Doing away with speech bubbles

[Dannae]

I wonder if we could just do the /narrate functionality with a simple convention: /me - Description of whatever you want.

* Dannae - apples fall out of the tree and bonk off my head

or

* Dannae : the waves lap at my toes, just before the unseen breaker pummels me into the sand

Haha... works for me!   

Still does nothing to keep the text out of the speech bubbles, but like Aramara... I never even read those and only have used them as a visual que at times to locate someone.

[Aramara Meibi]

Still does nothing to keep the text out of the speech bubbles, but like Aramara... I never even read those and only have used them as a visual que at times to locate someone.

and there you have it... if i'm talking to you through /tells it's most likely a pretense for tracking you down 

[Cairn]

And honestly, there are ways around it, it's not really what works best or not, just simple preference.

[MishkaL1138]

That's something that also came to my mind after chaining some /me statements. Certainly each line beginning with a name tag makes it easier to keep track of the dialog/action/ mixed wall of text, and that's probably the reason for the restrictions here. Maybe a compromise could help where the name tag is first displayed in brackets, and thereafter you can place some narrative text, just as you would do with /me or /my. Maybe for the above example:

/narrate The ring of steel striking steel can be heard reverberating through the sewers as Aramara raises her shield to block her enemy's battle axe.

[Aramara] The ring of steel striking steel can be heard reverberating through the sewers as Aramara raises her shield to block her enemy's battle axe.

I actually like this idea more than any of the other ideas posted. +1 and hope the Big T sees it

[Vakachehk]

I do think that Dannae presents a valid (and funny) point in her example.  That's something that you see come up lots of times, especially when it comes to RP-fighting.  Aramara also makes a good point about this, here:

most people do break their dialogue and actions up into separate posts, which is how i used to play as well. But that creates a problem where you're never sure when that player is 'done'.

The uncertainty of whether to proceed with a RP or not can be hindering to the general flow of the storyline, itself.  Whether or not the ability to tag in /me and /my into a sentence will ultimately fix this problem is uncertain, but I do feel confident that it would certainly help address the issue.

Maybe if you want to split your comment up put at the end of your comment in brackets [to be continued] or [tbc].

I like Bonifarzia's idea on the /narative.

This is waaaay off topic but, with RP what I find holds me back and is a main reason why most of the time I don't really enjoy RPing is the chat tab in general. It's very annoying and basic, the selecting words and copy/paste would be beneficial. But what about the option for RPers to have the whole of the bottom screen the box to type your comment (like http://webchat.freenode.net/) and have the chat tab above it to the left or right of the screen. The availability to have 2 or 3 or 4 or however many lines, so your text will pop down to the next line until you reach your chosen cap and then your text starts to disappear off the side. (I hope that made sense).