Masks, Hoods, Wraps Etc

[jmordetsky]

It's been discussed. Masks and hoods should help to hide one's identity, but shouldn't completely mask it.

A mask or a facewrap removing one's mdesc has been deemed too much because you should be able to make out one's build, voice, eye color etc.

I'm behind that. However I was thinking, what if masks, hoods and wraps did something similar to the language code, in that they could hide some but not all of of the mdesc, based on how much of the person was covered by the item.

For example if my mdesc was:

This man is tall. He is handsome. He will mudsex you. He has a scar on his hand.

A hood might do something like:

This mxo is tulm. Hi is hqndsome. He wilx mxdsex you. Hx has a sxar xn his hxnd.

A wrap would be more severe:

This xxo is tuxm. Hi is hqndxome. He wxlx mxdsxx you. Hx hxs x sxar xn xxs hxnd.

A mask even more so:

Txis xxo is tuxm. Hi is xqndxome. xe wxlx mxdsxx you. Hx hxx x sxar xn xxs hxnd.


Thoughts?

[Hexxaex]

Seems like a neat idea, but if they have lines describing their bulging dwarf biceps and whip-thin legs, how would a mask, wrap, or hood hide that?  It would completely mess up the entire Mdesc, even if one line only was used to describe the face, and the rest of the build, skin-color, etc.

If a part of the mdesc was codedly sectioned off as something describing their face, sure, I think it would be a good idea.  Might go something like "[face]His eyes are blue.[/face]He has solid masses of muscle, and [face]a long nose sticks out from the middle of his visage[/face]."

How hard that would be to code is beyond me.

[Tamarin]

That's pretty cool.

[I]

Yea, neat idea.

[sarahjc]

I like it the way it is now. I think it should be up to the players to decide what they can and can't pick out of a description.

A long while back I had a PC that this hooded elf wanted to kill. Now beforehand, I met him a couple of times but he was always with a hood on. So, I looked at him and noticed he was not wearing gloves once. And in his main desc, he had milky skin or something and he also had long silvery hair. And maybe noticed what he had on his back and certainly what he wore.

Now even though this guy wayed me a bunch of times so I knew his short desc, I always played it out that the only thing I knew about him was that he was elf tall, had pale skin, and silver hair.

Did I know what he looked like? Yes. Did I know what his short desc was? Yes. But it was my personal choice not to use those things to hunt him down. I only went off what I could see of him.  Now, if I went by your method, I might not get that information, which would be silly.

[LoD]

The only way for this to work legitimitely would be for your body description to be different from your head description.  During the creation process it would prompt you to describe your body below the neck including feet, legs, waist, torso, shoulders, arms and hands.  After inputting that information, then it would prompt you for a description of your head, hair and features.

MAIN BODY DESC[/b]

Broad shoulders frame this man's heavy build.  Coppery skin marred with several old scars speaks of a long history with heavy labor and no small amount of fighting.  His arms are well built, and rough calluses layer his meaty palms.  Bowed legs and knobby knees give him a waddling gait.

HEAD DESC[/b]

Lockes of reddish brown hair tangle in a merciless territorial dispute atop this man's scalp.  A pair of dull brown eyes droop from beneath a pair of bushy brows.  Mashed and lumpy, his nose seems to have been introduced to more than one set of knuckles in its time.  A long scar on his lower lip worms its way toward a square chin.

So, the total regular description would be:

Broad shoulders frame this man's heavy build.  Coppery skin marred with several old scars speaks of a long history with heavy labor and no small amount of fighting.  His arms are well built, and rough calluses layer his meaty palms.  Bowed legs and knobby knees give him a waddling gait. Lockes of reddish brown hair tangle in a merciless territorial dispute atop this man's scalp.  A pair of dull brown eyes droop from beneath a pair of bushy brows.  Mashed and lumpy, his nose seems to have been introduced to more than one set of knuckles in its time.  A long scar on his  lower lip worms its way toward a square chin.

