Cloaks, veils, masks and all that jazz

[Beux]

What came up in a recent derailed thread was how is is nearly impossible to cloak your appearance even when dressed head to toe. I think being able to hide who you are would seriously bring more depth and realism to the game, I think it is as an aspect that is really missing.

When I first thought about it I considered the solution, that was also suggested on said previous thread, about breaking the description into sections that could be displayed depending on what was being worn - however I agree with the point made that this would make all descriptions very template-like and generic. Snore.

The only other solution I can think of is to leave it in the trustworthy hands of the players and combine this idea with another idea that has come up numerous times. Tdesc.

Wearing a hood, veil, mask or any other identity concealing item would totally conceal your description. With Tdesc in place you could then re-add the features that you considered still visible. Whether this was done in the form of pre-written, pre-approved 'chunks' of Tdesc or whether you showed be able to do it on the fly...I don't know. I suppose the character creation could be extended (-a lot-) so that you would have:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Full description:
This tiny girl has bright orange, shoulder length hair marred with dirt and grime. Her fingernails are bitten right down to the ends leaving pink sores at tips of her emaciated fingers. Limbs, gangly and jutting, lend to her awkward stand and despite her obvious gender she has a form very much like boy. Her nose is stub and subtly turned up at one end, her lips are tight, the natural pink scarred by numerous cracks and cuts. Her overall appearance is messy and unkempt bar gleaming cobalt eyes that are a stark contrast to the rest of her countenace.

Cloaked&Hooded (I don't think there is much need to rewrite your desc with no hood up):
Gleaming cobalt eyes pierce through the shadows cast by her hood. The colour of her skin is darkened by the shadows but hints of dirt and grime can still be seen streaked across her chin. Her pinkish lips are scarred and cut and tufts of orange hair fall awkwardly from around her hood. Her stature is tiny and that of a child or small human.

Masked::
A gleaming cobalt gaze pierce through the eyeholes of this mask. Her form
is tiny and emaciated with awkward gangly limbs. Her fingernails are bitten right down to the ends leaving pink sores at tips of her emaciated fingers. Her hair is a loose mess of bright orange locks.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Then you would have to go on to have: Masked&Cloaked (which no doubt would leave nothing but eyes), Veiled and Veiled&Cloaked.

This is very long-winded way of doing it (maybe it should be either a. optional or b. karma restricted) and would require the imms doing the app'ing to make sure that all the shorter version descs still matched what the character looked like (not identically formed sentences).

The other way would be to trust the players, give them T-desc and let them write it up themselves each time.

Any other ideas on a solution to this? As identity concealment is something that is reheally missing from Arm.

Staff feedback would also be appreciated, as this and similar ideas have come up all the time it would be nice to know your stance on it thus far.

[Rindan]

Personally, I think that if you have a mask over your face you should have no ldesc.  Yes, yes, you could see that your masked villain has blue eyes or long legs or whatever.  Honestly though, how often can you REALLY identify a masked man?  If a masked man came up to you on the street and mugged you, would you be able to describe to the police who he was or have any hope of ever identifying  him again?  Chance are that you would never have any hope of identifying the person.  If someone is so horribly deformed that they can be identified through a mask, I would rather just trust that player to RP it out, rather then be in the situation where we are now.

In other words, if someone is wearing a mask, we can assume that they are taking all reasonable precautions to conceal their identity and that they are successful almost all of the time.  If they want to RP out clues to help you guess who they are, that is their business.

If I were to propose a masked solution it would be this;

1)  Add a new wear location called 'mask'.  Make pretty much every single scrap of cloth able to fit on that wear location.  If someone has something on their 'mask' wear location, their entire ldesc and sdesc is covered.  A 20 'sid bandanna should be all you need.  Masks should not be some uber awesome item you can only get from Kurac for the price of a castle made out of steel.  It is a frigging piece of cloth and nothing more.  Yes, every Red Stormer and 'rinth rat will wear one.

2)  Having anything on your 'mask' wear location is a crime in Allanak and Tuluk.  If you are seen with a mask on, you are considered a criminal that the guards will gang-bang appropriately.

