No, there are no standardized uses on the site as a whole.  Some GMs have their own preferences that they institute across games, some request that their players not use colored text, and some let their players do what they will.


It's been my experience that most people try to coordinate their colors in game if they use colored speech, unless the GM decrees something.  For instance, if Player 1 uses 'blue', player 2 may use 'red' and player 3 may use 'green' but that's up to them and their GM.




I've never seen it used that way, but there's no reason it couldn't be.

I think this is a reflection of 'orange' being the color of system messages and moderator messages, but I could be wrong about that.



Color is used however the GM's / players want.  Could it be used more effectively -- certainly, but not without sacrificing the freedom of GMs and players to play the way they want.  That would go against the spirit of RPoL, so I do not expect it ever to be implemented, no matter how effective it might seem.



This is personal preference.  Based on what I've seen, though, past tense third person seems to be the most popular.

I'd rank it (just based on my own observations) as:

past tense, third person
present tense, third person
present tense, first person
past tense, first person

Everybody probably has their own preference for when it comes to color usage. It probably has to do with how you get started on the board, as I use orange for OOCs notes within a game thread, but don't remember where I picked that up from.

I used to use purple for the default spoken color for NPCs, until someone decided to use it for their character. I've switched to coral now.

I don't usually put thoughts in color for a character, unless those thoughts are a telepathic communication. Thoughts should be italicized, and telepathic communication preceded and ended with ~ or ~~. While this system isn't universal, online gaming has been going on for so long now that other people have figured out a way to be consistent and make sense.

Another trick I've considered over the years is add the name of the color to NPC's Tag so that I can 'remember' it. Or select a color for his speech and the color of his eyes.

Anyway, I prefer using colors for speech, as it makes the post easier to read.


The problem with tense is that you can really have more than one within the same sentence, depending on context. Not to mention when you use dialog. I bounce between them, switching to 'you go' as if I'm talking to the player/character in person. The main reason is that English just doesn't have all the mixed tenses that come into play.

Personal preference only:

• Orange for OOC within IC threads (including copy and pasted dice rolls).
  • I do have one player who generally uses no color for this, but I don't mind making the exception.
• Spoken IC text in whatever color a player chooses (including if they choose to switch it up according to language or even mood, as you mentioned). I'm happy for their creativity.
• Exception: No red text. It tends to trigger migraines for me when viewed on a screen (computer or TV), though more in contrast to a dark background than light. No red is easier on my head. Other colors in the red spectrum don't bother me: Rose, Pink, and Royalred.
• I use and request past tense in my game.

Sometimes, as a boost to colored (spoken) text, I tend to use smallcaps (in lieu of red) to show anger or a raised voice.

Ya, OOC = Orange is pretty standard.

Seems that if there is going to be chosen colored text that the DM usually reserves Red or Blue for NPC's

Past tense 3rd person really is the default but I don't think most people could define what either of those things mean and just use them on instinct.

Seen some games that use colors for different languages. But it seems silly, players can barely keep track of what they are capable of hearing let alone what they actually understand based on something as easily overlooked as color.

I demand colored text in my games because I have a hard time picking out where people switch from emote to speech. Seems like people are more likely to notice they forgot a </blue> than they are to notice they forgot an quote mark.

Yellow is BS. Wait what?! when did they fix yellow? and why is it identical to Goldenrod?

Now watch as all the people with non-white backgrounds laugh.

Yellow
Goldenrod

Not quite identical.  Goldenrod is slightly darker.

I use orange for OOC text within IC threads because it's the closest match to the text color for PLs. So if you're scrolling through past threads, it's easier to skip past all OOC together that way.

I specify that people use brown text for anything quoted in an IC thread (instead of using the default quote box). This doesn't come up very often though.

I don't use colored text for dialogue, but I don't decree anything of my players. Some use colored text and some don't.

I default to posting in third person present tense. As a GM, I try to post in the same tense as whatever the player is using (or majority of players if there's more than one).

For the first several years I played on here, I didn't use colored speech at all.  Then I got in a game where the GM had specific rules about the use of colored text (different colors for different types of communication...spoken/thought/OOC/etc etc etc)  I honestly had never even thought about it up until that point...and the game didn't last long at all (don't remember if the GM gave up on it or if so many players dropped out that he let it go...and I do think the stringent requirements on formatting posts may have had something to do with it.  I just know, one day posts were getting responses, and the next day they weren't...and never did, for as long as I stuck with the game.)

Most games I'm in now encourage, but don't require, players to use a color for dialogue, and using unique colors is highly encouraged...if I'm blue, it's kind of expected that nobody else use blue (but they can use darkblue...).  And, yes, it does make it easy to keep track of spoken dialogue, which is a factor in at least one of the games, as one player has a learning disability and loses track of text when it's more than three or four lines of the same color.

