Back in the 'good old days' of traditional text only paper books (I'm talking of novels here, not comics), everything was black text on white paper. When a character said anything, speech marks were used. When a character thought anything, italics were used. This format has been successful for hundreds of years.

Now, I understand the need for the " OOC: " to indicate Out of Character discussions in story threads.

But does anyone know, how or when, on role play forums, colored text came to be used to indicate speech, and thought? Is there such a real need?

I don't know how it came about, but I recall that in the 90s (during the AOL heyday) there were a lot of text based RPG communities that used chat rooms, instant messenger, and message boards to run various types of RPGS (mostly freeform or with very simplistic systems). In that time period, I recall it was customary to color your text.

I've never really thought twice about it, but I do like it.

Whether there is such a need is debatable. Obviously there's not really a need for anything, but it's a matter of preference.

MUDs and MUSHes come to mind as a possible influence.

I myself prefer black on white with punctuation and italics as appropriate.

There is no standardised posting format, it's all just a matter of personal preference,  Some GMs use coloured text, some don't.

Black and white text was a printing limitation from pre-20th century times by which time it was traditional and extra colors not added to books except for high priced specials. IIRC the first major color photo in newspaper was back in 1976 for a Mars landing showing pink land/blue sky.

Computers started monochrome; TSR-80 anyone?  But they advanced, options showed up and savvy tech folks took advantage of these innovations and coloring was offered and folk took to it.

It stands out. You have to stand out to get noticed.

Nothing in a B&W post/print/text stands out.

This isn't a novel, though.
First of all, each protagonist is written by a different author, and many (if not most... or almost all) of them are amateurs.

Novels are also limited by the need to physically manufacture them. A single dark color printed on a single light color is considerably easier and cheaper to produce than something else. But then, not all novels do stick to just text. There are sometimes images, diagrams, change of fonts, and sometimes ways of playing with the medium like text that appears damaged to represent a damaged note or book the protagonist is reading--teardrops on a handwritten letter, or scratched out portions that another character tried to hide.

Obviously monochrome text is sufficient, but we have extra tools available. Why wouldn't we use them?



Oh, and italicized thoughts are a formatting choice that not all novelists use anyway, even if it is common.

On another site I use, the GM can set each character's speech to a different colour.  This makes it easy to tell who is talking.  Of course, that depends on each player to open and close quotations properly, including fixing any copy/paste that doesn't transfer accurately.  Also there is often an adjustment time since, though there are not as many choices for background as here, different people may be using different themes, so that some colours don't show up well for everyone.

It's funny that so many folks have posed questions like this.  Many expressing disdain for the whole idea.

As stated above - with new tools - comes new methods and means.

For myself - I find a *LOT* of players WON'T use quotations marks to indicate speech.  So, coloration is easier (often for them too).  Might sound minor and trivial - and you might be thinking "just kick them", but, that's just lame when the medium (the forums) allow for a perfectly acceptable option.

I don't insist on using colored text for speech; typically I follow the lead of whoever I'm writing with, or what standards are set by the group, if it's a group game.  I do like to use it, however, and when I ran a group I did ask that the players used colors.  However, I absolutely do not find colored speech to be an adequate substitute for quotation marks and proper punctuation.  I can't get past people not putting speech in quotation marks, even if the text is colored.  It just takes me out of the scene and grates on my nerves way too much.

Colored text can be helpful if multiple characters are speaking in a single post, as a sort of 'signature' for a character, to differentiate PCs from NPCs, etc.  I find it a useful tool and I think it looks nice, and it can also help when replying to a post; if you're reviewing to make sure your character responded to everything that was said in a long post, you can just refer to the colored text for a quick check before hitting 'post.'

As for where it came from, I'm not sure.  I remember on the first forum where I ever RPed each person was in the habit of playing multiple characters and we could only post under our account names, so we would use different colored text to indicate which character was doing what.
This message was last edited by the user at 19:42, Sat 06 Feb 2016.

I color my character's words here on this site, because that's what I've always done here.  I don't do it anywhere else.  I'm in three active games at the moment and in two of them the GMs have said that our characters should use colored text.  No problem, that's what I do here.

I think the generally slower pace of a play-by-post game (at least in my case) encourages more infodumps, so I can certainly understand why colored speech can be useful.  For instance:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albu...eech_zpsfrip1no3.png
I've tastefully blurred it out so that you aren't distracted by what was actually said.

In the first paragraph I basically wrote, "Hey, X and Y just happened, here's what I'm thinking: blah."

