Burglary: How to play an acclomplished thief

[Is Friday]

Please edit out the code details.

[Cind]

I've only been accused of crimes unrealistically and with unbelievable proof three times, the kind of situation where you're constantly reminding yourself to buy it. Otherwise, the general reaction to criminals seems a little stronger than it should be, but I don't feel like I'm dooming myself when apping a criminal. The situation could be a lot worse than it is and I enjoy playing thieves.

[Zoan]

Someone stole the knife from your belt:

CLOSE THE FUCKING GATES IT'S CODE MAGENTA.

[Celest]

In my experience, the best way to avoid all of the problems with twinkery based on avoiding or retaliating against thievery is to steal using non-coded skills. Trick people using cons, and they're usually really glad to be part of the thievery and the RP that goes with it. Likewise, I think that involving people in the RP of burglary with arranged items helps to take away from the sting and remind people that it's for RP. I have no problem with people who pursue thieves relentlessly, because being stolen from (in real life) is a really terrible, terrible feeling. The issue is what happens to thieves when they're caught. I don't think I've ever seen a public humiliating, maiming, flogging, or otherwise collective punishment for a caught thief, when that's really (in my opinion) the most productive route for RP.

My biggest peeve with the way thief RP goes, is when someone clears literally everything out of a building - including furniture and very heavy objects - because they're thieving late at night and no one is around to see the elf carrying couches and cisterns out of an apartment. Or, when people ignore masks, changed clothes, tdescs, raised hoods, changed accents, padded or concealing clothing/armor, and so on and automatically recognize someone by mdesc. Or, alternatively, when there's a lull of a certain race in an area (elves/dwarves) and so when one is seen fleeing a burglary, they know that it's the one active elven/dwarven PC who is a thief rather than the numerous number of NPCs or vNPCs which it could possibly be.

[HavokBlue]

If someone steals all the furniture and heavy things from your apartment, try wishing up or sending a report asking if the door guard saw anything. Because I find it hard to believe you can get a gigantic obsidian couch past a door guard without him noticing, no matter how high your sneak and hide skills are.

[lordcooper]

If someone steals all the furniture and heavy things from your apartment, try wishing up or sending a report asking if the door guard saw anything. Because I find it hard to believe you can get a gigantic obsidian couch past a door guard without him noticing, no matter how high your sneak and hide skills are.

Unless you put a bucket over their head first.

[Lizzie]

On the other hand, if you really want to steal that obscenely heavy, enormous obsdian couch, you could try wishing up to inform the staff that you're about to bribe the NPC guard...and then bribe the NPC guard to look down at his feet for a few minutes..

and then send a character report with the log snippet to show that it happened, if there's no staff to animate the NPC at the time.

That way, it -would- make IC sense for your character to steal that couch and get away with it. Whether the NPC honors the bribe is another matter, but the results at least would be IC and sensible.