When wearing a mask:

Broad shoulders frame this man's heavy build.  Coppery skin marred with several old scars speaks of a long history with heavy labor and no small amount of fighting.  His arms are well built, and rough calluses layer his meaty palms.  Bowed legs and knobby knees give him a waddling gait. Black sandcloth has been pulled tightly about the head, bordered by  a weighted leather edging.  Narrow slits allow its wearer to peer out of the fabric, while a few leather strands near the back keep the mask taut.

-LoD

[Xygax]

Having separate head/body descs would be pretty cool, I think.  In fact, I'd like people to have descriptions for a lot of things for which no description exists now.  The problem is that I fear making the character application process more daunting than it already is for new players.

-- X

[Tamarin]

Perhaps it could be made optional to character creation?

More experienced players could choose to have the ability to make use of a more dynamic description system, whereas newer players could avoid it if so desired.

I would so very much like to see a system that allows subtle variations to the descriptors, so that things like your injuries, mood, and general physical situation could be more evident.  Probably won't happen though...

[Anonymous]

Having separate head/body descs would be pretty cool, I think.  In fact, I'd like people to have descriptions for a lot of things for which no description exists now.  The problem is that I fear making the character application process more daunting than it already is for new players.

-- X

I agree. It would be too much.

The reason I like this idea, is because it takes care of two issues.

1) It cures the 'look figure' OMG it's so and so syndrone. Which happens a lot.

and 2) It cures the uberness of the masks of yester year.

It also allows for some cool roleplay, because it forces your brain to stop and think about who the person might be or what they looked like. While this isn't perfect (IE the head/body thing) it's closer to what your brain would have to do if you had to ID someone who was wearing a mace wrap or something similar.

In addition, if you had seen a person previously, you would be better able to recognize him because you're brain will recognize the mdesc even with a bit of masking, the same as it does with the lang code when you are talking with n00b elves.

In addition to that, the masking could be random each time, making multiple look commands helping to give you a better idea of the persons mdsec.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't have a solution for the head/body thing. But, this does allow for a more realistic, and less abusable system then we've discussed previously.

Think for a moment how you recognize chars in arm. A lot of it is based on sdesc, only a small portion on mdesc. The size and stature of the person is really handled by the "tall figure in the so and so cloak" sdesc that gets placed on you when you wear a hood or wrap.

When you see a figure in a cloak you look at them (depending on the scene) and examine their mdesc to determine who they are. If it's a friend, you RP peering under their hood and they say, "Oh hey so and so. Wasn;t sure if that was you."

This code would simply hamper that process a bit, based on the type of disguise the person was wearing.  So if you were mugged by a well disguised person, you would be able to make out parts of the mdesc, but not all. So you could give a templar or whomever an account of what you could make out.

Plus, using this method, the staff could crank up or crank down the level of masking for an item thus avoiding further abuse and allowing for the system to be tweaked. All of this without an overhaul or over complication of the app system.

I think it's a nice medium, even if wearing a hood possibly masked something in your mdesc about your arms. It is a small tradeoff for the overall effect it provides.

[Anonymous]

The above was jmordetsky...

[Xygax]

Of course, the other interesting side effect would probably be that a lot of people would post a lot of typos about other people.  

-- X

[Bestatte]

I don't see why it would be too much. I mean, a main description is supposed to tell the reader something about the face and body anyway. I've seen plenty of characters in the past with sdescs like "the long-haired green-eyed woman" and when you look at the character, there's *zero* reference to hair or eyes.

When that character wears a hood, there's absolutely no way anyone could even *guess* that it was a long-haired green-eyed woman because 1) she neglected to mention the two main things about her that were worth putting in a sdesc, and 2) the imm who approved the application didn't catch it, or let it slide.

By just simply breaking up head and body descs as LoD suggested, during the application process, you'll eliminate that possibility from ever happening again. ALL characters will have some mention of their face, and ALL characters will have some mention of their bodies. Hood up - face part disappears. Hood down - face part appears. Corpse intact - full desc. Corpse beheaded - body only.

Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

[Anonymous]

Of course, the other interesting side effect would probably be that a lot of people would post a lot of typos about other people.  

-- X

Hahaha. Yes. True.

[Twilight]

While I was sort of blah on the idea on splitting them out, something Bestatte mentioned made me do a total reversal.  I totally love the idea of putting a person's description on their corpse object (at the very least for PCs!), and having it change for body and head objects if the corpse is beheaded.

[I]

I like it the way it is now. I think it should be up to the players to decide what they can and can't pick out of a description.

A long while back I had a PC that this hooded elf wanted to kill. Now beforehand, I met him a couple of times but he was always with a hood on. So, I looked at him and noticed he was not wearing gloves once. And in his main desc, he had milky skin or something and he also had long silvery hair. And maybe noticed what he had on his back and certainly what he wore.

Now even though this guy wayed me a bunch of times so I knew his short desc, I always played it out that the only thing I knew about him was that he was elf tall, had pale skin, and silver hair.

Did I know what he looked like? Yes. Did I know what his short desc was? Yes. But it was my personal choice not to use those things to hunt him down. I only went off what I could see of him.  Now, if I went by your method, I might not get that information, which would be silly.

Unfortunately, not everybody does this, I've seen people who will memorize a hooded figure's equipment then if they see the figure later and unhooded, attack them, claiming to recongnize the persons things.

[Delirium]

What's wrong with that?

Not that I condone magically remembering every single piece of equipment the PC was wearing, but let's say for the sake of argument that I'm walking down the street and suddenly this guy in black sneakers, blue-jeans, a hooded sweatshirt with a logo on it, and black gloves jumps me and grabs my bag, then runs off.  Later on, I see some guy wearing the same exact outfit and with the same build and carriage in the 7-11 getting coffee.  Are you saying I shouldn't recognize him at all?

I like the idea of body/head being split up in the descs, though I would make it an option to put the head description before the body, so that it reads more 'top to bottom', so to speak.

[Maybe42or54]

Interesting Idea about 2 descs. I enjoy it.

[Ghost]

I like the original poster's idea.  But the problem is, not every hood is good enough or even close for hiding identity.  

Having different main descs, I think that is pretty neat as well, but I would think after a while, people would get used to it and so would recognize the guy's main desc (without head desc) as well.

Hmm... Still the original idea sounds better to me.

[Angela Christine]

It's been discussed. Masks and hoods should help to hide one's identity, but shouldn't completely mask it.
[snip]

For example if my mdesc was:

This man is tall. He is handsome. He will mudsex you. He has a scar on his hand.

A hood might do something like:

This mxo is tulm. Hi is hqndsome. He wilx mxdsex you. Hx has a sxar xn his hxnd.

Meh.  

I see the problem being people who do the ol' cut & paste of descriptions to give their character's perfect recall, and this solution would barely bother them at all.  Even if it was nearly indecipherable as text, it would still be formatted exactly the same way as the original in regards to spacing, punctuation and the like, so if you are comparing it to a collection of unobfuscated descriptions it shouldn't be too difficult to find a match.

On the other hand for people who have seen a mixed up description and are trying to make a report this would make OOC nonsense out of the description.  "Well officer, he had either a scar or a star that I think it was on his head or his maybe his hand, I'm not really sure which."  Huh?  

Randomizing appearance that way just won't make sense in many situations, and it will do very little to stop people who use cut and paste to remember every single detail of a description.



It is a knotty problem.  I've been to roleplay MUSHs that used multi-descers so that you could pre-set an number of decriptions (usually it ws just for different outfits but in arm you could have: normal, masked, naked, cleaned up with a nice hair-do, especially filthy, topless, sick, horribly injured, burned, etc.) and easily switch between them, but I don't think it would work well with our application process.  Here are a couple examples:  http://www.chaoticmux.org/~kareila/TF/desc.txt   http://liverpool.o-r-g.org:8000/help/file?name=multidescer&db=153  
Even if you remove the ability to create brand new descriptions without staff intervention these would be trouble.  Now the application reviewers won't have to read just one description, they would have to read several and make sure that not only was each spelled and formated correctly, but that they are also consistant with eachother.  You can't have blue eyes in one description but green or brown eyes in another (unless your character is some swirly-eyed freak, and that should be a special app).


