Closed cloak + mask + raised hood = hidden mdesc

[MeTekillot]

Idea is the title. Beat people up and remove their masks or subdue them and make them remove it if you don't wanna fight or just ask nicely.

Also raised hoods should cover up anything worn, tattooed, or scarred anything above the neck.

[Lizzie]

Idea is the title. Beat people up and remove their masks or subdue them and make them remove it if you don't wanna fight or just ask nicely.

Also raised hoods should cover up anything worn, tattooed, or scarred anything above the neck.

In theory it's a great idea, but you'd need to have more than one mdesc. Otherwise looking at someone will still show their hair (which would be covered by a hood). I think I posted something along these lines in the past, totally support the concept, just not sure how it could be implemented without everyone having to make multiple mdescs to make sure "this" covers "that" feature, and doesn't cover "this other" feature, etc. etc.

[Cabooze]

I can see how this could be done a lot easier than having to make a custom mdesc for when your features are hidden, supply a basic description of:

This tall/short/(blank) figure is shrouded and their body made amorphous by an <insert here>, <insert here extra lines detailing the cloak if it's something fancy> , their face covered by <insert facewrap/mask here>, give or take more details.

Something similar to the above that's largely automated based on what they are wearing. Any other details about yourself you dont care about sharing would be left up to you to flesh out via tdesc

[Dar]

mdesc hiding masks did exist, but were removed from gameplay. For some unfortunate reason .

[Brytta Léofa]

The idea of masking-parts-of-mdescs or having-multiple-mdescs or what have you...just won't fly. Too much work, too big a deviation from current gameplay, etc. For this to work it has to (1) simply hide the mdesc without requiring additional character-creation work and (2) have enough restrictions that we can live with the game balance.

In particular, I don't think we can live with a game where a masked assassin can stay completely unidentifiable.

What if engaging in combat, casting magick, or being subdued all caused your mdesc to show?

[sleepyhead]

The second mdesc could be optional. If you don't set it, it just uses your regular mdesc.

[Lizzie]

If they're wearing a *facemask* then their hair would be seen. Unless they're wearing a hat - or hood up - in which case their hair would be obscured. But what if they're wearing their hood up, but their cloak is open? Then you see their general body type and shape, anything that isn't covered would reveal skin color and texture...

This is the problem we had back when masks used to obscure mdescs. It wasn't believable that something you put on your face would obscure every single physical detail about your character. Especially things like "long trinket-adorned dreadlocks" - unless that mask comes all the way down your back, it's not going to cover your hair, and anyone who looks at you will know that it's you, because you're the only one they know with "long trinket-adorned dreadlocks."

If that's in your mdesc, they SHOULD see it. If its not in your mdesc, it should be, because it's a distinctive trait. If you want to add a tdesc saying that we can no longer see those dreadlocks, that's great but two things have to be true: 1) we have to trust everyone to add those tdescs and 2) we have to trust everyone to honor them when they see them.

If one person fails on either side, then the entire idea fails.

The only other alternative really - besides what we already have now - is to have multiple mdescs. One main for people that includes their face, hair (if any), body type, eye color, overall size, shape, unusual "normally visible" markings, etc. Another one for "all the above, except this person's head is covered." And possibly others to obscure the face, but not the hair, and the hair, but not the face, and so on.

You'd basically have to account for multiple possibilities.

[Heade]

I would be good with the combination of mask+closed cloak+raised hood completely hiding MDesc, under one condition. There should be a command that any character can use to pull down another person's hood without knocking them out or subduing them. Anyone who's ever been pantsed will know that people don't have to completely dominate you physically to quickly pull a piece of cloth that is covering you away.

A skinny, short 13 year old could pants the Mountain.

Just make it to where there is a command delay after de-hooding someone so that the person you did it to has a few seconds to decide whether to run, attack, or whatever.

[X-D]

Mdesc hiding masks were removed for basically 2 reasons, It was deemed unrealistic for a single item to cover entire body/mdesc, and the value of them was unrealistically high. Of course the second reason could have been fixed by simply making them not rare.

Now, what is funny is, right after removel, I suggested exactly the same fix as MeTekillot.

[Vex]

I would prefer a disguise skill.

You have the skill, and disguise yourself using coded props, like fake elf ears, fake mustache, in some combination, that produced semi-random gen descs, based on those items. High skill allows access to deeper description pools, for more variation, and the employment of better disguise components, up to, and including, house gear.

