Languages in the Riverworld PBEM

The goals:

Players should only have to send 1 version of their move
Players should only have to receive 1 copy of someone else's move
Players should have the choice whether they want to maintain the suspense by seeing only what their character would really understand or read the story from an omnilingual perspective.
Ideally, other readers should be able to experience the story from the perspectives of any character.
The GM should only have to write 1 version of the Turn
Players should only have to receive 1 copy of the Turn

Overview

Language in moves should be indicated by the following:


<English>
"This is in English"
<Japanese>
"This is in Japanese. It also illustrates that you don't have
to put a closing quote mark on the same line as the starting one."
"This is also in Japanese. All speech is, unless you change again."

That is, the language you plan to speak should be put in <>'s on a line of its own, ideally the line before the speech. Below you can read about exactly what can go in <>'s

Players send their moves to the move mailing list. Mail to that address is currently being filtered through a nifty script which does the following:
1. Sends the GM a pristine copy of the email
2. Sends each player a copy of the email in which they can understand only languages they know. Others languages are marked by name. That's about as realistic as I want to bother with - partial garbling, unknown language names, etc., are just too much work right now. :)
3. Sends the GM an omnilingual copy of the email - as if he were a player who knew all langauges.
On the WWW page, I will post the omnilingual copy, so if you want to read the whole story, you can, and we'll trust ya. :)
When I send out a Turn, I will be using another script to do a similar thing. Each of you will receive a Turn customized for your language knowledge, and an omnilingual Turn will be Webified. I hope to also Webified the customized Turns, so the story can be read from each character's perspective.

Formatting details

As noted above, you control how you're speaking in your moves by indicating it with <>'s on a line by itself. Here are all your options for ways of speaking:

To speak a single language, use its name: <French>. The movefilter will add either '(Yourname) says something in French' or '(Yourname) switches to French', for everyone, followed by the utterance, for those who understand French.
To speak multiple languages, separate them with commas: <French,English>. Those who speak either language will see your speech. Those who don't won't see anything, not even a "(Yourname) says something in French/English" line. An example of appropriate use might be:
```
   Alternating between French and English in order to interpret
   the conversation for the other women, Sally begins speaking.
   <french,english>
   "I was born a poor slave girl..."
```

You can indicate speech to a particular person(s) by using their name(s) and at least one comma. Here are some examples:


   Sally mutters something to Dave.
   <,Dave>
   "Isn't this fun?"
   
   Dave mutters back to Sally, loudly enough that John can hear.
   <Sally,John>
   "You bet!"

   John makes a secret sign with his hands toward Sally.
   <,Sally>
   "(sign language) Dave - dangerous - beware"

Note that in the sign language case, the double-quotes are necessary, as the language markers apply only to quoted langauge.

You can speak to everyone but one or more players, or (if you really want to) in everything but one or more languages, by following the above examples but adding a ! after the <, like this:
```
   <!Dave>
   "Now that Dave's gone, let's have some fun!"
```
Note that the comma before a single name becomes optional when you use !. <!Dave> and <!,Dave> are identical.
You can speak to a predefined group (the GM defines these) by giving the group name in double angle brackets:
```
   <<river>>
   "Hello, people on the river!"
```
You can speak to everyone by using <all>. This is assumed to be in effect before you use any other language command.