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Perhaps I'm doing this wrong, but to make your disguise work correctly and avoid meta, it appears need to change your look place so it does not match the look place for your undisguised character. Of course, if you always have the same look place when you're hooded/shrouded/etc., then it's still easier for players to identify you, particularly under the new rules (which I support).
To avoid the work of having to come up with different, rotating look places, I propose that a standard look place be applied whenever anyone dons a disguise meant to obscure ones identity (as opposed to one meant to create a new identity). Players should be able to change their temp places still, so they can take a smoke or hunch over a bar drunkenly if they so choose. Rotating and coming up with new look places when disguised is just extra typing without any real roleplay value.
By Robespierre1789 at Mar 11, 2020 2:03 PM
Would be a huge quality of life change and honestly, forgetting to switch your LP just gives pure meta information nobody should be able to use but probably will.
By Kiwi at Mar 11, 2020 2:05 PM
Isn't the idea of being good at disguising yourself supposed to mean that if you're good enough at it noone knows your disguised?
By Flingcon at Mar 11, 2020 2:06 PM
Just @macro it. Giving disguises default @lps would make it even more meta.
By Azriel at Mar 11, 2020 2:07 PM
And @voices and @describes and @naked hands and Chen Mayo designer kicks and signature weapons and preferred alcoholic drinks and known associates and and and
This "work" is part of the play. Have you read the update to "help disguise"? See the "Preparation Required" section Slither just wrote this month.
https://www.sindome.org/help/game/disguise/
By beandip at Mar 11, 2020 2:08 PM
By Flingcon at Mar 11, 2020 2:08 PM
Being easily recognizable as having disguised yourself seems to defeat part of the purpose of being disguised.
By mindkontrol at Mar 11, 2020 2:08 PM
@fling: This is why I wanted to distinguish disguises meant to obscure any identity with disguises meant to create an entirely new identity. The latter should still have a look place, because you're pretending to be someone else and not just hiding who you are.
@azriel: A macro doesn't solve this because if you have the same "disguised" look place, you're still going to be recognizable.
@bean: The work for appears and clothing is great RP. It means you have to go buy multiple things and think about what you own, or make the decision to appear like a snack, or a fleshbag, what have you. Look places are different in that the change is cost free, as opposed to the chy cost for new articles of clothing or the skills costs for appearing, and the link between what one would need to do in real life (or real 2105 life, or whatever the physical manifestation of the game is) and changing your LP is pretty tenuous. Further, I imagine even though it's not strictly against the rules, it's still frowned upon to identify someone by their LP, as opposed to identifying someone by their general shape and demeanor or their clothing.
By Robespierre1789 at Mar 11, 2020 2:14 PM
Giving disguises default @lps would make it even more meta.I'm missing something, explain how it doesn't remove one potential point of meta if every disguised person has the same @lp?
By beandip at Mar 11, 2020 2:16 PM
Set an auto-triggered @lp for wearing and removing your disguise and just pump out a few custom @lp macros to cycle through for convenience's sake.
By Azriel at Mar 11, 2020 2:17 PM
@beandip It tells you meta'ly that that person over there is wearing a disguise.
By Flingcon at Mar 11, 2020 2:18 PM
I imagine even though it's not strictly against the rules, it's still frowned upon to identify someone by their LP, as opposed to identifying someone by their general shape and demeanorI guess it depends on the content of the @look_place. If it presents them as doing something pretty individual, that's different from if it presents them as looking some way you couldn't see through the disguise.
Examples:
Joe is doing that two-left-one-right skip down the street he always does.
versus
Joe is sneering that sneer he always sneers.
By beandip at Mar 11, 2020 2:19 PM
Wouldn't 'hey that asshole in a shroud has his custom @lp about how flash he looks still up, I know that's JoeBaka in a shroud' be more the meta here?
By Kiwi at Mar 11, 2020 2:21 PM
Yes but just because it's against the rules doesn't mean people won't do it and treat them differently. If you're trying to be someone else and have put the effort in to Look sound and act like someone else. Why should that all go to shit when someone spots your generic disguised @Lp telling them you're not who you say you are but instead are a person in disguise.