Another solution is having a description altering masks or disguises custom made for a particular character.  The mask-generated description is based on the regular description, but is altered in the ways that the mask would logically alter that particular individual's appearance.  The problems here are that they require some imm-effort to create and keep track of, and if the plump, brown-eyed woman wears the tall, muscular man's mask she will look exactly the same in it as he did, which is silly -- anyone who has experienced halloween knows that just putting on the mask of Zorro doesn't make you look much like Zorro.


I don't believe that there is any easy, newbie-friendly and imm-friendly yet twink-resistant way to solve this dilemma.


Angela Christine

[bloodfromstone]

The set of descriptions is a great idea. I can see the problem for scaring off new players, though, the character creation process is already pretty indepth.

As far as the OP's idea, I don't like it so much. There's a number of problems I see with it. The obvious being that you'll likely end up with nothing but useless information about the cloaked figure's freckled shoulders and third nipple while missing the details about stance, build, skin color, etc. It just doesn't seem realistic enough to me, I guess.

I don't have too much of a problem with the current system. Sure, it's flawed because people are flawed. Yeah, it sucks when you walk into the bar in a hooded cloak, emote stopping in the entry way, and your buddies at the bar look at you and call you over. It's frustrating when it becomes impossible to disguise your character, even if they have a pretty generic description, new clothes, and a facewrap. But I can't really think of anything that would fix these things without going too far the other way. Even with split head/body descriptions, people will still recognize you.

[jhunter]

The problems here are that they require some imm-effort to create and keep track of, and if the plump, brown-eyed woman wears the tall, muscular man's mask she will look exactly the same in it as he did, which is silly -- anyone who has experienced halloween knows that just putting on the mask of Zorro doesn't make you look much like Zorro.

:shock:


Shit, no wonder the cops are after me!


Z

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

Regarding the OP's idea...
I think it should be implemented simply because it'd be so hilariously confusing for newbies.

Code Select Expand

point allanak

look figure

Tie fizynt ghefrre yio is a zhurc kittoe dxarf wytj no lair whetzoxejer. He hez big heids, o yarge nisy, and ze jmeltz xtrungiy of duit. Stars triss-crozx his yusxy skig.
The short figure in the hooded robe is in excellent condition.

The short figure in the hooded robe asks you, in an unfamiliar tongue:
"Xjo jhe rjxg urt iuy, ykxket!?"

You think:
"What the hell is wrong with this MUD!?!?"

[bloodfromstone]

That's hilarious.  :lol:

[Larrath]

I am very much against the original proposal.  Scrambling large masses of text will only promote heads exploding and being bashed in.
And promote those silly "lower your hood, citizen" situations, too.
Also, like jhunter said, the formatting remains the same, so it makes little difference.

About describing specific portions of the body, I am in favor.  This could be troublesome for newbies, but I can see a way around this.  It will work this way:

Code Select Expand


Now entering main description - would you like to use a Normal or a Modular description?  (N/m)
> N
[Normal editor goes here.]

>m
Please describe your hair or bald, shiny dwarven head.
[Editor]
Please describe your head, ears and face.
.
.
.


This will include hands, arms, neck, body and back, face, eyes, feet, legs, ears and, just for the heck of it, genitals.
Then equipment would actually hide things.  Yay for striptease!
We really need a way to let people disguise themselves.  It's crucial for raiders and criminals and spies and secret magickers out on missions of mass pain and discomfortation.

[jmordetsky]

One problem with double descs is that, if I mask my face, and that gets taken away, then you can still key off my body desc. Which, to be fair, isn't going to be as helpful to you in recognizing someone very easily in real life. IT helps, but it shouldn't let this ID someone. You can still ID someone from their body desc, way to easily.

