Masks

[Xan]

Should masks that cover up your mdesc also conceal any keywords?

I say yes, just because it allows for more RP oppurtunities.  Impersonating someone, having a double, etc. etc. etc.  Right now that can all be ruined oocly and in some cases icly by going "look (name)"

Assess -v should still give the same feedback, so you can tell the difference with a little thought.

Comments, ideas, pointless voting?

[SailorMars]

Is there a reason masks in particular would be treated differently than anything else that conceals the person, such as hoods, facewraps, etc.?

[Forest Junkie]

I may be wrong, but I thought there was such a thing as a mask which hides mdesc.

*shrug*

[ashyom]

Masks that hide your main descriptions are no longer given out in game.  If you find one, you should typo it.  Staff might occasionally give out masks that hide the mdescs if IC circumstances warrant it, but this is done on case by case basis.

[Xan]

Is there a reason masks in particular would be treated differently than anything else that conceals the person, such as hoods, facewraps, etc.?

Not talking about your average hood or face desc.  I'm specifically talking about items which delete or alter the mdesc of a person so that when looking at them all you see is their eq, no discerning features.

Hoods and facewraps conceal sdescs, not mdescs.  And to FJ, they exist if you can find them.

Edited to add:  Didnt realize they're supposed to be restricted now.  Poll still stands valid though unless staff thinks its a discussion that shouldnt take place.  Keywords can leak who someone is very easily, should they be disabled while the mask is on?

[Mr.Camel]

I can recognize someone by their voice, walk, size, movements and many things that aren't always described in emotes. So, no, I don't think keywords should go with masks.

[sacac]

Actually..
take "The buff, tattooed-to-hell warrior man"
this he-man puts on a mask.
the short male wearing an uber-face mask of death is here.
i love it, he is no long buff or tattooed unless you looked at them
Anyways..
No, I don't think they should cover up keywords, because your blue-silver eyes would still be seeableand those elite muscles you blew up.

[Callisto]

Masks that hide your main descriptions are no longer given out in game.

Why, exactly?

[Gilvar]

They are abused.

It is left up to the players to decide themselves how much of a character's features they see, same with hoods, face-wraps, veils, etc. Also, main-descs are not just facial features, and when those type of masks were worn they removed any perception of other physical characteristics including height, weight, hair-color, body-scarring, tattooes, that the player may have chose to include in their description.

Its unrealistic to assume that just because a person is wearing a mask that you'd be at a loss to describe these other, traditional, things included in a description. And on the flip-side, it would be unrealistic for a person to disregard the fact that your wearing a mask.

And then my personal opinion, but most of the masks in game are not solid-slabs worn over the face, they pretty much still reveal the eyes, and lower-portion of the face and hair. Its kinda like the gag with 'Robin' in batman's mask. Why couldn't people figure it out? He was basically just wearing big glasses. The fact that they were completely anonymousizing the person is silly.

[Carnage]

They are abused.

It is left up to the players to decide themselves how much of a character's features they see, same with hoods, face-wraps, veils, etc. Also, main-descs are not just facial features, and when those type of masks were worn they removed any perception of other physical characteristics including height, weight, hair-color, body-scarring, tattooes, that the player may have chose to include in their description.

So now instead of one person abusing a mask, a whole audience abuses a person by ignoring the hood/face-wrap/veil/etc?

[mansa]

Yes.  A bad apple spoils the whole bunch.

[Quirk]

The problem is that the masked person usually stands to lose a lot more than the people who might recognise him.

It is very frequently the case that people who have in reality been victimised by some sudden or violent crime do not recognise their assailant later or have difficulty describing them to the police, even though that assailant was not making any attempt to conceal their features. This phenomenon does not carry over to Armageddon; recognition of that raider or thief is pretty much a given. Going to the next level of concealment, with a hood or veil, would in reality be sufficient to make positive recognition very difficult for most victims; by the time you get to a mask, recognising someone closely enough to be able to pick them out of a line-up of people of similar build would be very hard.

Of course, this doesn't address the issue that voices are likely to be harder to disguise, and while seeing someone you only ever saw hooded and masked is unlikely to bring back memories, hearing their voice may do so.

As far as Gilvar's comments about masks not revealing height, weight, tattoos, scars and hair colour - hair colour apart, all these other things can be revealed by a combination of assess and look. Scars and tattoos that are uncovered are present on the body. Assess reveals height and weight. Hair colour is likely to be hidden by a hood in any case.

Shifting the burden of good RP onto a larger group of people i.e. all those who see the masked victim, when the stakes are likely much higher for the smaller group, seems to me a rather odd way to handle it.

Quirk

[Delirium]

<slips Quirk $10 under the table>

He wrote my post for me, you see.

