Ignacius

Aww, that's a bit limiting! Just because you're doing it in /say doesn't mean you can't put an emote stuff in there too! Basically I always write my in-character posts like I'm writing something. I'll use /em if the way I would like to write my post happens to begin with Shopu's name, for whatever reason- like, if for the flow of the sentence, it would be better for the subject to go before the dialogue, or if she is actually performing an action before she says something... /em bent down and picked up the small box. "Oh, what, you mean this?" /s "It's my collection of shiny rocks!" she said, opening it. They were shiny and beautiful and whatnot. as opposed to, say, /em bent down and picked up the small box. "Oh, what, you mean this?" /em opened it. "It's my collection of shiny rocks!" They were shiny and beautiful and whatnot. For this particular instance I want to convey that she's opening it as she's speaking, so it's just more elegant to do it the emote-in-say way. How would you even do that in /em... "/em opened it and as she opened it she said," It's just the way that's most fun for me. I'm very particular about things like the order things get expressed in, word flow, word choice... so sometimes it takes me a little bit to formulate my response. Length depends on setting, too. And putting *'s around actions just reminds me of my embarrassing forum RP days when I was a tween. I love using emotes (as in, the animations; is that what you meant, Ignacius? oops) and facial expressions a lot too, which on Shopu is unfortunate because she's so small people rarely notice. And I leave the chat messages for those turned off because they, well, mess up my flow. Sorry, I came from a multiple-paragraph background in RP. So most of what I say is definitely in emote... and whether fortunately or unfortunately, it's hard to miss. Literally, it turns out to be: /em Ignacius picks up his axe, running an eye carefully along the edge. "I suppose you think having an axe in my line of work is a hindrance." He shakes his head, settling on his knees before his whetstone. Sprinkling some water on its surface before rasping the blade across the rock with a hungry hiss, he says, "But I've learned that the best tool for killing isn't the best tool for killing. It's the best tool for all situations." Running an eye over the edge again, his eyes gleam over its surface at her. "You never know who or what needs to die, so you bring the tool that does it all." My people have some longer and more philosophical conversations. -c- is our friend.

Unfortunately, nobody decided to piss off Houngan Seeger to the point where I could boil their skin off or do any of the myriad crazy shit his scary witch-doctor-y-ness could do. People were surprisingly nice to him...

At issue here is how much needs to be conditional. FFXIV players are a relatively scripted lot, so I'm not sure why people think getting a mug of ale would be written that way. We operate under the real-life basis that nobody's going to give much of a shit if you get up to get a drink in a bar. The conditional is only used in actions you're assuming will be contested (whether you'll tackle someone after diving at their legs). I write mostly in the present tense because nobody's going to interrupt Orleans lighting a cigar. There's an idea that every "would" is an invitation, but it's hardly necessary. It's even less necessary in FFXIV. Your character is physically walking to the bar. I wouldn't think that even needs to be narrated. My post would simply be me ordering the mug of ale, then walking to the bar, walking back to the table, and sitting down all gets handled with WASD and the /sit emote.