So jade longsword + militia cloak + eyepatch would let you pass as a soldier, with your normal eq, but with random gen s/mdescs, but using militia cloak requires advanced disguise. Kind of like, you need a certain skill to craft mek hide, or whatever. It could even be done, via craft.

craft disguise mustache ears cloak feces

You disguise yourself as a filthy, half-elven waif.

Clayworking required to make master required stuff, like face shaping clay, or whatever. Think of all those components, like fake eyes, peg legs, whatever, that barely/never see use. It'd actually make stealing a clans gear/getting stolen gear back, really important, or some infiltrator will walk into your compound, and steal all your scrabloaf.

A lot more involved, and more work, but interesting. Also requires, people think about the gear they wear, when being disguised.

Give it to infiltrators to help comp lower stealth skills, as master potential, and maybe a sub or two, too, to jman. Let everyone get it to apprentice, like drawing, just for flavor/funsies.

[MeTekillot]

Or we could do my thing and just reintroduce old code with some toggles instead of entirely new skill systems, maybe

[Synthesis]

Hiding mdescs, or portions of mdescs only works realistically if we have access to much more information about the PCs we observe.

E.g.:

1. Partial or part-specific mdescs
2. Default voices set at chargen
3. Default gaits set at chargen

[mansa]

Hiding mdescs, or portions of mdescs only works realistically if we have access to much more information about the PCs we observe.

E.g.:

1. Partial or part-specific mdescs
2. Default voices set at chargen
3. Default gaits set at chargen

I wouldn't want to let the initial character application be overly complicated.
I'd suggest to have these values be variable, much like 'mood' or 'tdesc' are.
Perhaps an 'ooc room' that we could go into, like the scar/tattoo room, and be able to set some description/features there.

Issue - if it ain't approved by staff, we could abuse a 'hidden' description we write up ourselves on-the-fly, if it completely removes the mdesc
Issue - if it must be approved by staff, it makes initial character application longer (and new players would not try out the game)

[boog]

Or y'all could just play right and, if someone's covered, not see their mdesc. *shrug emoji*

[Armaddict]

Or y'all could just play right and, if someone's covered, not see their mdesc. *shrug emoji*

While great in theory, it's also entirely subjective, also slanted by people's aversion towards stealth being used, i.e. 'If I got a look at them, I count it as a look that gives me something.'

In other words, as with many things in Armageddon, people often tend to find a way to justify what the code gives them rather than sit back and question what the code gave them, which I view as entirely understandable and why I support as much code support for desired outcomes as humanly possible.

[The Warshaper]

I've made the mistake of identifying people who were wearing a mask. I missed the piece of equipment when I looked at them and continued just talking to them and asking them about certain facial features. Am I a bad player? Probably. Was it on purpose? No.

[mansa]

I've made the mistake of identifying people who were wearing a mask. I missed the piece of equipment when I looked at them and continued just talking to them and asking them about certain facial features. Am I a bad player? Probably. Was it on purpose? No.

Maybe a better solution would be to have the 'face' and 'eyes' location be bolded using the colour code, so it 'pops' when people look at the person?

[Brytta Léofa]

(1) Give assess -v an echo rather than an hemote: "$n sizes you up carefully."

(2) Increase the detail of information provided by assess -v.
  He is about 3 years older than you.
  He is 4 inches shorter than you.
  He is about 10 stones heaver than you.
  He looks like he could throw the Giant's Fist ball about 20 cords. (I jest--or do I?)
Make these values randomly inaccurate, but repeatable for a given viewer and target: Amos doesn't guess the same values for Bob that Talia does, but their own guesses stay consistent. Make the guesses really accurate for persons of same race and similar age.

(3) When a person's mdesc would be hidden, cause look to display assess -v output instead.

Result: you can't uniquely describe a person's identity, but you can pass on a reasonable "fingerprint" and you can fairly accurately identify them in a lineup.

[Inky]

Or y'all could just play right and, if someone's covered, not see their mdesc. *shrug emoji*

Pretty much this.

You can try to pick out characteristics you might notice from their height, skinnyness, eye-color etc. But it's always going to be gamey because you know it's a player and not one of the world's virtual denizens.