Then in the next paragraph I describe my own actions, and say something, and only that spoken text is colored.  Then I continue to describe my own actions.

And last I throw in my rolls and OOC descriptions of what "really" happened (for instance, up where I write what I was doing I described how my character was throwing something, and where he tried to throw it, and then down at the bottom I simply say, "attack roll, throw X at Y".

Still, though, there's a lot of text.  While I believe that my character's internal reactions and thoughts are great, they're not necessarily something that another character might realize.  And they might happen to look somewhere else or decide that they don't care what I'm doing.  What a character says, though, is usually the most actionable thing, and as such when playing by post here at RPOL I'll color my speech so that it stands out.
This message was last edited by the user at 21:43, Sat 06 Feb 2016.

I dunno...if someone came up to me and said "Hi there, nice day" and then proceeded to stab me in the face with a pointy stick, I wouldn't really care much at all about what they'd just said ;).

Had a discussion recently in one game about coloured text for speech. I don't get why people use it - if you want to show speech, that's what speech marks are for. And every character has their own profile/avatar so you can see who's talking just by looking at the left of the screen. And, you know, by the use of their name in the narrative ;). I never really was given any kind of persuasive reason as to why coloured speech is "necessary" beyond "The brain likes colour" (dunno about this...the brain likes patterns, but they don't have to necessarily be all multicoloured) and "all the other games I'm in have coloured speech". Which isn't really a reason at all. When I mentioned that seeing a game with coloured speech puts me off joining, one person said that they were "saddened" (or some similar word) that I felt that way because it meant I was missing out. This same person then said, a couple of posts later, that they wouldn't join a game if it didn't use coloured speech. I noticed this but forgot to pick them up on it when it came to typing my reply.

I try to work out why people use coloured speech and can only come up with a few theories. Maybe these people are lazy and don't want to bother putting in descriptive narrative about how their character is talking, or even that they are (ie not bothering with phrases like "X said"). Maybe they're terrible with punctuation and are somehow ignorant of the existence of speech marks or how to use them. Maybe they think that speech is somehow more important than anything else a character can do (it isn't - see the start of this post for an example :P). I dunno. I just find it really distracting and it bugs me. Imagine if books used this and tried to have a different colour for every character. Imagine if a book like Lord of the Rings did this, or anything else with a lot of characters often interacting at once. Would you have to try and memorise every character's colour? And if certain characters had colours that were really noticeable and one of them was believed dead or something, and as a Wham Line at the end of a chapter they suddenly come back and give a one-liner to announce their return...if you had just turned the page but not got to that bit yet you might notice their colour and have the impact somewhat spoilt by knowing they're about to suddenly turn up and start talking.

Whenever I look for a game on RPOL these days I have to remember to first check whether it uses coloured text for dialogue. I am in one or two games which use this because I wasn't in the habit of checking back when I joined. I just use plain black text and speech marks, though. Coloured text is for OOC and my colour for that is dark green...it would've been purple but in the first ever game I joined on here, the GM requested everyone's OOC colour be different and someone had beaten me to it ;).

I really, really prefer colored text for dialogue because, as I've gotten older, I have a lot of trouble focusing on and internalizing text.  The color helps break it up and makes the parts I really need to pay attention to (and respond to) stand out.

Then again, I'm generally on a crusade against people writing in 1st person in multiple-player situations (where the onus falls on the readers to dissect the 1st person post to decide what their character would actually know and what they wouldn't), so I'd say that's part of it, too.

I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with writing in first-person, necessarily. It's when they start including character thoughts and feelings that you have to start skipping unless you don't mind mixing player and character knowledge - I like to keep the two as close as possible so I try never to read any IC stuff that my character wouldn't know.

You know how you've trained yourself to usually ignore what's on the sides of the screen on a website because it's usually just ads?  (Or is that just me?)  Also, I have a widescreen monitor.

Edit: I'm not saying that everyone needs their own color to post.  I'm saying that I usually pick up who's posting by context or because the person usually puts that in their post like: ["Blah," said character.]  And I already have a mental image of what the character looks like, so I usually never look at character portraits.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:58, Sat 06 Feb 2016.

Before I found and started on RPOL, I desperately wanted to participate in PbF, and I found the numerous Star Trek PbF forums. What put me off joining them was the 'Training Sessions'. None of them, that I could see, allowed viewings of their story posts. Very few of them described what that training entailed. So I can only presume it was all about posting formats and writing style. Thank God, I didn't join them. There's nothing worse for me, than being dictated to.

