Overkill

[WarriorPoet]

I hate the idea of a pieced together desc. Hate it.

Perhaps expand the mdesc-hiding mask code to affect facewraps, veils, bandana's and the like when worn on the face location?

I don't think I'd like crazily-dyed bone masks on every Amos I see in the desert, but as it's a desert world with ALOT of sand and sun, I don't think covering your face would be all that rare. I know that when I wear a face-covering garment I like to emote little hints as to what you can and cannot see, eyes with a veil, the press of my huge nose against my bandana, the fluff of bluish hair hanging from the folds of my facewrap, etc...

As for the mask-code hiding mdesc things like missing legs or a giant horn on their face, I'd say that is up to the raider/masked person to take care of via-emotes. Size and the like isn't really an issue, as assess -v will tell you alot about that. Maybe not as detailed as a mdesc, but it will give you a general size, age and race. All of which you could probably tell with just a look, anyway.

Back on topic, I wish people would be a bit more easy-going when it came to letting folks live. You rarely see long-standing feuds on Arm because everyone has a minor argument and suddenly people start dying. I want to see more non-lethal plotting, especially in the noble and templar areas of the game. There's more at stake, there, than personal honor. A rival House probably has a hundred cousins, all of whom are expendable. But is their House's Honor expendable? Their prestige among the other nobility and the commons? How powerful can they be when every grubby rat on the street is snickering behind a hand about them?

Sure, you could kill Lord Crotchrot for insulting you in the Barrel, but wouldn't it be more satisfying to drug him asleep and shave off that big-ass fancy beard of his? He's SOOOO fucking proud of it. We'll see how proud he is when he's dwarf-faced and shamed before commoner, noble and Krath himself.

More non-lethal feuding. Let that bastard go so he can live in shame, and maybe come back for more.

-WP

[Vesperas]

Sure, you could kill Lord Crotchrot for insulting you in the Barrel, but wouldn't it be more satisfying to drug him asleep and shave off that big-ass fancy beard of his? He's SOOOO fucking proud of it. We'll see how proud he is when he's dwarf-faced and shamed before commoner, noble and Krath himself.

More non-lethal feuding. Let that bastard go so he can live in shame, and maybe come back for more.

-WP

LMFAO.  Thank you.

[jhunter]

That can be countered a little bit in the cities by making them illegal, but it still wouldn't prevent a desert full of "tall masked figures" as every desert elf started wearing them. We could limit them, a little. Make them very very rare. But then you'd have people murdering each other for masks, which is kinda silly.

Perhaps add some documentation to some of the tribes to help with this. Maybe some of them "do not" wear masks for any reason other than special ceremonial masks for certain ceremonies. Perhaps some of them consider it beneath them to cover up their "beautiful" elven features. Maybe they consider it a "roundear weakness" like having to ride a mount to cover ones face with a wrap when out in the wilds?

Outlawing masks/facewraps within the walls of cities would be good too. Perhaps soldiers at the gates would make people uncover their faces upon entering. "Checking to see if it was a known criminal they were letting through."

And yeah, some responsibility would fall to the masked pc to display certain noticable things via emote. "Horns on their face....etc..."
That's fine...most don't have anything like that, but if they did I'm sure the player who made that sort of pc would be decent enough to emote that out.
And it's not going to get the victim killed if they forget. As it stands, twinkiness on the part of the victim usually gets the aggressor killed or the word spread around that they are a thief/raider or whathaveyou.

[Rindan]

Personally, I think people drastically overstate the difficulty in dealing with masks.  First, masks are silly.  No one should wear masks unless they are giving a play.  Translucent veils, hoods, and things of that nature would not cover mdescs.    Facewraps, or even a piece of cloth torn from the scavenge code should do the job just fine.  As to how to deal with it?  I think it is simple.  Wearing a mdesc hiding object would be illegal in lawful cities.  If every single 'rinther wants to cover their face, let them.  If every elf wants to cover his face, let him.  

