So, I'm not sure if this is the right place to talk about this so please inform me if it isn't, i'll move it over elsewhere. Now onto the topic itself, I wanna talk about the whole text colour changing function on this site. I haven't seen many people use it (or maybe i haven't looked in the right places) but it can be very useful when you think about it.
I mostly made this post to talk about how I personally use the function of changing text colours and seeing how other people use it, to both help people better their rp posts in a certain way and to improve my own posts while doing so.
From the tiny bit of experimention i've done i've mostly found two ways to use the text colour changing to full effect.
The first is:
Now that's all well and good but i think I should discuss the second one now, that just so happens to be:
Okay, i've written more than i thought i would, this has become too long already so i'll leave this here, please let me know your thoughts and opnions of the matter and of any other ways that these function could become helpful in terms of roleplay.
I mostly made this post to talk about how I personally use the function of changing text colours and seeing how other people use it, to both help people better their rp posts in a certain way and to improve my own posts while doing so.
From the tiny bit of experimention i've done i've mostly found two ways to use the text colour changing to full effect.
The first is:
dialogue separation
I think we all have certain NPCs in some of our rps that don't have character slots, and that's fine and all but sometimes the dialogue gets abit muddled when two characters are speaking in the same message. I've found that it's easier to differentiate between the dialogues of two different characters if each of them is assigned a separate colour for their speech.
The problem becomes when each character has more dialogue in a paragraph than the narration, in those moments i find that it becomes abit too colourful, another problem is the hassle of finding the right colour or copy and pasting the Hex codes for the colour you want in.
This might just be me being picky and giving myself the extra work of assigning the colours though so let me know what you think.
The problem becomes when each character has more dialogue in a paragraph than the narration, in those moments i find that it becomes abit too colourful, another problem is the hassle of finding the right colour or copy and pasting the Hex codes for the colour you want in.
This might just be me being picky and giving myself the extra work of assigning the colours though so let me know what you think.
Now that's all well and good but i think I should discuss the second one now, that just so happens to be:
Emphasis
Now hear me out, you might be thinking 'we already have Italics and bold for emphasis' and that's true, those two can be quite good for emphasising words and semtences quite well, but they also have other functionalities and in my opinion the way that they emphasise words are different, such as, Italics are more calm and have a more elegant way of giving the words meaning, bold is a bit more harsh and aggressive.
But this is where colours come in. Depending on the colour you choose to use the word can have a more threatening impact or a more reassuring one, it can be dark and brooding or light and bubbly. Colours often make the emphasis that are already in place using italics and bold alot better and make them more clear too, makes the tone alot clearer when otherwise it would be alot more vague.
The cons of this system is that while most of the time, italics and bold do a good job at emphasis in general, colour only really works in speech and dialogue, the change of colour in text while narrating doesn't look as good and anyway the colours don't always improve the emphasis at all.
But this is where colours come in. Depending on the colour you choose to use the word can have a more threatening impact or a more reassuring one, it can be dark and brooding or light and bubbly. Colours often make the emphasis that are already in place using italics and bold alot better and make them more clear too, makes the tone alot clearer when otherwise it would be alot more vague.
for example
Let's take a line that my character said recently
"Y'know darling, my kind like to chase our prey"
Under the right context this would seem like a threat, and even if the context were correct it wouldn't really seem that way unless the reader understood the tone correctly. Now let's see the with colour and emphasis
"Y'know darling, my kind like to chase our prey"
Now if you look at that, under the right context there would be no way too misinterpret the tone and the threat in the line. Both the colour and the emphasis set the tone in which the line is spoken and how the character speaks it.
"Y'know darling, my kind like to chase our prey"
Under the right context this would seem like a threat, and even if the context were correct it wouldn't really seem that way unless the reader understood the tone correctly. Now let's see the with colour and emphasis
"Y'know darling, my kind like to chase our prey"
Now if you look at that, under the right context there would be no way too misinterpret the tone and the threat in the line. Both the colour and the emphasis set the tone in which the line is spoken and how the character speaks it.
The cons of this system is that while most of the time, italics and bold do a good job at emphasis in general, colour only really works in speech and dialogue, the change of colour in text while narrating doesn't look as good and anyway the colours don't always improve the emphasis at all.
Okay, i've written more than i thought i would, this has become too long already so i'll leave this here, please let me know your thoughts and opnions of the matter and of any other ways that these function could become helpful in terms of roleplay.