The problem is that concentrating on the spoken words only means your character is missing out on non-verbal cues.  As Ameena said, if someone says "Hi there, nice day" and then proceeds to stab you in the face with a pointy stick, what they're saying isn't the bit you really need to pay attention too.  :>

So I'm in the no colouring camp - I quite agree that coloured text does attract the attention, so I prefer text not to be coloured so I'm not distracted from the rest of the post.

Thinking on't, paperback novels are ubiquitously black on white (maybe some kids' books dabble in colour ?) but does anyone know if any electronic versions of novels use colouring of speech or any other text ?  Cost of printing's not an issue there, so be interesting if they did.  And before anyone asks, I'm old school - I like to hold the book in my hands, even if it costs more.

I always use quotes, prefer not to colour speech , but am happy to do so if GM wants it (I write the post first then  once I'm happy with it, I go back and colour the spoken bits), and if my players want to colour speech in my games, they're more than welcome to.

I don't know where it originated, Rpol was the first place I saw it and for a while I thought coloured speech and fruity swearing were inventions of the Rpol Admin.

I'm with Silver Cat. I'm old-school and always use speech marks and punctuation in addition to colour, and I only use colour because it seems that the majority of games here use coloured speech and I just give my players what they want. I go with the flow.

Having said that, now that I've used colour for a while, I find it is easier to keep track if several NPCs are talking in the same post (most often happens in a GM post) and, unless you're in a really vicious player v player game, your interactions with other players will mainly be via speech rather than pointy sticks - that's what the orcs use, and you don't often talk to them...

Sometimes in a novel you have to re-read a paragraph to be sure who said what. Coloured text avoids that.

To me, only joining games that use black and white text makes as much sense as only dating platinum blondes. I might like them, I might even prefer them, but I'm sure as heck not going to restrict myself only to them - they're a minority, and there's an awful lot of wonderful experiences to be had out there with other colours... :)

I do usually use color for dialogue; but I also use quotation marks. I don't find it all off-putting if people don't; but I know some people do find it easier to note speech when it's colored,so why make it harder on those people? Whilst there may be some who find it easier in just black and white; I find them a lot rarer; and if someone tells me in a game they find color off-putting, I'll adapt for them.

What I don't understand, though, and have still never seen a decent explanation of, is why speech is coloured. It's like it's being treated as more important than the other text, when that's not necessarily the case - like I mentioned before, a character's actions might be so much more important than what they're saying. And there could be any number of subtle little hints and clues in the narrative outside of the dialogue which might clue you in on stuff you should be paying attention to - someone fidgeting about a lot whilst talking, for example, with the implication that they're lying or at least not telling the whole truth. If you only paid attention to the speech, you'd miss that. If you're gonna put speech in colour, why not do the same for people's names, so that you know who's being referred to? Or verbs, so you know what everyone is doing? Or nouns, so you know what kind of items or creatures are present? Or maybe punctuation symbols, so exclamation marks stand out when someone is shouting or full stops in case you didn't notice the sentence had ended? Why speech? All or nothing, surely?

If you color everything, the whole point is lost.

I once had it explained by someone who's had novels published, that people in PbP don't usually do new paragraphs for dialogue all the time; which authors generally do for their novels. She said that she could deal with that, as long as they colored their speech instead. If they did neither, she found it really frustrating, and hard to follow as to what was said, what was thought, and what was action.

Maybe people just like a bit of color.

I usually colorize my speech, or italicize it, while still using punctuation as appropriate.  Sometimes I use italics and color.  There are times when a post of mine might include two, three, or four characters, and one's speech might be italicized, while another uses blue text and still another uses green italicized text.  A favorite color for NPC speech is brown.  I don't use bold other than to indicate emphasis, because I like reserving it for that emphasis.

Why just the speech?  Why not?  I like a bit of standardization and pattern, and I like the look of just 'so' much color.  I use more descriptive text than speech, so to me it looks better to use my color in speech.

I'm not lazy, and I write pretty well, thank you very much, both in regards to grammar and creativity.  I find it funny to see 'lazy' listed as a possible reason for using color, when it actually takes more effort.  Maybe all the people who use black and white are the lazy ones, because they can't be bothered remembering which color they've used consistently or take the extra steps. :P

You know, over the years, I've developed my own style of handwriting.  I make my capital 'S' even in cursive writing to look like the printed version.  Is it because I am too lazy to make the cursive S?  Because I don't understand that a bunch of people over the years decided that the proper format to make a cursive S is 'this'?  Am I juvenile or mentally deficient because I choose to write in this manner?  There are letters that I also make more 'printed' than standard cursive, not because I don't know how, but because it 'flows' better for me, and there's probably a hint of individuality in there as well.

