Lets make power emoting possible

[Reiteration]

 I do not like open-ended emotes, people always turn god-mode and try to become a hero.

http://www.armageddon.org/original/showSubmission.php?submission=354

[Marauder Moe]

Heh, most of those examples you just gave are implemented to some extent in the code.

Well, arm wrestling used to be but I think it got taken out for some reason.

If you're against the full concept, then how about being able to roll a simple check (echoed only to yourself) to check if your character succeeds at a given action.

As I've said, I'm absolutely for this idea.

[Marshmellow]

If you could take into account where my character is looking, whether my character is distracted by a conversation, your character's state of intoxication, our positions in the room, etc etc etc... until then, you don't get to poweremote you tripping or knocking over my character.

[Sam]

I'd say make it another command attached to the emote.

emote attempts to smack ~curvy upside her purny head. *agility check
So-and-so attempts to smack ~curvy upside her purny head. Agility check success.

[Aaron Goulet]

What kind of actions require a skill check on another character to perform that can't be done by the code, anyway?  Examples!

Pushing them over, arm wrestling, sneaking up on them (from within the same room), smashing a bottle on their head, tripping them up, flicking a small scrap of whatever at them, hearing the movement of a character that yours is not facing etc etc

I can see some valid arguments against this here, although my intent wasn't to promote power emotes, but to help make them more reasonable by providing a method of checking how possible an action would be.  If you're against the full concept, then how about being able to roll a simple check (echoed only to yourself) to check if your character succeeds at a given action.

Yeah, I'm totally down with being able to roll against your own stats and skills without an echo, but not versus other peoples'; otherwise, people will use it to try and sniff your stats and skills.

[Sokotra]

I'm not sure we have more than a couple of options:

Option 1.  Some sort of dice roll - echoed to everyone in the room would assure no cheating, but I think we want to avoid any sort of OOC echo... so I guess a hidden echo to yourself would be okay as a role-playing tool, but I'm not quite clear how that would work or make sense.  Simply having something like an agility check tagged on at the end of your emote seems a little too simple.  What if an untrained beggar with high agility is trying to push an expert combatant with a mediocre agility.  Too many other skills, stats, and factors come into play for this to work.

Option 2.  Coding things like arm-wrestling and stuff.  We already have some of these in the game and I'd hate to see any unnecessary code-work be piled on the staff.  But... Expanding and improving the brawl code would be nice.  Unless there are some other good ideas for specific games, matches, or tests of skill... or other little actions that would be neat to be coded into the game that would put all skills, stats, and saving throws into the equation when checking for success.

[aphex]

Right now the brawl code is pretty much the end-all be-all of coded character interaction within the city.  I really wouldn't mind some kind of system to check your rolls versus his OTHER than brawl code, which basically seems to be dependent on offense. E.G. the longest lived character wins.

[Marauder Moe]

Can you come up with some examples of specific situations?

[jriley]

Can you come up with some examples of specific situations?

I feel like we have, though.  And any time we try to add to the list people merely come up with questionable reasons why they're covered with existing code, or else are not relevant to game play.

What if you...want to hold a coin in your hand, and challenge your student to remove it before you can close your hand, ala Kung Fu?

...you want to shoot an apple off someone's head, and they try to duck?

...you want to arm wrestle someone?

...you challenge someone to a game of hop-scotch?

...you have a staring contest?

These sorts of things do tend to crop up from time to time.

But really, the purpose of the code change is to address those very sorts of situations that are not easily foreseable, and those that come up infrequently.  That's the real beauty of it.

[Kryos]

I am generally for an attribute test command, and one specifically that echoes to 2 people as a contest of attributes.

As a secondary note:  I'd love to see brawl code both fixed(I don't think racial qualities are considered, I could be wrong, and more potent over all) and expanded to usable in any room.  In the desert you grab a rock and throw it instead of a bottle, etc.

Then again, if we're talking about improving the quality of RP, I believe a number of things need fixed, including flee and movement mechanics.  Nothing ruins the scene like a power emote about how awesome you are + flee.

[Marshmellow]

All of those situations have too many variables, jriley.  How can you boil those down to a simple stat roll?

[hyzhenhok]

All of those situations have too many variables, jriley.  How can you boil those down to a simple stat roll?

The fat, bearded man says, OOCly: "That's not an agility roll! Let's roll strength."

The lithe, zippy youth says, OOCly: "Hells no, its definitely agility!"

The frail, wizened old elf says, OOCly: "Guys, there's strategy involved. It has to be wisdom."

The fat, bearded man, the wizened old elf, and the lithe, zippy youth are here, power emoting each other.

[Aaron Goulet]

All of those situations have too many variables, jriley.  How can you boil those down to a simple stat roll?

The fat, bearded man says, OOCly: "That's not an agility roll! Let's roll strength."

The lithe, zippy youth says, OOCly: "Hells no, its definitely agility!"

The frail, wizened old elf says, OOCly: "Guys, there's strategy involved. It has to be wisdom."

The fat, bearded man, the wizened old elf, and the lithe, zippy youth are here, power emoting each other.

I'm slightly worried about that (and the new cyclical GDB debates that would inevitably follow), but I'm even more worried about people trying to power-emote "grabbing" people without using subdue, or otherwise trying to impose themselves on another PC without factoring in skill or the criminal code.  I doubt that is jriley's or the original poster's intent, but I can promise you that some people will use it that way; some players will do anything they can to get an advantage, codedly or otherwise.

