The trappings of posing

[Auspice]

@cupcake said in The trappings of posing:

@auspice said in The trappings of posing:

People who obsessively use %t/[space(5)] are a large part of why I refuse to log.

I won't name names, but y'all know who you are. And you need to stop.

I agree, though for somewhat different reasons. I do log a lot of the time, and that indent in people's poses means I have to go through the log myself and fix all the indents before I add the log to any wiki. Which in turn, makes me less inclined to log.

It's yet another reason why I Faraday and her scene system. It ignores those indentations when it logs the scene. There's no need to go back and edit them out. So the tab-obsessives can tab away and I never need worry about having to clean up after them.

[fortydeuce]

• General spelling and basic grammar: I used to be bitchier about this than I am now. I teach English literature, and although my writing style on games is pretty practical as opposed to well-written, it's hard for me to overlook really egregious cases -- but I'm less weirded out by the odd comma splice or whatever than I used to be.
• Pose length and detail: please don't overwrite. There is a place for a one-liner now and again, but that place is rare: 4-5 lines is a sweet spot, provided (of course!) there's something to react to.
• Tempo: I am on the slower side, especially if I play characters who are more thoughtful about their actions. It takes me a few minutes to write up a pose. But even my attention will drift and I'll start WHOing and the like if we're rolling towards 15 minutes without a reply.
• Personal peeves: don't care about either of the listed. I hate when people pose in past tense in a present tense game, though. Follow conventions, whatever they are.
• Pose ordering: don't care mostly, but with the caveat that I'm a slow poser compared to some, so if someone talks to my char, and then fires out another pose while I'm still writing, that pisses me off. No worries if the chars aren't interacting with mine, though.
• I'm kind of weirded out by you-posing, because I am very much not my characters in a billion different ways, and also because of the level of familiarity that implies. I won't avoid a scene with a you-poser in the way I will with a past-tenser or the like (which breaks my immersion even more), but I won't be as likely to make that person a long-term RP partner.

[Goldfish]

General spelling and basic grammar:This always ends up being a bigger deal than I think. I just can't take you seriously if you are clearly being too lazy to spell and punctuate. This is different from someone who is ESL or the like.

Pose length and detail: Just get the words out that make the point. Length and detail are up to you.

Tempo - posing regularly at whatever time interval you prefer: I'm on the slower side so you will never hear me complain about someone else's tempo.

Personal peeves (wiki codes, %t tabs, whatever they might be): The second I make a carriage return I suddenly feel like the pretentious asshole. Others, it's perfectly fine.

Pose ordering such as not using (or using) three-pose rule over round-robin, etc: Oh my god, do I hate being skipped. If we are round robin, I start working on my next pose as soon as my last one is out the gate. I craft to cover all the other people in the scene and then a motherfucker skips me, ruining my pose in the process. One skip is an accident. Yeah. Sure. I do it too. But I've been skipped a lot recently and I know it's because I tend to take my time. It just sets my hair on fire. Pose quality suffers because I'm rushing to stay relevant. Now I'm the shitty RPer. I usually avoid large scenes for this very reason and bow out of growing ones.

[Arkandel]

@fortydeuce said in The trappings of posing:

• I'm kind of weirded out by you-posing, because I am very much not my characters in a billion different ways, and also because of the level of familiarity that implies.

Now I'm mad at myself for forgetting to put this in the original post!

I 'grew up' as a you-poster. Everyone used it in two person scenes, so I did as well until I noticed no one else was doing so any more; I was actually weirded out about that at first.

I guess it doesn't matter to me so much. I'll follow convention but you all need to know I am doing it reluctantly and I'm secretly judging you for it.

[Sparks]

I actually think metaposing has a place. If this character has reason to know me but the player hasn't played with me before, I will throw hints in.

"Aislin rubs at the bridge of her nose, a habit those who are familiar with her know as a clear sign she's gathering her thoughts. She doesn't yet speak, however."

Stuff like that I think can help rather than hinder.

[Goldfish]

@sparks I do this a lot when I'm meeting a character that I'm supposed to have a prior relationship with. These are "the things you already know" as a character.