And, ya know, pencils have been perfectly good for writing for decade upon decade, and I can't stand writing with them.  If I'm writing (as opposed to typing) I use a pen.  I'd hunt the office and the house over if I could only find a pencil before I'd give up and use said pencil. Oh, and I tend to prefer blue ink over black, red, and even purple ... which is weird, because I love purple.

And I prefer white paper as opposed to yellow, even when I use paper pads -- even enough that I'll still buy the white notepads if the yellow ones are on sale.

Bottom line, people like different things.  Sometimes it's just that simple and that complex.

In reply to Ameena (msg # 19):

I've actually seen people who do use colours for things other than speech - the GM in those cases will usually have a list of required colours - this colour for speech, this one for thoughts, this one for body language, this for movement, this for game rules stuff...  It's not very common and, again, it's all down to the GM's personal taste.

Just like choosing not to use colours.

Yeah, those games I avoid.  <grrins>

It's yet another subject where you'll hit polarized opinions and are unlikely to shift anyone from one camp to another.  No "ah, I see now, I was wrong all this time" epiphanies.

Using or not using colours will probably annoy about half of your fellow players either way, so in the words of Rick Nelson - "can't please everyone, so you <beat> got to please yourself."  Or more importantly, your GM. ;>

Curse you, Skald!

*goes to add Ricky Nelson to my Spotify playlists*

In reply to Ameena (msg # 19):

I'm in a couple of games with people who seem to have some kind of learning disorder (I say 'seem to' because they've never said anything, but what they respond to in posts indicates they have some difficulty reading or processing long posts).  At least one of them has found a way to make that work for him by playing a character with poor social skills, who has a hard time interpreting vocal inflections, bidy language, etc...

For him, coloring speech is very helpful.  He knows exactly what stuff to focus on...his character hears the colored text.  He may not understand if it's sarcasm, or if someone is being evasive or reluctant...so he doesn't need to try and muddle through the rest if the post.  He just focuses on what is said and takes it at face value.

So, while I'm fairly sure that wasn't the reason coloring text was developed, it does have some practical justifications.  Personally, I don't care much one way or the other...I go with whatever the GM wants, or, in the event of the GM not having a preference, whatever seems to be the norm among the other players.

Except for games where EVERYTHING has to be color-coded.  That's far too much trouble, for me.

Coloring DM here.

I'm no grammar nazi, but formatting and legibility are two very important things with me. I try to encourage people to write as well as they are capable, but even for colored dialogue I expect people to still use opening and closing quotations. I've read many books in my time, and I'm perfectly capable of following who's speaking in them without colored text. But in the context of RPOL, I strongly prefer colored/formatted speech (with each character choosing his or her preferred color), because it helps me add an extra dimension to the scenes that I'm writing, and offers other uses as well. Both for my benefit, and (I hope) for the benefit of my players.

If a character has a deep voice, I say as much in my descriptive text, and then try to follow it up with formatted speech that reflects the tone I'm going for. Rose is a good color for this, just as an example. I try to be consistent with these color choices, so that when a new character is introduced, players instinctively have a frame of reference that helps them to stay rooted in the scenes we're trying construct.

Given that many of the posts in my game can also be quite long, it also helps to break up the text and allows me to find key quotes or concepts at a glance when looking through older threads. My game has over 10k posts, and both myself and my players are constantly having to research old threads to remind ourselves what enemies or allies specifically told them sometimes (literally) years prior! A combination of F3 search, and colored text, is key to making that process easier!

Given that I run a Pathfinder game, I find that orange is excellent color for differentiating narrative from dice rolls and combat actions. I also find that emboldened red and purple work well as headers and footers, for introducing or closing scenes, or announcing who's turn it is during combat. Those colors are very conspicuous, and they help with those at-a-glance thread searches I mentioned earlier.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:50, Mon 08 Feb 2016.

I'd say I also land in the camp of people that want color to enhance, not replace punctuation.  If you mouse over and highlight the entire post, it should still be correct and readable.

Personally, I find that coloring the text makes me more cognizant of what I'm posting.  Am I throwing out way too much prose?  Am I not communicating to my fellow players appropriately?  Did I just spend a thousand words for what amounts to looking pensive and saying "hey"?

For an example of fiction that colors text, one that comes to mind is the Eclipse Phase fiction stuff.  Because they have many modes of communication going on, they utilize colored text quite a bit.

