Communication

Talking in a room, private messages, the channel system, languages, mail and notice boards.

Speech in Rogue has three ranges: what is heard in the room you stand in, what carries to the rooms around it, and what reaches players anywhere through a channel. Private messages, mail and notice boards sit alongside them.

Speaking in a Room#

say <message> speaks aloud to everyone present, and say to <player> <message> makes it clear who you are addressing. NPCs in the room may answer what you say. 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. A semicolon does the same in one keystroke: ;smiles warmly. If the message begins with an apostrophe no space is inserted, which is how emote 's eyes glow. reads correctly. Your own copy shows "You" in place of your name. You need at least a point of stamina to emote, though emoting spends none of it.

There are a couple of hundred stock emotes, each a single word. lol shows the room that you laugh out loud, and lol <someone> aims it at a person standing with you, who sees their own version of the line. Anything else you type after an emote is added to it, so lol that was great reads "laughs out loud that was great!" emotes lists them, emotes <prefix> narrows the list, and help <emote> shows what one prints. racialemotes lists the extra emotes your race has. Many townsfolk answer a bow, a wave or a thank you. The same emotes work on channels and in tells: chat ;lol, chat ;lol <player> for anyone who is online, and tell <player> ;lol.

When the line should not start with your name there are four more commands, all seen only by the room you are in:

• pmote hand rests on the hilt. starts with your name as an owner.
• omote Leaning on the bar, ; sighs. puts your name where the semicolon is.
• tmote <someone> ; nods to -. is about you and one other person in the room, who reads "you" where the - stands.
• premote prints the whole line exactly as you write it. It must include your name.

whisper to <player> <message> speaks privately to someone in the same room. Others present can see that you whispered but not what you said.

Speech arrives in the listener's colors and is wrapped to the listener's screen width, not the speaker's. speakcolor <color> sets the color in which you receive say and whisper, and screen <width> <height> sets the width your text is wrapped to.

Carrying Further#

yell <message> reaches your own room and every room adjoining it. Everyone with you hears you by name; listeners a room away hear only that someone of your race and gender yelled.

shout <message> carries into every room within two of yours. 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. hist tell reads back your recent tells.

earmuff <name> stops a player's tells, talk and channel messages reaching you, without telling them; unmuff <name> hears them again, and earmuff alone lists whom you have muffled.

Introductions#

You see other players by a description such as "a tall elf" until they introduce themselves. introduce to <player> gives them your name, introduce to <player> as <name> gives a name of your choosing, and introduce all introduces you to everyone in the room who does not know you yet. You can only introduce yourself to someone in the same room, and not while disguised. introduce list shows everyone you know. Death wipes every introduction you have received.

Channels#

A channel 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. Put a colon or semicolon straight in front of an action to emote on a channel: chat :waves.

hist also reads back your own record of other speech: hist say, hist tell, hist whisper, hist yell, hist shout and hist clan.

The Channels#

chat is for friendly conversation about anything but the game. Every player has it from their first login. Do not discuss game mechanics, stats, levels, XP, builds, gear, quests, progress or roleplay events there.

mechanics is for focused questions and answers about how the game works, such as "What does strength affect?" or "How does blocking work?" Keep it on topic. Do not announce or compare personal levels, XP, gains or achievements, or ask what level other players are. Every player has it.

newbie is for new players' questions and help, and every player has it too.

Each guild has a private channel named after it, heard only by its members: explorer for those who have not joined a guild yet, then warrior, mage, thief, rogue, healer, necromancer, ranger, bard, assassin, psion, merchant, templar and diplomat. The guild's name on its own, with no message, shows which members are online. Clerics and paladins have no guild channel. 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.

Each city has a channel for in character talk, heard only by its citizens: aurin, olympus and morrigan. See Cities and Citizenship.

Clans and groups each have a private line of their own, reached with clan <message> and group <message>. Speaking on the clan channel needs the speak permission at your rank. See Clans and Groups.

death, connections and announce are system channels that carry messages from the game, not from players. Everyone is given them, and like any other channel they can be silenced with tune <channel> or channels off. announce carries realm news: oaths sworn, milestones reached, guild upheavals, notable deaths and world events. announcements shows the staff's announcements that you have not read, and announcements realm shows the most recent realm news.

Some of the realm's news also arrives as a short banner: players coming online, deaths, bosses killed, Colosseum victories, merchants' cries and clan challenges. settings announce lists them, and settings announce <kind> off turns one kind off.

Controlling What You Send and See#

gag on stops you speaking on any channel, which helps when you are hiding, playing a stealthy character, or want to avoid speaking on the wrong channel by mistake. gag off lifts it. A thief's Gag skill, used on someone else, is a different thing; see the thief's own help.

chancolors off shows channel messages without their colors, and chancolors on brings the colors back. cursefilter hides some common swearing from what you read.

Channel Etiquette#

Be kind, welcoming and respectful. Do not antagonize, bait, belittle or attack other players. Hostile tirades, explosive rants, harassment and repeated provocation are not acceptable. Disagree calmly and follow staff requests to stop or move a conversation. Spamming or flooding is not tolerated, and hate speech will result in disciplinary action. Do not swear on public out of character channels.

Chat is for conversation about anything but the game. Mechanics is for focused questions and answers about game systems. Personal levels, XP, progress and general game chatter belong in the appropriate Discord channels when they are available. Their names and purposes will be announced when created. Until then, keep that talk off the public channels in the game. A Discord channel linked to Chat in the game follows the same rules.

Keep spoilers off the main Discord channels. Until a dedicated spoiler channel is announced, share spoilers only in private groups. See help rules and help channels for the full policy.

Languages#

say and shout are understood by everyone. yell and speak are spoken in a language: Common, which every character speaks, unless you choose another. speak in <language> changes the language you speak by default, and speak in <language> <message> uses one for a single line. Someone who does not know the language you use hears your words garbled.

Racial Speech#

Every playable race also has a tongue of its own, and rsay speaks it. It works 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 fourteen of these, one for each playable race, and none of them is shared. race names yours alongside your other racial abilities. Racial speech shows in plain text unless you pick a color for it in settings colors.

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 is the exception that catches people out. 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: 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.

Mail#

mail opens your inbox from anywhere. mail <player> begins composing a message to that player. To finish writing, enter a single period on a blank line and press return.

Boards#

The guild halls keep notice boards for their members. Stand in the room with one and look board to see the notices it holds.

Writing ends the same way mail does, with a single period on a blank line; ~q throws the notice away.

Related Systems#

• Cities and Citizenship for the city channels.
• Clans for the private clan channel and herald announcements.
• Religion for the faith channels.
• Groups for party chat.