Thanks, guys    I hadn't noticed the /away command, that's cool. I'll try to combine that with finding a quiet corner somewhere (though of course the tavern may be too far away if the phone rings or something). Good solution. I always thought it'd be nice if games like this had a /snooze command or something so people could intuitively see that it's no use talking to you, without breaking the general illusion... but I can see it may be a bit much to implement a special animation for that (then again, it's prolly something that a lot of people could use).