Dialogue

Gemcode: Amethyst

Dialogue is the process of character-to-character communication. This is done either as a player acting in-character with another player; or it is done as a player interacting with a director or storyline editor who is acting in the capacity of a particular character for purposes of the dialogue. Dialogue is always sent however to the storyline editor responsible for overseeing the conversation for review and possible editing. That editor will then forward the dialogue to the recipient. Players can never be sure then if Amethyst messages originate from a player, director, or storyline editor. In practice, the origin should make no difference. Players should concentrate on character interaction and not on the person driving the character.

Dialogue should focus on the actual spoken word, plus any minimal visual or flavor text that either the player or director sees as necessary to help the flow of communication. To speed communication and game flow, players and directors should refrain from fictionalizing the dialogue to any great degree until its conclusion. Then players and directors responsible for fictionalization should recast the dialogue in complete form but with the addition of fictional elements that help place the speech into story context from their character's perspective. This could include but is certainly not limited to adding insight, perspective, mood, reflection, and observation.

Dialogue is indicated by an Amethyst gemcode. The subject matter of e-mail with dialogue should follow the following format: Amethyst/name of character speaking/name of character(s) being spoken to. Example: Amethyst/Emma/Mr. Knightly. In the previous example, anyone looking at their in-box could see at a glance that this is an amethyst gemcoded e-mail from Emma to Mr. Knightly. Players and directors should refrain from simply hitting a reply button and sending the reply with the subject stating: Re:Amethyst/Emma/Mr. Knightly; this last example misstates who is speaking to whom. It only takes an extra moment to relabel the subject header and this is time well spent since it helps directors and storyline editors keep track of dialogue flow. To help maintain context, the last few words of the preceeding dialogue should be included.

Contrary to earlier versions of the Santa Cruz Chronicles PBeM rules, Amethyst coded e-mails are not sent directly to another player. Instead, they are sent to the storyline editor overseeing the dialogue. It is that editor's responsibility to turn the dialogue around as soon as possible in order to prevent lag in the dialogue. Lagging dialogue will tax the interest of participating players and directors and could jeopardize continuity.

Date and time placement are not necessary for dialogue unless the dialogue constitutes the entirety of action at a particular place and time in a character chronicle. Normally dialogue is assumed to be part of action already taking place. If a Timestop is announced that affects characters in dialogue, players and directors who are affected should try to conclude their dialogue as soon as is realistically possible. Check with your director or storyline editor if there are questions. Byline credit is given to whoever fictionalizes the dialogue. In some cases, this could result in different byline credits when a given conversation is fictionalized from two different perspectives.

Below is a hypothetical interchange between two players via the conduit of a storyline editor charged with overseeing the dialogue. We will call the players Adam and Brenda. The editor's name will be Charlie. We will abbreviate these as: A, B, and C.

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Heathcliff (played by Adam) encounters Cathy. A decides that Heathcliff will initiate conversation and sends an e-mail to Cathy's character via the governing director, Charlie.

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Charlie decides to add a small embellishment to the message to help Brenda when it comes time to fictionalize this dialogue from Cathy's perspective. This is what he sends to Brenda.

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Brenda writes her response for Cathy and Charlie sends it verbatim. Note that Brenda has followed form an include the trailing line of the previous message. It seems superfluous and is. But in the cases of more complex interchange, this is very helpful in keeping continuity, especially for directors and storytellers, as well as players tracking multiple dialogue.

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A to B.

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B to A.

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A to B.

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B to A.

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Mischievous C rolls for both characters and determines that they both botch horribly on running and dexterity. He relates the following to both players:

As Heathcliff runs forward, he trips on a thick tuft of heather and instead of embracing Cathy in his arms, falls forward, his broad shouldered weight nearly crushing the poor girl as he falls upon her. She in turn, trying to keep her balance, reaches out for anything to steady her; but as there is nothing to grasp, she manages only to poke Heathcliff sharply in one eye with one of her fingers. They land together on the heather with a thud, Heathcliff's weight nearly crushing poor Cathy, who finds herself immobilized with a small stone pressing most uncomfortably into the small of her back. Meanwhile Heathcliff ignores Cathy's distress as he is preoccupied by the steady bleeding out of one blinded eye.

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A to B.

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B to A.

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A to B.

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B to A.

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And so forth, with apologies to Ms. Bronte.