I nearly always use color or a specific font along with plain 'ol punctuation in my writing to denote the character speaking, for reasons of both readability and to convey the personality of the character without needing to say a lot. Once a character has been established, people will quickly  become conditioned to associate those colors and visual style with a given character, and it immediately puts them in the proper mindset and emotional state when reading posts from and replying to that character. It's a bit of psychological trickery that's worked for me for over a decade now here on RPoL and on other sites and in other mediums.

Hmm. This is a great subject for a potential paper in psych class. Thanks a lot guys!
This message was last edited by the user at 15:20, Wed 17 Feb 2016.

I thoroughly detest colorized speech.  There is no reason for it.  Ever.

Tell us how you really feel =)

You know, except for all of the reasons cited by other people in this thread.

Wow, I'd never thought this would evoke such strong opinions. Thanks for everyone's contributions!

Here's my opinion on the whole thing:

I don't mind it. If it help with the game, use it. I can do well enough with monochrome, if it suits the GM, and just as well with color. If color is not used as a mere gimmick, but is used to assist the gameplay, it's a good idea.

For gamers who find colored text a distraction, how about adding an option to read all the text in monochrome?

In reply to Space27 (msg # 33):

That option already exists.

In User Preferences, under the option to change your colour scheme choose "create one", and then tick the box marked "Disable colouring in messages".  Does just what it says, and people who dislike coloured text never have to see it again.

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 34):

Uh-mazing.  Now I can stop taking antiemetics.

I think I tried setting the colour scheme to "custom" but it changed something else about the setup of the site that I just didn't like. I can't remember what, though, off the top of my head.

I like to use coloured font for two things.

One is to make it easier on the eye. The same as using double paragraph breaks and short paragraphs. It also makes it easier to spot the part of the page I want while scrolling.

The other reason is that I like to pick colours which resonate with the character's personality for me.

In reply to Ameena (msg # 11):

I don't think your theory about people being lazy works too well. I prefer the use of colored text for speech, yet I also try to make sure that I have correct placement for my punctuation. In games I play in or run I always used colored text for my speech, it makes it pop and really most of the time that is all people see. Even in interactions in the rel world most people only hear what people say so the speech stands out. If they just make a quick pass over it at least they read what my character said. The people/characters that tend to pay attention will not only hear the words but also pay attention to the context of what is said and how.

I have played in games where it is requested not to use colored speech, it doesn't bother me too much to not do it. I don't see a reason to actively avoid games that do either, it just seems like you're limiting yourself based solely on a cosmetic choice.

The possibility of people being lazy was just one suggestion I came up with when trying to work out why people want to put such an emphasis on speech. Non-verbal communication is often much more important than verbal communication so I just don't get why people want to have part of their narrative to be "shouting" at the reader by being in colour and all "Hey, look at me, I'm important!" when the reader should be giving the entire text equal attention lest they miss some important clue (like the speaking person subtly slipping their hand into their coat or behind their back whilst talking to you about how dangerous it is round here and just the other day some guy got stabbed, oh it was terrible, etc) or just generally some fun bit of fluff in the narrative or whatever.

To reduce people confusing what was spoken and what was not.
To portray character.
because it's easier to read and recognise as speech either when people fail to spot speech tags or fail to use them
Because you are more likely to hear someone speak than notice their body language
because some players will post 800 words and frankly I don't want to ride their vanity trip just to get to part I can actually act on

In reply to Ameena (msg # 39):

Ironically, perhaps, there are a great many people who are unaware of non-verbal communication.  They still do it, if course, but it's all on a subconscious or even instinctive level.  They notice what is spoken, they react to it more strongly than to inflection or body language...

Colored text is just another tool available to help people with gaming.  In that regard, it's no different than, say, having the dice roller automated to handle the specifics of the various systems (calculating successes or failures, re-rolling dice as necessary, etc)  Those are functions that could all be done without the help of the dice roller, it's just faster and easier with it.  Some people feel that using colored text facilitates communicating information in their posts.  There's nothing wrong or right about it, it just works well for some.  For others, it doesn't.

Because not everyone here has the skill and experience of a novelist to know how to break up a paragraph and not bury speech in a single wall of text that contains no paragraph breaks.  If everyone here could write like a well edited published novel, I don't think that the colored text would be particularly helpful, but that isn't the world we live in.