A game I'm in, as well as the game I run, also use specific colors for NPCs, which makes it easier for players to keep track of which NPC is talking when you post conversation fragments with more than one person talking (yeah, I could write individual posts for each NPC and remove that particular problem...but it makes the game flow feel faster when the ground is covered in a single post.)  Which colors I use are entirely up to me, although I have been trying more and more to settle on certain colors assigned to certain NPCs (as opposed to just making sure that whatever color I'm using isn't the same as the PCs involved in the same scene...)

As for my use of tense...I pretty much always compose my in-game posts in third person/past tense.  It's the way most novels I've read are written, the way most stories I've written are written...no, it's not the way I would phrase it if we were playing a tabletop game, but then again, we're not playing a tabletop game.  Different media require different presentations for optimal results, I believe, and past tense/third person is optimal for the way I want to present my stuff in this medium.

I just remember it being a really bright yellow that was impossible to read. The difference is more noticeable when you bold the text. My sentence switched colors about half way through.

I don't use colour for any IC posts - I've never understood the "put speech in a different colour" thing - if you want to show someone is talking, use speech marks. That's what they're for, and it works just fine in books :P. I find IC posts with scattered lines of different-coloured text all over the place incredibly distracting.

In the first game I joined on RPOL it was asked that players pick their own colour and use that for OOC comments in IC threads - since purple, my colour of choice, was already taken I went with dark green and have just stuck with that ever since.

When writing IC posts, I use third person present tense - if I'm playing at tabletop I'll say "I do X" so that partially carries over into my forum-based gaming (I keep the tense but use third instead of first person)...in the game I'm running I switch between third and second person but still use present tense, because that's how I would do it if I was running a tabletop game.

Nowadays I'm with most of the people in this thread: my games have players using their own colors for voices, and I use orange for OOC (didn't realize it was to coincide with system messages, though I did notice it coincided with Private Lines). Back when I started in the early/mid 2000s, OOC as orange wasn't quite as prevalent as it is now, and my games all used red instead.

I do remember one particular game where I codified color use. It was a Star Wars game, and we'd have characters speaking Basic using bold yellow (like the narrative blocks in the films), characters speaking any other language in bold blue (like subtitles in the films), Binary in monotype red (like R2's readout in Empire Strikes Back), and OOC as plain red. I don't think I've ever used standardized colors like that since then. It was a lot of fun, but nowadays I realize that with RPoL's customizable color schemes, yellow isn't as easy to read for everyone as it is for me. Also I imagine these days it would be hard to get everyone on board.

I'm pretty much in the same boat with using orange for OOC and players using whatever color they wish for spoken text (I almost always use blue, and I don't really care if someone else does, too - it's just a force of habit at this point).  As a GM, I usually use purple for NPCs, and a different color for each additional NPC in the immediate conversation.

The one thing I'll add is that red tends to get reserved for the GM's use.  Red, even more than orange, grabs attention, and I tend to use it as the GM for damage or IMMEDIATE IMPORTANT READ ME NOW things.


Eh, the "books do it" argument isn't a great one.  Books are, by and large, restricted from a lot of things that you can do in online media, but that doesn't mean that they've got the perfect formula.  Even books have evolved over time, too.  Just look at how complicated the idea of punctuating thoughts, even in books, has become.  You have one camp that says quotation marks, another camp that says italics, a third camp that says you should just merge it into the narrative with no markings, and then a roving band of science fiction writers that have to consider thought transmission that have just dumped kerosene on the others and made a bonfire of +s and ~s and all sorts of other things.

Personally, I like color around speech since it really helps to make the speech stand out from the surrounding text.  I tend to dislike thoughts in posts unless it's the kind of game where that fits (one where thought transmission is common or it's one-on-one, usually).

If you really don't like color in posts, you can always turn it off.

In reply to Sir Swindle (msg # 11):

Yes, I noticed the switch.  That's why I bolded it to make it really clear.  :p

Sadly not putting thoughts in posts tends to only have a "people are bad and they should feel bad" argument. I don't think I have ever inserted a thought into a post and not had someone react as if I had openly spoke about what I was thinking. Thought is useful, you can say that you are acting sulky all you want but putting the thoughts in words makes it a lot clearer what you are doing. Also it sort of gets some OOC discussion out of the way "My character thinks this guy is a douche bag and wants to kill him someone should step into this conversation" and other things like that make a lot more sense in a thought than in a different OOC post that isn't linked to the IC post in any way.



Unless the game is using it for something then you look like an idiot when you read someone's mind.

While we are on it. Big OOC statements in IC posts irritate me. If at anytime I feel compelled to make an IC post to the tune of "Swindle crosses his arms thoughtfully" just so I can respond to your OOC comment then something has failed. As a DM I move that crap into the OOC and delete it. I don't want to see a big block of orange anywhere but combat.