3)  Add a new command called 'study' (or whatever).  You can 'study' a person and see through their mask to their ldesc.  Study is blatant act and results in an echo.  Study takes about 10 seconds and is broken by combat or movement by either party.  In other words, if you sit in Red Storm with a mask, people can see through it given enough time.  Study can't be used in combat, so if you try and study the guy mugging you, he will likely kick your ass.

4)  Add a new command called 'grab'.  You can grab a mask off of someone.  This is a hostile act and can be done in combat.  Making a grab leaves you especially vulnerable to attack.  Your chance of making a successful grab is computed by comparing your agility and attack skills against your opponents agility and defense skills along with whatever combat bonuses either of you might have.  In other words, it is easier to grab the mask from someone sitting unarmed at the bar then it is to grab the mask of someone you are locking swords with.

The net result?  People can wear masks.  You can still identify people by tattoos and equipment if they never change.  Raiders and muggers might actually have a reason to not kill you because you can't automagikly post their description on the boards.

[Beux]

I don't think masking your face should be illegal. There are plenty of noble types, agents and such that might wish to *Veil* their faces and conceal their identity for the sake of privacy and peace and quiet. I don't think Senior Lady Fancypants would appreciate ten guards jumping her because she fancied a walk around the bazaar and didn't want everyone staring.

Also some people mask their faces because they are disfigured and such. No, masking should definately -not- be illegal. But that isn't to say it wouldn't lend suspicion and bartenders/templars/shopkeepers/guards and the like *may* request suspicious individuals (again...not nobles/agents/high standing citizens) to remove said mask.

[Lizzie]

There was a recent robbery in town where the guy was wearing a piece of pantyhose over his face, gloves, long sleeves, long pants, and a hat. The police were able to determine these things:

The guy had a broad crooked nose with wide nostrils.
He was a guy (his voice).
He had very bushy eyebrows.
He might have been a Hispanic, or light-skinned african-american, and the skin that was exposed on his arm when he reached to get the money displayed a tattoo on his wrist.
He had coarse, curly black hair.
He was either hairless on his chin, or very clean-shaven.
He had a cleft chin.
His eyes were definitely not blue or any light hue, and were some shade of dark brown or possibly black.

Anyone wearing a veil would probably show that much, if not more. Veils don't cover the entire face, they only cover from the nose down. Veils don't cover the hair. Veils don't cover the backs of the neck. Masks don't cover the back of the neck, or the top of the head. Neither veils or masks cover the eyes, and neither cover any part of the body below the neck.

The problem with these face coverings is that they currently hide the sdesc which might not be appropriate (as in the case of the bulky, two-fingered elf), and don't hide the main desc which is almost never appropriate (unless the only things mentioned in the main desc are facial features, which is a player error and not a code error).

I don't think there is any way to resolve this, code-wise, and that the responsibility will just have to fall on the players to RP it out as realistically as possible.

L. Stanson

[Beux]

I think it would be much better solved the other way - leaving it to players to RP appropriately what -should- be seen after the ldesc has been masked, rather than leaving it up to the players to pretend as if they don't recognise someone (which is a lot harder for players to realistically do).

The point of allowing someone a Tdesc entry after concealing their description would be so they could point out things like the colour of their eyes, the scar on the back of their hand, the cleft chin...whatever.

[jmordetsky]

I still think the way to go is to mask the msdesc the way you would the language code.

Normal:
This man is tall. He has blue eyes and black hair. He has a beard.

With Hood:
TXXs man is tXXl. Xe haX Xlue eyXX and XXXck hair. He Xas X beard.

With Mask:
TXXs mXX is tXXl. Xe haX XlXe XyXX and XXXck hXXr. Xe Xas X XeXXd.

And then make the characters scan or watch skill effect the amount that is masked.

It's not ultra realistic, but it does the trick for what would amount to something fairly easy to code.

(Of course that's coming from someone who has never seen the code.)

[Beux]

I suppose that would be cool. I doubt it should be affected by watch/scan. A problem with this may be...you could be reheally unfortunate and end up having a really obvious/memorable part of your description revealed - the type of feature that a person would make an obvious effort to hide if they concealing their identity.

