God-Mode Emoting

[Rotku]

Just a short reminder about emoting, arising from some recent difficulties late last year. While I hate discussions on "You have to emote this way", please do try and avoid "god-mode emoting" (as I've had it recently described to me) - where, through your emoting, you take control over another PC. Example below.

Example 1
Acceptable emoting
*Greg bursts out laughing and slaps Joe on the back*
This is Greg taking an action that involves Joe, but does not direct Joe's action.

Unacceptable emoting
*Greg bursts out laughing and slaps Joe on the back, while Joe turns bright red*
Here Greg's emote starts to to dictate what Joe is doing in response - something that should be left up to Joe's player.

Example 2
Acceptable emoting
*Greg kneels down on one knee and holds a shining gold ring towards Alice*
Again, Greg is taking an action involving another PC, but does not dictate the other PCs response.

Unacceptable emoting
*Greg kneels down on one knee, holds a shining gold ring towards Alice and slips it onto her finger*
Here, while Greg hasn't controlled directly what Alice is going to do, he has chained a large series of actions without giving Alice a chance to respond.

[hollyfant]

Also: don't hesitate to ask people to roll a skill check, but don't get upset if they don't want to. You're free to ask, they're free to refuse.

[ElCadaver]

*Kert steps towards the crowd of heavily armed orcs, and they fall on their knees and abase themselves, in awe of his awesomeness"

[oldgrayrogue]

I find a good rule of thumb to avoid God Moding is to emote what you attempt to do to another PC as opposed to just describing a completed act.

[Heero]

*attempts to grab Jonathon into his arms and make sweet love to him*

[t-ice]

Not taking actions on other people's stead is relatively simple and straightforward. Where it becomes more tricky is whether to describe your actions and expressions as they are vs. what other people think of them:

*Tina smiles faintly and shifts her gaze from your eyes to your feet.*
vs
*Tina smiles faintly and looks suspicious*

Is she embarrased, smitten, lying, bored or something else in the first? A multitude of subtle hints would in reality often hint at it, but it's impossible to describe them adequately in text without glaring meta. And that description would be needed in order for you to not take over the other character's thoughts, as you have in the second. You are after all supposed to emote what your character does, not what other characters think of it.

In the DM chair I've usually come to approach this by emoting the obvious and general: "Tina smiles faintly". And then send tells to PCs based on their sense motive rolls on how they capture the subtleties, if anything. That's doubly cumbersome in PC vs PC, though, and often it feels forcing things on PCs as a DM, too. But on the other hand I feel it can give PCs with conversation skills invested the chance to get to hints and do what they are supposedly good at. As it can easily come to the player's personalities as opposed to PC skills that determine this kind of encounters. But, perhaps there are better practices and this is supposed to be discussion forum...

[Veilan]

Robot Devil: "You can't make your characters announce how they feel. That makes me feel angry!"

[Darkmystic]

T-Ice, its better to emote -more- then -less-. To just write "smiles faintly" makes me think you're being bored and unintressted in rping with me. I notice alot in ALFA that people emote all tiny and act like they are waiting for a sense motive.

I love emoting and its my goal to have fun oocly so I emote alot. Why care about sense motive? Just emote that your pc is embarressed or bluffing so people have a chance to detect it.

Also, we're roleplayers, not rollplayers. Rolls changes the outcomes, they shouldnt fully decide the amount of fun we have.

[johnlewismcleod]

I suppose if it's more fun for you to emote everything your PC is thinking and feeling for all to share (effectively making all PC much smarter, wiser, etc they they really are), you can do that DM.

I do hope, however, that you can resist the temptation to emote one thing while thinking or feeling something else when it becones necessary to deceive

[Brokenbone]

Just go into PC Tools and find the "Dance Funky" animation, often as possible, that will express a wide range of feelings. Funkily.

[NESchampion]

Just go into PC Tools and find the "Dance Funky" animation, often as possible, that will express a wide range of feelings. Funkily.

This is how I roll.

[Castano]

If your PC is acting normally (e.g. not attenmpting to bluff), you should be able to emote the facial appearance of your own PC - e.g. "appears suspicious" within reason. It is very hard to accurately convey body language via words, except for extreme body language like blushing etc. We all know when someone appears angry, appears sad etc. but I would be at a loss in a quick RP setting to write out all the facial muscle movements...

Essentially it's like a sense motive with a DC of 0. This is a tangent though, the original post was God-moting...which is never ok.