Roleplaying and Red, green, and blue boxes... and Tessa

[Delirium]

Over in the newsgroup there is a bit of a debate over whether things role-played with red and green naration boxes are "real" - players can and do make anything up, after all.

I note that in the currently unfolding story line with the separ that the GMs seem to have sanctioned Tessa's collection of samples from the dewed as "real." Having "assisted" Tessa on several occasions, I can say, I didn't see any blue boxes when Tessa took samples (although the lumps themselves do produce blue boxes). Still, Tessa's entire collection of tissue samples is a "red and green" role-played thing, and it seems that it may have real in-game consequences. [:D]

[Sargon]

Hi

Sargon can't see a difference between red/green/blue action boxes. If someone distinguishes between these, that's an OOC reaction to me. I think that the different colours (didn't even know about red!) are there for the player sitting behind the computer to notice if someone tries to abuse the game in a way. For interaction between honest players (not necessarily characters though) it should be the same.

There's a similar thing in the (text-based) mud I played years ago. You could emote actions like 'Sargon eats a tangleberry pie.', but certain constructs were changed automatically by the game engine to prevent cheating:

"Sargon gives you a tangleberry pie."

would be automatically translated to

"Sargon tries to fool you that he gives you a tangleberry pie."

The different colour of the action boxes seems to be a more elegant way to this problem, but then, in a text-based mud there was not this possibility.

Sargon

[Delirium]

Red boxes are action boxes - the ones you get with /action. Green are /narrate boxes. Blue are GM/game mechanics generated.

[Konoko]

I like this is great news for Tessa. She undoubtedly thought of doing this stuff (probably not knowing that this would actually happen) and took the time to do the actions/narrations/etc. A GM or whoever saw this and now it is going to pay off for our Tessa!

Congrats Tessa!

Konoko

[Lex]

To some extent, you need to know the difference between the colored boxes. If it's important to you to know if someone has a certain item, and they use the /action color, they either don't have the item or won't /show it to you. It's for your protection.

However, if you see "Tessa falls over in pain" in an action box, it probably doesn't matter if it was game or player generated.

That being said, I find some people's RPing annoying. Specifically, those that are constantly trying to make everyone pay attention to them. For these people I would probably make a very real distinction between text box colors. Sure it's OOC, but at a time when I feel it's necessary.

Lex