AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

Two things....

I know it's all cool to use purple or dark blue text for your posts.... supposedly anyway. Here's the thing, it's REALLY hard to read that against the black background of the forums. I just give up after a few lines most times. Sure, you think it -looks- cool, but.. if no one reads your post, what's the point?

Also, I've seen a disturbing trend to posting IC activities by just stripping the conversation part of a screenshot and posting this. Personally, I like the dark blue text better. If you want to post some IC activity, write it out, tell the story, that's what RP'ing is about. It's not necessarily the EXACT thing that happened, it's your character's side of the experience. There are no video or sound recording devices available in Amia that I know of, so an EXACT recording would be nigh impossible. Leave it open to interpretation, so much more interesting.

Another side effect of the copy/paste method is random flyby's. What I mean is if other characters happened to walk by and got caught by your screenshot, isn't it sort of against the forum rules to post that without their permission? Not a big deal, but....

Ok... maybe I just need more coffee, or to fully wake up *shrugs*, but, those things have been bugging me lately.

Thanks for listening!

Valid points. I prefer a written story rather than screenied as well.

If your emotes are as detailed and crafty as possible, screenshots are perfectly fine, IMHO. And it really depends on how big the RP is. If you're just going to shift a few rocks about, you don't need 20+ lines detailing how every muscle in your body writhes and sweat cascades off your masculine abs as you shift some rocks. Simple RP, simple emote.

From what I've seen, it's not emotes, it's conversations. Not a lot of emoting or descriptions, just talking. I just don't understand the need to share an entire conversation word for word on a bulletin board. Not one of my characters would do that. The general synopsis, sure, their feelings, of course, but word for word recording? Not likely. Now, that's just my characters, maybe some out there would do this IRL....

Boils down to player preference, I suppose. Can't argue with that, sadly.

Meh, sometimes I find it neat when people do just that, as I'd never care to do the same. I find it a bit situational really, but as long as it's not used against other players I don't see a problem with it. If it's for requests, it sure backs up that it really happened IG.

There is some wisdom to showing the emotes in a post , admittedly it might not be nescessary for a PC story but it is good for verifying ot the team that RP's being done. I do understand and can empathize though..

I changed the text color to make it artistic, because he's an artist! Caron doesn't care if people can read less artistic things better- he cares if they can learn to appreciate the beauty of his craft!

.. in all seriousness, thank you for the feedback. Sorry about that! (I have a feeling this references my recent post.) Caron and I will choose our texts more kindly in the future.

I've found that highlighting the selected text by clicking and dragging helps if it's really all that difficult to read. I like it when people use pretty colors for their posts!

And in all honesty, even some of the really dark colors aren't all that hard to read. Unless you're sitting in a really dark room, using a really tiny screen... Which I'll admit, I've done if I was lying in bed using my phone, but I usually have no problems reading them. Sometimes the stark white text against black can be a bit abrasive, so I'm not too fond of using it. But that's just my preference

Like so, if this is hard to read, just click'n'drag over it if you're having a tough time!

I'd rather see some pretty texts than have them immediately readable, even if it takes an extra second to make easily legible

I'd defs agree about dark text on a dark background. At least this forum only has one theme; one RP server I played on had two themes for their forum, and one had a black background while the other's was white. Needless to say, you pretty much couldn't read 50% of the playerbase's messages without highlighting.

Maaaan that was a pain.

But regardless. I'd also agree with screenshotting RP being rather inferior to actually writing it out. Not only are screenshots generally pretty hard to read without editing (average RP area has two or three conversations going on at once), but they're also pretty dang easy to fake, so it doesn't even really do much to verify you actually roleplayed anything in many cases. Especially if you're the only one talking. Then it's just a forum post made in NWN and then brought back onto the forum. Which is silly.

That said, I... I think that screenshots of roleplay are required for DC requests and the like, a lot of the time. Unless I'm mistaken. (Maybe a DM or long-time player can clarify that for me?) And they are really nice for, y'know, the screenshots thread.

But I will say this: If you're gonna take screenshots, take the extra bit of work to "trim the fat" off of 'em. Cutting out irrelevant messages like OOC chat and the like. Or at the very least, crop them. Don't just... print screen your whole desktop for a chatlog, that's a pain in the neck for everyone else. '-';

I think screenies serve more as a testimony that rp actually happened more than the lazy short-cut to not writing a story.

They are for the most part. That was the origin of the trend, in fact. Players wanted to be recognized by the DM Team and be able to prove things they were doing, a direct result of our consistent insistence upon proof. Pretty sure it was Talia in particular who really got that ball rolling

Mind you, I'd personally say that, sure. People could use the screenshots. It definitely shows the DMs that the RP happened and the like (though, can still be faked as Tyrak pointed out). However, my own preference would also be to take those screenshots and put together a more comprehensive story of the RP that occurred. As has been pointed out, there's a very large amount of vague or even non-existing emotes in a lot of RP that I've seen. So even making an attempt at writing that out in that way could go a really long way.

One of my personal preferences for that is to take the screen shots of the chat window and link them into the descriptive text of the post. And then take HUD-less shots of the environment to accompany the text as [img] in the post. Best of all worlds!

I also make use of things like full range HTML color charts, like this one and others, to get a color I want in a shade that isn't eye-bleeding on a black background.

I'd much rather write in depth about stuff but proof is too often required.

I was referring to in character posts, not anything being used to fuel a request. Simply seeing people screen grab their rp from ingame and cut the chat boxes off. Lacks creativity to me. However, it seems it's doing no harm, so... I'll shut up.

That Guy wrote:

I was referring to in character posts, not anything being used to fuel a request. Simply seeing people screen grab their rp from ingame and cut the chat boxes off. Lacks creativity to me. However, it seems it's doing no harm, so... I'll shut up.

I don't think that you were suggesting anything outrageous; don't worry!

Requests and PC Stories can often blur together, also, as the PC Stories are frequently used the RP supplement to the Request, including screenies. Some people do that, some don't. Some use their PC Stories as a sort of notebook for their own benefit. Some just write stories of things that don't happen IG but still concern the thoughts and development of the character. S'all valid.

Highlight the text if it bothers you?

Somethings slightly annoying.

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