The World Quick Start

You're a colored smiley in a picture of a bar. Other people are the other smileys. Everything here is text and pictures; there is no voice chat and never will be. The only sounds are a few short 1995 effects, a doorbell when someone comes in and the like, and you can turn them off.

• Moving
• Talking
• Faces
• Balloon tricks
• Whispering
• Privacy
• Your look
• Closed eyes
• From Discord
• Harry
• Painting
• Wheel of Cheese

Moving around

Right-click a door and it tells you where it goes and whether it is bolted — 🔒 shut, 🔓 open — with Go through beside it. The padlock only works on the door of the room you are in: you can bolt and unbolt your own door from there, but a door seen from the other side is for looking at, so nobody reaches through a doorway to lock somebody else in or out. /bolt and /unbolt do the same thing by typing. While a room is bolted, what's said in it is sealed between the people inside, like a whisper. The house can't read it, Harry waits outside, and nothing is rated or posted to Discord. A barkeep who walks in is announced and can read what's said from then on, but not what was said before. When someone leaves, the room gets a new key they don't have. Sealed lines show in italics, in the balloons and the transcript, so you can see at a glance that the room is private. A whisper inside a bolted room is still a whisper: sealed to that one person, and the rest of the room doesn't see it. Your first line after the bolt goes out a moment later, once the room's key reaches your browser.

Click anywhere in the picture and your head jumps there. Once you've clicked the picture, the arrow keys nudge you four pixels at a time (sixteen with Shift); start typing and the keys go back to the chat box. No walking, no animation, no fences; that's how the original Palace worked too. Stand near someone to talk to them, sit on the bar, hang from the chandelier. Your spot is remembered, so you'll be standing in the same place next time you come in.

Doors and rooms. A bar is several rooms, each its own picture: the bar, the boardroom, the chessboard, the checkers board, the armory and so on. The board rooms lay their pieces out by themselves when you come in: Harry, let's play chess takes you there, and a partner finds you. Some have doors in the picture: a doorway, a staircase, a painting. Move the pointer over one and it lights up with the name of where it leads; hold Control and every door in the room shows itself at once (as in the original Palace), or type /doors for a five-second look on a touch screen; click one and you're through to that room, same login, same look, and the room you left says where you went. Type /goto on its own to see the rooms here, or /goto boardroom to go straight there. A door can also lead out of the bar: to a page beside it (/open https://…, a new tab; you stay) or away from it (/goto https://…, this tab; you're out of the room the moment the page goes). /invite Damon invites someone, wherever they are, to your room (it's a kind of whisper, so their privacy door applies); they get a line with a Go button. Harry can take everyone at once when a barkeep says "all" or "everyone". You're in one room at a time: if a second window of yours goes to another room, the first steps out (with a button to come back), so nobody is in two places in the pictures.

Talking

Type in the box at the bottom and press Enter. Your words appear in a balloon next to your head. They stay in the bar: nothing you say here is posted to the Discord channel, though the pinned picture of the room shows your balloons to anyone looking. Balloons stay up longer for longer messages, at least three seconds. Say something else while your balloon is still up and, if there is room below it, the new line hangs underneath as a second bubble on the same stem; when the first fades, the second moves up to take its place. When there isn't room, the new line waits its turn. ↑ and ↓ in the box recall what you've said, like a shell.

The 🔔 button is the sounds switch. With it on, the bar rings a doorbell when someone comes in, a door when someone leaves, and a knock when someone whispers to you; that's what lets you leave the bar open in another tab and hear when a newcomer arrives. Two more are off unless you want them: a pop when someone says your name, and a pop when someone chats from Discord without coming in. Each is its own switch in the look picker (☺), under Sounds, with a play button to hear it and a level from 0 to 7. Typed, sounds off, sounds on, and sounds 3 do the same, and sounds alone tells you where things stand. The setting is per browser, not per room. Browsers won't make a sound until you've tapped or typed once, so the bell shows a slash until you do; on a phone, sounds play only while the bar is in front, and the silent switch mutes them. If you have the bar open in two tabs, the one you're looking at rings, or one of them if neither is in front. To hear a sound on demand, type play doorbell (or door, knock, name, murmur; "Harry, play doorbell" works too): it plays for you alone, nobody else hears it, and Harry says nothing. Note what doesn't ring: someone who was already in the bar and reloads, wakes from dozing, or comes back within half a minute of dropping off never left as far as the bar is concerned. The sounds are from the original 1995 Palace sound set.