If someone doesn't know how to use speech marks, I don't think I'd fancy playing with them anyway - it would be too much of a pain in the arse trying to read whatever they wrote. Putting some of it in colour wouldn't make any difference if it was just a big mass of text. It would just be a big mass of text with some of it in a different colour to the rest of it. I still maintain that speech is by no means the most important thing in any narrative. Important, yes, but no more important than anything else. Like the example I mentioned much earlier in this thread, if someone says "hey there, nice day today, isn't it?" whilst pulling out a knife and sticking it between your ribs, the speech isn't the part you're going to care about. If all you're looking at is the speech then things are goign to get very confusing when you post something like "Why yes, it's pretty sunny, isn't it?" and give no reaction to the fact that you're now supposed to be leaking vital fluids all over the place :P.

There's another difference between roleplaying and a narrative, though. In a narrative the reader sees everything the author wants them to and isn't expected to respond. In roleplaying, the players are expected to respond, and only to parts of the narrative they can perceive. So speech might not be the most important, but it's something that all present can be expected to notice even when they're looking elsewhere.

Besides, most games I've seen also call out specific actions like attacks anyway. Although I guess that might depend on whether you play freeform or with a system.

It doesn't even have to be mechanical things like attacks. Just...well, anything, really. Anything that might be detected by another person in any way...gestures, movement, facial expressions, picking up/putting down/manipulating objects, anything like that that might be mentioned in half a sentence outside of speech and yet potentially of great significance.

Just because it's not in color, doesn't mean that no one is going to pay attention to it. Color breaks things up and makes it easier for your brain to process all of the data being shoved at it.

Consider the same post, both with and without color.

---

"I guess I won't be going to the dance on Friday," Bob lamented.  From the angle he was sitting, it was clear that his leg was broken.  "Tell Suzie that she can take Paul if she really wants."

---

"I guess I won't be going to the dance on Friday," Bob lamented.  From the angle he was sitting, it was clear that his leg was broken.  "Tell Suzie that she can take Paul if she really wants."

---

Is the one with color any harder to read and understand than the one without?  I would say that I, as a reader, find the one with color much easier to process because things are broken up more.

Posts that make good use of color and blank space are much, much easier to read than a wall of monochrome text.

Pretty much exactly what I'd have said.

If you turn off colors altogether, it's beautiful in black and white.

Consider this, written by a GM running several NPCs and whose punctuation is less than ideal:



Without colours, that little post will take you about six PMs to sort out...

Sadly, these days people are more likely to get colour right than punctuation.

The bottom line is this: Rpol allows you to switch off colour if you don't want it. It offers no facility to add colour to a wall of text.

I think my brain sees a bunch of coloured text and automatically treats it as a separate thing, not part of the rest of the text, so I auto-skim over it and then have to go back and make myself read it, or something.

As for the punctuation thing...well, that might be where my suggestion of laziness may actually be relevant - some people may get used to using colour for speech and just not bother using speech marks or anything else. I'm used to playing with people who actually do know how to write properly so there is no issue. If someone were to just neglect proper punctuation/spelling/grammar (whether related to speech or not) in a game, I doubt I'd be playing with them for long if they didn't at least make an effort to maek their stuff readable. It's like people who use "N00bspeak", putting stuff like "u" instead of "you" and "w8" instead of "wait", <shudder>...in the case of those people, I figure that if they can't be arsed to write in proper English, I can't be arsed to try and translate it. Note that anyone for whom English is not their first language is different - usually such people seem to have better English than a lot of "English" people and certainly their English is a zillion times better than my <insert non-English language here> :D. That tends to just be a case of some words spelt wrong and maybe some words in a slightly odd-looking order due to different grammatical rules, or something. That's fine, I can deal with that. American spellings bug me but I can just sort of...not spend too long looking at them ;).

All of the people I'm playing with who use coloured text, also use correct punctuation.  The colour is just an add-on.

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 51):

Same here. Color is just a nice feature which has uses that don't diminish the need for good grammar and punctuation.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:22, Thu 25 Feb 2016.

I use proper punctuation and grammar when writing (aside from texting on my non-smart phone), but find the colored speech helpful for going back and finding a specific quote. X's character said something about that... I can then scroll back through looking just for X's color, ignoring posts where X said nothing, and where others than X were speaking. It's a tool. It doesn't mean I ignore the rest of the post.

It's also a helpful tool for more easily understanding those who don't, or don't reliably, use quotation marks. It makes their work readable enough to deal with comfortably.

The worse offenders for misuse/sloppy use of written English do tend to come from native English speakers. :/

I disagree.  I don't need colored text to read anything else that I read.  Websites, novels, magazines, newspapers, all use black and white.  I don't see any need for it here either.

