The Think Channel

[Anthalas]

Hi, I want to suggest something cool that might open up an avenue for a different kind of roleplay. Something a little more solo and introspective, as well as making it interesting for two-faced characters. We have the osay, otell, sayto, tell, say, and yell commands for communication and these work quite nicely.

I wanted to suggest think, which works similarly to say, except that no one (except for admins and telepath pcs) get to see.

This opens up an avenue for thought shielding items, mind reading spells, and of course, another dimension for roleplay (what I think is the most important part) and allows for some very colorful and staff-entertaining character thoughts.

[Algon]

The first thing that popped into my mind when I read this was what fun a wiz with telepathic abilities could have with this. Inserting thoughts into peoples minds and suggesting them to do things...so much fun! lol

[Lathander]

I do not really see us adding telepathic powers/spells, though there is nothing wrong with discussion. In the meantime, for our newer players, try [tell self message].

[Anthalas]

I forgot to include the part where it gives any staff watching the scene or running a scene a look into the player's thoughts and intentions but then I'm pretty sure you guys can see into tells, in which case, the tell self command would be a good substitute.

[Mele]

Tell self <message> will do just that! :)

[Lisira]

In my experience with other MUDs, think usually isn't as effective as it sounds. Unless psionics are introduced for other players to listen in (and, even then, how many people are going to spam think on the off chance that there's a telepath listening in?), imms generally don't have the time to ghost around a lot of scenes to listen in and take note of peoples' internalized thoughts, unless they're running a scene themselves (again, speaking to other MUDs, but I don't imagine the gods here have that much spare time, either).

There was talk around a MUSH I used to play on about implementing a scene command (something along the lines of scene start and scene end, and maybe scene invite? It's been a while). IIRC, it was only going to flag the PCs in the scene, so players could glance at WHO and see who was actively RPing (as opposed to building, wandering around, idling and chatting on OChans, which weren't flagged at the time). But, something like that could be used as a framing device, possibly to divert RP-heavy scenes to a separate log that imms could skim through. I wouldn't want imms obligated to read it (again, their time constraints), but rather just to give them something to read when they've got a few minutes of boredom to waste, and maybe add a layer of structure. But that's really the only way I see think being especially useful on a community scale, rather than just for players to amuse themselves with.

Honestly, I don't even really like this idea, I'm just throwing it into the ether for discussion's sake. Cheers.

[Trillarel]

Tell self <message> will do just that!

I like the idea of thinking and I like the fact that there's a way to do this without introducing new commands and spells. Brilliant!

[Selveem]

Tell self <message> will do just that!

I like the idea of thinking and I like the fact that there's a way to do this without introducing new commands and spells. Brilliant!

Yeah, it's gotten me in trouble before. <.< (Not OOC)