Well, I suppose I'm not so guarded as an RPer. Like I said, a LOT of people don't adapt to the scene they're in; I try to do so. If my character says something and someone tries to cut their head off, I pride myself on not making my first reaction an OOC reaction. Sure, some people might try to troll you, but the amount of people randomly decapitating people in any scenario is fairly low. Almost suspiciously low if you consider many of our characters raised their in-game levels by randomly cutting the heads off of pretty much anything that got in their way. But then, I've done a lot and seen a lot, and I feel it's a poor reflection on me if I immediately judge people by some sort of reaction. Plenty of my best RP friends did things that, I suppose, a lot of people just wrote off as horrific: As a fellow member of that former community, trust me, we were grognard assholes, and so were the people you played with. The ability to effectively handle a bad technique does not mean the technique is not bad. It just means you were really good at something bad. My reaction to someone who got into a fight with me without asking my permission first wasn't, "They're an asshole." Nor were they assholes for trying to kill my character. I made probably the best thread of my life on Yahoo IM with very few character deaths (right up until the end) despite being completely open to the public. In short, my world's full of a lot less "assholes" because I would never presume to judge anyone on that ground. I don't have the right; the people I met there were perfectly good roleplayers. I certainly feel it would be judgmental to say, "I'm in this open RP forum, you did something a way I don't like it, therefore YOU are the horrible person." It's open RP. If every altercation doesn't require a break for you to formally complain in OOC about format, you have to learn how to RP with people. Yes, that means being careful about how you write things, but apparently, that broadened the base of people I could play with. I wasn't actually aware of how many until this moment, but I've never really contemplated how lucky I am that I seem to be able to enter more scenarios with fewer problems and play with more people effectively. I've certainly not had cause to call many people I'd met on Yahoo assholes and, assuming I met the same people these folks did and without usually killing people in threads, I came out of a scenario where people were disgusted by the people around them with a good reputation and a great group of regular roleplayers. It's certainly put a smile on our faces. I passed this thread around to the old community members I talked to in order to get their opinions.

That's probably why you thought everyone were assholes (Lex Tangent, Red Roman, Donovan Clay, Bruce de Coyne, Alexander Eis, Vic Giovanni, Constance Anavictor, et al). If all you were running into in combat was a lot of frustration, but you do things that keep landing you in combat, and you don't know how to write your way through it, you probably didn't know what was going on. Believe me, you learn early to say what you "would" do rather than what you "are" doing. After ignoring the t9ers, I never had a problem with anything else. You learn or you don't; it's the same with any medium. Lol? You're saying my problem was that I just didn't know how to rp? Hahahhahahahahhahaahah No. Yahoo rp was full of assholes. But thanks for your attempt to insult me. Too bad it didn't work out for you, cupcake. No, I'm saying you might not have been aware of how to survive in tactical checkmate combat. There's a reason I learned to do these things. I've learned to read what people actually write. Au contraire, mom ami, I was very good at the bullet style of combat, and the other two styles as well. That doesn't change my statement one iota.

My WoW main, a nasty Nelf DK named Zumoktaga, once got hold of both of the arms of a human who tried to start a bar fight. At nearly nine feet tall and weighing in at over 400 lbs, Zumoktaga pulled until his arms came off. I haven't had the pleasure of IC combat on FFXIV yet (possibly because people have better sense than to attack giant elves in bars with criminal reputations in this game).

Yeah, that's usually where the dissonance is. Books aren't generally written in the future tense or present tense (even if they're meant to take place in the future or present). Narratively, we are conditioned to accept all stories happened in the past (otherwise, how would you tell them?) so we don't often narrate in the present tense. Honestly, if no one ever takes a swing at you that you didn't know is coming (or if you never intend to RP with people who would do that and plan to ignore anyone that tries) it never becomes an issue. I'm certainly not out there yelling at people typing posts in the past tense. Not that anyone's been inclined to take a swing at Orleans yet. He's a kind of intimidating guy. However, Kage did ask why he would have seen that, and I wanted to answer him. He's probably never had to worry about tactical checkmating yet (and may never have to). However, if you see present or future tense, particularly in the manner he typed it in the OP, the history of tactical checkmating is why. It was the traditional form of IM and open forum RP for the purposes of contested actions. If you aren't going to be drawn into life or death combat with strangers in your RP, it won't come up. People should feel free to do so. Like I said, nobody is going to care about what tense your character says hello in.

