An idea for the "listen" skill

[Jacques]

OK, we've all heard it said over and over again. Listen is way more powerful than it should be. Having had characters with and without it, I agree - it's a really powerful skill. However, suggestions to tone it down a bit always seem very complicated. After eavesdropping on a few dozen conversations recently, I had the following idea:

Treat the "listen" skill as though it were a language, and put a maximum cap on it below 100%, so you always miss at least a little. Maybe add a random number as a "bonus" so it's possible to hear everything, just not all the time. Maybe something like (random number 1-10 + skill [capped at 90])%.

What would this do? To someone without the skill, they'd pretty much here gibberish when they tried, but could probably make out an occasional word or two if they were lucky. To someone with the skill, but at a low level, they'd catch parts of words, and could sometimes put together what the actual meaning was, but would miss a lot. Someone with a high skill would catch many things, but would still miss the occasional detail (which could be a name, place, or something important).

An example:

no skill: Nan, chil Rexqaul hal waco zxibbo ejixc!
low skill: Ror, thel Jabqies ras sore crippe idios!
high skill:  Wow, thit Jacqres hav some trappy ideas!
actually said: Wow, that Jacques has some crappy ideas!


So anyway, there's my idea. What's everyone think? Would this be practical, codable, or worthwhile, or will we all be saying "Nan, chil Rexqaul hal waco zxibbo ejixc!" if it's implemented?

[amoeba]

Good idea, but I'd rather see it along these lines.

no skill: Wo., .... ...... .... .... ... py ide.!
low skill: Wow, .... ...... has .... .appy ideas!
high skill:  Wow, that Jacques ha. som. crappy ideas!
actually said: Wow, that Jacques has some crappy ideas!

[Cindrak]

Either way, it'd be cool if listen worked like that and not the way it currently does, which makes no sense.

-Cindrak

[jmordetsky]

Good idea, but I'd rather see it along these lines.

no skill: Wo., .... ...... .... .... ... py ide.!
low skill: Wow, .... ...... has .... .appy ideas!
high skill:  Wow, that Jacques ha. som. crappy ideas!
actually said: Wow, that Jacques has some crappy ideas!

SOI's listen is coded that way. But it sucks, because you can't turn it off. The mixture of what we have + what they have would rock.

[Angela Christine]

I believe that the substitution characters are different for each language.  If you only speak Sirihish and there are a couple dwarves speaking mirrikum and a couple elves speaking allundean, they will both be gibberish to you, but the mirrikum gibberish will sound different than the allundean gibberish.

If so, then dots . . . could be specified as subsitition characters for the listen language.  Also mumbly-sounding characters like m, n and z.

You might run into trouble when listening to a language you don't speak well though.  Does it go through the language filter and then the listen filter, the listen filter and then the language filter, just the listen filter, or  just the language filter?  The interactions between the skill checks and the filters could potentially cause some problems.


Angela Christine

[Armaddict]

Me, myself...I'd rather see a lot of other things taken care of before anything like this.  I -really- just don't see the big deal with this, I -really- don't see it as all that broken.

No more broken than say...the crim code...which I'd -much- rather see tackled first.  Of course...that won't happen.

[Dracul]

Dots. And I love that idea. Its been proposed multiple times and supported.



I often end up with a char who has listen...and no...Im not going to rp only hearing part of messages...sometimes and I do and sometimes its okay. But a coded will would be very good.

[lazycritic]

SOI's listen is coded that way. But it sucks, because you can't turn it off. The mixture of what we have + what they have would rock.

You actually can...anyhow, this would be kinda nice, but I like my super-hearing.  

Call me a twink.

[Cindrak]

Me, myself...I'd rather see a lot of other things taken care of before anything like this.  I -really- just don't see the big deal with this, I -really- don't see it as all that broken.

I'm baffled by how you can think that. Let's think about how real life eavesdropping works. Do you try several times to 'listen', hearing nothing, and then all of a sudden you 'succeed' and can hear every conversation in the room? Do you have a "listening unit" that needs several tries to boot up, but is perfect once initiated? No. You try to listen once, and from that point on you hear little snatches of conversation, depending on how good your ears are.

No more broken than say...the crim code...

They're both broke, but the listen code is broker.

-Cindrak

[Armaddict]

The reason it's not as broken, Cindrak, is because it's not a huge problem.

If you sit in a room, and hear everything, you generally hear useless babble and socializing.

Just like guarding yourself against theft, it's very easy to guard against listen.  Thus, your 'all-encompassing' listen skill isn't so all encompassing.  It provides more entertainment while you're sitting alone than mass amounts of information that would make the 'all encompassing' listen abuseable.

[Dracul]

And yet if listen wasn't all powerful...where even my Warrior/subguild can hear every word you say....      we might be more inclined to drop things in conversation if it's less likely that it could be exploited.

Listen...that would be an awesome addition.

[Xygax]

The idea has been proposed before, and this discussion isn't proving to have any particular merits over previous discussions along the same lines, so I'm locking the thread.

Incidentally, I like the idea of tweaking listen a bit, and I like the general feel of having chunks of text get lost.

Thanks,
 X