Shattered Kingdoms

Yesterday I received some really cool RP tells from someone who wasn't named and had an unusually complicated short desc, like one that didn't follow the typical adjective sex race thing. I actually also thought it was weird that the tell wasn't sent by name, which is how tells usually work, right? For various reasons boiling down to I lost the desc and had my reply stolen by other tells, I was unable to reply later on.

Anyway, I was wondering what I should do in a case like this.

Also, just in case that person browses the forums, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to not reply!

There's a couple of explanations for why you would have received a desc tell instead of a named tell. The first is due to a certain cabal ability that can't be named on the forums. The second is from an imm forcing a NPC to send tells. If it was just a single tell and not a conversation, it might also be due to a charm or domination spell, but I'm getting the impression this wasn't a one-off but rather a back-and-forth.

In the first case, you can't really do anything. In the second case, sending up an ooc pray sometimes nets you a response.

The only way to respond to tells from an NPC (non player character) is with the reply command. This is also true for people who are invisible or ghosts, if you don't have the proper detections up.
Generally, you'll recieve a tell in 1 of 3 formats:

<character name> Even if you haven't met them before, you will almost always recieve tells with the character's name, followed by the message.

<Someone> Literally "someone". You'll recieve this if you can't sense them on the who list. A few things can cause this, but ultimately, what it comes down to is if you would be able to see them if you were in the same room as them. If they're invisible (and you don't have "detect invis", if you're blind (or much more common, have dirt kicked in your eyes), if they're a ghost (and not manifested), or if they're in a dark room without a glowing object, and you don't have infrared vision.

<Davynn the inkeeper (or any other NPC's name)> This means that an NPC is sending you a tell. The most likely reason is an Immortal (the people who run the game) is possessing it, and having a bit of fun.

Also, if you get an NPC tell that you need to respond to but have, in the interim, received a tell from another PC, you'll no longer be able to reply.

If you're pretty sure it was an imm running the NPC, you can just stick whatever your reply would have been behind a "pray" command and that should re-engage with them.

it sounds a bit 'crude' but perhaps we could implement a system where tells coming to you from "someone" get something of a serial number.



to which you can respond with a "reply 1"

I like where Morovik is going, but let's go a bit further.

Store the last ten people that you received a tell from. Multiple someone's are kept separate.

"ltell" (for last tell) lists the last ten people you've received a tell from, and the last message from each, all of which are numbered.

reply (optional number) can then be used to reply to the specific tell on that list. reply 8 Where do you wanna meet? would reply to the 8th person on the rtell list.

reply without a number acts as it currently does.

If you literally can't sense who you are talking to (re: someone) how could you possibly know where to direct your mental communication?

By implementing a voice adjective system! Then you would get "A gravelly male voice tells you". At the very least instead of someone, at least make it "A feminine voice tells you" or "A masculine voice tells you".

The fact remains that the tell command requires you to be able to sense the body of the person to whom you're talking. Reply is like a generous gift in itself.

I think tell/reply are fine.

I'm pretty much in agreement that the tell/reply system is fine, but a voice adj addition would be a nice touch.