Cloaked and Masked Descriptors

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Currently, when someone wears a cloak or a mask object, you get the height and weight descriptors, ie: The short and obese figure/male in/wearing a cloak/mask looks at you.

While I think that the descriptors for cloaking should remain the same, I'd like to see the descriptors for masking change to:
The short, obese dwarven male wearing a skull-carved, bone mask looks at you.
The huge, thin elven male wearing a white silk facewrap looks at you.
The gigantic half-giant female wearing a gimpka-rat mask looks at you.

I'd also like to see 'and' removed from cloaked and masked short descriptions, and replaced with a comma in order to minorly reduce length of strings.

[Harmless]

Not a bad change, but not necessarily adding new information. Just clarifying and standardizing the way information used to be presented so that it isn't so dependent on what height and weight you yourself pick for that PC. Will make reading logs a little more tolerable.

However, I worry about half-elves. Where do they fit in? Their bodies are in-between elf and human... their ears will probably be hidden by the mask. Their facial features too.

Elves -- if one is particularly short, within the height range of a human, who's to say it isn't a skinny human?

It's tricky.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I suppose I'd veer towards their coded look. Since they can choose to look elven, human, or half-elven, I'd apply that to their masked look.

[Is Friday]

Dig it.

[HavokBlue]

That would make sense for giants, but how do you know it's an elf and not a tall human, or a human and not a short elf? At least, until you glance at them with your x-ray eyes and see through their mask, hood, cowl, and other hood?

[Ghaati111]

From a half-giant's perspective, I think an elf, half-elf, and human are going to look the same with their hood up.

From a dwarf's perspective, I think a tall human, half-elf, and elf will look the same with their hood up.

I have no problem with how it is now. Adds a touch of mystery to a game where most veterans have already played most of the mystery out of long ago.

[Redheart]

From a half-giant's perspective, I think an elf, half-elf, and human are going to look the same with their hood up.

As it currently stands add dwarves in there too.

[Harmless]

Given that dwarves look the most different from everyone else, as do giants, then maybe we could just have their sdescs changed according to 7DV's suggestion for everyone, but only give the "half-elven / elven / human" labels to those races, and not to half-giants and dwarves. But at least half giants should be able to tell a dwarf apart from the above three, and maybe with this change we can stop seeing every half giant as "gigantic and obese" which has just been wordy and kind of an eyesore for years.

[Tuannon]

All I want is for the voice to be masculine of feminine or whatever.

[Barsook]

All I want is for the voice to be masculine of feminine or whatever.

Same, I think gender is more important.  Though can you use asses -v that figure to get the gender.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

... I want ... the voice to be masculine of feminine or whatever.

Oh, yes.

[Harmless]

I want the voice's masculine or feminine qualities to be an optional thing. Either you take the masculine voice if male, or feminine voice if female, but you can't take the opposite gender's -- you can just choose to "opt out" of your character having a voice like that.

Given I feel pretty strongly about the above, I think that means it's a bad idea to even bother coding that in.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Eh, that's pretty unrealistic. How many of you know a significant number of voices that sound like their gender-opposites, or are difficult to discern the gender of? I know maybe just a couple.

I suppose I wouldn't mind an optional attempt to sound like the opposite sex.

>change voice normal/opposite/neutral

You will now speak normally.
You will now try to speak with a feminine/masculine tone.
You will now try to speak with a gender-neutral tone.

On this same note, I'd like to see a section of chargen which went something like this.
How do you wish your character's voice to naturally sound? Pick one of the following:
a:normal          b:deep       c:dusty      d:gravelly
e:baritone        f:tenor      g:raspy      h:blustery
i:simple          j:strained   k:regal      l:pretentious
m:high-pitched    n:sqeaky

You could set tones:
change tone tenor

You will now try to speak with a tenor tone.


If you failed to mimic the tone of the voice, you would simply speak in your normal tone and voice.

Then in the dark, you would hear something like this:
Walking around a huge and obese shape, checking its haunches, someone says to you, in sirihish, with a deep, masculine voice:
   "Why don't ah just take yur water instead, you sniveling street rat?"

[Kaineus]

Eh, that's pretty unrealistic. How many of you know a significant number of voices that sound like their gender-opposites, or are difficult to discern the gender of? I know maybe just a couple.

I suppose I wouldn't mind an optional attempt to sound like the opposite sex.

>change voice normal/opposite/neutral

You will now speak normally.
You will now try to speak with a feminine/masculine tone.
You will now try to speak with a gender-neutral tone.