Agreed that it has its place. I personally like using it to color code dialogue. Helps make posts easier to read in the same way quotation marks do, but better because you can't easily spot quotation marks without first reading the post. However, I've noticed that whenever I try to use color codes here, they just get removed when I actually post, even though they're visible in the editor/preview.
Dialogue separation isn't a problem if you're careful with speaker tags and the placement of the speakers themselves, only have them say what they actually need to say and not fluff. After all, most published fiction in stores never make use of colour at all, it's all plain black text.
I use colour codes incredibly sparingly, usually when a character is speaking in an undeniably changed state like using powerful magic way beyond their means and not all the time. It's like a neon beacon if, after 80 posts of build up, I make the villain of the RP utter the words of a forbidden spell that will raise an army of dead in red. That's when the beat drops. You know sh**'s going down.
Words by themselves are subject to interpretation, the room I imagine two RP characters in probably looks way different to how my partner sees it, but the colour of words bypasses all of that and hits you in the eyes.
So yeah TL;DR I use colour codes to indicate my SUPER SAIYAN MODE CHANGES /jk
It's stylisation I took from 'quest' formats which blurs the lines between text-only roleplay and something else, it's an online medium of storytelling so the use of visual tricks isn't uncommon to add another layer to the whole entertainment experience.
@Marin That doesn't sound right, I've used colour codes in the forums before and they work perfectly fine. Make sure you leave the # out of the number.
edit: With all I've said, in practice it's just highlighting one or two key words to make it look supernatural. I refer back to the first point I made, coloured text being unnecessary because you can always write your prose in a way which makes each speaker and their dialogue easy for the reader to differentiate from one another.
I use colour codes incredibly sparingly, usually when a character is speaking in an undeniably changed state like using powerful magic way beyond their means and not all the time. It's like a neon beacon if, after 80 posts of build up, I make the villain of the RP utter the words of a forbidden spell that will raise an army of dead in red. That's when the beat drops. You know sh**'s going down.
Words by themselves are subject to interpretation, the room I imagine two RP characters in probably looks way different to how my partner sees it, but the colour of words bypasses all of that and hits you in the eyes.
So yeah TL;DR I use colour codes to indicate my SUPER SAIYAN MODE CHANGES /jk
It's stylisation I took from 'quest' formats which blurs the lines between text-only roleplay and something else, it's an online medium of storytelling so the use of visual tricks isn't uncommon to add another layer to the whole entertainment experience.
@Marin That doesn't sound right, I've used colour codes in the forums before and they work perfectly fine. Make sure you leave the # out of the number.
edit: With all I've said, in practice it's just highlighting one or two key words to make it look supernatural. I refer back to the first point I made, coloured text being unnecessary because you can always write your prose in a way which makes each speaker and their dialogue easy for the reader to differentiate from one another.
I would be super careful with this. Like Lucidus kind of displayed in their message, bright colors like yellow for some people like me can be a little harder to read. Unless you know for certain that bright, colorful letters aren't going to be a problem for your partner, I wouldn't do it. I've met people who didn't do well with bright colors in general due to sensory and neurological differences. Plenty of people have visual disorders like color-blindness that make this a problem, if not completely ineffective. Off the top of my head, I think disorders like Dyslexia can make colorful wildness a little distracting and hard, don't quote me on that. As someone with ADHD and their own near vision problem of having an eye that's just functional enough to be a problem when it decides it wants Also To See while im reading, thus giving me double vision, I wouldn't like it. Especially on a large scale every other paragraph being a different color. Especially bright colors that just dont constant well enough with the default RPR theme to be easily read, and I doubt I'm the only one whose not going to change themes over a rp that's giving me trouble. In fact, I imagine a lot of colors don't work with each theme just because of contrasting issues making them a little harder to read and that's a whole lot of bother switching between themes to see which one makes the RP readable.
However, some people might find it easier of course. My dyslexic teacher uses a *solid* blue comic sans in her emails and I imagine it makes it easier for her to read. Every serious online test I've ever taken as had the option to change background and/or text colors. The visual differences might make it more interesting and there for easier and funner to read for some people. But, unless you're certain it won't cause problems for your partner, or make your writing style clear enough on the get-go so people it wouldn't work for would know to avoid it, I would avoid this.
Tl;DR -- It might make your writing genuinely less accessible for a very broad group of people. Bright colors also just don't contrast well to be easily read with RPR's default brown theme, and other colors probably wouldn't contrast with the site's other themes. Some people might benefit, but I would generally advise against, especially on a large scale "every time a different character speaks" level.