Ziggy sounds like a dick. Anyone looking to hamstring you on your choice of tense or phrasing isn't trying to roleplay with you, they're masturbating over their English textbooks. It's poor etiquette to hold a character accountable for a writer's technical abilities. I mean, I don't know what to tell you. Poor me? How do you know Ziggy is a dick? For all intents and purposes Ignacius started the fight and with a total stranger. He's not a dick for defending himself. It's not endemic on him to just say, "Oh, you didn't mean what you typed. That's okay. I'll let you parry, whoever you are, and you can try to kill me on your next action." It's not about masturbating over grammer, trying to cut someone's head off is functionally different than swinging at someone with the intent to cut there head off if it's available. It implies Ignacius wasn't wary of quick reflexes and reactions. It's not Ziggy's job to write Ignacius for me. I can't think of a better way to articulate this, but let me give it a shot. There is a world of difference between "You tried to cut my head off and missed because my character moved/deflected/dodged/whatever" and "You tried to cut my head off but didn't write it well enough so it misses." I understand what you're trying to say, but you're not seeing this in the context it was originally in. This is with total strangers. If I'm trying to cut someone's head off, they aren't supposed to let me, especially if I don't know them. If we're strangers, all they HAVE is my writing to go on. If I don't write it well, that's not on Ziggy, and it's not endemic on him to grant me mercy because I didn't mean to write it that way. In the end, I wrote it that way. In small, closeted, premade groups, this kind of thing isn't an issue. However, I don't RP with just a couple friends and I don't like having extended OOC conversations to plan out what's going on. I really do like meeting random people for unorganized and organic RP. Sometimes that means ending up in a fight with a dedicated opponent. That's how it goes sometimes. Then again, I learned not to write it in a way where Ziggy could interpret my words that way. I used the present tense with a future conditional. The issue rarely came up with me.

I'm sure the former roleplaying userbase of Yahoo IM's roleplaying forums appreciate your generalization based on the manner they mutually and often respectably handled combat with strangers with no dice pools present or mutual backstory. As a former Yahoo RPer (hello Ayenee!), we were assholes . However, I don't remember ever rping in future tense with "woulds." And I am an old school rper. That's probably why you thought everyone were assholes (Lex Tangent, Red Roman, Donovan Clay, Bruce de Coyne, Alexander Eis, Vic Giovanni, Constance Anavictor, et al). If all you were running into in combat was a lot of frustration, but you do things that keep landing you in combat, and you don't know how to write your way through it, you probably didn't know what was going on. Believe me, you learn early to say what you "would" do rather than what you "are" doing. After ignoring the t9ers, I never had a problem with anything else. You learn or you don't; it's the same with any medium. Lol? You're saying my problem was that I just didn't know how to rp? Hahahhahahahahhahaahah No. Yahoo rp was full of assholes. But thanks for your attempt to insult me. Too bad it didn't work out for you, cupcake. No, I'm saying you might not have been aware of how to survive in tactical checkmate combat. There's a reason I learned to do these things. I've learned to read what people actually write.

Ziggy sounds like a dick. Anyone looking to hamstring you on your choice of tense or phrasing isn't trying to roleplay with you, they're masturbating over their English textbooks. It's poor etiquette to hold a character accountable for a writer's technical abilities. I mean, I don't know what to tell you. Poor me? How do you know Ziggy is a dick? For all intents and purposes Ignacius started the fight and with a total stranger. He's not a dick for defending himself. It's not endemic on him to just say, "Oh, you didn't mean what you typed. That's okay. I'll let you parry, whoever you are, and you can try to kill me on your next action." It's not about masturbating over grammer, trying to cut someone's head off is functionally different than swinging at someone with the intent to cut there head off if it's available. It implies Ignacius wasn't wary of quick reflexes and reactions. It's not Ziggy's job to write Ignacius for me.