On this same note, I'd like to see a section of chargen which went something like this.
How do you wish your character's voice to naturally sound? Pick one of the following:
a:normal          b:deep       c:dusty      d:gravelly
e:baritone        f:tenor      g:raspy      h:blustery
i:simple          j:strained   k:regal      l:pretentious
m:high-pitched    n:sqeaky

You could set tones:
change tone tenor

You will now try to speak with a tenor tone.


If you failed to mimic the tone of the voice, you would simply speak in your normal tone and voice.

Then in the dark, you would hear something like this:
Walking around a huge and obese shape, checking its haunches, someone says to you, in sirihish, with a deep, masculine voice:
  "Why don't ah just take yur water instead, you sniveling street rat?"

I like the idea of options, but it's too finite. Maybe it's something that can be apped like a sdesc. Pick an adjective for your character's voice.That way it's vetted by the administrators, but we can still have variety.

I would be in favor of finite options like 7D mentions if you have the potential to learn other ways of speaking, like accents. Now that would be funny, you're right.

In general this idea is interesting and would add realistic information while being hidden, cloaked, shouting, etc.

Edit/More rambling: That said, you could maybe app the adjective, but still learn them like accents. It would combat snowflakiness and lead to funny things like bards acting in impersonation of famous people, etc.

[Lizzie]

Oh please god no on vocal changes. There are games that have them, and the result is inevitably ridiculous. Too often, people change their tone to be something, and forget they have it.

Scowling at you, the green-eyed man says in northern-accented sirihish, in a cheerful tone,
"I hate you. You define every loathsome thought the entirety of the Known has ever experienced in its existence."

or

Smiling seductively at the red-haired man in sirihish, in a fearful tone,
"How about you come up to my place, and we can make sweet love, darling?"

not to mention that "in a [insert adjective] tone" would just be more repetitive "stuff" that people eventually just ignore. When you see the same words over and over again, in the same pattern, your eyes just gloss over it.

If your voice is gravelly, we'll know it the first two or three times you use it in a nested emote. We don't need to be reminded of it every single time your character utters a single word.

In no particular manner, the tall handsome man says in sirihish, in a deep gravelly voice,
"No."

[Barsook]

I don't dig the vocal changes, that's for roleplaying not hard-coded.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

At night or when someone is cloaked you really ought to be able to tell if they are male or female without them role-playing it.

[Harmless]

I think there's just too much disagreement on how it should be done for one-size-fits-all tagging to work for everybody. And, I'm sorry, I've seen so many muscled women, and so many men acting and talking in a way that it'd likely fool my PC into thinking that they're female, not to mention the tremendous age variation, and what you have is a system where people should just emote their shit out.

[Lizzie]

Also what Harmless alluded to - the age variation.

What is it about a 14-year-old boy that makes him sound like a male, if his voice hasn't yet changed? You -can- be 14 in Arm, and there's nothing in the docs that indicate that 14-year-olds have completed puberty and now have manly voices.

In addition, not all full-grown men have manly voices, and not all full-grown women have feminine voices.

The default should be nothing at all and let the player decide if they want to add something. And when they do, they can type it out, just like they always have. Or if it's that immensely important that their tone be understood every single time they talk, they can make a trigger that inserts it as part of an emote in their communication commands. But don't be surprised if people start avoiding your character because he's always talking in a stoic tone, even when he's giggling and having fun getting drunk.

One of the biggest draws of Armageddon is the ability to customize EVERY emote. Why would you want to make yourself sound like a robot?

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Eh ... I think I'll just agree to disagree wIth you. Fyi, only cloaked or voices from those you couldn't see are to have the descriptors.

[Lizzie]

Eh ... I think I'll just agree to disagree wIth you. Fyi, only cloaked or voices from those you couldn't see are to have the descriptors.

And cloaked 14-year-old boys don't necessarily have voices that give away their gender.
And adult females also don't necessarily have voices that give away their gender.

As it stands now, you CAN tell if it's a male or female if they're talking, and you can't see them.
AND you can tell if they're male or female if they're wearing a face-covering, but don't have their hood up.

But that's not what I'm objecting to. I'm objecting to the idea of giving players the ability to "set" their character's voice quality, like we set our ldescs. I object to it for the same reason that I object to being able to "set" your movement style. Because you're not always strolling, or meandering, or skipping, or dancing, or whatever else. You can set an ldesc, and as soon as you type "stand" or unhide or otherwise move from your characters' previous state of existence, it toggles itself off automatically.

Can you imagine how jarring it would be, for you to walk down Meleth's circle, and see me lounging idly against the bar, next to the corpse pile?

That's how it is for me, when I see someone with movement and voice scripts that never change.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

It's fine the way it is. I think voices are more constant than a long description ... but it's less of a need and something I think would just be excellent flavor.