Don't believe me?  Watch three or four people scan in a busy tavern the moment "someone" emotes.

[Malifaxis]

If this goes through, I'm going to play nothing but mul warrior/thugs and fucking heinously murder anyone who ever does this to me, ever, for any reason.

Fact.

[Case]

I hated it in SOI, I would hate it here.

I prefer to just roll with emotes. If someone emotes punching at my character's face, I will probably have that punch connect. It just -- god. It was so immersion breaking to see people roll vs <stat> OOCly and then emote their success or failure.

After seeing the abuse it gets in SoI, this.

And it's not coded well in SoI either.

[Kankman]

Haven't read the whole thread, but we used to have a perfect solution for this but it was removed.

The command 'touch' would check whether or not your PC would be able to hit/flick/poke/whatever their intended victim.

You could then:

> emote reaches out and tries to whack ~jerk on the back of the head.

> touch jerk

> You reach out and touch the jerk-faced man.

or

> You reach out to touch the jerk-faced man but he avoid your nasty unwashed fingers.

It was great.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Yeah, I'm totally down with being able to roll against your own stats and skills without an echo, but not versus other peoples'; otherwise, people will use it to try and sniff your stats and skills.

This is a little paranoid. Yes, it will happen. No, it will not happen often.

I support the idea of being able to roll stat-and-skill specific checks against other players. This opens up an entirely new avenue of code-supported RP.

[Qzzrbl]

roll amos emote suddenly lashes out at ~amos and slams a fist across ^amos jaw (emote suddenly lashes out at ~amos, ^me fist missing ^amos jaw by inches)

Check it out.

The original command, "roll".

It encompasses all stats, condensing them into a single variable, and perhaps a random variable as well.

Using "roll amos" targets Amos, rolling your condensed, summed up stats against his condensed, summed up stats.

The first emote, "suddenly lashes out at ~amos and slams a fist across ^amos jaw." is what would echo if there's a success.

The second emote, set within parentheses, "suddenly lashes out at ~amos, ^me fist missing ^amos jaw by inches" is what would echo if you fail your stat check.

There would be no "visible" ooc check that echoes, but one can use a command something like... "check roll" to check the last use of the "roll" command against his/her own character to make sure some asshole doesn't put a success emote echo in both parts of the command.

Example:

> Roll check

Last roll made against you: emote suddenly lashes out at ~amos and slams a fist across ^amos jaw (emote suddenly lashes out at ~amos, ^me fist missing ^amos jaw by inches)

And if a player catches abuse-- it can be reported to staff.

Thoughts?

::Edited to add::

Abuse of the feature (should anyone find a way to abuse it) will lead to the feature being unavailable to the offender.

[Marshmellow]

So... Qzzrbl, just so that I understand what you're saying... take all of my stats and all of your stats and come up with some sort of median or total or something... and when I want to do something to you, roll me against you?

[Qzzrbl]

So... Qzzrbl, just so that I understand what you're saying... take all of my stats and all of your stats and come up with some sort of median or total or something... and when I want to do something to you, roll me against you?

More or less.

Perhaps add a little bit of a random variable or something in there.... 'Cause even the strongest, fastest, smartest, toughest motherfucker gets unlucky every now and then.

And maybe, MAYBE have offense/defense play a small part in it.

I just shat this idea out of my brain, so I'm sure it could be improved upon. o:

[Aaron Goulet]

So... Qzzrbl, just so that I understand what you're saying... take all of my stats and all of your stats and come up with some sort of median or total or something... and when I want to do something to you, roll me against you?

More or less.

Perhaps add a little bit of a random variable or something in there.... 'Cause even the strongest, fastest, smartest, toughest motherfucker gets unlucky every now and then.

And maybe, MAYBE have offense/defense play a small part in it.

I just shat this idea out of my brain, so I'm sure it could be improved upon. o:

I still don't support a command like this, but even if I did, I would have a problem with this particular suggestion: It would work in mock-combat situations, but why would someone's wisdom, agility, and defense play into something such as arm-wrestling?  Someone with a really high wisdom and agility but low stength could then, in theory, out-armwrestle a burly, high strength PC with not much else going for him (or her).

Furthermore, such actions such as the one you used in your example are already covered by the brawl code, unless you're not in a tavern...  And if you're not in a tavern, the crime code should kick into effect in most places.

[Sokotra]

Not perfect, but an interesting idea...  but it just makes me think even more that we should just expand and improve the brawl code instead.

Edit:  Oh, and also maybe we could get the arm-wrestling code turned back on for competitions of strength.  For agility or other stats, maybe, if time allows, code other little games like "snatch the pebble from my hand"... or "catch the grasshopper (or cockroach)". 

[Marshmellow]

I still don't think I'm down for that either, Q.  Someone that has all exceptional stats but a poor strength against someone with an exceptional strength but the rest are all poor... in a contest between the two, the first would likely always win, even at arm-wrestling, something that arguably takes nothing but strength.

[Kryos]

Hidden rolls v one stat, or compared stat rolls hidden to all but the competing players.  This is a beautiful RP tool.

The simple truth is, responsible players who are more about playing the game then winning it or oocly trying to be 'awesome' would find such a tool incredibly valuable.  There's always going to be those who pee in the pool.  Let the lifeguards kick them out.

[Nahara]

Must I ask it...

If you have a hidden roll using agility...

What are you rolling against anyway?