For example my double desc:

[FACE]
This man's face is well structured. He has a scar on his left cheek, and oddly shapen nose and bright blue eyes.
[/FACE]

[BODY]
This man's body is sturdy and strong. He has the look of one who has spent a lot of time in the desert. His hands are calloused and dirty.
[BODY]

So, when you look at me you see:

This man's face is well structured. He has a scar on his left cheek, and oddly shaped nose and bright blue eyes. This man's body is sturdy and strong. He has the look of one who has spent a lot of time in the desert. His hands are calloused and dirty.

Now, according the 2 desc logic, if I wear a facewrap you see:

This man's body is sturdy and strong. He has the look of one who has spent a lot of time in the desert. His hands are calloused and dirty.

But your brain can still do direct recall of me based on body desc, it's an exact match to the other piece of my desc. The same words etc, and as a result you won't feel lost when you look at me. You'll know who I am, because your brain will automatically match the pattern of words from body desc. This is worsed if you've seen me before.

Now, we know that killing certain characters in the language code hampers your understanding. We've all played it and experienced the feeling of "What the fuck did that dwarf just say?". This, is a near perfect implementation for language because of what it does to your brain when you read the dialogue. You lean and go "Wha"? Then you read it again. You "read" what they are saying and "feel" confused.

That same feeling of confusion and inability to discern what's happening from a sensory point of view is directly applicable to the issue of hoods and masks.

I took the same example from before and wrote a script that ran it through a random number generator to mask some letters. Now to deal with the formatting recognition (which is a valid point) that AC brought up, I also masked space characters which throws off your ability to match "word" patterns.

Secondly, to address Ghost's concern, (which is also a valid one) I created different levels of  "masked" descriptions based on a percent chance of character being masked. Objects in game (theoretically, Xygax would need to confirm that, I'm just speculating on this) could have a different "percent" chance of masking a character's mdesc. I could only imagine that this is would be very similar to the code that determines, based on your language skill, if you understand something someone says to you.

Here is the original desc along with the results categorized by how much "masking" potential an item has:

Original – no mask.

This man's face is well structured. He has a scar on his left cheek, and oddly shaped nose and bright blue eyes. This man's body is sturdy and strong. He has the look of one who has spent a lot of time in the desert. His hands are calloused and dirty.


Light Hood - Masking potential of 30%

This man-s fa-e is w--l structur-d- He has a-scar-on hi---eft-c--ek, a-d o-d---sh--e- nose --d brig-t bl-e eye-- -h-s--an'- body--s --ur-y -n- stro-g---- has-t-e look -f-one who h-s-s-en--- lot-of -ime-in t-e---s-rt- -i- hands --e-c-l-o-sed and di-t--


Face wrap (alone) - Masking potential of 50%

--is m-n-s f--e is-wel- str---ured- ----a--a-s-ar -- -is---f- -h---- -n----dly--h-pe- --s--a-d---i----b-----ye-.--h-s-m-n---b-dy----s-u-dy-a---st-ong--H- h-s--he l-o--o-------h- h-- --e-t---l-t-of -im--in -he-d--ert. --s ----s a-----l--u-e- --d d--ty.


Full length body cloak w/hood and full obsidian face mask - Masking potential of 80%

--is---n---f---------------------------------------- -i----------------------------e--------n-------t----------------------------i-------y---- -----------h-- ------o---- --- ------------------------------ ----------.-----h---------------s-- ----------

The last example is extreme, but I was considering this a V like costume. (google: vendetta wachowski for more info on V)

The idea is, when you look at these people, you might be able to make them out, you might not. But when you read those desc, you're like "fuck who is that?". If you had seen me before you might be able to recognize me in the first two. Also, you can see this can be tweaked. Perhaps the most powerful masking item only gives you 30% coverage.

The idea is to inhibit your brains natural ability to put together patterns of words and recognize them so that you cannot recognize a PC.  You're not doing this by just removing portions of a description.