She looks young for her race. - Good or bad?

[Anonymous]

Carnage's reply to a post in the roleplaying section got me thinking.  What is the value of having assess -v reveal whether or not someone is part of your race?  It seems like an OOC mechanism that replaces at least taking a moment to pass a cursory glance over the target's sdesc-something that would be necessary in order to divine what assess -v tells you about their race.

Thoughts?  I'd rather see it changed from 'She is younger than you' or 'She appears young for her race' to just 'She appears young for her race.' all the time regardless of whether or not the target and the PC issuing the command are of the same race or not.

Considering people age differently, its sort of a reach to think that you could tell precisely who was older by a year between the 28 year old tavern-dwelling catamite or the 27 year old craggy-skinned hunter.

[Petra]

I'm in favor of discarding race discrepancies with assess -v.  While some may argue this function should be ignored IC it's not that far fetched as OOCly knowing the person next to you is a defiler while having to role-play not knowing IC.  Frankly, I'd rather just not know.  This can be especially awkward, I find, when dealing with desert elves and city elves.  They're the same race but not according to assess -v, and I'd rather find out IC what type of elf they are.  Half-elves posing as either of their parent's race also suffer the same OOC difficulty.  As a human, if I assess you and see you are young/old/etc. "for your race", I can pretty much assume that unless you are some freakish demon in disguise (not bloody likely) odds are you are a half-elf.  I don't want to pretend not knowing, I just want to not know at all unless discovered IC.

[Carnage]

Not really. I like knowing if I'm younger or older than some people. Unless you change the message to compare it with your race, I don't care for it. Sure, it's a small thing, but I like to know if I'm older than that new recruit or whatever.

[Petra]

Carnage: Of course, and I think that's what's being discussed.  The only problem is where it says "for their race" when they are not of your race.  I'd rather see the message say "He looks young for his race" even if he's your race or not, this way you cannot instantly, and OOCly, determine if they are the same race as you, since it's not always evident.  I'm sure many a half-elf posing as human has been ostracized because someone assess -ved them and drew that conclusion.  Sure, keep the age indicator, of course, but remove the racial discrempancies I say.

[Mook]

Down with the discrepancy! Wanna know my race? Find out IC, damnit, not by assess -v.

[Forest Junkie]

I agree with Mook.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I kinda wasn't clear here, the title of this thread is probably a little misleading.

Basically, I'd like the age line from assess -v to become standardized so that it would tell you (relative to the racial age boundaries) whether or not someone looks young or old for their race regardless of whether or not your PC shares a race with them or not.

Want to know if that's a half-elf?  Check those ears!

I think it would be cool since a human might draw up a sdesc with ears that are a little more pointed than normal and might have to face undue discrimination.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

It can be argued that it should only reveal that the person is older or younger than you. That is it. Since folks have grown up with just about all the races, I say that knowing if a person of any race is likely older or younger than you is not a stretch. Thus, you can simply forget the damned 'for race' tag and just leave the older or younger tag.

[Anonymous]

It can be argued that it should only reveal that the person is older or younger than you. That is it. Since folks have grown up with just about all the races, I say that knowing if a person of any race is likely older or younger than you is not a stretch. Thus, you can simply forget the damned 'for race' tag and just leave the older or younger tag.

Yeah, either way is fine with me.  I want assess -v to be able to tell age, physical condition and the like, but I think having it tell race undermines some roles at worst and at best is a crutch against having to give much consideration to the desc of the person you are dealing with.

[Petra]

Well so far there are a number of votes in favor of keeping the race discrepancies but nobody explaining why.  To me, it seems like something along the lines of using the Way to find out if someone is in game or not (as the code once allowed), and I'm curious why anyone would want it to stay this way.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Code Select Expand


This person is quite a bit younger than you.
This person is taller than you.
You are slightly heavier than this person.
The hooded human is in excellent condition.
The hooded human does not look tired.

I would actually suggest this as well, to kill any knowledge of sex or race, for those who are hooded or are trying to hide their sex. This makes sense to me, though it could be argued in fact that maybe the assess -v system could be revamped to check to see -if- the person being assessed is hooded or has deceptive keywords in their short description.