The 💬 button opens a transcript to the left of the picture: everything said out loud, Harry's lines, whispers you were part of, and who came and went, with times. It follows you from room to room (a "— The Armory —" line marks each move), and whatever was being said as you came in is in it too. The transcript and the lists can sit on either side of the picture: drag one by its title to the other side, or press the ⇄ in its title; drag its inner edge to make it wider or narrower (a double-click there puts it back). Your browser remembers where you put them. The transcript itself is kept in your browser only, and it records what people typed, not the word-swap gag if one is on. With the transcript closed, the comings and goings and the room's notices (a bolt thrown, a sign) show for a few seconds as a line over the foot of the picture instead; with it open they're only in the transcript. Answers to what you type (You're already here) show over the picture either way.

The 👥 button is the original's user list: everyone on the server and where they are, your room first, with the marks you'd see over their heads (✱ for barkeeps, ~ for a chosen name, the bot head for a puppet, closed eyes for a sleeper) and dozing for the idle. Click someone in your room to whisper to them; click someone in another room to go there, or invite to bring them here (a whisper with a door in it). The 🚪 button is the room list: every room, in the server's order with the main room first, and how many are in each; click one to go through. Both can be open at once (rooms above people) and keep themselves current while open. Sleepers are listed but not counted in a room, as they aren't in it. In the original both lists were windows off the toolbar too; there, wizards saw hidden rooms and everyone else didn't, and a room list of a private room showed a dash for the count. Here every room is open to see (going in is another matter), so there's nothing to hide.

Messages are capped at 250 characters.

Changing your face with emoticons

Start a message with one of these and your face changes before you speak. The emoticon itself is not shown. You can also use one on its own, just to change your face without saying anything.

So :)hello smiles and says "hello", and :( by itself just looks sad. A few faces have no emoticon (Blotto, Tilt up, Tilt down, Wink right); pick those from the look picker.

Balloon tricks

A different first character changes the balloon instead of the face. These can be combined with each other and with an emoticon, in any order.

Whispering

Click someone's head and the input box switches to whisper mode: their name appears next to it and the text turns italic. Whatever you type now goes only to the two of you, in an italic balloon. Whispers are never posted to Discord.

Press Esc, click the × next to their name, click the floor, or click their head again to stop whispering. If someone whispers to you, your box switches to whisper mode back to them so you can just reply; the same × gets you out.

You can't whisper to a head with closed eyes. They aren't in the bar, so they wouldn't hear it.

Sealed. A whisper between two people is sealed in your browser before it leaves and opened in theirs: the server passes on bytes it can't read, and keeps nothing. The label by the input box says which it is. 🔒 means sealed, and 🔒✓ means you've also checked safety numbers with them (below). 🔓 means not sealed: a whisper to Harry or a puppet (the house has to read those to answer), or to someone whose browser is too old to seal. A whisper that went through in the clear shows the same 🔓 in its balloon. Your browser makes its keys the first time you come in and keeps them; they never leave it. What's private, from whom has the whole story.

Safety numbers. The server hands out everyone's keys, so in principle a server someone had tampered with could slip in a key of its own. To rule that out, choose Safety numbers on someone's menu: it shows their number and yours, eight groups of four digits. Read them to each other somewhere else, such as a Discord message or a phone call. If they match, nothing is in between, and They match remembers it. If a key changes later, your browser says so in the transcript: Ada's key isn't one this browser has seen for them before. Usually that means a new browser or device; ask them. Each browser has its own number, so your phone and your laptop differ.

Your look

The ☺ button at the bottom right opens the look picker.

Face

Twelve expressions, drawn in your current color, including the ones with no emoticon. (The thirteenth, the gritted-teeth angry face, is emoticon-only: :[.)

Color

Ten colors: red, orange, yellow, lime, green, teal, sky, blue, purple, magenta. Your balloons are tinted to match, so people can tell at a glance who said what.

