Chat bar

The chat bar appears near the bottom of the screen, and is used to enable a PC to speak outside a pre-scripted conversation. (Text entered into the this bar will be spoken by the PC.) Even though some NPCs will respond to such speaking, this is not the norm. The vast majority of the time, the chat bar is used to communicate with other PCs.

Who hears the text entered into the chat bar is determined by the channel being used. The current default channel is listed to the left of the chat bar, and this default can be changed by clicking the default channel name, then clicking on the desired new default channel. (The tell channel is not available as a default.) The default channel can be overridden (changed) for a particular line of text by specifying one of the following switches at the beginning of the text. The quotes around the character and player names are optional if the name in question does not contain spaces. For example,  will speak "Help!" on the party channel. Custom content, most notably SIMTools, may make additional switches (corresponding to custom channels) available.
 * /talk = talk
 * /tk = talk
 * /w = whisper
 * /s = shout
 * /p = party
 * /dm = DM
 * /t "character name" = tell
 * /tell "character name" = tell
 * /tp "player name" = tell

Console commands can be entered into the chat bar by preceding the command with two hash marks (##). Commands entered this way are not spoken for characters to hear.