Maybe so, but the problem is that I'm not writing Ziggy's character. And Ziggy's player can take my sentence and say, "You're swinging at Ziggy's head, you can't back out now." And, technically speaking, he'd be absolutely correct. I did not say Ignacius would try to swing at Ziggy's head in that example ("would" being a conditional word that assumes his head is readily available for separation) I said he tried to swing at Ziggy's head. While we might all know what I intended, that hardly would be an issue to the head's owner. What's at issue is that Ignacius was locked into an action, despite the reaction. And in the past, if Ignacius drew his sword and tried to cut off Ziggy's head, in your example, Ziggy has already not had his head cut off. Otherwise, that wouldn't make much sense. It's essentially the difference between writing a short story by yourself (where action is all predetermined) and RP (which is, technically speaking, happening in the present with conditions abounding). Of course, with your friends or relatively apologetic and forgiving company, intent is fine. Then all this is meaningless, literally everything. You could write everything in the future tense with mispelled words and completely not get your point across until you throw in a lot of OOC explanation. If people are inclined to just let it all roll, there's nothing to worry about. Open RP is just not a place where you're going to run into universally agreeable company. Ziggy's certainly going to argue with his potential decapitation. The people you RP with sound like grognard assholes. I'm sure the former roleplaying userbase of Yahoo IM's roleplaying forums appreciate your generalization based on the manner they mutually and often respectably handled combat with strangers with no dice pools present or mutual backstory. As a former Yahoo RPer (hello Ayenee!), we were assholes . However, I don't remember ever rping in future tense with "woulds." And I am an old school rper. That's probably why you thought everyone were assholes (Lex Tangent, Red Roman, Donovan Clay, Bruce de Coyne, Alexander Eis, Vic Giovanni, Constance Anavictor, et al). If all you were running into in combat was a lot of frustration, but you do things that keep landing you in combat, and you don't know how to write your way through it, you probably didn't know what was going on. Believe me, you learn early to say what you "would" do rather than what you "are" doing. After ignoring the t9ers, I never had a problem with anything else. You learn or you don't; it's the same with any medium.

You survive with the times. I've been doing this a long time and in all manner of different settings. Tabletop, LARP, forums, IMs, games, I've written well in all of them and had to defend myself from other players in all of them. You learn to adapt. If you're worried about format, it's in your best interest to simply not get into any combat with any stranger no matter what. I always thought that limited my character interaction (some of my best friends I met while trying to decapitate them), but I understand the sentiment.

The way I see this. If your character moves as he drew the sword, would the other character not be tracking movements as well and still be aiming to swing at his neck? So the idea is still the same, the character drew the sword and his aim is to swing at the neck. You see what he's typed, your character moved as he was drawing and now it's his turn to act. Everyone I have roleplayed with, the tense does not matter as much as the intent is clear. I have had at most two cases where meta'ing or godmoding happened but not in combat player character to player character. We adjust from past to present or vice versa depending on the players we are roleplaying with. Like I'm saying, Kage, I could feasibly type "i eat gud" and my intention was to say I'd cooked the foie gras to perfection. Intention is fine when you're with people you know and you can have long, drawn out OOC discussions to talk about how you handle things (or even if you handle things). That's just not the case with complete strangers you meet in random RP. If Ignacius says something someone else doesn't like, and we come to blows, this is how it works. The problem with the example you're not reading is the reaction. Yes, according to the sentence you're interpreting, Ignacius is still swinging at Ziggy's neck. However, Ziggy's neck didn't just move, Ziggy could be moving to cut off Ignacius's arm, and continuing to swing at Ziggy's neck would be stupid. Yet, according to the sentence, Ignacius only tried to swing at Ziggy's neck; that example leaves no room to not continue doing it. That may sound petty to you, someone may say "you know what I meant", but the other person only has to say, "But you didn't write what you mean, then." And this is a stranger who, one would think, thinks he has as much right to cut off Ignacius's arm as he does to lose his head. In the end, only the wording matters. I mean, you're perfectly welcome to think of Ziggy what you want for taking the sentence literally as it was written, but truthfully Ziggy has no reason not to and isn't necessarily a bad person for doing so. It would be my own fault for writing it so that Ignacius wasn't wary enough to stop swinging at Ziggy's neck when Ziggy's sword came out.