For example, assessing the emerald-haired man would give this:

Code Select Expand


He is quite a bit younger than you.
He is taller than you.
You are slightly heavier than him.
The emerald-haired man is in excellent condition.
The emerald-haired man does not look tired.


Assessing the same man while he is in a black military cloak might give this:

Code Select Expand


This person is quite a bit younger than you.
This person is taller than you.
You are slightly heavier than this person.
The figure in a black military cloak is in excellent condition.
The figure in a black military cloak does not look tired.


Assessing the same man with the short desc of the emerald-haired woman would give you this:

Code Select Expand


She is quite a bit younger than you.
She is taller than you.
You are slightly heavier than her.
The emerald-haired woman is in excellent condition.
The emerald-haired woman does not look tired.


Who knows...just an idea.

And perhaps if you got one of those odd short descriptions, like the monolithic behemoth, you could see this:

Code Select Expand


You have no idea how old this being is.
It is taller than you.
You are slightly heavier than it.
The monolithic behemoth is in excellent condition.
The monolithic behemoth does not look tired.


Just an idea or four.

[Xygax]

Actually, I don't think the command should report whether someone is younger than you...  it should report their age relative to their race...  A half-elf that's "older than me" might still -look- younger.

[Petra]

Actually, I don't think the command should report whether someone is younger than you... it should report their age relative to their race... A half-elf that's "older than me" might still -look- younger.

Fair enough.  But I still don't want the coded advantage of knowing someone is not my race when they have made every attempt IC to appear otherwise -- or worse yet, someone knowing my race differs from their's despite that I have made every attempt IC to appear otherwise.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Well, what I think would actually be better is for folks to play IC and stop worrying about everything the code says. I mean...you guys can do this, can't you?

If the short description says the PC is a human man, then treat him like a human man, whether he is a mul, dwarf, half-elf, or anything else. After all, the short description is the defining element of the preception.

[Xygax]

I don't think it's that simply, Venomz.  And, Petra, that's what I mean...  ALL of the messages should relay the target's age, relative to THEIR race, regardless of whether it is the same race as your own.

[Petra]

Well, what I think would actually be better is for folks to play IC and stop worrying about everything the code says. I mean...you guys can do this, can't you?

If the short description says the PC is a human man, then treat him like a human man, whether he is a mul, dwarf, half-elf, or anything else. After all, the short description is the defining element of the preception.

Login to a MUSH and when someone affected by invisibility enters the room you will see ChrisINVIS has arrived (or whatever their name is with INVIS added at the end).  This follows the precept that one should role-play their character accordingly while knowing OOC what is going on, in this case, someone invisible has entered.  I imagine there are many occasions in Arm where I have been in a scene that another player, hidden or concealed with magick, has been watching me, and I guarantee you my role-play will be different if I OOCly know they were there, even if I try not to.  To me, this is the sort of code which differs from a MUSH to a MUD.  Granted, there are some things we must role-play not knowing when we OOCly do, such as information learned from clan documentation from our previous character or information on a specific person also learned from your last PC, but I'd still rather keep as much IC information unavailable as possible, since this is a MUD and not a MUSH.

The argument that we should all just be responsible and role-play fairly could also be used to allow skill per centages visible on character sheets, for the criminal code to be more or less non-existant, for us to decide when our characters die rather than the code, or for the example I used above where other players OOCly know someone is invisible and has entered the room; if you're a good role-player you'll pretend that person isn't there and act how your character would, right?

Though this is a role-play oriented atmosphere, I am neither afraid of coded functions, nor the term MUD.

[marko]

I'm not sure I understand the problem.

I'm guessing this is in direct relation to half-elves because every other race is obviously very different.

My understanding of half-elves is that while they can look similar to a human (or an elf) they still exhibit characteristics of their tainted blood.  Even the most cleverly concealed half-elf should have hints in their description that indicates that they are half-breeds.

So, is it fair to use assess -v to figure out someone is a half-breed?  Sure.  Leave it up to the player to decide if their character recognizes the tell-tale hints.  Sometimes you will and sometimes you won't.  

Hide it all you want - you are still a halfbreed and it still shows.  A careful examination should reveal the taint.  Assess -v, in some ways, is just that.