[jmordetsky]

I suppose that would be cool. I doubt it should be affected by watch/scan. A problem with this may be...you could be reheally unfortunate and end up having a really obvious/memorable part of your description revealed - the type of feature that a person would make an obvious effort to hide if they concealing their identity.

True.

[Mudder]

I personally have seen stuff that hides your mdesc, rather or not you can find it is a different story. I think these things should be rare for a reason or you would have everyone running out with their mdesc hidden.

[Sokotra]

I don't know if it has been discussed yet or not, but clothing and equipment is another big identifier.  When you are covered in a cloak and/or hood I think there needs to be more concealment of some of the items worn.  

There are certain types of cloaks that would conceal nearly every last bit of a persons armor and such except for boots and gloves and certain helmets and also weapons/packs that might be slung across the back.  

Still, though, I imagine it would be easy to conceal those as well... but then you have to look at maybe increasing the 'draw' time or possibly a very minor decrease in your maneuverability when you are covered in something that is extremely concealing.

[Beux]

I personally have seen stuff that hides your mdesc, rather or not you can find it is a different story. I think these things should be rare for a reason or you would have everyone running out with their mdesc hidden.

That should be allowed. Why should you be able to identify every person you pass in the street wearing a full length cloak and a facewrap?

But the majority of people socialising would want people to know who they were - sat in bars etc. Still, that goes back to my previous point, templars, militia, guards, bartenders etc would probably ask any suspicious characters to remove items that conceal their identity if they were looking/acting suspicius.

[Rindan]

There was a recent robbery in town where the guy was wearing a piece of pantyhose over his face, gloves, long sleeves, long pants, and a hat. The police were able to determine these things:

The guy had a broad crooked nose with wide nostrils.
He was a guy (his voice).
He had very bushy eyebrows.
He might have been a Hispanic, or light-skinned african-american, and the skin that was exposed on his arm when he reached to get the money displayed a tattoo on his wrist.
He had coarse, curly black hair.
He was either hairless on his chin, or very clean-shaven.
He had a cleft chin.
His eyes were definitely not blue or any light hue, and were some shade of dark brown or possibly black.

Great, so you are saying the robber was the guy I sat next to at the bar on Saturday?  The point isn't that you couldn't tell ANYTHING about that person.  The point is that you couldn't possibly identify that person to save   your life.  You would not call the police if you saw a guy matching that description on the street because his description matches millions of people in the US.  Yes you saw "stuff" about him despite his mask, but none of it is useful for actually identifying him.  

If this robber was a Armageddon character, his "mdesc" was effectively concealed.  Sure, you could look at him and see the tattoo, and your assess -v would suggest that he is probably a human.  You would know when he speaks that he is a male.  Nothing else about him would separate him out from the rest of the population.

Anyone wearing a veil would probably show that much, if not more. Veils don't cover the entire face, they only cover from the nose down. Veils don't cover the hair. Veils don't cover the backs of the neck. Masks don't cover the back of the neck, or the top of the head. Neither veils or masks cover the eyes, and neither cover any part of the body below the neck.

How many people in this world do you identify by the back of the neck?  If  you see the back of the neck of a guy robbing you, what are  you going to report?  "Officer, arrest the man with the thick, sun burned neck and black curly hair!"  Again, my point isn't that there is never any information to be gained from a masked person, just that they are effectively impossible to identify.  The only way to really simulate this in Armageddon is to simply conceal the mdesc.

I don't think there is any way to resolve this, code-wise, and that the responsibility will just have to fall on the players to RP it out as realistically as possible.

I agree responsible RP is the solution, but I disagree with who the burden should be placed on.  Right now, the burden of responsible RP is placed in the victim's hands.  The victim looks at the masked man and decides if he/she is going to copy and paste their mdesc into word to be used later.    It should be the other way around.  The person wearing the mask should be the one who needs to be responsible.  The person wearing the mask should be RPing out clues as to his identity.

I give Armageddon folks a lot of credit, but there are not many that will look at a masked man, see his mdesc, and then pretend they don't know who they are when that person sits down to have a drink at the bar.  Right now the default is that there is absolutely no way to conceal your identity.