[Heade]

Or y'all could just play right and, if someone's covered, not see their mdesc. *shrug emoji*

Pretty much this.

You can try to pick out characteristics you might notice from their height, skinnyness, eye-color etc. But it's always going to be gamey because you know it's a player and not one of the world's virtual denizens.

The problem with relying on players to portray this accurately is that 1. People make mistakes, and might not notice the mask, and 2. Some people might just not play it right, and act like if they saw the mdesc, they saw it IC.

In either case above, it's problematic when certain types of characters rely on anonymity to stay alive, so even if another player incorrectly identifies you, resulting in your death, the opacity of the game will rarely allow you to know that's what happened, and even if it did, it would change nothing because staff won't ressurect a character killed in this sort of manner because often that mistake by 1 character reverberated, causing IC interactions with other characters that ultimately led to the PK. There is, quite simply, too much to try to retcon and say someone survived in such a circumstance.

And so, for something like this, code should be utilized, I think. But it shouldn't be unbreakable anonymity. It should be a very simple matter to rip someone's hood down, revealing their Mdesc, even if said character would otherwise physically dominate you. See pantsed in public as I described above.

[Inky]

I suppose. I just personally very much err on the caution side. Or try to remember to at least.

[Dar]

Perhaps make raised hoods and masks give the mdesc/sdesx flags?
Kind of like having something very heavy in your inventory, or have some very visible spell effect on.

The short, honest elf stands here.
- facial features obscured by a mask
The elf puts his hood on.
The short figure stands here
- facial features obscured by a mask
- body features obscured by the cloak.

Mdesc remains the same, except some text added at the end.

And leave it for people themselves to decide what to notice and what not to.

[Heade]

And leave it for people themselves to decide what to notice and what not to.

Highlighted the problem there for you. Leaving this to players to decide is an inherently flawed plan because you're relying on an inherently flawed species. Code will get this right 100% of the time. You can never expect people to approach that same level of reliability.

Again, with the code change, it would have to be -EASY- to yank someone's hood down, but having hood + mask hide Mdesc would be helpful to all sorts of roles in the game. Basically give people a 100% chance of successfully pulling someone's hood down, but when they do, they have, say, a 6-8 second command delay. So if you yank the hood off a raider who just demanded your money, you can be virtually guaranteed they're going to attack you. But for the courageous, it gives people an option to identify nefarious individuals, and for the nefarious individuals, it gives an assurance against metagaming.

This system would also prevent the endless griefing that was possible with the masks of yesteryear, since there will be a counterbalance to it in the removal of that ability, should someone be so brave as to pull off their hood.

[Lizzie]

Serious question - and this is even for the current system:

Lots of tall, blue-eyed men of staggering variety over the years.
Same with petite, green-eyed women.
Barrel-chested, hawk-nosed, pale, swarthy, curvy, rotund, hairless, mustachioed.


Which of these things get obscured by people wearing hoods, from a distance?

All of them. Just pulling a hood up to cover your hair and shadow your face (but not cover it) is enough to obscure your entire sdesc, no matter that there's nothing in your sdesc that *would* be obscured by a hood (except hair).

Theoretically, JUST having their hood up, with a cloak that isn't or doesn't shut, no sunslits, no facewrap, no veil, should return:

the barrel-chested, hawk-nosed, pale, swarthy, curvy, rotund, mustachioed, green-eyed woman.

The only thing missing is the hair on her head, because that's the only thing that's actually covered enough to truly obscure it. And for that matter, a greathelm should obscure any instance of "hair" in her sdesc and main desc already, and it doesn't.

And now you want to make it easy to obscure their entire mdesc up close and personal?

Possible solution:

Make it so the following must be true:
You're wearing a cloak or other un-fitted outer garment that reaches from head to toe with the hood up.
Your cloak MUST be closed, in order to put the hood up. You get an error message if you try while it's open. Or, if you try, it automatically closes it for you.

There, now you should still show up as the tall green-eyed figure - but your eyes are NOT obscured. Shadowed, sure, Not discernable from a distance, agreed. But definitely visible. Eyes that are mentioned in the sdesc should still be there if you're hooded/facewrapped. But should NOT be visible when wearing sunslits. Same in their mdesc. But again that leads us to needing more than one mdesc.

[Armaddict]

Case in point.  Even with reasonable coverage, we're going to have people who insist that they can identify everyone by their eyes.