Communication
Talking in a room, private messages, the channel system, languages and mail.
There are three ranges of speech in Rogue: what is heard in the room you stand in, what carries to other rooms, and what reaches players anywhere in the world through a channel. On top of those sit private messages, mail, and the languages that decide whether anyone understands you at all.
Speaking in a Room#
say <message> speaks aloud to everyone present, and say to <player> <message>
directs it at one person so that it is clear who is being addressed. NPCs in the
room may react to what you say through their talk and consult triggers. If you are
using the shadow skill your name is hidden and others hear only a voice from the
shadows.
emote <message> places your text directly after your name, so
emote smiles warmly. reads as your name followed by the action. If the message
begins with an apostrophe no space is inserted, which is how emote 's eyes glow.
reads correctly. You need at least a point of stamina to emote, though emoting
spends none of it. emotes lists the soul emotes available to you, and emotes <prefix>
narrows the list.
whisper to <player> <message> speaks privately to someone in the same room.
Others present can see that you whispered but not what you said.
speakcolor <color> sets the colour in which you receive spoken messages.
Carrying Further#
yell <message> reaches your own room and every room adjoining it, so it carries
one room in each direction through open exits.
shout <message> carries out of your room and into every room within two of it.
Everyone standing with you hears you by name; listeners further off hear the shout
arriving from a direction but cannot tell who made it. Beyond your own room only
players hear a shout, never the creatures between you. Being muted silences it
completely.
Private Messages#
tell <player> <message> sends a private message to another player anywhere in the
world, visible only to the two of you. reply <message> answers whoever last told
you something, and rtell <message> goes back to whoever you last told. Both save
retyping a name in the middle of a conversation.
Channels#
A channel is an out-of-character line that reaches everyone tuned to it, wherever
they are. Type the channel's name followed by your message to speak on it, so
chat hello everyone reaches every player listening to chat. tune <channel>
turns a single channel off and back on, tune on its own lists the channels you are
tuned into, and tune in and tune out switch them all at once.
channels lists the channels you hold and shows which are currently blocked.
chans and lines are the same command. channels off blocks all of them at once
and channels on restores them.
hist <channel> shows the backscroll of a channel, and hist <channel> <number>
limits how many entries you see. hist also reads back other kinds of speech, with
hist say, hist tell, hist whisper, hist yell and hist shout.
The Channels#
chat is the general conversation channel and every player has it from their first
login. gossip is an alias for the same channel.
newbie is for new player questions and help, and every player has it as well.
death, connections and announce are system channels. Everyone is given them on
login, though like any other channel they can be silenced with tune <channel> or
channels off. announce carries realm announcements: oaths sworn,
milestones reached, guild upheavals, notable deaths and world events.
announcements shows the most recent of them, each tagged with the kind of event
it marks.
Each guild class has a private channel named after the class, heard only by its
members: warrior, mage, thief, rogue, healer, necromancer, ranger,
bard, assassin, templar and diplomat among them, with explorer for those
who have not yet joined a guild. Clerics and paladins are the exception. They have
no class channel at all, because they belong to a religion and speak on their
faith's channel instead.
Each of the five faiths has its own channel, joined when you are inducted and left
when you renounce. religion <message> is the convenient way to reach it. See
Religion.
Clans and groups each have a private line of their own, reached with
clan <message> and group <message>. See Clans and
Groups.
Controlling What You Send and See#
gag on silences you on every channel, which is useful when you are hiding, playing
a stealthy character, or running several characters and want to avoid speaking on
the wrong one. gag off lifts it, and gag local on and gag remote on narrow it
to local or intermud channels.
chancolors on and chancolors off set whether channel messages reach you in
colour; chancolors on its own only prints its syntax.
Channel Etiquette#
Keep messages on topic for the channel you are using. Spamming or flooding is not tolerated, and hate speech will result in disciplinary action.
Out of character channels exist for necessary out of character talk, not for discussing the game itself. Do not swear on them, and do not discuss levels, gear, ongoing roleplay, experience or mechanics there. Some players want to immerse themselves fully in the world, and the out of character channels need to be free of spoilers and mechanical chatter for their sake. Talk shop about builds, strategies and quest solutions privately with friends.
Languages#
Every race is born to a language, and some races share one: humans and halflings both speak English, elves and shades Edhellen, dryads and fey Sylvan, catfolk and jackile Tangetto. Someone who speaks to you in a language you do not know sounds like gibberish, and improving your proficiency is what lets you understand more of it.
speak in <language> sets the language you speak by default.
speak in <language> <message> speaks a single line in that language without
changing your default, and speak <message> uses whichever language you have set,
falling back to your native one.
Racial speech#
Separately from the above, every race has a tongue of its own, and rsay
speaks it. It works exactly like say, and everyone in the room hears you, but
only your own race understands the words. Everyone else knows you have said
something and can tell roughly what it sounded like, and no more. A jackile
barks and growls, a fey chimes and twinkles, a dwarf rumbles out hard
consonants that go nowhere.
There are thirteen of these, one per playable race, and none of them is shared.
race names yours alongside your other racial abilities.
You always understand your own tongue and cannot lose it. Understanding somebody else's is possible, but it is not learned the ordinary way and it is never free.
Goblin deserves its own warning. Goblins understand each other perfectly well, but nobody else ever has. Goblins are what was left over when the fey were made, and that leftover wrongness sits in their speech: the world cannot take goblin words as words, so what reaches everyone else is obscenity, every time, whatever the goblin actually said. A goblin asking directions sounds exactly like a goblin cursing your ancestors. Goblins find this funny.
Mail#
mail opens your inbox. mail <player> begins composing a message to that player.
To finish writing, enter a single full stop on a blank line and press return.
Boards#
Notice boards stand in taverns, guild halls and other gathering places. Look at one
to see the notices it holds. Standing at a board, post <subject> writes a new
notice, read <number> reads one, followup <number> replies to it, and edit and
remove change or take down your own. Writing ends the same way mail does, with a
single full stop on a blank line.