You're fine. I'm just remarking that it still sounds like trying to win via outwriting your opponent. "You dedicated an attack at my head, so you're forced to do it, so now I'm going to outsmart you" etcetera. It might be the most "fair" way of settling things without dice to some people, but it's still dickwaving at how capable of a writer you are. Powerlevel shouldn't be dictated by dictionary. As long as the intent is delivered (A swing aimed at your head) there shouldn't be a need to outlaw action or restrict a change in that. I think you're mistaking how this generally gets handled and why it arose. Dickwaving didn't happen via tactical checkmating, though my writing on that was in passing. Quicktyping was generally how that happened, and when your options were to quicktype combat or to use tactical checkmating, I highly recommend tactical checkmating. In all honesty, few people were showing up in the local bar thread to start off a multi-para checkmating battle. That just didn't happen. Your shill walking around picking fights for the sake of it was generally asking to, "come t9 me mf" Tactical checkmating tended to be a somewhat more flourished affair. It wasn't really outwriting someone; you had to somehow get the essence of your character across in it. Otherwise it turned into a game of well-written twister. However, it would happen that fights would break out. And even in WoW, even at max level and gear, I tended to favor tactical checkmating over kicking off game mechanic duels. It's just a better way to write combat, and you tend to get favorable outcomes. In that case, I may have tried to kill Ziggy, but just as likely Ziggy and Ignacius would fight for a while (generally talking the whole way through), but fizzle out. Like a lot of fights in bars that happen for no reason. A duel might take ten seconds, but you could easily be dropping combat paragraphs for an hour. However, in case one's going the whole length (and I've had to hold my own checkmating a lot in my RP career, especially in WoW), the best defense is to remember that anything you say you do can be used against you in another post.

Maybe so, but the problem is that I'm not writing Ziggy's character. And Ziggy's player can take my sentence and say, "You're swinging at Ziggy's head, you can't back out now." And, technically speaking, he'd be absolutely correct. I did not say Ignacius would try to swing at Ziggy's head in that example ("would" being a conditional word that assumes his head is readily available for separation) I said he tried to swing at Ziggy's head. While we might all know what I intended, that hardly would be an issue to the head's owner. What's at issue is that Ignacius was locked into an action, despite the reaction. And in the past, if Ignacius drew his sword and tried to cut off Ziggy's head, in your example, Ziggy has already not had his head cut off. Otherwise, that wouldn't make much sense. It's essentially the difference between writing a short story by yourself (where action is all predetermined) and RP (which is, technically speaking, happening in the present with conditions abounding). Of course, with your friends or relatively apologetic and forgiving company, intent is fine. Then all this is meaningless, literally everything. You could write everything in the future tense with mispelled words and completely not get your point across until you throw in a lot of OOC explanation. If people are inclined to just let it all roll, there's nothing to worry about. Open RP is just not a place where you're going to run into universally agreeable company. Ziggy's certainly going to argue with his potential decapitation. The people you RP with sound like grognard assholes. I'm sure the former roleplaying userbase of Yahoo IM's roleplaying forums appreciate your generalization based on the manner they mutually and often respectably handled combat with strangers with no dice pools present or mutual backstory.

Well, I've RPed effectively across all those eras. And yes, we had open RP and, yes, that meant combat with strangers. We can debate "interesting stories" all we'd like, but a stranger in combat, whether for narrative purposes or not, is a part of any RP where I'm carrying a sword. You may not be fond of the era, but I both RPed effectively and told interesting stories as I went. I'm simply relating where the format came from and why it exists as per Kage's request. I'm not passing judgement on you for disliking it or attempting to stir up your unpleasant memories. However, despite where you were and how you RPed, I can say that quite a few bits of narrative combat arose during RP sessions and we effectively handled it via tactical checkmating. And, should an altercation arise where grammatical tense is suddenly important, you can't always pull the narrative to a screeching halt to negotiate a neutral party and dice rules. Tactical checkmating still exists whenever a stranger has a reason to not like you. And, in the end, that's where the live RP format comes from. We didn't often write in a past-tense narrative format and that was the reason.