Avatars and props

Everything on your head lives in one place: Change avatar / props… in the look picker, Change avatar… when you right-click your own head, or type avatar. The window shows your head with each piece you're wearing drawn on it. Add a piece from the emoji strip (the common ones and your recent ones; type two letters to search by name, or :beer:), from the bar's props (the 1995 party hat, martini, sunglasses, pirate hat, halo, bow tie, mustache, crown, cigarette, wine bottle, beer, cards, top hat, bunny ears), from worn lately (single pieces, and whole outfits when you wore several at once: a doubled edge marks a set, and picking one puts the whole set on in place of what's there; the list follows you from device to device, kept with your account on the bar's server rather than in the browser, as are the emoji you reach for), by typing an https image address, by pasting a picture anywhere in the bar, by dragging a picture file onto the window (or onto the bar itself, which opens the window with it): the card lights up while the file hovers, or with the 📷 a photo from your device button under the text box, which opens your photos or files (on a phone or tablet, the camera roll and the camera, where pasting rarely works). A photo is shrunk in your browser to at most 1024 pixels on a side and turned upright before it's sent, so a 12-megapixel frame goes through; a GIF is sent as it is, so it keeps moving. The 2× button in the corner of the preview doubles it for fiddly work. Click a piece to select it, drag it to place it, drag its corner to size it (a quarter to three times, never past the 132×132 area), press Delete, tap the small × at its corner, use Remove piece, or drag it out of the window to drop it. This piece hides my face makes it an avatar rather than a prop; a pasted picture starts as an avatar, an emoji or a bar prop as a prop. Up to ten pieces. Wear this puts the lot on; Put the piece on the floor leaves the selected one in the room for others; Naked (or typed naked) takes everything off and gives you your smiley back. Emoji come out at 44×44 as the same Twemoji drawings on every screen; pictures bigger than 132×132 are shrunk; transparency is kept. Every picture that comes in gets a copy on the bar's own server, tidied away after six weeks if nobody wears it. Whether you may bring pictures in depends on your tier; wearing what's already in the bar, and the emoji and the bar's own props, is for everyone.

Loose props. Hold Option (Alt) and drag a prop off your own head and it lands on the floor where you let go (a plain drag on your own head carries you around the room), just behind the people; Take off … on your right-click menu, or typed take off, drops the topmost one at your feet. Anyone can drag a loose prop around, and drag it onto their own head to wear it, which picks it up. Hold Shift as well to make a copy instead of taking it off, so you keep it and others can have one too; Option-drag a prop on the floor copies that. Click a loose prop to select it, then Delete or the small × at its corner removes it from the room, and so does dragging it out of the picture and letting go outside; right-click (or press and hold) one for Pick up, Take a copy, Remove. The same goes for a prop dragged off your own head and a picture on the wall: let go outside the picture and it's gone. You can't pull anything off someone else's head; they share by taking it off. Props left lying around for a day are cleared; barkeeps can clear the floor (clear props, the menu, or Harry, clean the room) or take a picture out of the bar for good from the menu on whoever's wearing it.

Your name. Rename… on your own menu (or call me Countess; my name goes back) gives you a name for here. Everyone sees it in italics with a tilde, so it's plainly a chosen one, and the first line of the menu on any head says who they really are: Countess is Ada · @ada_l · barfly. A name that's already someone's, or a ghost's, is refused.

Whispers and muting. No whispers, please on your own menu, the privacy box under Preferences in the look picker, or dm off, closes your door: a small ⊘ shows by your name, to you alone (the barkeeps can see it on the People list and your menu; anyone else only finds a whisper refused), nobody can whisper to you except someone you've whispered to first within ten minutes, and the barowner. Mute on someone else's menu (or mute Ada, unmute Ada) is yours alone: their lines and whispers stop reaching you, a slash shows over their head for you only, and they aren't told. It's remembered across visits.

What you see. Pictures in the bar carry a rating, movie-style: PG, R or MA (or none). Pictures rated up to in the look picker is your own dial, R to begin with; anything above it, on a head, on the floor or on the wall, is drawn for you as a grey tile with the rating on it, and your browser never fetches the picture. The house sets a ceiling nobody can see past. Words I'd rather not see… keeps a list of your own: they come out as asterisks on your screen alone, wherever they're said, and follow you from device to device. Neither is a secret from the house; both are yours.

