ask another patron.  Then another, then another and then another.  After a temple kicks him out, a tired seeming human says "I hear he's from Red Storm or something...pretty desperate guy".

I also expect to see that man hanging out in taverns and annoying people -at least- three times a week, wait for at least the third time before making a post, and make use of ldesc.

The muscular, strong dude is here, annoying the patronage.

Of course, this could be easier for the character if he was:
1) Involved in a very major event that was in the RPT, and he then screamed about wanting to be employed.
2) Is really really _really_ special, like a retired Advisor with twenty years of experience, a former Merchant, Foreign Noble, a freakish mutant or a kank.
3) He spent major funds paying the bartender/bard to tell everyone about him.

But in most cases, I agree.  Using the IC board in order to find employment usually tends to annoy me.

[Bestatte]

I used that example to address the current issue regarding off-peak players. If Joe is in Allanak, and there are 5 people beside him playing and he never sees any of them, then he needs to have -some- method of communicating his existence and his character's needs. If one of those 5 is a Byn Sargeant who is always in the barracks, that Sargeant is not likely to ever see this guy. However, another Bynner who shows up when Joe isn't around WILL see that post, and inform his Sargeant, who will then actually look for Joe.

As for who gives a shit - anyone looking to recruit someone gives a shit, especially if they're having trouble finding people to recruit during the times they play.