But... how would another PC know that if it were a thought?  It's much cleaner to not use thoughts and instead either go heavy on the nonverbal cues or skip straight to telling the other PCs what it looks like you're thinking (which is kind of the same thing without room for interpretation).  For instance:

"Bob clenched his fist, rolled his shoulders, and narrowed his eyes dangerously.  The bungling of his cheek clearly showed where his jaw was clenched tightly with obvious anger."

doesn't include any thoughts, but it is really clear.  Or even the more direct:

"From the way Bob is looking, he's about to deck the guy if someone else doesn't step in."

As opposed to what I've seen entirely too many times:

"Without letting any indication of it show outwardly in any way, Bob thinks, 'I'm going to deck this guy if someone doesn't step in.'"

Of the three, which one would work without another person using metagame knowledge?

I tend to let my character's inner monologue show a little bit in my posts, only because I feel it makes it easier for other players to visualize non-verbal cues (which I use a LOT).  It's usually something along the lines of 'So-and-so didn't sound enthusiastic...the plan seemed like really long odds, from his perspective, but everyone was apparently determined to try, so he set his jaw and nodded reluctantly.'

Granted, I generally compose my posts as if I was writing my character in a novel or short story, and not everyone does.  But I very consciously avoid using any sort of IC 'thought posts' as passive-aggressive commentary on other players/characters...if I post something about my characters' thoughts, it's accompanied with some kind of physical detail...and it's always about how my character feels in the moment, not about his judgment of another character.

My gaming circle tends to use either green or dark green for OOC.  I prefer using bold text for speech, although sometimes I go with other colors or none (I used bold pink once, I think, but it's often some hue of blue).

I often put thoughts in my texts and use italics to do so, but I see RPOL gaming less as improv and more as collaborative writing with dice and rules.  We do have to be careful not to respond to thoughts, but it can be a really good character development tool to really get inside someone's head and figure out how they tick.  It helps the GM understand our motivations, too, and gives them more to play with.

I do play with a PBEM GM who mandates no thoughts in posts, and that's a lot harder.  Challenging, though.  The posts end up much shorter, too, but it still maintains a good narrative structure.

My standard group has a few set rules that are similar to the ones above (and most of the games I've played in over the years come pretty close to matching them):

OOC = Orange, and never, ever in IC posts unless it's A)combat actions, or B)hidden in a PM.

Colors = Everyone gets their own individual text speech color. There is no overlap allowed. Why? Because it's super-important, when you have a scene that has a dozen characters talking, that you can immediately pick out the character talking to you by going 'All right, I'm looking for Aqua when I skim the new posts'.

Use of the 'Reply' button in posts instead of the 'Post a reply' at the bottom of the thread will get you stabbed. It looks terrible to see 'In reply to' in the middle of an IC thread. (I've seen people get kicked from games for being unable to abide by that rule.)

Past tense. Always, always past tense, because that way the minute you post you've taken an action, you've actually taken the action and other players can react accordingly.

Thoughts in posts... usually represented by italics, in speech color or otherwise, but generally discouraged because it's kind of douchey to pepper your post with a lot of stuff that other players don't know and can't react to. Detailed description of actions is encouraged over inclusion of thoughts, unless they're just the occasional sprinkling.

While we're on the subject of in-game communication protocols...

For the love of all you hold dear, don't compose a brand new PM thread every time you have a question for a player.  There's a guy in one of my games that had, at one point, fifteen PM threads with me (I'm not the GM, just another player in the game), all of which had one or maybe two posts (depending on whether or not I bothered to reply in the PM as opposed to in the game).  NONE of them, after the first, truly required their own thread.

I compare that to the GM in that same game, with whom I have a grand total of three PM threads between just the two of us...the first is my RTJ, the second was set aside when we got really close to 1000 messages, and the third is in full swing.  If I need to find something he said to me, I know it's in one of two threads...I don't have to spend an hour finding out which thread it's in (though finding which number the post in question is may take a while...)

I really appreciate GMs who create one PM thread for each player.  One good organizational method I've seen is one PM thread with the RTJ, one for advancement (CP awards, etc.), and one for all other communication.  It works great.

In a game I just started I had my Players PM me and include in the title their Caste (game is exalted) and to use that thread as the persistent PM thread.

That way the author is their character name, the title is who they are (because fantasy names are hard to track in my head int he middle of the night), and there are no extraneous threads.

I think that is the perfect set up. It's like just using the RTJ but their player name is replaced with the character name.

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 21):

Yeah; in one game I'm in; there's a fair few PM threads between the players as well as the GM; but it's only one per pair of players. It's a big game, so I have a few PM threads, as long as I know who it was that said something to me, it shouldn't take too long to find it.

How do you guys handle players that just don't know how not to keep starting new threads every time they want to say something?

Boot them, players are a dime a dozen. For most games.

Also deleting their threads and posting that they are an idiot in the thread you want them to use until they figure it out works eventually.

If you're the GM, take whatever they wrote, and quote it back to them in the main thread you want them to use along with your responses.  Delete the new thread.  Do this repeatedly and they'll get the hint.

Or boot them.

This message was deleted by the user at 15:05, Tue 06 Dec 2016.