"Bad practice" in equipment/descriptions.

[flurry]

I think most of this kind of thing comes down to whether you're doing somehting with the intention of gaining some OOC advantage. That could go for a lot of things: choice of sdesc, how you write your mdesc, when you burgle apartments, whether you add a keyword or not, etc. etc. When your motive is to get an OOC edge, I'd say you're not being fair to the rest of the playerbase.

[Armaddict]

Having a keyword that is also an alias has been done since the beginning of time, and there has never...ever...been an issue with it before.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's fine.

[Synthesis]

Having a keyword that is also an alias has been done since the beginning of time, and there has never...ever...been an issue with it before.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's fine.

You're mistaken.

The issue is:

a) having an alias that is not a keyword

or

b) having an alias that is a keyword, but is also a keyword for a bazillion NPCs.

Both of which suck, and would perhaps cause me to summon some IC rationale for stabbing said character in the spine.  Perhaps.  Maybe I might go OOC and politely ask them to add the keyword.  There's a command for that, you know.

[Riev]

I ALWAYS come up with nicknames and aliases for my characters. Perhaps someone doesn't WANT to type "Kelthuzarmam" everytime, so I just addkeyword Kel

I honestly didn't even know people said "My name, is Snake" and didn't addkeyword it. Thats just bad form.

[Armaddict]

Er, okay.  Yeah, that's been brought up before.  Sorry, I guess I misread the OP.

Myself, I don't really have an opinion on it either way...I don't think it's necessarily bad form, having had a character that was known as a different name by several different groups.  Pretty lame when someone says the name they know you by, and instantly that person tries 'contact <name>', and voila...it's you!  They haven't seen you before, but now your plots are uncovered because you used contact on a name that was hearsay for you.

That's always lame.  But on the other hand, yeah...it is also lame when the dark eyed man gives you a name that is not correct.  I always just say screw it to contacting them, and they won't get whatever you need to tell them.  *shrug*

[some guy]

There's a number of ways to severely abuse the Way and most of them shouldn't be explained in detail on the GDB, but they mostly have to do with knowing how contact prioritizes targets and how you can exploit the keywords. There are ways to discover a PC's playtimes, even if you didn't know about them to begin with. There are ways to find out about PCs who are a certain kind of magicker or can hide. Obviously, there are ways to find the sdesc of just about anyone regardless of how much effort they make out of disguising themselves. I wish all of these abusive methods would be removed, they serve no other purpose than to exploit and take advantage of people, and it has a purely negative impact on the game.

[Kyviantre]

Add keywords, its fine.  Have many, hand out a new one to each person that you meet.  Nothing wrong with letting them target you easily.  (so speaks the one that had a character with one name...two variations of nicknames stepping from that, and two alias' given to an assortment of people - lots of names are fun, if confusing!)

[Sokotra]

Pretty lame when someone says the name they know you by, and instantly that person tries 'contact <name>', and voila...it's you!  They haven't seen you before, but now your plots are uncovered because you used contact on a name that was hearsay for you.

Yeah, that could stand to be fixed somehow.

And the sdesc sniffing has to be fixed - I don't know why it hasn't.  There could be a good reason, I don't know.  It would be great if "contact figure" just gave you a mental image of the "figure" in whatever they are wearing (cloak) and not reveal their sdesc.

[Delstro]

Or if you tried to contact:

Big brute brutus hairy armed man tiny

It would show you:

You contacted your target, Big brute brutus hairy armed man tiny.

You way a big brutus hairy armed man tiny, "Hey, how's it going?"

Or, if you only know an alias:

You contacted your target, Tiny.

You way tiny, "Hey how's it going?"

[Sokotra]

Or if you tried to contact:

Big brute brutus hairy armed man tiny

It would show you:

You contacted your target, Big brute brutus hairy armed man tiny.

You way a big brutus hairy armed man tiny, "Hey, how's it going?"

Or, if you only know an alias:

You contacted your target, Tiny.

You way tiny, "Hey how's it going?"

That makes sense.  Maybe if you got better (really really good) or were a psionicist, only then could you see the true sdesc or be able to see through disguises.  The average person shouldn't be able to see sdescs and be as good as a mindbender at these things.

[brytta.leofa]

I think we're working with way too little information on this one, guys.

The staff, who actually do know all these details, have said repeatedly that the Way works exactly as it is intended to.

[Delstro]

Maybe, it is intended to be this way, but... it could be -better- and more fun if we changed the intentions.

[Sokotra]

I think we're working with way too little information on this one, guys.

The staff, who actually do know all these details, have said repeatedly that the Way works exactly as it is intended to.

A lot of stuff is like that, I don't know everything the staff knows about the game... nobody does.  You can't blame us for being ignorant.    But then again, if we don't say anything at all there's a lot of stuff that wouldn't get fixed.  This could be one of those things, who knows.

[Riev]

While normally I'd agree Sokotra, I think this issue has been brought up almost as much as "Too many magickers" threads, and the staff keeps insisting that it is working as they intended, and there won't be any changes to it. Its unfortunate, but In The Imms We Trust.

[Sokotra]

While normally I'd agree Sokotra, I think this issue has been brought up almost as much as "Too many magickers" threads, and the staff keeps insisting that it is working as they intended, and there won't be any changes to it. Its unfortunate, but In The Imms We Trust.

Huh.  I guess if they've already responded to the details of the problems discussed here then there's nothing left to say.    Although, there are lots of things that get discussed continuously through the years like this.