Sleepers: heads with closed eyes

Only where the channel allows chatting. A server can keep its channel read-only so the live picture stays in view; then nobody sleeps in the bar, and /palace say is the way in from Discord.

A head with its eyes shut, a sleeper, is someone who is talking in the Discord channel but hasn't opened the bar. Their messages still show up as white balloons, so you can read along, but they can't see you, can't move, and can't be whispered to. The moment they open the bar, their eyes open and they wake up right where they were standing.

Eyes also close if someone in the bar hasn't touched anything for twenty minutes. Any click or keystroke opens them again. A closed-eyed head disappears fifteen minutes after its last Discord message.

From the Discord side

You don't need the bar open to be part of it. Anything you post in the bar's channel appears in the room as a balloon from your closed-eyed head, and the people inside can answer you, though their answers stay in the room. Emoticons and balloon prefixes work from Discord too.

The channel has a pinned message with a live picture of the room, refreshed within about twenty seconds of anything changing, plus an "Enter" button. That picture is how the channel sees the bar. Slash commands do the same on demand, visibly only to you: /palace peek shows the picture and the link, /palace who lists who's awake, who's dozing, and who has their eyes closed. And /palace say <text> puts a line into the bar from wherever you are on the server: it appears in the room as a caption under your name, and if it's for Harry (/palace say Harry, who's there?) his answer comes back to you, privately, in the same place. That works from any channel, and it's the way to reach the bar when the channel itself is kept quiet for the picture.

Harry, the man in the painting

The bar has a host, its ghost. Say his name in a sentence, Harry, what's good tonight?, and a balloon answers from the portrait behind the bar. Harry is his usual name; a room may call him something else (the top of the room says who's in), and the house's name reaches him either way. He has no head to click and never posts to Discord; his balloons are white with a gold rim so you can tell them from a person's. Three dots under the painting mean he's composing.

He's a barkeep, not an oracle: dry, brief, and he'll tell you when something is beyond the painting's reach. Once he's answered you, you're in conversation: for the next minute or two your lines reach him without his name, so "who's there?" works. End a line with over, radio style, and he'll answer that one but then leave you alone until you say his name again. After one reply to a line that didn't use his name (two, if you're the only one in the bar) he drops out of the conversation on his own, and the room talking among itself is never his cue. And if you tell him to be quiet, hush, pipe down, or that you're busy or playing, he says nothing at all and stays out of it for ten minutes, or until someone says his name. He answers each person about once every twenty seconds otherwise, and knocks off for the day when his tab runs out. You can whisper to him by clicking the portrait; he whispers back.

Where your words go. What you say to Harry, whispers to him included, goes to the model provider that answers for him, along with the last few minutes of room talk and, when he looks at the whiteboard, a picture of the room. Everything he does and every line that woke him is kept in the room's audit log, which barkeeps can read. Whispers between people go to nobody else, not Harry, not Discord, not the log, and they are sealed, so the server that passes them on can't read them either. A bolted room's talk is sealed the same way, and Harry doesn't hear it. One more thing he never hears: a line that mentions Claude (the developer's assistant) is treated as a note for the developer, kept out of Harry's ears and put in the audit log instead, so you can leave a bug report in the bar without him answering it; a line that starts with bug: or bug report works the same way.

What he remembers. Within an evening he keeps private notes on what's going on: who's about, running jokes, house rules and suggestions people make. Across evenings he keeps a few things regulars told him about themselves, where you're from, what you drink, a standing request, so he can greet you like a regular. He only keeps what you said yourself, a handful of lines at most, and Harry, forget me wipes it.

