Turns in Group Scenes

[Starstarfish]

Turns are worked into the combat code, and I think that's great and fair and gives everyone a chance to do their thing in a high stress situation.

What's the possibility that there's some way to code a similar thing to opt in to for big scenes? I've been in a few large scenes where at a certain point, things seem to literally end up at a dead stop because you get lost or don't know whose turn it should be and can't figure out in a room with a bunch of retainers who is or isn't going to pose. And then ... no one does.

It's further complicated if some people are in combat and thus on a set turn system and then others aren't.

Would there be a way for this to work?

[Rabek]

In my experience, turns just really don't work in large scenes. A single round of turns can end up taking close to an hour. It gets worse if one person is IAW or something. And people are more likely to go IAW if they have to wait for an hour of emotes from people they aren't even interacting with directly in a big scene.

A good rule of thumb we could adopt instead is the three pose rule (common on MUSHs), where you can just take your turn as long as three other people have gone since your last emote. It keeps things moving without bogging things down with a strict turn order.

[Gerolf]

I would just add as an Addendum to Rabek's rule, unless you are engaged with another person, then give them a chance to respond before assuming that they are ignoring you.

Also if it is a really busy scene (8+) consider using the join command to limit your interactions and emotes to the broader room

[Starstarfish]

TI has a policy that when a player uses the 'turns' command,
turn-taking becomes enforced. Players may request turn-taking for any
reason, but once turn-taking has been requested, all players in the room
are expected to take turns until the player who requested it leaves.

The difficulty is that current stated policy as per the help turns helpfile is that once any person in a room requests turns and flags it (IE - each person takes one turn in order, arguably though that might need definition - what defines turns) that everyone else in the room by the current stated rules must follow such There is as stated no expectation on timing between rounds (versus say the coded combat setting it at 5 minutes) or what happens if the person who requested turns doesn't leave but goes AFK/IAW (is turns still in effect?).

Ultimately, I'm fine with whatever as a community is decided, but the rules/policy and practice and people's feelings on it seem to be not exactly all lining up from what I can tell from some of the bigger scenes I've been in. So perhaps just a review or clarification of the current policy helpfile?

[Rabek]

I think that policy was put into place before the Places code anyway, so it probably needs reviewed. Places makes it an even more difficult policy to follow.