Descriptions on individual limbs is just overkill.  If you can't see a guy's face or recognize him for distinct tattoos and equipment, unless he has some kind of obvious defect, he is going to be unrecognizable.  One skinny elf looks like pretty much any other skinny elf.  Sure, one might have fatter legs or whatnot, but the chances of you noticing through his pants is pretty minimal.  Even if you could figure out the elf's leg size, the 'fat legged elf' is not a description that should be of any help in ever identifying him again.  I can live with the assumption that if someone is wearing a mdesc hiding piece of equipment, that person has likely taken all of the obvious efforts precautions he would need to conceal his identity.  If a person does have some obvious defect that should be noticed despite attempts to conceal it, I would rather people just RP it out then making it impossible to conceal yourself because of one rare exception.

For shits and giggles, throw in a reveal command.  The reveal command does a little offense vs defense and agility check.  If the reveal check is failed for the victim, then the revealer rips the victim's mask off.  Throw in a time delay so that the victim of the command can decide to gut the revealer.  The reveal command could even work in combat, but it would take a penalty to your ability to tear off the mask and you would defend like you are not holding any weapons while you struggle to fight past their defenses to tear off the mask.  Hell, throw in a bonus for people that try to reveal while hidden.  So if Jane the informant follows Smelly the criminal to his secret lair, she can simply hide, wait for him to turn his back, tear off his mask and take a peek, then run.  If Scrawny the masked elf attacks Joe the big mean warrior, Joe the big mean warrior just tears off the scrawny elf's mask while easily blocking the attacks.  If merchant Amos decide he is going to tear the mask off of Ugly the Mul raider, merchant Amos is not only fail his check, but is also going to be gutted very quickly.

Will that make the criminal's life a little easier?  Sure, it might make it a little easier, but that isn't a bad thing.  As it stands, certain crimes are almost non-existent.  I have been attacked in the desert something like two times.  I have never been pick pocketed, never been attack in the commons, hell, I don't think I have even ever been attacked in the 'rinth by a PC.  I can chalk up all of my lost characters in the 8 or so years I have been playing to Templars, NPC, falling, and drowning.  Drowning in water more times then you have ever been mugged or pick pocketed?  That is just wrong.  

Give crime a chance.

I think that the simple ability to have a reasonable shot at concealing yourself would do wonders to getting people to try non-lethal forms of retaliation.  Beating the crap out of my enemies and stealing everything they own sounds like fine, but not if a Templar magikly picks me out of all the people in Allanak because my victim saw my mdesc.  If you really want to know what the masked bandit looks like, I think it should be done the old fashion way, shadow the fucker or beat him until he can't stop you from taking his mask.

[Delirium]

Beautiful post.  Bravo.  Rindan for President.

[jhunter]

I love the "reveal" idea. That sounds perfect. Letting people attempt to rip of the mask at the drawback of being under a delay and or failing to do so, that's sweet.

[Agent_137]

Well, rindan and jhunter seem pretty adamant about the whole "trust other players" idea failing utterly. I wouldn't know myself, so I'm going to have to trust their experience on the matter.

If there's no trust, let's see some coded assists to criminals.

[Vesperas]

I think the topic name and subject are somewhat appropriate enough for this derailment:

I think some of the NPCs get REALLY into an overkill, especially when the crime is of a nonlethal nature.

Not cool to forget the brawl code and die within half a second because 15 guards jump your arse with the intent to kill, and you didn't even use the 'kill' command.

[Agent_137]

This is tough, espescially considering most mdescs don't contain anything really noteable besides the way they're written.

This is my second character, for example:

This muscular human looks to have gained his strength more from labor or
fighting than by any organized attempt.  His beard is badly groomed and
appears to be unwashed, along with his short black hair.  His skin is a typical
dark tan of a Zalanthan, with various scars scattered about.  His flat nose
and square face sit well on top of his burly chest and thick legs, perhaps
the only aspect of him with any organization.  

So basically, he's burly, has scars, a beard, and short black hair.

Yea, that REALLY narrows it down. Half a million in allanak, I'm quite sure he's not all that remarkable. I just don't see how people can tell a templar this, and actually have the templar not laugh in their face.

>
You say to the templar, "He was bigger than average, had some scars on him, he was wearing a facewrap but i could see his beard, and his hair was black, and short. I was on my way back down from visiting Tuluk when he attacked me on the road."
>
The templar says in a flat voice, "Sure, I'll get right on that, spy!"
>
The templar explodes your head.
>
Welcome to Armageddon.


