Letters as roleplays

[Nathan]

When I've got little time, I'll often skip the roleplay messages and just read the other types of messages. But recently I've seen quite a few people tag things as "roleplay" when actually it's a letter to someone. I only noticed because one of those roleplays was addressed to my character as I was skipping past it. I went back through my messages and noticed I've actually skipped a lot of letters.

What do you all think about tagging what are obviously letters as being roleplays? How do you respond to them? Part of me says they should be ignored as the player might have meant them to be roleplays and not letters, but then the other part of me says I might be stopping things progressing because I'm ignoring things.

[De-Legro]

I've seen people do it when they post the letter to the realm, but only address it to single or group of nobles. The intent as I understand it is to share the role play, while attempting to make it obvious that it is intended to be IG knowledge for only the characters listed within the role play.

I can't see why you would do it in letters that are only sent to those "participating" in the RP, in general a letter written in character is a part of role play with or without the tag. Did the letter include any "actions" that would exist outside of the written text conveyed? That might be a reason.

[Anaris]

The Roleplay message tag is specifically intended to be used only on narrative roleplays: that is, describing the actions of your character.  They are not meant to be letters sent between characters.

[Bedwyr]

I hate it when people tag letters as roleplays, because I often skip roleplays when I'm pressed for time as well, and as Tim says, it's not correct.

[Perth]

Indeed, technically speaking every message you send (except designated OOC, of course) is "roleplay" because you should be writing In-Character and as your character. I've always understood the "roleplay" tag/designation be primarily for narrative stories, etc.

[Indirik]

Indeed, technically speaking every message you send (except designated OOC, of course) is "roleplay" because you should be writing In-Character and as your character.

I've known people who have insisted on sending everything tagged as "roleplay", because they are always roleplaying their character.

[Anaris]

I've known people who have insisted on sending everything tagged as "roleplay", because they are always roleplaying their character.

I had a General once who did that.

And then yelled at us for not following orders.  Because we didn't notice that they were orders.

[fodder]

easy change would be to just call it narrative instead of rp...

[Chenier]

easy change would be to just call it narrative instead of rp...

Indeed, though it's a sad thing if such a change is needed, imo.

[Anaris]

Actually, when this issue came up on the dev list about two years ago, Tom gave the go-ahead to remove the signature from roleplay messages, which I never got around to doing.

I have now done so.

It's not a huge thing, but it should at least help to show that Roleplay messages are not letters.

[Nathan]

Is there anything else we can do to show that they're not letters? I still think that people will use them as letters without the signature - they could even just add their own signatures.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Not much to do really. If people don't understand what a roleplay is, perhaps due to language, then we can explain when we encounter them. If it comes from someone who continually insists on using gold letters, then there's just no cure for that.

[Sacha]

Sure there is. OOC ban them.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

OOC bans are for blatant rulebreaking, and even then it's not really used. Tell you what, how about you become a ruler and try it, and report what, if anything, happens to you.

[m2rt]

Actually, when this issue came up on the dev list about two years ago, Tom gave the go-ahead to remove the signature from roleplay messages, which I never got around to doing.

I have now done so.

It's not a huge thing, but it should at least help to show that Roleplay messages are not letters.

Finally! /me hugs Anaris