Thoughtfully thinking too many thoughtful thoughts?

[TwistedAkai]

I love think. Recent MUD-hopping through various RPIs has taught me to think and made me love to think. But until CLOK, it was never a tool for poking GMs (usually another command for that, like pray). Encountering this just as I'm really getting into the idea of thinking my characters thoughts, I find myself wondering... When is it a good time to think? When is it a bad time to think? Am I thinking too much?

Typically, any time my character has a particularly strong thought or feeling is when I've tried to use it elsewhere. Anything from fear to excessive joy to seething anger. The sort of things you might say to yourself when no one's looking. This gives GMs insight to the motivations of a character, generally helping things run smoother, and possibly even ending an investigation before it's begun.

Here, though, it looks like the expectation is more along the lines of what I would expect from Pray. When you're particularly hopeful for something to happen, or actually praying to a divine/demon/etc. Having personally been at the mercy of players with a pray button, I can see why this might be preferred.

I've been trying to find a happy medium while RPing a more reserved character (by my standards, at least!), but I'd like to know the thoughts of players and GMs alike on this.

[Lysse]

I usually use thoughts for two things. I use it to try to attract the attention of GMs for IC purposes, such as for animating a mob or simply letting them know I've done something that requires GM attention to actually be taken care of at some point.

Secondly, I use think when Lysse is feeling any particularly strong emotions that are tied to IC events. So, if there's a lot of overlogging being done, if someone attacks the Hyra, or does something to Dwaedn Vil. Or even if something particularly good happens, such as a successful raid or a particularly special trade. I try to limit these, since I don't like the idea of spamming the GMs. But I do them every once in a while, so the GMs have an idea of what my character is about, and what goes on through her head.

[Rithiel]

Different players use it for different things. There are some that only use it for things like "I wonder if NPC X will be willing to talk." Others use it as a way of helping themselves imagine their character or be in character. It's pretty clear to us the differences, and it's not that spammy (we spam ourselves with way more information than players could). It is an IC command, so use it IC as you see fit.

[Rias]

And honestly, if you want to request a GM's attention or assistance with something IC, you should use the request command. This may be just me, but I get kind of irked by the "I wonder if Guard Joe has a minute to talk" thoughts. If you want to talk to Guard Joe, do something like: request I would like to interact with Guard Joe for a minute if a GM is available

Think is more for just thinking what your character would think as things are going on. GMs have the ability to see this because it can clue us in to look at what's going on and possibly get involved, or just observe the roleplay. For instance, if I see someone thinking, "I can't believe this is happening!" or "What in the world could have caused that?" or "This is going to really screw up my plans" or something, I'm going to peek in and see what's going on that caused the person to think that (and maybe peek at the logs too, to catch up on any context I may have missed up to that point). So think should be more natural and flowing with how your character is feeling and what's going on around them, not a GM-attention-getter. We don't mind PCs trying to get our attention for special circumstances, I just prefer players use the request command for a flat-out request, rather than just thinking "I want this/I hope this will happen/I wonder if this is possible".

Sorry if that sounds a little grumpy or nitpicky on my part, just giving my honest feelings on the subject.

But yeah, feel free to think things often, as long as it's not constant irrelevant/mundane stuff like "the sky sure is pretty" or "I think I'll buy some red shoes" or whatever.

[Makkah]

I honestly didn't even know about request. That's awesome.