Understandable, but Kage made a point to mention that this was a curiosity on people using future tense and indefinite statements outside of a combat situation. Such as Doug and his bagel. Obviously, if it's a combat or any manner of conflict situation, it's "better" for someone to leave an action open-ended to allow the other person or persons involved to react or even interrupt what is being done. Using a future tense - or a present/past tense that does not implicitly imply success - is recommended and even encouraged in these sorts of situations. The matter at hand is when people are using it for mundane things. Again, such as Doug and his bagel. And, since it's such a small thing that will likely have little to no impact on whatever RP may or may not come from it... I would say that the tense used with Doug and his bagel is irrelevant in the grand scheme as things. Just as long as the message that Doug has a bagel and his current goal of eating it is understood. Which is fine, but Kage's original post example is not eating a bagel. His example is correct in use for contested combat. I figured that's why he was asking. I highly doubt he's having lunch interrupted so often that he needs to make his bagel consumption subject to tactical checkmating.

Maybe so, but the problem is that I'm not writing Ziggy's character. And Ziggy's player can take my sentence and say, "You're swinging at Ziggy's head, you can't back out now." And, technically speaking, he'd be absolutely correct. I did not say Ignacius would try to swing at Ziggy's head in that example ("would" being a conditional word that assumes his head is readily available for separation) I said he tried to swing at Ziggy's head. While we might all know what I intended, that hardly would be an issue to the head's owner. What's at issue is that Ignacius was locked into an action, despite the reaction. And in the past, if Ignacius drew his sword and tried to cut off Ziggy's head, in your example, Ziggy has already not had his head cut off. Otherwise, that wouldn't make much sense. It's essentially the difference between writing a short story by yourself (where action is all predetermined) and RP (which is, technically speaking, happening in the present with conditions abounding). Of course, with your friends or relatively apologetic and forgiving company, intent is fine. Then all this is meaningless, literally everything. You could write everything in the future tense with mispelled words and completely not get your point across until you throw in a lot of OOC explanation. If people are inclined to just let it all roll, there's nothing to worry about. Open RP is just not a place where you're going to run into universally agreeable company. Ziggy's certainly going to argue with his potential decapitation.

In the case of eating a bagel, it likely doesn't make a difference. Most of this doesn't until a certain kind of context. This format was originally created for freestyle RP on IMs and forums. Tabletop games tend to have systems for combat, and in fact, some of these made it over (some well-structured threads had dice emulators, DMs, etc.). Freestyle open RP didn't have that. There was a mechanical version on IMs called quicktype (where someone would declare an action, an impartial third party would type a nine word sentence, then both players would try to type it as fast as possible; least mistakes won, ties were settled by who posted faster). However, the de facto standard of freestyle RP combat was the "tactical checkmate". In it, essentially, people declared actions and reactions until someone couldn't weasel their way out of getting hit (if it stretched too far, people could call a tactical checkmate, because you can't bend your back completely over without some serious backstory, for example). And for tactical checkmate combat (and later, for pretty much everything) the present tense with future conditional was the way you learned to type. In that example I gave above, action locking was usually what got you killed. Ziggy could draw his sword and cut at Ignacius's elbow as he stepped to the side. If Ignacius is trying to cut off Ziggy's head, he has no exit, he is still trying to cut off Ziggy's head even if Ziggy is about to dismember him. That's why there's so many "woulds" and future conditional verbs in a lot of old-school RPer's styles, even though that's not seen in many novels or short stories. An RPer, especially in some kind of contested action, tends to set a future conditional on a present action, saying Ignacius is drawing his sword and swinging, with the intention of hitting Ziggy's head if it's still in the area. However, in that wording, the swing can change and meet Ziggy's sword instead of Ziggy's head as soon as Ignacius reacts to the situation. Tactical checkmating is still the de facto standard today if your character gets in a dust up with another character and it wasn't planned. However, FFXIV has a lot more DMs and dice rolls just in the community. The population is, at this point, getting a bit young to the point where some maybe started RPing in games instead of forum threads and IMers, so they've grown up with the tools around them. In short, it's not necessary for any action (and most people don't care too much), but grammar suddenly can become a big deal if someone decides to take a swing at you and you don't have a dice setup beforehand. That, and it's good RP courtesy, if such a thing exists anymore, to leave any contested action available for future reaction. If your character grabs a bottle of wine and pours it, trying to fill someone's cup, that person can't cover the cup and say no thank you. If your character begins to tip the bottle, intending to fill it (notably here, intending to fill it in the future, making it a conditional future tense), your character can stop before he pours wine all over her hand and the table.

