Geas

Lately I have seen a lot of power emoting / godmoding (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godmoding). For example:

Character A picks up Character B.
Character A grabs Character B by the collar.
Character A jumps into Character B, knocking him into a puddle of mud.
Character A throws a ball at Character B, hitting him right in the face.

Personally, I think it's bad form. I don't like people forcing my character to do things. (That's my job.)

Any thoughts?

I agree that it's poor form, and I don't like it at all. The only cases I could see it being fine is when the person receiving the power emote abuse is either captured, constrained, or willingly submissive.

But in casual shenanigans, or worse, serious moments? It's bad form, definitely.

I must also heartily agree. Some harmless handshakes and such are alright from time to time but beyond that...(shudders)

emote flexes his gargantuan muscles, gnashes his vampire teeth, and critically breaks the necks of all those who insult power emoting!

i like emoting and i only do the "power emoting" like

emote punches #x# in the face

if the person is helpless or bound by a rope on a stake etc, or the person has recently done something to me that would warrant a knock to the teeth, namely using power emotes on me. =P

it might actually be very satisfying to punch someone without having to start combat, it could still do the skill check though.

In some situations emoting such actions might fit, if the situation is right, and the other person can respond accordingly.

Example: I would regard slapping someone as an insult to start a duel to be a valid emote. A helpless, arrested person can be handled by emotes if it fits the situation, etc.

Randomly hitting, throwing, defeating someone by emote is not right, of course.

i think i havent seen poweremoting happen in geas.... maby an example of this from in the game would be a good idea for those who do not understand.

i dont see what devi gave as an example happen. a harmless pickup from a tshahark here and there but nothing i couldnt respond to

edit: and yes i throw rocks at people, but i do not consider that bad form... true i do make it hit them in the face sometimes. but I try to tell whether or not they'd have a chance to dodge... hmm. i'll stop that.

If I want to hit someone with a rock without starting combat, I'll usually emote throwing the rock at them and let the person decide himself whether his character dodged it or was hit.

so like...

Tessa throws a rock at Luminier!

I can

Luminier nimbly dodges the rock because hes so awesome!

or

Luminier gets drilled in the face by the rock!

so it works some what like "tickle x" i think with that action it says

Luminier tries to tickle Tessa!

and then they decide whether the tickling affects them.

I can

Luminier nimbly dodges the rock because hes so awesome!

or

Luminier gets drilled in the face by the rock!

Exactly! But you should think about it first... who's faster: Tessa or Lumi? Was Lumi paying attention? Was Tessa drunk? If Tessa has good aim but isn't very strong, maybe Lumi would get hit by the rock and laugh about how it barely left a dent. Maybe it would bounce off his helmet. I think it's all good so long as you don't make your character unrealistically awesome or invincible (see the wiki article on godmoding). The fun thing is that you are able to decide what Lumi does (no one else).

That's why power emoting sucks. It robs a situation of interaction. A rock fight can be like a conversation, and you would be surprised how much people are willing to get hit and how many fun responses there are. One little power emoting story. poYegerfin used to go out of his way (he had a trigger) to avoid pokes. Something kinda sorta like:

Devi pokes Yegerfin.
Yegerfin stops Devi's poke mid-air!

So he never played along with power emoting. I think it even bugged him. He was, however willing to be poked if he wasn't forced to be:

Devi points behind Yegerfin.
Yegerfin looks behind him.
Devi tries to poke Yegerfin in the stomach.
Yegerfin screams!

I was quite fond of Yegerfin's little set-up. You could try tickling, patting, poking, or etc. him to your heart's content, and he'd make an attempt to dodge it. He did, however, have his little 'program' set up so his dodges weren't 100% successful. So Tessa occasionally managed to slip something in if she was quick, or surprised him, or barraged him with a dozen prods.

Honestly, I'd like to see something like in the game for general use. There are quite a lot of situations I'd like to be able to dodge certain actions or certain people. But I don't have TinyFugue or coding experience like Yeger, which puts me at an obstacle.

It might get a little carried away if lovers are dodging each other's hugs. How could you control for this?

Do something like..

deny 'poke' from 'all'

deny 'all' from 'naga' *peers suspiciously in naga's direction*

Those sort of things.

I think this is going to have to be something that the players self-regulate.

I think it just depends on the situation... and i guess if you are really annoyed you could simple call them out ooc. I agree with Adanath.

Tessa's idea makes me smile, but I agree with Adanath, we want those wizards giving us that new continent and magic and a million other awesome things like they do when we don't bug them with silly shit we can do ourselves.

I agree that forced pokes, tickles, etc. can be lame. I still haven't seen much power-emoting. Almost anything can be negotiated with an "offer" emote, such as extending your hand for a handshake or Devi's Yegerfin poke. Besides, emote "conversations" are some of the best fun you can have.

Chikatilo wrote:it might actually be very satisfying to punch someone without having to start combat, it could still do the skill check though.

try "emote slap xy"

I have also seen this poweremoting and I am annoyed by it. But I think that even "shake hands with xx" is too intrusive. Perhaps not so important for your survival, but shaking hands with someone who didn't want it might hurt his status or reputation - so in a RP world it is very serious. But then again, like someone said, you can easily regulate this by doing "offers his hand to XX" and similiar. And this should probably be up to the players as long as the emote command exists. If you know the person does not mind it, it might also be okay to shake hands. Otherwise, I think it should be reported to the playerarch and in the worst case be punised. IMHO, it's not a small crime, but a big one RP-wise and this is an RP game. The emote command is very powerful, so you also need to be very responsible. Easy to type, easy to forget its powers.

Of course, there is also the opposite.. If you have gone to bed with another character and you are lying in the bed snuzzling, it might be impossible to avoid a tickle. In such a situation the "use of power" is valid, IMHO..

Now come on, a report to the playerarch followd by punishment is a bit extreme for some emoted handshake.