By Flingcon at Mar 11, 2020 2:21 PM
Okay then. Let's clearly distinguish between "disguised" as in concealing versus "disguised" as in masquerading.
Someone who's masquerading absolutely should come up with a unique @lp and apply it. I agree that in this situation no default @lp makes sense, but, really, in this situation the player has to prepare.
Someone who's just trying to conceal their identity can have a default disguised @lp, or a @macro'd one, and it doesn't reveal anything because you already know they're disguised. I'm still not too wild about a default @lp for them, because there still are at least 6 different points of preparation this person needs to at least think about, why single out @lp.
By beandip at Mar 11, 2020 2:23 PM
It's less of a problem with shrouds and more that it clashes with named disguises and wigs/contacts.
By Azriel at Mar 11, 2020 2:24 PM
@bean The masquerading v. concealing point is what I tried to make before, and I agree 100%. @azriel, this is the distinction to which I was referring before, so wigs and contacts would be excluded.
I think @lp is different than any of the other points because it comes with no in game sacrifice and has less of an analog to what one would need to do in a physical manifestation of the game. Buying different hood colors costs money. Changing your demanor and physical appearance requires skill investments. Changing locations, or doing other things to make it harder to identify you, comes with costs and is part of the fun. I don't see much RP value in thinking up new ways to say, "I'm blending in."
@voice is the closest thing to @lp, but that's still different in that you don't necessarily want to disguise your voice when you disguise yourself, and you don't necessarily want to disguise your physical appearance when you disguise your voice.
By Robespierre1789 at Mar 11, 2020 2:40 PM
Give an example for what you'd want the @lp to be?
By Azriel at Mar 11, 2020 2:49 PM
"an average shrouded meatsicle is disguising their identity." If it's the same for everyone, you can't meta around it unless they temp place, at which point the player is consciously deciding to take some action.
By Robespierre1789 at Mar 11, 2020 2:53 PM
It doesn't have to be anything other than empty. "standing here" is the default default.
By beandip at Mar 11, 2020 2:54 PM
Yep, beandip. That's what was I going to cap this off with. Can't beat the classics.
By Azriel at Mar 11, 2020 2:55 PM
Maybe this is tangential enough for its own topic, but, ambient disguisers have giveaway @lp's. They could just "stand there" too. For better or for worse, that would mean people wouldn't disguise up and then apply one of the ambient @lp's as part of their preparation.
By beandip at Mar 11, 2020 2:56 PM
You don't need the @lp to say they're disguising their identity, you can already tell that because they're unnamed.
By beandip at Mar 11, 2020 2:57 PM
Beandip! That's an excellent idea, and it's completely on topic. I think with the appear system and the rule change, it changes disguises so that IC knowledge matches OOC knowledge, which I think is a lot more fun and realistic. Having a bunch of ambient disguised people running around with the same LP means that you have to have real evidence to, say, off a disguised person, or conversely, not care very much if you're killing the right person, which is fine too.
By Robespierre1789 at Mar 11, 2020 3:01 PM
Well, it wouldn't really change anything because people can already just apply an ambient @lp.
By beandip at Mar 11, 2020 3:04 PM
Setting, or changing your @lp is part of getting disguised.
There is an art and science to it.
Learn it, Love it, Live it.
Or don't, and keep getting found out because you missed an important element of the disguise (like @lp).
By Hek at Mar 11, 2020 3:42 PM
It's easy to figure out who is or isn't a disguised NPC if you look at them though. Fix for this would be giving those NPCs damaged or patched up ponchos so they look like 99% of disguised PCs. Hoodies are different because of the whole nakeds problem.
By Necronex666 at Mar 11, 2020 9:53 PM
To @Necronex's point, there are already a lot of obvious tels.
Let's not post them all over BgBB please.
One of my favorite parts of the game has been learning to build a good disguise.
The one thing I will suggest is to @macro them. There are so many things to tweak that doing it consistently, manually, is a PITA.
I think that's especially relevant now with the APPEAR changes and the requirements to RP the changes. A @macro per persona helps enforce consistency.
By Hek at Mar 12, 2020 12:28 AM
I understand with the recent disguise policy changes that the onus now lies on the players, as there's plenty of tools to hide your identity and discover others', so I'm bearing that in mind along with agreeing that the new disguise functions -should- render you entirely indistinguishable with no 'meta tells' if you do it right... BUT!