[Sunny]

I used to care about grammar and spelling and 'pretty poses'. I don't, any more. If I can understand what somebody is trying to say and I'm engaged, I have somehow gotten to a point where it just doesn't bother me.

Same with pose length, or 3pr vs round robin, or...any of it. A lot of this stuff I used to care about, like a whole lot.

These days, if I can engage with the other character in any sort of meaningful way, the rest of everything I just don't care about any more. Too many variances in style have turned out to hide really fun people that I'd have missed out on if I was anywhere near as picky as I used to be.

[ThatGuyThere]

@arkandel
For me the most important is tempo, the next big factor is details. The poses that really get me to seek out RP with a person are one that paint a specific image in my head.
Those are about the only form factor type things the really matter to me, I can handle typos and misspellings as long as the meaning is clear.
Though unlike a lot of folks on the board I tend to be pretty strongly in favor of pose order.
About the form things that would cause me to avoid someone would be slowness or posing not in present tense.

[Thenomain]

I metapose and let people pick up on it if they want. My pose style is so short that I want every word to count, but even after all this time I don't consider myself a creative writer and I and those around me need all the help they can get.

But I find there are two types of metaposing, and this includes the subset of power-posing:

• Good: Posing to add information to the character or the scene, or OOC ribbing your friends.
• Bad: Posing for others without their permission, or to insult people.

Not a black and white. If I pose @coin's character rolling his eyes behind mine? Probably fine. If I pose @coin's character chewing with his mouth open to turn people off? Probably not fine unless that's his character. Better not be something he would ever do.

[Roz]

@arkandel said in The trappings of posing:

• General spelling and basic grammar

Have a good, solid grasp. I will generally prefer people with a better than solid grasp, but I'll happily play with people who flub a little bit. Once it starts getting difficult to read, I'll tend to steer clear of the player.

• Pose length and detail

One paragraph. I think that one-liners have a very important place, but a lot of my favorite scenes end up more like 3-5 sentence poses. I generally only do multi-paragraph poses for things like big scene sets or maybe a big speech or something.

• Tempo - posing regularly at whatever time interval you prefer

I'll get antsy at 10 minutes. I really like 4-6 minutes. If someone is a poser who regularly takes 15 minutes, I generally will just direct myself elsewhere. It's not my bag.

• Personal peeves (wiki codes, %t tabs, whatever they might be)

UGH TABS. I hate them. I don't mind wiki code like * * or / / or whatever. I'm already using / / to emphasize stuff. Or _ _ is fine. The only thing in the world I prefer about Wikidot is some of their formatting code just because it works a lot better in actual posing. When I've played games that use Wikidot, I'll just double up my usual / to // and it'll italicize it in the log, which is nice.

If a game has an +autospace option, which a huge amount do, please do not add extra line breaks at the start of your poses!!!! DON'T FORCE ME TO HAVE AUTOSPACE IF I DON'T WANT IT. JUST USE THE CODE OPTION.

• Pose ordering such as not using (or using) three-pose rule over round-robin, etc

I'll auto-3pr at like 4-5 characters. 3 or less I'll generally do strict pose order. I don't mind people breaking it for special occasions, but I would mind if two players kept posing between themselves in a three-person scene.

And anything else I forgot, of course.

DO. NOT. THOUGHTPOSE. AT ME. Please don't explain motivations. I will use metaposing to 1) make dumb jokes about my own characters being dumb, or 2) give some explanation of body language stuff so that people can react.

[Apos]

I care about tempo proportionally to the scene, and what's the scene about. I think of it as part of mood. There's a huge difference between characters bantering or scenes with a lot of gravitas, and I'd just want everyone on the same page there.

I don't enjoy scenes with strict pose order. I honestly can't think of one I did. I can do them, but they always feel like work to me. Always just meeting obligations. I'll do it if invited but I would never seek it out, and would prefer to not do any RP scene like that.

[Lotherio]

Yeesh, sorry for all the hate, I use tab/indent for paragraphs.

I know, its more a benefit to printed material, but coming from the days of telnet and before softcode included space/carriage return between posers, those tabs helped me distinguish between posers even. My dyslexic eyes needed them. Old habits die hard. Guess I don't get much RP cause I tab or something.