This is the only place I've ever seen colored text used on a regular basis, outside of MySpace pages.  And that's what all the colored text makes me think off, early 2000s MySpace pages.  It makes things look cluttered, unorganized, and unprofessional.  And I find it much harder to read.

I do like color for some minor things, like OOC portions of posts.  But I've turned off color entirely and deprived myself of that simply so that I can read game posts with some semblance of normalcy.
This message was last edited by the user at 23:23, Thu 25 Feb 2016.

It's funny that the discussion on coloured text always attracts so much attention; in the end is just a tool and people should use it or not depending on their preferencies and the rules of the game they're into.

I would like to say though, that it's true that colouring text tends to make people ignore gestures and sign language when those are included in the text, and the opinion that text needs to be emphasized because "that's what other players need to answer to" has been expressed in this very thread, and that's a concept I'm entirely against - if somebody made a long post, there's likely a reason for it, and no portion of a text is less important, it should be read in its entirety. Ignoring any part of another person's post is a gesture of disrepect toward that poster, I would think.

I have a player in the game I'm running whom character speaks about once every three posts they make, and that has helped a lot to convey their personality to the other players/characters, and whenever that character speaks more than a few lines in their post, it immediately conveys to the others that what they're saying is important. On the other hand, I have another player who puts up long speeches often, often literal walls of texts, but the other players follow because that particular player is both the scout and face for their team, so others read what they say in full despite their text not being coloured. And I've had mute NPCs who had no trouble being understandable to the players who interacted with them either.

In the end, color text is an useful tool to have, and I am happy RPOL gives it to us, and everybody has the full right to use it for anything they feel needs it. But the idea that speech is the only important part of a post, or the only portion of a post other players need to read/answer to, that's an idea I disagree with.

I think that's pretty much what I was trying to say, Egleris, but I think you just said it better :D. Wait, why is your name familiar...I think you're actually one of my GMs :O. In which case I know who the Wall of Text character is. And the one who doesn't really talk much (but spams the GM a lot with descriptions of the psychic "conversations" she's having with any non-sentient creature in the local area :D).

My general experience is that the reason is that they suck at writing in third-person objective.  Which means you get to have an impromptu reading comprehension test as you dissect what your character can actually sense from what they can't.  More than once I've seen this turn into an OOC fight when someone accidentally reacted to thoughts or the like.

What a horrid assessment... =(
By horrid - I mean: sheesh, if your 51%+ view is that everyone is a failure; you certainly interact with a lot of failures!

My first post in any major chapter/scene change is usually long (when narrating) - as it is about setting the stage.  Usually the first paragraph (3-4 sentences) covers what the CHARACTERS should know that the PCs wouldn't.

Then describing the first scene so that the players/PCs can interact with something other than following a plot-train can take a paragraph.  Then again - I may not know what you mean by "long" post.

I think swordchucks more means players making long-winded posts habitually, and yes I'd agree it shows a lack of skill in concise and compartmented communication.

If you write what would be a solid page in 12 point font on a word processor for every post, you're writing too much. Some posts need to encompass somewhere between six seconds and a minute of time, and a character shouldn't be able to have a detailed reminiscing about their painful childhood and analysis of everyone around them.

Often these same players will complain of not having time to post.

I'm not talking about GM posts as all the things you cite are perfectly reasonable.  I'm also not talking about PC posts that are solo or semi-solo in nature (this often applies to introductory posts in threads or first posts in games, since the posts tend to cover a lot of communication to the GM and then end with the group meeting up).  A solo game is generally attractive for that very reason.

What I'm specifically talking about are posts by PCs in games where the PCs don't have a huge amount of control over the environment (and thus would be relating GM-type data) that break about 200 words in length and don't include at least a third of that as dialogue.  Even then, one every now and then can make sense if there's a lot of stuff to describe, but my experience is that folks that tend to do it routinely can't write in an objective perspective consistently.

Maybe there are players out there that can pull it off... but I don't recall playing with them.

As a part of that, I did do a survey of games I'm in, looking at posts and assessing their content.  I found that, in general, PC posts without dialog tended much more toward the "he thinks..." and similar styles than posts with.  Those that didn't were almost always shorter, sub-100 word posts concentrating on actions.

Short of having the first RP Forum designer who included colour in their design to be used as a tool, weigh in on this, I doubt much of a real answer will be found. We can all speculate as to how or when and everyone can make some sort of argument as to whether there is even a need for it.