Like I explained, in interactive roleplay (both tabletop and active; whether that's a book game, game, or instant messenger), the common form is that it's written in the present tense and conditionals are written in the future tense. For example, the past tense, past conditional: Ignacius drew his sword and tried to cut off Ziggy's head. Doesn't work because it immediately implies Ignacius didn't cut his head off, which we (technically speaking) don't know yet (the sentence is in the past tense, action is in the present, and reaction is in the future). The same example in full present is: Ignacius draws his sword and tries to cut off Ziggy's head. This works better, but still makes no sense if you actually cut off Ziggy's head. The operation on "try" makes it conditional without using a word like "would", but necessarily implies that Ziggy's head doesn't get cut off (in which case, he wouldn't be trying, he'd be doing). Worse, this implies after reaction. If Ziggy is somehow dodging out of the way after Ignacius draws his sword, he's probably not going to make it. Ziggy, if he can, is going to GTFO before Ignacius is finished drawing his sword. A lot is happening there. However, according to the sentence, Ziggy is now reacting to Ignacius's attempt to cut off his head. Even if he is no longer there, even if he has his own sword out, even if his own sword is moving to cut off Ignacius's arm, by this point, Ignacius is locked into his action. No matter how ridiculous, the present action can't be changed. He is trying to cut off Ziggy's head whether Ziggy is there, his head is available, or not. So the correct form implies the conditional future tense (and even in the previous example, we assume the future tense is implied by the verb "try"): Ignacius draws his sword and would try to cut off Ziggy's head. Or, more commonly: Ignacius draws his sword and swings, intending to cut off Ziggy's head. This has the benefit of being in the correct tense and implying a conditional future action. That way, if Ziggy happens to not have his head in front of Ignacius's sword, he can move or abort the action. He can make sure he moves to try to cut off Ziggy's head, or stop swinging even if his daughter jumps in front of Ziggy asking Ignacius to spare him (unlikely). I hope that helps. It's a lot different from writing a short story. People can go one way or the other, but the most common is to RP in the present and set actions conditionally in the future if you feel they'll be contested (to avoid having your action "locked").

Is this a common way to speak / roleplay in tabletop? Where does the future tense usage come from? Edit: I've emphasized a point that has been brought up already. I know this. That's why I already mentioned it and now I've bolded it. You will always see it applied to actions, and generally in the conditional tense. It denotes someone trying to do something, but doesn't place it in the present since you can't auto an attack. It's important because, grammatically speaking, RP shouldn't be done in the past tense. It represents current actions in the context of the game's setting, so the correct tense for an actual in-game RP interaction would be in the present tense. Many are confused because a novel, generally, is written in the past tense and therefore many believe all writing is done in the past tense. Also, technically speaking, you can't use the past tense to interrupt an action. If, as in this example: You wrote in that you were attempting to buy an apple. However, in RP, we don't generally write that we are "attempting" to do anything that doesn't inherently involve another character. By the time you're writing, obviously, Kage is already at the store. You don't have to conditionally write that he went there (in the game, he is there). This doesn't happen in the present tense because it's deliberately describing temporal action. Everything that is typed is specifically what is happening in the moment; there's no indication that this was completed beforehand. That's why your above example doesn't work; in the past tense, you'd have to correctly predict via conditional notation that your character didn't buy an apple. In the past tense, of course, you'd know you'd have bought the apple or not. If you're going to have truly random roleplay where people can just hop in or out, you can't plan everything out like a book. So in addition to being technically correct, the present tense is often more mechanically useful. That means that, if you're speaking in the present tense, any conditional action becomes future tense. That makes sense. Whereas in a book all actions are simply being retold after the fact (and by the time of the telling are preordained), RP in real time doesn't happen after the fact. So the use of the present tense and future conditional is the most applicable for our uses. You'll find this is different in forum RP where you're typing out stories which may well be in the past tense and that the past tense is generally accepted to be the de facto standard for writing your own closed stories. I fail to see how "Liadan throws herself towards the ground, attempting to grab onto his legs" isn't grammatically correct. Yet, it is in future tense and completely allows for the other party to interrupt the actions. It's in the present tense (in the future tense, it's "Liadan will throw herself..."). However, "...attempting to grab..." is a conditional future tense. It is indicating an action which has not happened yet, hence the use of the future conditional with the present tense, as I explained.