Only barkeeps (and the barowner, who runs the place), people with the server's roles for those, can direct him. When a barkeep asks, Harry can redecorate: Harry, turn the bar into a spaceship, Harry, put up a banner that says Trivia Night, Harry, use the word replacement gag (the original 1995 list, where "computer" comes out "the evil empire"; only balloons change, Discord sees what you typed), or Harry, give Ada a badge that says Champion. He can also take everyone to another room: Harry, take us to the whiteboard, Harry, take us to the White House (where he takes the podium as the President and everyone else stands on the stage in front), Harry, back to the bar. A room is a place with its own picture; the bar doesn't change its picture, you go somewhere else, and people watching the bar's picture in Discord see everyone leave. He has a small library of images, and he can draw signs and shapes. Anyone else asking gets a friendly no.

Pictures from the web. Harry, find a picture of a ring-tailed lemur and one goes up on the wall behind the people, from Wikimedia Commons or Openverse (free, credited pictures), with a line in the log saying what it is and whose it is. He glances at the search's thumbnails first and picks one that actually shows the subject, so a name the archives don't know gets "nothing found" rather than a random print. A barkeep can also paste an https image address into the chat and ask him to fetch that exact one. He knows the title when it goes up, and if you ask him what's in it, what it says, or about a detail (Harry, what number is in row 3, column 3?), he looks at the full-size copy and answers from that. Barkeeps handle it with the mouse: click it to select (a dashed frame with corner handles; clicking a picture never moves you), drag inside to move it, drag a corner to resize, click anywhere else or press Esc to put the frame away. Right-click (or press and hold on a phone) for a menu: Next picture and Previous picture cycle through what the search found, In front of people / Behind people, Open source page, Remove; the × at a selected picture's corner removes it too. Typed, next picture, previous picture and remove picture do the same to the selected (or latest) one, and Harry, a different one asks him to swap it. Banners and other things Harry puts up can be nudged the same way. Pictures live with the floor: when it closes they come down. The bar keeps a small temporary copy of each picture on its own server so that nobody's browser has to fetch from the source site.

In the bar he's a voice from the portrait. In most other rooms he has a body: a small square portrait that stands on the floor, square on purpose so you can tell he's a bot. He is in every room at once (a separate Harry in each, who knows what you came for when he sent you), barkeeps can drag him out of the way, each room remembers where he was last put, and he can walk himself if asked. Which he is in a room, and where, is a room setting.

For game nights the bar keeps the honest parts: Harry can put up a scoreboard, run a timer that everyone sees, roll dice on the table, and open a poll you vote in by clicking an option. He never invents a roll or a score; the bar does those, he narrates. Ask a barkeep: "Harry, let's do trivia, players are Ada and Bram, 30 seconds a question."

Chess and backgammon are furniture, not referees, the way the original's game rooms were. Harry, set up chess (or checkers, or backgammon) switches to the board picture with the original Palace piece art in place; everyone in the room drags pieces, drops snap to squares or points, a chess piece dropped on an occupied square sends the occupant to the side, and there are no rules at all. Pieces, boards, and panels sit under people, so a spare checker never covers a face; a head under the pointer takes the click before a piece does. Play by whatever rules you agree on; ask Harry to roll for backgammon. Harry, reset the board, flip the board, clear the board, and take the board down do what they say.

He also runs hangman: Harry, let's play hangman puts a board up (he picks the phrase and keeps it to himself; the bar draws the gallows and blanks). While a game is on, anything anyone says in the room counts as a guess, a letter or the whole phrase, so you don't need his name. Harry, take the board down ends it. And twenty questions, with him guessing: tell him you're thinking of something and he asks one question a turn; your bare yes and no reach him without his name, the bar keeps the count for him (he can't count from memory), and at twenty he guesses unless you grant him more.

A barkeep can also put the 8-ball in: Harry, 8ball on. He wears a crystal ball and answers four kinds of question and nothing else: yes or no ("Signs point to yes", "Doubtful"), this or that ("Is rutabaga a vegetable or a piano?" gets "A vegetable, no question."), how much ("How dangerous is skydiving?" gets "Somewhat dangerous, I'd say."), and a rating out of ten. He won't do numbers or facts that need counting, and a question that isn't one of those gets told so. Behind it is not his usual mind but a small decision model that answers in a fraction of a second, so it's an oracle for judgment calls, not for knowledge. Harry, 8ball off brings him back. A room can also be an 8-ball for good, from the Ghost tab; then he stays one through restarts and the spoken switch does nothing.