[crymerci]

It's sort of a larger problem, in a way.  I mean, if you're a 25-year-old human who meets another 25-year-old human, how is it exactly that you determine that they are the same age as you, and not five years older or five years younger?  Granted, you probably DO have a better judgment of age with your own race than with another.  But still, people are going to vary widely in how much they show their age depending on the events of their lives.  A grizzled mercenary that's all scarred up and dessicated by the sun is going to age much more quickly than that soft-skinned, pale noble.  I think that the messages for the same race could be even more vague, and possibly even subject to being misguessed, perhaps based on wisdom or something.

And then for other races...I mean, how can you even begin to guess how old a gith is, or a halfling? Whether you're talking in actual years, or just for their race.

So what I think should happen is, perhaps the for their race part could be taken out, or could be used even for one's same race.  That way you couldn't tell someone was a different race just by ass -v (mostly only an issue for half-elves, but still). Then (and maybe this is too much work but maybe not) have ass -v show a more vague, or at least, less accurate, assessment of race.  You can make the modifier for correctly guessing more difficult with people of different races, and maybe, like I said, a modifier for better wisdom making you more accurate.

[creeper386]

I don't personally see much of a problem. I've played a half-elf that didn't have half-elf in his description, didn't claim any elven blood, but through his description there was plenty of hints as to him having tainted blood. I didn't live a grand time with him, but I was treated just like any other human. Maybe noone bothered to assess me that whole time... SHRUG, but from my knowledge, it's not a hugely widespread problem.

Now, I've also seen half-elves that basically had no hint that they have tainted blood behind being a slim human. IMO this is messed up. You may be able to pass as a human or an elf, but you aren't going to be your average human or elf. Period. I think people get upset when they try to look completely one race or another and someone has suspicions that they aren't full blooded. Which is completely fine. I know I've seen people ICly ridiculed for having tainted blood when through assess it's obvious they don't.

It's called RP. If you want to play someone that has only the slightest bit of elven blood in him that goes back ten generations or something... Just make a human. If you want to play a half-elf... I'm guessing your going to probably have to deal with the fact that your not full blooded and it'll sometimes show rather you want it or not.


Creeper

[flurry]

Being able to compare ages so effectively is especially surprising given the difficulty in determining if an object weighs 1 stone or 100 stones.    It would be interesting if you could be wrong and think someone was a little older than you when they were actually a little younger.  

And I agree with those who prefer that assess didn't tip off to race.

[spawnloser]

How about, instead of getting rid of the 'for their race' we get rid of the 'than you' messages?

For example...say my 21 year old character assesses someone of the same race that is 31 (as well as female and well-endowed).  The way things work now, I would see:

Code Select Expand

She is quite a bit older than you.
She is shorter than you.
She is slightly heavier than you.
The boobalicious woman is in excellent condition.
The boobalicious woman does not look tired.

Why doesn't it get changed to:

Code Select Expand

For race:  Mature.
Shorter than you.
Slightly heavier than you.
In excellent condition.
Does not look tired.

Eliminating all sdescs and references to gender should placate everyone that has a problem with such...changing the first line to always mention 'for race' should fix any issues with that.

Personally, I'm all for this...I had a character that was denied a job when, as far as RP, she didn't even know she was a half-elf, but some noble told her that she had elven blood in her.  Granted, that made my character run off to talk to family to figure things out, providing some interesting RP, but that was a pile of 'tok shit, if you ask me.

[Angela Christine]

Nooo!  Don't take out gender identification, I get into enough trouble with hooded lords, ladies, and templars as it is.  They get cranky if you guess wrong and mis-identify a lord as  a  lady and vice versa, and some of them also get cranky if they think you are looking at them "the wrong way" so many  timid, god fearing characters don't look at them at all.

Besides, is sex  realy something that needs concealing?  The vast majority of the time gender will be obvious, a person with gender ambiguity is far more rare than one who is trying to pass for a different race.  I think most players are good at playing along on gender anyway, since there are no coded and few cultural advantages to being one sex or the other.