[Bakha]

Another reason that masks were removed was that they were inconsistent and illogical. There was no rhyme or reason to what items qualified for the mask flag and what items didn't; it was basically arbitrary.

Additionally, people hoarded and prized ingame items for OOC reasons. Suddenly a rugged piece of sandcloth (with the mask flag) became more valuable to players than a metal ring or magickal sword. People would go to great lengths to get these items that were, ingame, indistinguishable from similar items but had the mask flag.

This then presented additional problems, as there was no logical reason that the piece of sandcloth with the mask flag wouldn't be easily reproducible by anyone, after all it was only a piece of sandcloth. And if, logically, the mask could be reproduced by anyone, then everyone would have masks, making for a very, very messy world with everyone running around with concealed mdescs constantly.

Thus, for the sake of game play and balance, the masks were removed. The primary argument against removing the mask follows: it's nice to have "cool" items ingame that people strive for and fight to obtain. However, those items need to make sense and be consistent with the reality of the game.

An argument could be made for the ability to change or hide people's mdescs. I think, though, that this ability would be better served by making a workable disguise skill than having an item ingame that works for everyone and anyone that happens across it.

*edited for additional thoughts and clarity*

[sarahjc]

I said no for all the reasons addressed above.. It is an Rp thing, A main desc holds a lot more info than just your face.

[Quirk]

And if, logically, the mask could be reproduced by anyone, then everyone would have masks, making for a very, very messy world with everyone running around with concealed mdescs constantly.

While the criminal fraternities would obviously seize on masks with delight, I suspect they would be rather rarer among law-abiding citizens. Wearing your hood up offers a measure of concealment, but most people keep them down in taverns and other places of public meeting. Now, while someone hooded is not necessarily bent on wrongdoing, someone who is masked likely is, and I would suspect that the militia would crack down on those wearing them within the city boundaries.

Given that criminals would adopt them in droves, what would be the likely result of them doing so? For starters, their fears about being recognised would be to some degree assuaged, and likely the number of murders would drop slightly, as letting the victim live would become more affordable. The role of the robber or raider who interacts with her victim would become far more playable. Recognition would still be possible, given that the details of dress and build and age and scarring and tattoos are perfectly decipherable even on mask wearers, but it would carry a substantially greater risk of misidentification than it does at present, which would be a Good Thing IMO.

In reality, when a group of thugs decide to rob a bank or shop, they pull stockings over their heads to afford them a degree of anonymity, and the descriptions that go out for them tend to be based on the sort of information that is readily accessible in game without use of the main desc. Arbitrarily restricting this does thoughtful criminal RP few favours.

Quirk

[Anonymous]

Quirk, anyone with enough money to buy a length of sandcloth can wrap it around their head and thus has a mask that hides their facial identity as much as any I've seen in game.  It was silly that a mesh facewrap would hide your desc but an orange sandcloth veil didn't.  Either all masks needed to hide descs or not for things to be consistent and I think they made the right choice.

Frankly I'm glad to no longer see NPCs being killed for their desc-hiding sandcloth wraps and no other reason.

[Quirk]

Quirk, anyone with enough money to buy a length of sandcloth can wrap it around their head and thus has a mask that hides their facial identity as much as any I've seen in game.  It was silly that a mesh facewrap would hide your desc but an orange sandcloth veil didn't.  Either all masks needed to hide descs or not for things to be consistent and I think they made the right choice.

Frankly I'm glad to no longer see NPCs being killed for their desc-hiding sandcloth wraps and no other reason.

That was pretty much my point. Extending mask flags to everything that makes sense to use as a mask would not result in the end of the world. I'm not claiming the betwixt and between made sense, merely that a proliferation of masks is not necessarily going to result in anarchy and chaos.

Quirk

[Stroker]

merely that a proliferation of masks is not necessarily going to result in anarchy and chaos.

Yes it will.

[Quirk]

merely that a proliferation of masks is not necessarily going to result in anarchy and chaos.

Yes it will.

Could you give a few reasons as to why you believe that would be so?

Quirk

[Xan]

I'd be more in favor for a disguise skill to give to assassins and burglars.  But what about raiders?  Can anyone seriously distinguish any features not included in assess and assess -v if someone were to wrap sandcloth around their face and wear a heavy cloak or robe?

As far as walking style and voice, that stuff should be similar in the raiders RP style in my opinion.  People using such masks should be taking care, sadly I dont think that the people who are getting a crime committed against their chars or are in a crowd are as likely to play it realistically in regards to recognizing the person if they were to see him/her again.

Also this isnt just for thief types.  Its currently by code impossible to try to impersonate someone or set up a double, mainly because anyone can go "look (name)" and immediately tell whether you are that Winthrol whose ring and clothing you stole, or the thief whose doing it.