So yea, bullshit. But I'll have to do it myself to find out if there are really twinks this retarded that can actually do anything worthwile to you, as rindan and jhunter so describe.

Next character, then. Raider. Look out. (or maybe THIS character. Mwhaha.)

[bloodfromstone]

Reveal is a wonderful idea, I think. Good thinking, Rindan.

I think some of the NPCs get REALLY into an overkill, especially when the crime is of a nonlethal nature.

For sure. Losing a decent warrior in one round of combat to NPCs is not fun, nor does it add to the game, imo.

As far as the actual topic, I would love to see more non-lethal fueding. It's hard to pull off, from what I've seen, and I'm not really sure how to fix that. Like people have said, one person who doesn't play along can ruin everything. I've had one experience involving a mugging (myself as the victim) that was an incredible RPing experience, because the person doing it was very well played and gave me a chance to prove that I wasn't going to spam-flee after they emoted a spearpoint to my throat. It turned out to be a much more fun experience than running off, hugging the items he was trying to take.

[JollyGreenGiant]

I think there's quite a lot of non-lethal feuding out there. Or rather, there are a lot of feuds that start out non-lethal, continue to be non-lethal for a good while, and are only lethal for the short duration that it takes someone to hire someone else to put a poniard between a third someone's fifth and sixth vertebrae. The thing about a violent world like Zalanthas is that any sustained conflict is going to result, sooner or later, in a spear through someone's sternum.

[LoD]

I agree with Rindan 100% with regards to most players having photographic memories and enhanced powers of deduction when it comes to your description as a thief, spy, raider, murderer, assassin, etc...  I used to raid extensively hooded with a tattoo written into my mdesc that a group would then use to identify me when, really, they wouldn't have ever had a good view of it unless I was undressed.

Halaster is also dead on with each point about the masks as a solution;  Too many and everyone would be wearing them.  Too few and people are murdering folks over pieces of sandcloth.

The 'reveal' command seems like a good idea, and I would be interested to see if a "disguised" flag could be created not only for masks, but perhaps for spells and other items/effects.  When someone is disguised, then they take on the mdesc of the item (or spell) causing it.  This flag could then be removed by the "reveal" command, or simply toggling it like a hood (raise/lower mask).

Allow the "reveal" command to be an attack check, as Rindan suggests, and perhaps automatic under "nosave" or "subdue".  This could also give way to a fun new spell, something like:

Dirty Alley [NS]
A human beggar is here, groveling for money.

>look beggar

Standing before you is a human beggar.  He's completely average in every imagineable way to adhere to some requests for shorter mdesc's.
A human beggar is in excellent condition.

<worn on body>                   a batman costume

>look me

Smooth skin, nice teeth, and ample breasts invite you in for a closer look at this fine piece of work.  Perfect skin tone, pouty red lips and a curvy waist lead to sumptuous thighs where inviting shadows whisper sweet promises of lust and a knife in your back because she's secretly a powerful assassin fighting against the Man.
The smooth, apple bottomed commoner is in excellent condition.

<worn on body>                   something in the way

>cast 'sul un lookie likey yoo" beggar
Something swirls, rumbles, darkens or gets wet as you cast a spell.

Your skin ripples as you point a hand toward a human beggar.
Ok.

>l me

Standing before you is a human beggar.  He's completely average in every imagineable way to adhere to some requests for shorter mdesc's.
A human beggar is in excellent condition.

Mask items would not be overpowered if there was a way to unmask someone without relying solely on their action to remove it, and introducing a 'disguise' flag might provide for some other interesting uses that would validate such a project.

-LoD

[jhunter]

This is absolutely one of the best ideas to help with this issue that I've seen. The additional suggestions are all very good too.

Bring back main desc covering items (making them common enough that people aren't unrealistically killing others to get them), make wearing a covering over your face illegal in the lawful cities, add "reveal", and I think it would make things much better.
It would be much more balanced out as far as criminal vs victim than it currently is and be more realistic as well. It would open up more rp opportunities and allow for people to try and be successful at criminal activities without resorting to killing all their victims.

[bloodfromstone]

Wow, LoD. That would be a badass spell for a number of reasons. (Not the least of which would be getting to watch how people react when they think an Imm is animating their local NPC.)