Emote

Emoting is one of the principal vehicles of role play in Rhizome. Emotes are used to describe the physical, non-verbal actions that your character is performing. For verbal communication, see the communication section under basic commands.

To emote, simply type EMOTE <message>. Emotes default to beginning with your characters short description, unless you use a stand in character (see below).

Example:

>emote jumps up and down

You see: You jump up and down.
The room sees: The short man jumps up and down.

Rhizome uses an automatic verb conjugating system that detects common placements and forms of verbs. If you type emote jumps up and down, you will see You jump up and down while the room will see <sdesc> jumps up and down. Similarly, if you type emote jump up and down, it parses the same. This system isn't omnipotent but it does help when it comes to writing natural language that sounds correct to both the actor and those witnessing the action.

Emotes are free form and open ended, and can be open regarding sentence structure, actor's short description and pronouns, observers' short descriptions and pronouns, and objects present in the room. A full table of the syntax used to accomplish this is here:

Token          Becomes                                To the one referenced
-----          -------                                ---------------------
@              your short description                 "you" (yourself)
~keyword       their short description                "you"
~keyword's     possessive sdesc (the guard's)         "your"
^keyword       object pronoun: him/her/them/it        "you"
^keyword's     possessive: his/her/their/its          "your"
^keywordself   reflexive: himself/themselves/...      "yourself"
*keyword       subject pronoun: he/she/they/it        "you"
me, self       always you, the emote's author         -
2.keyword      second of several identical matches    -

Example: emote @ hands ~pack to ~guard, tapping ^guard's shoulder.

  The room sees:   The tall woman hands a canvas pack to the town
                   guard, tapping his shoulder.

  The guard sees:  The tall woman hands a canvas pack to you,
                   tapping your shoulder.

While emoting is intended to be fairly flexible, there are a few caveats regarding etiquette:

Firstly, you should keep your emotes believable; nothing is stopping you from describing your character as levitating off of the ground, but if you don't actually have the coded ability to do so, pretending that you can in emotes is considered in bad taste and will likely result in sanctions if it is a consistent problem.

Secondly, you should not assume how another player or NPC thinks, feels, or reacts to your emotes. You can extend your hand for a handshake, you cannot decide another player shakes your hand; you can describe your character doing something frightening, you cannot tell someone else their character is frightened by it. This is commonly referred to as PowerEmoting and is not allowed in Rhizome.