Changing the room (banners, the board, a game) opens "the floor," a session that ends when a barkeep says Harry, stop or reset, when the barkeep leaves, or after twenty quiet minutes. Ending it puts the room back exactly as it was. Going to another room is not a session; it's just going.

Puppets: the little bot head

A bot head in amber marks a bot: a visitor that is a program rather than a person at a keyboard. It's a member like anyone else, counted, whisperable and answerable to the same rules; the mark is there so you know who you're talking to. A bot can say so itself (I'm a bot on its own menu), and a barkeep can mark one that didn't (… is a bot on its menu, or its row on the People tab). The blue head below is different: a head the house operates.

A name with a small bot head (blue) drawn before it belongs to a puppet: a person the house drives, not someone at a keyboard. The mark is drawn from what the server knows, never from the name, so no one can type their way into it. There are three, Franny (a member), Flo (a barfly), and Jacky (a barkeep, ✱ and all), and a barkeep calls them in (Harry, add the test puppets) to try the bar on someone who isn't them: whisper to them, mute them, watch what a member sees. Everything that works on a person works on them; they count in the tally, go idle, take whispers, and can be sent to another room. Their lines are Harry's, and he speaks for one only while a barkeep has told him to (Harry, chat as Jacky): then anything said to Jacky by name, and any whisper to her, reaches Harry and comes back from her head, in her character. Otherwise a whisper to a puppet goes nowhere, and nothing they say goes to Discord.

Painting on the room

The original Palace let you draw right on the picture, and so does this. When you're allowed to paint, a ✎ button appears next to the chat box. Click it and a strip of tools opens: the sixteen Palace colors plus black and white, a pen size from 1 to 8, and an "in front" switch that puts your strokes over people's heads instead of behind them. Drag on the picture to draw; a click without a drag still moves you. undo takes back your own last stroke. clear wipes everything, barkeeps only.

By default barkeeps can paint any time and everyone else can't. A barkeep can open it up: Harry, whiteboard puts a white board up on the wall behind the people, right where you are, and hands out markers to all (a barkeep can also put it up or take it down with the board button on the paint strip). Harry can look at the board and tell you what he sees, and he can draw on it: Harry, draw a frog gets you a frog in his own hand, which is to say a bad one, on purpose, the way anyone draws with thirty seconds and a marker. He'll play Pictionary either way, drawing or guessing; Pictionary and Wheel of Cheese happen wherever you are, nobody goes anywhere. A drawing belongs to the room it was drawn in; it doesn't follow you to another. When the floor closes, the board comes down and everything is wiped.

Pictionary. A barkeep says Harry, let's play pictionary (add a number of rounds if you like; nine is the default). The bar runs it, not Harry: captions announce each round, the drawer gets their word in a private box that only they see, the drawer alone can paint for ninety seconds, everyone else guesses out loud, and the bar judges the guesses and keeps the score in the corner. Say pass on your turn to skip a word. Harry takes turns like anyone: on his he draws from his own stock of doodles, on yours he looks at the board every so often and blurts a guess. Anyone who walks in joins the rotation. Harry, stop ends it.

Wheel of Cheese

The bar's own game show, ported from the 1996 Palace bot: Ratbot hosts, and Bananna turns the letters on a board of tiles in the top left corner: she walks along the foot of the board, turns each lit tile as she reaches it, and waits at the far side for the next one. A yellow sign beside the board carries the category and Ratbot's prompt. A barkeep starts it with Harry, let's play Wheel of Cheese or /harry play in Discord. Everyone in the room is in; say out if you'd rather watch and play to get back in. Ratbot takes turns around the room and tells you when you're up. The wheel itself is a spiky card in the top right corner. If you can't see the board, open the transcript (💬): every change to the board is written there as text, with blanks as underscores, and a screen reader hears the same.

On your turn, just talk. Plain English works too: "I wanna spin", "I'd like to buy a vowel", "is there an S?", "gimme a T", "I'll solve it", "I pass", and his name in front or behind doesn't hurt. The short forms:

Three rounds, then the player with the most winnings plays the final: the sign shows the puzzle with R S T L N E filled in, you give three consonants and a vowel on one line, and then you have forty seconds on the clock to type the answer. Win and the grand prize is yours. The top ten winnings for the room are kept. Cheese is not redeemable for anything. A barkeep's Harry, stop or reset ends the game early, and barkeeps can drag Ratbot out of the way like Harry.