My first forays into RP existed in a hosted chat room some 18-19 years ago. The chat room offered coloured text so each individual could personalize themselves in some way. Programs came about where you could further personalize by adding custom colours using the Red/Green/Blue system of shading. They went so far as to create the system so colours could shift through the text, fading and blending to whatever the creative mind could come up with. People would use this to make their character stand out in some way. So if there were 30 people chatting at the same time and trying to RP with separate people, one didn't have to wade through everybody else's posts. I suspect this is partly why colour was introduced in forums as well. Likely whole posts were done in one person's favourite colour so they might stand out to someone who might be in the same forum but location wise, were actually far away from anything else going on.

It wouldn't be hard to assume some colours were just not fun to read and gradually this was pulled back in favour of simply using the coloured text for speech. Many people are more likely to only return the spoken parts anyways. Maybe they are just unpracticed in describing actions and the like or maybe they are just lazy. Perhaps some who have issues looking through blocks of text for personal/medical reasons, simply found this easier to comprehend. Just because they were less capable of describing action didn't mean they should be ostracized when they are simply trying to participate in an activity they like. This is just a few suppositions on why the gradual evolution (if I may be so bold) of coloured anything came to RP Forums.

Is there a fundamental need? No. It is a tool to assist some in reading, some in separating their character and to others it is a hammer in a pottery class.
This message was last edited by the user at 16:48, Fri 26 Feb 2016.

Writing something that's not in objective third-person doesn't mean you can't, y'know.

ah-kha! I get you there.

Yes, this is far better suited to a solo-play environment.

Completely agreed.  It can be a bit frustrating to have run-on information for no reason.

But, I will say: I'd rather have the option to format my text and posts - than not have the option.

I like Orange.  Orange is good OOC =)

Oh, wow, I forgot about this, but this is totally where I started doing it, as well.  Well, on MUDs and MUSHs where the options were offered.  With everyone being a little name, it became infinitely better if folks color coded their contributions (often using elaborate macros) so that you could tell, at a glance, who was talking.


I think it's more a matter of not writing in third-person objective when that is the correct format than anything else.  I play in a variety of games and use third person limited and even first person as appropriate.  However, the majority of group-games should be done in third-person objective.

The one caveat I give to that is Eclipse Phase.  For some reason, Eclipse Phase just doesn't work like it should if you go with the objective point of view.  I think it's the loss of the Muse.  I'm sure there are a few other games out there where it's appropriate, too, and those get a pass.

You preferring it doesn't make it "correct."

It's a game. Writing a bit more about your character might be more fun, and it helps to communicate context which helps make what you're describing more clear.
Reading a bit more about other characters might be more fun--plenty of people in this thread are comparing reading posts on RPoL to reading other things, like novels, after all.
And not all communication is with other players. A lot of describing what you're thinking, what you're doing, and why, is for the GM. How's the GM gonna answer "Sarah leaned slightly to the right, looking over Alexander's shoulder," if she doesn't mention what she's looking for? Stuff the other PCs can't see still needs to go in posts sometimes.

In one of my games I just wrote a post describing what my character was doing while she was alone in a room. How's that different from describing her thinking for why she's doing something? Which, as some people have kinda expressed when talking about nonverbal cues, might be obvious to anyone watching her anyway.

I've seen it cause problems many times, especially when games are first starting out.  There are other ways to do it, but the GM ultimate establishes the correct format for a given game.  Even if the convention is only established by weight of everyone else, if you have one person posting in limited and four people posting in objective, the person posting in limited is not conforming to the group and thus "wrong".

If your group all decides to go with third person limited, then knock yourself out.  I wouldn't object to you doing so, but I'd probably also prefer not to play in that game unless other factors outweighed that.

Other points:

Being alone in a room is something I rarely see played out in regular threads.  It's usually done in PMs, PLs, or otherwise hidden threads.  I'm in a game right now where I'm doing something similar... but it's a private thread (and I'm posting in third person limited because of it).  I wouldn't call it "wrong" to do otherwise, but I prefer compartmentalization of knowledge in games for a variety of reasons.

As for communications to the GM... that's what OOC lines and private lines are for.  If Sarah is looking for something, she needs to call out the game effect she's going for in an OOC or PL.  GMs read and respond to a whole lot of text and, depending on the GM and the game, can easily miss things.  Clarity is critical, and relying on nonverbal cues that might be buried in the middle of a wall of text is just a bad idea.

Actually it does... for him.

I'm closing this thread now, since it's a discussion about personal preferences, and nobody is ever going to change anybody's mind.

Thank you for your participation everybody.