I will also bold, italicize, and underline the fact that you're looking for -IC REASONS- that someone isn't who they say they are, not OOC ones. Yes, there are plenty of tells where I immediately have to laugh to myself and go "Okay, I as the player know, but my character doesn't." And carry on.
This is, absolutely, me stabbing a contrarian stake in the ground, but I feel it's important to discuss when the conversation starts to lean towards this sort of (healthy) meta-discussion. Chalk it up to posterity's sake, but let's remember to keep our reasoning IC for the sake of RP, despite some subtle and glaring OOC tells.
By HolyChrome at Mar 12, 2020 12:37 AM
I agree with Hek.
Your @lp, @describe, @nakeds, appear, et cetera are all part of your player-driven disguise skills. Disguise is not just putting on a shroud.
By 0x1mm at Mar 12, 2020 8:52 AM
0x and Hek, maybe I'm just not visualizing the @lp of a concealed person correct (distinguishing it from a masquerading person, where @nakeds and @describe actually play a role). I like that disguises are more than just throwing on a shroud and pretending they're invisible. If my character is buying a new shroud or new sneakers, for example, they're doing that to look different so even when other characters see my concealed chum, they won't be able to know it's the same concealed chum they saw the same place yesterday. When my chum appears as a wageslave, I envision them hunching over, looking tired, and ambling a little listlessly. My chum could change their weapon, be at different places at different times, change their behavior, or take on different speech patterns, and I agree with Hek because all of these things are fun. It's all "work", but it's "work" that I envision my chum doing.
Particularly in light of appear and non-appear shortdescs, I can't really explain what my character is doing when I change their @lp, and unlike appear shortdescs, there's no coded limitation on them. I understand I could rotate around with say four or five macros, but then I'm using up a lot of valuable macro real estate for concealing.
I don't want to get rid of the work that goes into disguising. I think this one aspect of working on your disguise isn't as fun as the rest because I can't really envision what's happening and the only limitation on my ability to change it either typing out new sentences or using more macro real estate.
By Robespierre1789 at Mar 12, 2020 10:15 AM
I am completely lost.
But a standard @lp for disguised characters would immediately tell everyone they are disguised, which is silly. That's not evening the field, that's dramatically weakening the power of top-end disguise so that people who put ten UE in to throw on a shroud have to make even less effort than they already do.
By 0x1mm at Mar 12, 2020 11:36 AM
I totally concede I may be completely misunderstanding this though, I thought I understood but I'm a bit more uncertain reading through the comments again.
By 0x1mm at Mar 12, 2020 11:37 AM
Generic @lp for low-investment shrouds alone seems fine to me though, like 'a hooded citizen is just another shroud', kind of thing.
There's just a lot more to disguise than just the basic shroud that a locked @lp for everyone would hurt.
By 0x1mm at Mar 12, 2020 11:39 AM
If you put on a hoodie or a poncho you're disguised anyway and everybody can easily tell that you're disguised. If the @LP for disguised people wearing those items is universal then it's harder to tell which disguised person is which. The option to change the @LP to something custom could still be there but a change like this would make disguised people more anonymous in my opinion. Especially if disguised NPCs had this by default too.
By Necronex666 at Mar 12, 2020 11:40 AM
0x, certain disguises make you appear like a different person, so other people looking at you don't necessarily know you're even wearing a disguise. Beandip referred to this as masquerading. And I agree 100%: the @lp on these should not be changed at all, because like any other undisguised character, you have an @lp.
Other disguises only serve to conceal your identity and not give you a new one. Thus, you might appear as "an average hooded mona." These are the only kind that I'm advocating a standard @lp for.
By Robespierre1789 at Mar 12, 2020 11:42 AM
Ohhhh. Sorry! The nomenclature was throwing me off.
If "proper" disguises retain @lp options, giving shrouds a default would make complete sense to me.
By 0x1mm at Mar 12, 2020 11:48 AM
"average hooded mona" isn't a @look_place. A @look_place is like "An average hooded mona is standing here.
By beandip at Mar 12, 2020 1:39 PM