A while back a had a  thin, dirty 'rinth kid whose gender was ambiguous.  I put right in the description that the layers of dirt and the lack of visible secondary sex characteristics made it difficult to determine her gender (being a perpetually underfed rinth kid had prevented any significant development of breast or curvy feminine hips, and she was young enough that it was possible that if she was male her voice simply handn't changed yet, nor had facial hair developed).  Around the third line in her description I actually used female pronouns, I figured using "it" would be overdoing it, and anyone that wanted to know for sure could type assess-v OOCly or grab her and rip her pants off ICly.  Despiet the fact that it was OOCly obvious that she was female, most player followed the statement in her desc that said it was hard to tel immediatelyl if the child was male or female, and pretended they didn't know.  Sure, some refered to her as female, but others  initially refered to her as male, which led to some funny conversations as those  that knew her better explained that she was a girl, not a boy.

I've even had people not realize, or pretend not to realize, that a character was half elven despite some clues like pointy ears, almond shaped eyes, or a tall and lanky build in the description, as long as I didn't actually put halfelf or halfbreed in the description or sdesc.  Maybe they just didn't bother with assess -v or read the description carefully, but I prefer to think that the player decided that elven taint was subtle enought that thier character did not notice right away.

AC

[Petra]

I'm not sure I understand the problem.

I'm guessing this is in direct relation to half-elves because every other race is obviously very different.

My understanding of half-elves is that while they can look similar to a human (or an elf) they still exhibit characteristics of their tainted blood. Even the most cleverly concealed half-elf should have hints in their description that indicates that they are half-breeds.

So, is it fair to use assess -v to figure out someone is a half-breed? Sure. Leave it up to the player to decide if their character recognizes the tell-tale hints. Sometimes you will and sometimes you won't.

Hide it all you want - you are still a halfbreed and it still shows. A careful examination should reveal the taint. Assess -v, in some ways, is just that.

Well it also affects desert elves vs. city elves, though perhaps that's not as important.  I remember a post by Savak where this was discussed and him saying something to the effect of, "Don't RP assuming someone who appears human but is listed as "for their race" under assess -v is half-elf, one time someone turned out to be some demon child."  So it really can expand beyond just half-elves, though those instances certainly aren't the norm, granted.

However, the help file on half-elves does say they can pass off as either parent, it's perfectly conceivable to me that one could escape notice as being mixed.  If someone assess -ved me and then said "You are tainted with half-elven blood" (RPing that they somehow managed to figure it out), I'd instantly label them as a cheater.  In fairness, a half-elf posing as a human or elf should have features in their main description hinting at this, but then many of those features can be found in full blooded members of their race.  Some humans have almond-shaped eyes, and the help files on humans even says that a common mutation is pointed ears!

If all half-elves have features which belie them as a full blooded elf or human, then the present coding discrepancy makes sense, but I was always of the impression that half-elves are capable of passing off as full blooded.  Is this not so?  I think there should be a means for people to discover the truth, but not with a simple function of the code that wasn't even intended for that purpose.

[Lazloth]

This is a different issue from emoting while hidden (closest thread I could find, but I recall an uproar), where Arm players demonstrated that we cannot separate the IC from the OOC.  If this is a hard-and-fast stance, go ahead and yank all reference to race [and, as someone pointed out, if masked, gender] from external means of discovery.

[Anonymous]

The way I see it removing racial information from assess -v will do the following:

• Remove the ability to roughly determine race with an echo-less command.
• Foster a greater reliance on reading and comprehending someone's desc.
• Eliminate the ability for city elves and desert elves to automatically differentiate between each other.
• assess -v is a no-fail method to determine if someone is a member of your race where there could always been some ambiguity in a person's desc.  Removing it will make determining race more realistic.

There are more scenarios than just the typical half-elf trying to pass himself off as a human type that assess -v affects right now:  A target of a raid or mugging who is told to 'not look at anyone' can still use the assess -v command to magickally ascertain that those 'tall', 'thick', 'thin' or 'short' hooded figures were possibly elves, muls, dwarves or humans instead of having to be left wondering if maybe they were just differently-sized member of his or her own race.

I think including relative age information is good and necessary since, as Quirk pointed out, not everyone keeps their desc completely up to date.  I just think it should work on a relative scale like the info given in chargen.

A 19 year old elf does an assess -v on a 17 year old human and gets 'They appear to be the same age as you.'
A 21 year old human does an assess -v on a 21 year old elf and gets 'They appear to be younger than you.'

In the end my main beef has already been discussed by others, but I'd rather see people learning about others much the same way it would happen in real life - looking at them, identifying racial characteristics and making a decision based on that.  Not some command that removes all questions or variables from the equation.