[Beux]

I agree responsible RP is the solution, but I disagree with who the burden should be placed on.  Right now, the burden of responsible RP is placed in the victim.  The victim looks at the masked man and decides he is going to copy and paste their mdesc into word to be used later.    It should be the other way around.  The person wearing the mask should be the one who needs to be responsible.  The person wearing the mask should be RPing out clues as to his identity.

Totally agree.

[Eternal]

Right now the default is that there is absolutely no way to conceal your identity.

Without violating my own IC-info policies, heh...
There are quite a few ways to conceal your identity from the look command.  Sneak and Hide are the most obvious and mundane ones... and I -think- there are still coded objects with the ability to hide mdesc, but that they are (understandably) rare as all heck.  Pretty hard to hide your barrel chest or muscular arms when you're holding someone in a headlock, heh.  Beyond the pale... I'd not be surprised if magicky/psionic types get a bonus from abilities that either hide or mask descriptions, or just prevent someone getting a good look at them.  Don't know if they do, but it seems reasonable.

Lord Templar Hard Nose thinks everyone should just go around naked, makes body-searches a lot easier.

[daedroug]

a crazy idea about this just popped into my head as i was reading this, it might work or it might be a little cumbersome and I haven't mulled over it yet so it may be abit rough.
Basicly anything that now hides your sdesc now hides your mdesc as well. Ontop of the normal mdesc that you write during character creation you also have part descriptions (pdesc?) that you put any notable attributes about a part of you, probablly only a sentence or two each. for instance for your hands it might be: this man's hands are fat with short and stubby fingers and dark callouses. I con't know about anyone else but that wouldn't be hard for me to come up with within a couple seconds each once i've written the main desc. So then all of these cobble together to make up a hidden desc only when they are actively trying to hide their identity (i.g. masks hoods facewraps) so if I have my hood up any part that is uncovered would be seen in my desc. If my hands are covered no pdesc for my hands, if my arms are covered no pdesc for my arms, etc. And finally when a person isn't attempting to hide their desc with a hood or what not, you can look burly's hands to see what their pdesc is for their hands. That way some on that is truly diligent enough to pay attention to the details of a character would still be able to pick a hooded figure out.
On a side note i know this is similar to the modular mdesc but this would take care of the problem with having cookie cutter mdescs and not being able to use over all impressions. Sure the desc that you see while they are hooded might be a bit cookie cutter, but isn't that the way it should be?
Feedback?

[edited to refine point and fix typos]

[rufus]

Neato.

[Agent_137]

i like it.

we need something.

[James de Monet]

As I recall, way back in the day, masks used to conceal your mdesc.  And the result was twinky PC central.  People would walk into the bars wearing masks and start robbing people because they knew all the PCs there were afraid to get crim-flagged for attacking.  Even though it was pretty dang obvious that the guy wearing the big scary mask and popping in and out of sight was the one responsible for everybody's empty pockets.

So, the masks no longer conceal your mdesc.  Simply putting that code back in place is not the anwer, though I do like these ideas about a vdesc? (veiled description) or body part descriptions forming your mdesc when masked, etc.

[Beux]

As I recall, way back in the day, masks used to conceal your mdesc.  And the result was twinky PC central.  People would walk into the bars wearing masks and start robbing people because they knew all the PCs there were afraid to get crim-flagged for attacking.  Even though it was pretty dang obvious that the guy wearing the big scary mask and popping in and out of sight was the one responsible for everybody's empty pockets.

So, the masks no longer conceal your mdesc.  Simply putting that code back in place is not the anwer, though I do like these ideas about a vdesc? (veiled description) or body part descriptions forming your mdesc when masked, etc.

Yeh, it would mean a bit more effort on everybodies part when they were apping characters, but not -that- much, because you'd only really be picking out features from the mdesc you'd already written, and the imms would simply have to check that yes in her mdesc she has a scar on her finger and in her...vdesc or whatever...she has a scar on her finger. Etc etc.

[Nightstring]

I still think the way to go is to mask the msdesc the way you would the language code.

Normal:
This man is tall. He has blue eyes and black hair. He has a beard.

With Hood:
TXXs man is tXXl. Xe haX Xlue eyXX and XXXck hair. He Xas X beard.

