Character metadata?

[chang]

Funny.. I hadn't read the post about adding descriptions to items when I thought of this, but it is strangely related.

 The implementability and the maintenance effort involved in this certainly outweighs the benefits, but I just thought it was an interesting idea from the coder's standpoint.
 
Imagine adding a broad table of key-value pairs to a character, a few required ones and then an infinite amount of player-chosen additional ones.  Descriptive characteristics that go beyond the semantically void mdesc.
 
At character creation you're prompted for things like, what color are your character's eyes?  Hair color? Relative complexion?  Things along those lines.  Other scripts and things in the game could take advantage of this to add some more realism.
 
My specific thought is with the crim code.  When you're caught perpetrating some act of ill will against.. The Man.  NPC onlookers that notice you currently just know the memory location of your character and just pass that pointer onto the list of wanted memory locations of chars.  So when a soldier sees your character, he just knows its you, and knows that you, specifically, are wanted for crime 'x'.
 
Imagine, instead, that each npc or vnpc has a chance to catch one of your particular physical characterstics, in a populated enough area, maybe each one would catch each one of your attributes, or maybe just one would catch all of them.. anyways.  Soldiers would know only that a blue-eyed, black-bearded man wearing a steel helmet and a brown cloak with a sexy-kank sigil is wanted for crime 'x', so whenever they see one (there could be many!) instead of just the subdue->drag->jail action, they could enter a more complex encounter of confronting the individual and trying to confirm that it is, indeed he, the blue-eyed, black-bearded so and so.  On-lookers have to roll to notice 'y' characteristics and soldiers have to roll their own chance to notice 'y' characteristics.

 Say the blue-eyed, black-bearded man is wanted, and you are a green-eyed, black-bearded man.  All soldiers know that the wanted person is both blue-eyed AND black-bearded.
 A soldier sees you, but from his distance (one room away, two?  even in the same room) she can only confirm that you have a black-beard.  So script 'variable[n]' kicks and she confronts you.

>The angular, snaggle-toothed soldier says to you, in sirihish, "You there, step over here a moment."
>Squinting at your features, the angular, snaggle-toothed soldier says to herself, in sirihish, "Nah.. this ain't the one."
>The angular, snaggle-toothed soldier walks west, hips swaying with purpose.

 Soldier scripts could involve choosing to tell you, "We're looking for a black-bearded, blue-eyed man.. I thought he was  you, but... nah."  or not... etc.

 Again- this isn't a proposition for something to be actually implemented- the need to add metadata to all existing characters, plus (probabably for fleshing stuff out) to all the npcs - plus adding the code - PLUS modifying whatever scripts and events are going to start taking advantage of it is just too much.  Its neat though.

[wizturbo]

I don't like this idea for crim-code, but I DO like this idea a lot for adding things you can tell via 'assess -v' command.

This could pave the way towards a disguise skill.

[Malifaxis]

Another brilliant idea, brought to you by the mind known as Chang.

Fucking rock on, brotha.  I dig it.

[Armaddict]

Chang's a genius.

Really.

I knew I got you into the game for a reason