Chat at Ratbot (Ratbot, is that a toupee?, or anything mentioning rat, spud, or Bananna) and Harry answers in Ratbot's voice, from Ratbot's head, on Harry's usual budget and cooldown. Neither of them will help you with the puzzle. When the game closes, a caption credits the artist: Ratbot and Bananna were drawn in 1997 by Lisa Herschbach, one of the original Palace wizards.

Captions. Now and then a square cream box appears with nobody's name on it: the art credit at the end of a game, or a dry aside from Harry. That's the narrator, the comics kind. It's not a person talking, and the transcript shows it without a name.

Odds and ends

Slash commands

Everything the menus do has a typed form, and every typed command also works with a slash in front: type / in the chat box and a list of the commands you may use appears above it, narrowing as you type; click one or finish typing it. /avatar, /rename Countess, /myname, /naked, /takeoff, /dm off, /mute Ada, /sounds 3, /play doorbell; for barkeeps /next picture, /clear props; for whoever holds the tool, /floor barfly, /preview off, /gag Ada, /ban Ada, /bless Ada barfly, /hidebadge on, /settings. A line that doesn't match a command is said out loud as typed.

Who can do what

Most people in the bar are members: anyone in the Discord server. Members talk, whisper, paint when it's allowed, and play. Two roles a server may hand out sit above that, barfly and clotheshorse, which change nothing on an ordinary night; they exist so that if strangers start making a nuisance of themselves the barowner can raise the floor for an evening, and the regulars wearing those roles carry on while plain members can only watch. Barkeeps direct Harry and handle the room; they wear a gold ✱ before their name, and the barowner ✱✱ (a mark nobody else can have: it's stripped from names, and it's drawn in its own face so a typed asterisk never passes for one). A barowner may take the mark off with /hidebadge on or the box under Preferences. The barowner can also gag someone (they keep typing, nobody hears; they're not told), ban them for a while, or bless someone up a tier by hand, and can hand any one of those tools to a trusted barkeep. If you find yourself able to see the bar but not be heard, that's the floor or a mute; a barkeep can tell you which.

The house's own eyes. A bar may turn on automoderation: a model reads what's said out loud (after it appears; never whispers) and rates pictures as they come in. Most of what it notices is a note nobody sees. Something worse is a strike: you're told at once, in a private line, what and why, and the line may be taken back (its balloon and transcript line vanish for everyone). Strikes add up: two in a week is a day away, three in a month a week, unless the barowner has set it otherwise; they can also clear them. Your strikes, if any, show under What I see in the look picker, so nothing here happens behind your back. A flood of lines gets a word from the house first, and a short gag if it goes on. Barkeeps can rate a picture by hand from its menu, and their word beats the model's.

Emoji drawings are Twemoji (CC-BY 4.0); emoji names come from gemoji (MIT).

What survives a reload

If you reload or lose the connection, the bar keeps your head, your balloons and your place for half a minute, and you come straight back to them; nobody else sees a thing. Longer than that and you come back the way you would tomorrow: your look and your spot are remembered, and so is your sign (a ^ line), which stays up on you until you say something else, even if the bar itself restarts in between. If the bar restarts (new software), everyone's page reconnects by itself in a few seconds. Looks, spots and signs come back; Harry's notes about the evening and what he knows about regulars come back. What doesn't: the picture and decorations if the floor was open, a game in progress, the whiteboard drawing, and the balloons in the air. Your transcript is kept in your own browser, so it's unaffected either way.

The bar holds twenty people. If it's full you'll be told, and a stool opens when someone leaves. Closed-eyed heads don't count.

Reloading the page keeps your seat: the bar waits thirty seconds for you before it decides you've left.

Log in is through Discord. Only members of the bar's Discord server who can see its channel can get in. If the barowner sent you an invitation link instead, open it, choose a name and a password, and you're in; next time, press Sign in with your name under the login button and use the same two.