Thats my take at least.

[Anonymous]

merely that a proliferation of masks is not necessarily going to result in anarchy and chaos.

I do not share your faith in mankind.  Having been the victim of many a 'I'll do what I want first then interact/worry about reality/emote later' situation I don't think anonymity will help matters at all.

More than anyone magickers would benefit from this unfairly.  Change your clothes, pop on your completely desc-hiding mask and go wander around the 'rinth/alleys/wilds practing your magicks.  If someone sees you doing this your only fear is of immediate reprisal.  If you can escape, you are home free since you do not have to worry about being found out and having your cover blown.  Magickers able to act with impunity is a scary thing, especially considering the varying viewpoints on what is realistic in a given situation and varying levels of willpower to resist attacking/messing with someone just because you can and have a lame excuse.

Anarchy and chaos is taking it a bit too far, but if you reduce in game accountabilty for IC actions you are going to see an increase in activities that wouldn't be engaged in except for the sudden ability to do them anonymously.  It's just human nature.

[Quirk]

merely that a proliferation of masks is not necessarily going to result in anarchy and chaos.

I do not share your faith in mankind.  Having been the victim of many a 'I'll do what I want first then interact/worry about reality/emote later' situation I don't think anonymity will help matters at all.

More than anyone magickers would benefit from this unfairly. Change your clothes, pop on your completely desc-hiding mask and go wander around the 'rinth/alleys/wilds practing your magicks. If someone sees you doing this your only fear is of immediate reprisal. If you can escape, you are home free since you do not have to worry about being found out and having your cover blown. Magickers able to act with impunity is a scary thing, especially considering the varying viewpoints on what is realistic in a given situation and varying levels of willpower to resist attacking/messing with someone just because you can and have a lame excuse.

Anarchy and chaos is taking it a bit too far, but if you reduce in game accountabilty for IC actions you are going to see an increase in activities that wouldn't be engaged in except for the sudden ability to do them anonymously.  It's just human nature.

Look at this the other way. People are restricting themselves from doing things that would be neither unrealistic nor out of character because of the unrealistic ease of recognition. Why should a magicker who's gone to some pains to conceal their identity have their cover blown by being instantly recognisable? As it is, a hooded magicker caught practicing has to be ridden right up to and looked at to be recognisable - surely something few people in their right minds would do - and the sole deterrent which keeps magickers from hooding up and heading out into the wilds is that people cannot be trusted not to ride up, look, and ride away. Magickers would not be able to "act with impunity" in civilised areas, but outside them - who, sensibly, is going to stop them?

Masks do not make you impossible to recognise. It makes recognition a little trickier, because you have to rely on the more generalised description of body shape given by assess -v, and you have to go on their scars, what they're wearing, their tattoos instead of the hidden facial features - but this is all realistic.

Finally, this isn't blind faith. I used to imm on an RPI on which hoods provided far more cover than they do on Armageddon, and it was impossible to tell the hooded person's features at a glance. I would not say that the quality of RP on that RPI was superior to that of Armageddon, but nonetheless few people put up their hoods save to keep off the weather or, with criminals, for purposes of concealment when undertaking some action likely to embroil them in trouble if they were recognised. And the hooded people were recognised and tracked down on occasion, even without the benefits of an assess command, because they were not careful enough about varying their "working" clothes or they were caught changing.

Quirk

[jhunter]

More than anyone magickers would benefit from this unfairly. Change your clothes, pop on your completely desc-hiding mask and go wander around the 'rinth/alleys/wilds practing your magicks. If someone sees you doing this your only fear is of immediate reprisal. If you can escape, you are home free since you do not have to worry about being found out and having your cover blown.

I don't see how this is unfair at all, seems realistic to me.

I have to agree with Quirk about this, I think that it would open up more rp for raiders and such without having to kill first out of fear that the other player is going to be a twink and run off telling everyone key parts of your desc that they wouldn't have been able to see because of your mask.

[Stroker]

Masks do not make you impossible to recognise. It makes recognition a little trickier, because you have to rely on the more generalised description of body shape given by assess -v, and you have to go on their scars, what they're wearing, their tattoos instead of the hidden facial features - but this is all realistic.

Assess -v gives such a generic description that it becomes useless, as it is the same for a very large proportion of the population. In addition, any semi-intelligent creature would cover up their tattooes... The only thing I can find feasible is body language, but half of the people don't even emote enough to make that a realistic possibility.

Also, some of the long descriptions describe body figure and the like, why would it be covered up with a mask? Unless description is restricted to just facial features, I see this addition unnecessary and unrealistic.