With Mask:
TXXs mXX is tXXl. Xe haX XlXe XyXX and XXXck hXXr. Xe Xas X XeXXd.

And then make the characters scan or watch skill effect the amount that is masked.

It's not ultra realistic, but it does the trick for what would amount to something fairly easy to code.

(Of course that's coming from someone who has never seen the code.)

I think this might work fairly well. Maybe the longer you've been around/seen/talked with a person while he or she was undisguised, the better you would be able to recognize him or her in a disguise (kind of like how it is for learning languages).

[daedroug]

I still think the way to go is to mask the msdesc the way you would the language code.

Normal:
This man is tall. He has blue eyes and black hair. He has a beard.

With Hood:
TXXs man is tXXl. Xe haX Xlue eyXX and XXXck hair. He Xas X beard.

With Mask:
TXXs mXX is tXXl. Xe haX XlXe XyXX and XXXck hXXr. Xe Xas X XeXXd.

And then make the characters scan or watch skill effect the amount that is masked. 

It's not ultra realistic, but it does the trick for what would amount to something fairly easy to code.

(Of course that's coming from someone who has never seen the code.)

I personally would not like this, and seeing as how this would be somthing that would be randomly generated, I'm guessing, I Forsee people double triple or even quadruple looking at some one to try to get a complete desc And as if the look echo isn't annoying enough this has the potential of geting out of hand pretty quick.

Code Select Expand

The annoying elf looks at you
The annoying elf looks at you
The annoying elf looks at you
The annoying elf looks at you

Seriously I think I'd go mad after about the third time some one did that to me

[Tisiphone]

As far as using the language masking code...well. It might work for most people, but I need to raise a point.

My last several characters have had problems with sirihish, including a dwarf who didn't get the hang of it for his entire life. I've gotten damned good at deciphering what those random characters really mean. Point being, the same could easily come true with descs if that's used.

[Beux]

As far as using the language masking code...well. It might work for most people, but I need to raise a point.

My last several characters have had problems with sirihish, including a dwarf who didn't get the hang of it for his entire life. I've gotten damned good at deciphering what those random characters really mean. Point being, the same could easily come true with descs if that's used.

I agree. I seem to have a super memory for recognising how descs look, not what they read, just the layout of words, the size and shape. If there's a five letter word on the fifth line slightly offest from a seven letter on the sixth, stuff like that. If I saw the partially scrambled desc of someone I'd met once/twice, I'd likely know who it was.

[jmordetsky]

Code Select Expand

The annoying elf looks at you
The annoying elf looks at you
The annoying elf looks at you
The annoying elf looks at you

Seriously I think I'd go mad after about the third time some one did that to me

Yes.

My last several characters have had problems with sirihish, including a dwarf who didn't get the hang of it for his entire life. I've gotten damned good at deciphering what those random characters really mean. Point being, the same could easily come true with descs if that's used.

Yes.

I was considering both these things as well. Especially the first. I too would definitely ahve to throw my computer through the window if someone did that. I think the solution would be to calculate the "mask" at the time of the "Wear" rather then the time of the "look". IE the mask is the same each time for anyone who looks.

To deal with the deciphering, I thought it might be better to just mask entire words rather then individual letters.

Normal:
This man is tall. He has blue eyes and black hair. He has a beard.

With Hood:
XXXX man is XXXX . XXXX has blue XXXX and XXXX hair. He XXXX XXXX beard.

Another thing I considered was running the Brill parts of speech tagger, which is an open source parts of speech tagger I've used in AI text projects. Running this over the description would allow us to *only* blacking out nouns and adjectives. Though it's not 100% accurate, it's pretty darn good.

In this case your mask would afford you:
This XXXX is XXXX. He has XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX. He has a XXXX.

Where the disguise would afford you an N% chance to mask a given adjective or noun at the time you wear it.

The only problem there is that you could memorize the pattern of XXXX's I think.

That said, this isn't cryptography, we're just trying to simulate the effect of people catching different bits of your description and not others.

[Beux]

I still think descs would be easily recognisably by sentence structure. It might work if the X'd words weren't just scrambled/X'd, but gone completely. But then...you might as well just remove the description.