[FirePuff]

I'm a slow poser. I admit it. But the benefit of doing round-robin in a large scene is that I'm able to compile all of my pose while everyone else is posing and tweak it to the interactions of the others, so I get out my poses within 1-2 minutes of the last pose.

That said, I have no problem with individual circles/groups within a single room having their own separate round robins unless/until combined via interactions. Like corners of a dinner party mingling together. Of course, this is almost required when you have over 6 people there.

[Arkandel]

For what it's worth, The Arkandel Way for PrPs in the last couple of years has been the one-pose rule; that is, as long as anyone else has posed since your last one, you can go again.

That's just to keep the tempo alive. The last thing I ever want in my scenes is bottlenecks, and screens staying still while there are players who want to do things.

[Zobi]

General spelling/grammar: I won't murder you for typos and as long as I can make sense of what you are doing/what is happening, we are golden. I fully admit to using Grammarly to fix my own poses because I can't trust my fingers and my brain to keep up with each other sometimes.

Pose Length: Varies. I love short, hard, and fast and I love long and super detailed. I guess it really depends on the people/scene. Those who can get me going know who they are. I type pretty quick and definitely try to keep the scene going on my end.

Tempo: I'm patient, so I can wait 10+ minutes between poses if the person is someone I adore RPing with as they might be busy. RL snags me a lot too! I know this isn't the case for most.

Personal Peeves: I.. I am a %t'er and I am so sorry! I didn't realize how much it isn't liked It is something that was drilled into me by the person who got me started in the hobby and I do not always do it, but I can't help to default to it most times. Otherwise for me? Wiki code tends to throw me off, or it did at first and now I have just adapted to it being there. And accents. Please, no unless something that is subtle and doesn't make me bang my head against my desk trying to decipher your each and every pose. It makes me cringe and want to just ask who hurt you and how can I make it better.

Pose Order: My OCD loves pose order, but I hate it at the same time. I tend to be as flexible as I can because, in the end, I just want to RP and have a good time, and hope those I am in a scene with are having a good time.

[ThatGuyThere]

I never knew the thing with the %t either, since I almost never log, though I have to admit given my general disinterest in logging knowing it is a hassle for them won't change my use of them, which I will admit is rarely if ever.

[Thenomain]

• Who's Posing/%T Issues: A game with a posebreak can help a lot. A game with a scene logger will make it so that you don't have to worry about a lot of text massaging.

• 3PR: The downside of 3PR is what we used to worry about: Shotgun posers. This is why enforced pose order became a thing; it wasn't just to be good and fair and fair and good, but because there are people who will pose one-line poses as other people are trying to type.

What this hobby needs is a 'posing indicator', so that there's some kind of notification that says this person is currently typing, so when people like me get to the 5 minute mark to see if anyone is typing, we can glance and get an update then move on.

[Duntada]

@thenomain said in The trappings of posing:

• Who's Posing/%T Issues: A game with a posebreak can help a lot. A game with a scene logger will make it so that you don't have to worry about a lot of text massaging.

• 3PR: The downside of 3PR is what we used to worry about: Shotgun posers. This is why enforced pose order became a thing; it wasn't just to be good and fair and fair and good, but because there are people who will pose one-line poses as other people are trying to type.

What this hobby needs is a 'posing indicator', so that there's some kind of notification that says this person is currently typing, so when people like me get to the 5 minute mark to see if anyone is typing, we can glance and get an update then move on.

I have seen posing indicators used extensively on some media... but I am honestly not sure how one could do that with current mushcode, since as far as I know nothing is sent until we hit enter. One would basically need to custom build their own client for their own game I would think.

[Thenomain]

@duntada said in The trappings of posing:

I have seen posing indicators used extensively on some media... but I am honestly not sure how one could do that with current mushcode

Oh you can't.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't have it in some utopian future.

[Auspice]

@thenomain said in The trappings of posing:

@duntada said in The trappings of posing:

I have seen posing indicators used extensively on some media... but I am honestly not sure how one could do that with current mushcode

Oh you can't.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't have it in some utopian future.

The tricksy bit:
Discerning between 'who's posing' and 'who is chatting while waiting for others to pose.'

Figure that one out and you have gold.