Out of Character Indicator

It would be nice if SL had a more clear way to indicate that a player is stepping out-of-character.
For example, a different color text in the chat or IM window.
...Or a different color name over the avatar's head to indicate "I'm in (or out of) character right now." (a la Everquest)

For the time being, I put out-of-character comments in parenthesis. For example:
Adz Childs: I want to go to an SL event later.
Adz Childs: I like this club!
Adz Childs: ( My coffee is ready. I'll BRB. )
Adz Childs: ( Work was a pain today. I'm glad to come on SL for a bit! )

I've seen other people refer to "my player", the person behind the screen controlling the av, in third person, as in, "My player says this game is burning a whole in his pocket." This is used to talk about things that the avatar would not normally talk about or circumstances he would not be aware of.

Also, in the case of child avs, out-of-character chat allows the player to temporarily use a vocabulary that should be beyond his little avatar's means. I realize this is a limited case, but I'm sure other players who have highly specialized or narrowly defined avatar characters would find a usefulness along the same vein.

Does anyone else feel the need for this feature? Please share your ideas. There are many directions to take this. Let's work out the details, here, and if we figure something out, I'll propose it in feature voting.

Mmmmmaybe. A large portion of SL residents don't play in character. They just play as... who they are. An optional feature like that would be handy for people who engage in RP etc, but it's probably not top priority right now.

I don't use character o.o I'm myself ;p
but isn't (...) or is easy enough to use already? Any feature added would probably need at least two or more hit on keyboard/mouse.

I made a combo HUD + Guestures set that wil let you type something like OOC Blah blah bla and have it output Your Name: [OOC: Blah, blah, blah] It also comes in handy for narration without names. If you want it, IM me.

why not just pop up a titler? imperfect but doesn't require more code and hence avoids more bugs, lag, and memory leaks..

personally have no need myself. if i even were to play in character i'd stay in character.

just my thoughts tho.

In RP-only environments like I think in some servers of WoW and Everquest they use a notation to indicate out-of-character action and speech.

But most other places are non-RP by default. SL is one of them.

In these environments I'd recommend the opposite. Since people by default in SL are not roleplaying, and typing their conversations straight, why not an "in-character" notation?

Something as simple as a dash starting the sentence will work so your example, Adz would go:

Adz Childs: -I want to go to an SL event later.
Adz Childs: -I like this club!
Adz Childs: My coffee is ready. I'll BRB.
Adz Childs: Work was a pain today. I'm glad to come on SL for a bit!

Thanks for reading my suggestion and replying.

This answers some questions.

Apparently, in SL, implied role-playing-mode only occurs in select circles. I didn't realize that because I guess I'm emersed in one of those circles. All of my friends find the need to make some kind of distinction when they are talking about RL versus character-life. But if its not something that applies to most other characters, you're absolutely right that is should not be an SL built-in feature.

Given that, I like the idea of a player-built, optional feature versus a blanket feature designed by LL. The drawback is that will not be universal. My way of indicating OOC might be unfamiliar to my new friend, and vice-versa. Oh well. I guess the best I can hope for is to check out the HUD mentioned here (thanks!), or make my own, and give it to everyone I know and encourage those in my circle to use it. To make it as universal as possible, from my perspective. I guess that's part of the charm of SL.

Thanks

I think that most roleplayers can recognize (( speak )) as OOC. A titler works great too, and another method is that there is an OOC group out there you can join that puts OOC as your title over your name. I found this works extremely well as most of the groups I've rped in require you to be in a group with the appropriate group title over your head while in character to be recognized 'in character'. Having the OOC group, I can flip between group titles which frees up my titler for other things. ^^

Although I still think for temporary OOC comments the double bracket (( should be enough )).

Me too. IC and OCC for me is the same thing. And yes, that includes the wings.

(Don't we have this already by using brackets?)

Yep.

on those situations I usually add "occ:" (withpout quotes) in the beginning of my out of character messages, perhaps just adding a diferent gesture for when an user start to type msgs with "ooc:"

pehaps produce some puppet strings when the user types out of character, or some generic human hands apear doing the "typing" motion over the avatar, or even just change the colors for msgs starting with occ: both on thje history and on the baloons

Regarding the different 'typing' gesture for OOC comments, great idea! I thought of that too....I was thinking of adding a pic of myself (my first life self) that pops up, hovering a few feet above and behind my avatar whenever my av speaks out of character, as in a guardian angel or somethign. i'd take a pic of my (real) self wearing a stern look, white clothing, a beard, and a white halo around the whole pic to add to the god-like appearance. HAHAH.