We’re RPing in the present, and not the past, so past tense makes no sense to me unless it’s for a story that happened in the past for something on say Argent Archives for example.
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Maybe they are roleplaying through the lense of a greek fate weaver?
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I think some actions are small enough to warrant the past tense.
I’ll iterate on Acrona’s example of sitting down.
“X sat down.” I don’t think there’s much interest in anyone trying to prevent X from sitting down unless it implies some catastrophic consequence.
But we can take it further. “X took a pen out from his jacket’s pocket and holds it out to Y.” An emote can encompass more than 1 action, and to clearly define the chronological sequence of actions performed a varied use of tenses may be beneficial.
“Having taken out his pen, X now holds it out for Y, hoping she would take it and sign the given papers. His brow would begin to furrow the longer he would have to wait.”
There, now I used all the tenses and ‘would’ as well. And it made sense too, because one can callback to a previous action even if we’re RPing in the ‘now’.
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Can confirm this, he beat it out of me.
Would look at you smugly
it must be killed.
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but then you brush into stumbling between tenses which looks p bad in like 90% of cases.
After reading your replies I think you should commit to one tense.
It looks ugly if you mix it. If you’re a past tenser- COMMIT to it. Make people question if they actually live in the “now” with outstanding emotes. 
While we’re offering free unsolicited writing advice:
Take the word ‘attempts’ out of your emotes. I get it, I really do, people don’t like to god emote so you talk about attempting to shank Sylvanas rather than just stabbing her. It’s a really basic tip for writing emotes that helps new players.
The trouble is that it’s not needed. It’s the equivalent of adding /e says after every message you type in /s. If I write /e stabs wildly for Sylvanas’s exposed belly, you can tell I’m attempting to stab her.
I’d extend this out to other things - it’s a variant of ‘show, don’t tell’ which is a very important writing tool to be aware of - but I’ll start there. Take ‘attempts’ out of your emotes, and just describe what your character attempts to do. I promise, if you make sure you aren’t writing your opponent’s response for them then you won’t run the risk of god emoting.
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I tend to use “X sought to do Y.” But that’s just me!
This is ‘x would do y’ but in slightly different language.
You can cut out the sought part without changing anything else - just write ‘X does Y’. There’s no difference between “Starshade seeks to[/sought to] do a sick kickflip to impress a hot elven babe” and “Starshade does a sick kickflip to impress a hot elven babe” - the kickflip is done and is sick either way. It’s up to the babe here whether he’s successful either way, which keeps it from being a god emote (which would be ‘Starshade does a sick kickflip and impresses the hot elven babe’).
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Present tense in emotes, past tense in stories.
When you’re reading a book it makes sense for the thing to be in the past tense, because everything that you’ve read has already taken place. When you’re RPing with somebody, it’s something active and on-going, hence why past tense will mostly feel out of place and weird.
I say mostly because there are those rare moments in RP where verbs done in past tense make sense, like referring to an earlier action taken by somebody else and your character’s specific response to it before you go on to describe what they’re doing at this very moment.
All that said, I’m still guilty of going into past tense when I see other people doing it, if only out of habit.
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This.
There is a world of difference between:
Pax swings his technostaff overhead for a moment, bringing the blow down on Sylvanas
And
Pax swings his technostaff overhead for a moment, bringing the blow down on Sylvanas, the weight of the blow causing her to stumble and drop her weapons
One allows for a larger variety of replies than the other, but at the same time it’s not asking your permission for my character to be competent at their actions. If I apply would or attempt in it, my characters competence to even land a blow or attempt such is entirely up to you. Whereas if I simply state I make the blow but withold the consequence, the effectiveness of it is up to your characters competence in how they can ensure it, glance it, counterweight it, without making my character seem incapable but instead making your characters strengths come into play.
Also I think would syndrome invites way too many elusive fighters. It’s okay to be successful. We must treat your character actually accomplishing something without a pre agreed think tank and two separate signatures from doctors as approval, as something that is okay. It’s not badrp to execute actions. If you force the consequences of those actions to basically contort the outcome continually, that IS a problem.
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This is of course cheating, since Starshade is a hot elven babe and will readily admit to be impressed by his own actions.
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Is impressed
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is also impressed
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I do use past tense sometimes, usually when I make a longer and more complex emote. I don’t mind it when people use past tense. It’s barely noticible for me
I personally do not ever use ‘would’ in that form in an emote. If I need to give someone an opportunity to respond, I can do so by saying something like ‘/e lunges towards Name, attempting to slash at their leg with her knife’
or ‘/e takes aim and looses an arrow towards Name. Smoke from the fire and pieces of the wreckage makes her line of sight a little unclear, so it’s a tricky shot, but she aims for a leg.’
Both have more variety than ‘/e would slash at Name with a knife’ or ‘/e would shoot Name with an arrow’, also allow for varied responses, and read more naturally. I don’t mind/judge if people do the would thing though, it just isn’t for me.
‘Would’ on its own is fine, just an unnecessary word - like saying “shouted loudly”.
The visceral reaction to it is that ‘would’ is normally attached to some truly garbage emotes over the years
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To quote a friend:
Big G would have laughed.
[10 seconds pass]
Big G laughed.
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Yes, it’s odd. Emoting like writing a past tense page in a book generally gives off a vibe of typing at someone rather than RPing with them and that’s rarely fun for the other party.
If we’re just dealing with the ever present “would”, I have an answer for you. Don’t do it. This is actually an old pathology of AD that I personally witnessed growing out of a serverwide culture against a deluge of god emoting and forced killing. In response, the pendulum swung too far back in the other direction and stayed there with every instance of emoting becoming an “attempt” lest you draw derision and accusation on yourself for being a bad RPer.
It has stuck around a fair bit and is kept alive by a combination of guild culture, old habits and cross culture pollution from american RP servers. We’re way past that now and would-ing just comes off as awkward and oftentimes used in a strange context so alien to the English language that it’s distracting. Emylee would blink, would she? What’s stopping her?
No, just emote in present tense and communicate with the people with whom you’re playing. Misunderstandings are easily resolved.