What's the deal with freemoting?

You're right- it is a useful tool for enhancing roleplay, but I think it's been misused. Lately, I've seen it used to convey OOC thoughts or used in a way that doesn't enhance or relate to roleplay at all, which wasn't the purpose of the freemoting command. I'm not staff, so I can't for sure say this is the reason, but if it is, I get it. 

That said, I'm excited for the opportunity to use pets and children props more easily! Sometimes, it's hard to incorporate them into scenes. Excited!

The parser system we have had always been the pride and joy of the Skotos games and is one of the major selling points of the proprietary software that we use. In fact, we have so many hundreds of thousands of verb and adverb combinations that we have actually broken the system on occasion! 

In an effort to maintain consistency, and yes, to a small degree, avoid the OOC use of this IC tool, we have decided to disable the command. 

I encourage you to try the @verb and @adverb commands to explore the breadth of options available to you to convey the thoughts and actions of your characters. You will be amazed at the amount of unique combinations that are there! 

What's wrong with freemoting being used to make out of character jokes sometimes? I've seen people do that and I've done it sometimes and it's hilarious. It helps build out of character cameraderie between players. And jokes aside, freemoting can also be used as a way to let other players know if certain kinds of rp are making certain players uncomfortable, while being less blunt and immersion breaking than switching to OOC talking. But people also use it extremely effectively to role-play in character all the time, and I feel sure that the game is really going to suffer if freemoting is disabled.

Just to throw my two cents onto the pile...

I love this! For over a decade, I have played several Skotos games that did not allow freemoting and for me, it was a more immersive experience. I love Allegory but as a player, what I find lacking most is a bigger divide between IC and OOC communication (@chat and @ooc have their uses but at least I have the option to turn them off if the chatter becomes too distracting). One of my biggest peeves was when freemoting was used to cross the IC/OOC divide. Sure it's cute and funny once in awhile but more often than not when used, freemoting distracts from the scene more than it adds to it. That's just my observation though.

I know it is probably frustrating for people who use the command extensively but try to think of it as a fun challenge to sharpen those parser skills.

I'll entirely admit that I've misused freemoting to make meta jokes and quips here and there. I'd like to apologize if that's ever hurt anyone's immersion within the game world. Though I do personally feel the command is very useful and players should be dealt with on a case by case basis if the abuse of such is harming the play experience of others, I respect the wishes of staff to remove it to focus on the parser system exclusively. I do feel personally responsible for my abuse of the system though, so I'd also like to apologize to the player base for being one of the players who made this an issue. <3 Good gaming everyone have fun <3

@margrat_maclean

Personally, I find it disruptive to roleplay and have rarely found it that funny. In fact, I hated it. Yes, everyone is guilty of misusing it, but that doesn't mean we should keep it. Most Skotos games didn't have freemoting and they did just fine without it. I've seen freemoting used as a tool to be unkind to other players, as well.  It's always been a tool that has been abused. And I think saying that you think the game will suffer for it is a bit of an inflammatory statement. Instead of drawing on the negatives of it, it gives us an opportunity to be more creative with the parser and to expand our ability as roleplayers.

@Samir- I agree with every word. 100%

@ava

We're all guilty of misusing it. I'm 1000% sure that you weren't the deciding factor for their decision to remove it, so don't feel bad. <3