However, some people might find it easier of course. My dyslexic teacher uses a *solid* blue comic sans in her emails and I imagine it makes it easier for her to read. Every serious online test I've ever taken as had the option to change background and/or text colors. The visual differences might make it more interesting and there for easier and funner to read for some people. But, unless you're certain it won't cause problems for your partner, or make your writing style clear enough on the get-go so people it wouldn't work for would know to avoid it, I would avoid this.
Tl;DR -- It might make your writing genuinely less accessible for a very broad group of people. Bright colors also just don't contrast well to be easily read with RPR's default brown theme, and other colors probably wouldn't contrast with the site's other themes. Some people might benefit, but I would generally advise against, especially on a large scale "every time a different character speaks" level.
Interesting.
I myself don’t think colouring adds that much to emphasis but I’m a bit old school. Like Meja said, different colours can be harder to read. I myself prefer italics, proper punctuation, and a line break between paragraphs than a colourful presentation
I myself don’t think colouring adds that much to emphasis but I’m a bit old school. Like Meja said, different colours can be harder to read. I myself prefer italics, proper punctuation, and a line break between paragraphs than a colourful presentation
This is interesting
I personally never really considered using it as a way to represent the dialogue of NPC's. Then again I never really used many so this might be why. Still, I can see how this would be very beneficial and I'd like to thank you for this amazing idea that I'll likely end up using at some point in the future. As for too much color due to dialogue being longer than narrative, I don't think I've personally ran into a lot of the posts that had that. I fear that I might be one of the people who's narrative is always lengthy regardless of the amount of dialogue I put in my post. It might be a good solution to only color the narrative of the NPC/NPC's that do not have an official character page on here? Just throwing that idea out there.
As for the second way you use color in your roleplay, I don't see the need for that in my personal experiences. Whether or not something in dialogue reads a certain way will always be made clear by context (at the very least in my own posts) and I've always found them to be rather clear in other people's posts as well. It's likely just my personal view but I'd find it distracting if anything. After all, whether or not something in dialogue is taken a certain way is usually not depending on me as a player but on my character and their overall experience with the character of someone else. By things being colored a certain way, I'd feel pushed to make my character take it that way while true to their nature, they would not. Just my two cents of course but I do thank you for telling us about this. I think to a lot of people, it could be helpful.
I personally never really considered using it as a way to represent the dialogue of NPC's. Then again I never really used many so this might be why. Still, I can see how this would be very beneficial and I'd like to thank you for this amazing idea that I'll likely end up using at some point in the future. As for too much color due to dialogue being longer than narrative, I don't think I've personally ran into a lot of the posts that had that. I fear that I might be one of the people who's narrative is always lengthy regardless of the amount of dialogue I put in my post. It might be a good solution to only color the narrative of the NPC/NPC's that do not have an official character page on here? Just throwing that idea out there.
As for the second way you use color in your roleplay, I don't see the need for that in my personal experiences. Whether or not something in dialogue reads a certain way will always be made clear by context (at the very least in my own posts) and I've always found them to be rather clear in other people's posts as well. It's likely just my personal view but I'd find it distracting if anything. After all, whether or not something in dialogue is taken a certain way is usually not depending on me as a player but on my character and their overall experience with the character of someone else. By things being colored a certain way, I'd feel pushed to make my character take it that way while true to their nature, they would not. Just my two cents of course but I do thank you for telling us about this. I think to a lot of people, it could be helpful.
I used to use color changes to indicate dialogue. Then I realized through OoC conversations and various mishaps over the years that people just used it as an excuse to skip the rest of my posts and miss vital non-verbal interactions... Needless to say; I don't do that anymore. It's nice from a stylized standpoint but it can ruin a good RP.
I see this pretty often on other sites and I used to hate it because it really did seem to imply that the dialogue was the most informative part of the post, highlighting it for easy reference back and making it hard even for someone who likes reading the exposition to not skip over it. I kinda got used to that culture though and picked it up for my group rps.
I think color coding all of your characters in a game where you run A LOT can make everything a lot neater. Just doing the dialogue is less overwhelming and does make the posts look pretty. It's not as useful on this site though where you can post from each character rather than a singular account where all five of your characters are responding at once.
I think color coding all of your characters in a game where you run A LOT can make everything a lot neater. Just doing the dialogue is less overwhelming and does make the posts look pretty. It's not as useful on this site though where you can post from each character rather than a singular account where all five of your characters are responding at once.
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