Is this a common way to speak / roleplay in tabletop? Where does the future tense usage come from? Edit: I've emphasized a point that has been brought up already. I know this. That's why I already mentioned it and now I've bolded it. You will always see it applied to actions, and generally in the conditional tense. It denotes someone trying to do something, but doesn't place it in the present since you can't auto an attack. It's important because, grammatically speaking, RP shouldn't be done in the past tense. It represents current actions in the context of the game's setting, so the correct tense for an actual in-game RP interaction would be in the present tense. Many are confused because a novel, generally, is written in the past tense and therefore many believe all writing is done in the past tense. Also, technically speaking, you can't use the past tense to interrupt an action. If, as in this example: You wrote in that you were attempting to buy an apple. However, in RP, we don't generally write that we are "attempting" to do anything that doesn't inherently involve another character. By the time you're writing, obviously, Kage is already at the store. You don't have to conditionally write that he went there (in the game, he is there). This doesn't happen in the present tense because it's deliberately describing temporal action. Everything that is typed is specifically what is happening in the moment; there's no indication that this was completed beforehand. That's why your above example doesn't work; in the past tense, you'd have to correctly predict via conditional notation that your character didn't buy an apple. In the past tense, of course, you'd know you'd have bought the apple or not. If you're going to have truly random roleplay where people can just hop in or out, you can't plan everything out like a book. So in addition to being technically correct, the present tense is often more mechanically useful. That means that, if you're speaking in the present tense, any conditional action becomes future tense. That makes sense. Whereas in a book all actions are simply being retold after the fact (and by the time of the telling are preordained), RP in real time doesn't happen after the fact. So the use of the present tense and future conditional is the most applicable for our uses. You'll find this is different in forum RP where you're typing out stories which may well be in the past tense and that the past tense is generally accepted to be the de facto standard for writing your own closed stories.

Not in /s, it's been implied by the format that you're saying something. Then again, I almost always emote, so that people have some flavor to the dialogue.

It depends on the character. I build them from the ground up to be their own people, so I don't necessarily introduce myself into the process. About the only thing is that I don't often make characters I can't convincingly play. For example, all my characters are male; I don't play females well enough for my own standards. I like to think there's not much I'm incapable of, though.

Exceptions abound, of course, but most RPers will play characters a few years older than themselves, if not around the same age. This has to do with people feeling as though they're at the peak of their lives at the moment they're living in. You can traditionally (but, I stress, not always accurately) guess both the average age of a community and the players by their ages. When I was 12-13, my characters were 17 or 18, usually. Those were, what I thought, the best years. However, when I was 18, I was playing characters in their early twenties. When I left college, my characters were in their late 20s to early 30s. Now that I'm 30, my characters are in their mid-30s. However, I've constantly said that you can't play a character well that you can't simulate in your mind. In a way, I think age has made me better at my craft. I've very often played criminals, and when I was young, my "criminals" were assassins on a ninja anime level. When I was twenty, my characters became somewhat more measured, brutal, but sly. Still, though, they were like street gangsters. By the time I was well into my 20s, my people played thugs but were by then highly secretive and known for playing in the background, running money operations, and were becoming more "real". Today, I think Orleans is the most realistic criminal I've played. He's based not just on decades of research on everything from biker gangs to Chinese triad organizations, but on my own maturity as a person. I'm not sure I was capable of playing this kind of character convincingly when I was younger, even though I think one of the reasons I play it so well is practice. However, it's generally accurate to back the years off the average character age and you'll get the average age of the players. I'd say the average age of the players here probably are college age.