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- zxq 7s
- Napoleon 4m
a Mench 3h Doing a bit of everything.
And 17 more hiding and/or disguised
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All short descriptors in glance
More consistent information

I don't find it particularly natural to write @describes that crowbar in vital statistics, and some of a character's short descriptors are often hidden. Appearance supercedes build in some situations, build supercedes appearance in others. It would be useful if these were always available somewhere. Example:

gl molly

Molly is a good-looking mona wearing a black WAI D-Fence bodysuit.

Molly is wearing silver mirrorshades and a black WAI D-Fence bodysuit.

Overall, her clothing is armored.

Molly is holding nothing.

Molly has a thin build, and is of average height.

Molly is in excellent condition.

It could also help to mitigate the subjective confusion that could arise from a woman being described as being 6'1" and 175lbs in her @describe, but is then 'average' when disguised.
As soon as you become good-looking, your size and shape become a total mystery, so I'd be down for this.
This would be one way to correct the issue of not knowing what people look like in terms of their build adjective.
This isn't a bad idea. My only suggestion is make it relative to the viewer.

%N is taller than you.

%N is fatter than you.

Etc.

Make it account for the viewer's appearance not their actual body type as well. I think if we make perception more inflective it'll help fight meta organically.

a woman being described as being 6'1" and 175lbs in her @describe, but is then 'average' when disguised

is way more than "subjective confusion" - it's a complete abortion of a disguise attempt. This is the kind of OOC and IC fuckup that makes people think that other people are metagaming to penetrate their disguise. If you're going to appear average, while simulaneously trying to conceal your identity with a disguise item, but not changing notable elements of your @describe and @nakeds, then that is your character failing to exercise their disguise skill - no matter what level it says your skill is at on your @stats.

An expert can fuck up. This is an example. All the bitching about disguise metagaming should have gone out the window when Slither updated help disguise to make clear that it's on the disguising player and character to make it work up to the limit of their skill. You can't disguise yourself better than your skill, but you sure as fuck can disguise yourself worse than. your skill.

The reason I use that as an example is that 6'1" and 175lbs is average by short descriptor.

Tall starts at 1.9m and husky starts at 90kg.

I like Reefer's suggestion. If you're appearing small, though, and you glance at a small person, would it go off your appear size or your regular size? I'd have to assume appear size.
There's also occasionally people who just completely omit their height from their description, leaving you with no fucking idea how tall they are, which is more than a little annoying.
Yeah, Baguette, I was totally thinking of that too, along with coded eye and hair color when not covered. There are people who don't provide those, can you believe it.
------------------------

You look down into so and so's eyes...

OOC: so and so says, "my character is 2 feet taller than you..."

quickly looks at so and so's description, and no mention of height or weight.

aaaaand, scene!

-------------------------

This has happened about once per month for me, with different characters each time playing the part of 'so and so'. Very much agree with Baguette and beandip on the frustration.

I think one problem with relative height and weight feedback is that two characters with the same short descriptors could have as much as a foot of height and 80 pounds of weight difference between them.
I also don't think that it's reasonable that someone's perception of others would change based on how they're appearing, themselves.

Leaving aside whether or not that's something that happens in real life when people change their own appearance, it wouldn't add anything to the game if it happened to our characters.

If you think it would, you're free to RP it.

This makes sense to me. I pinged Johnny to get his take on it.
An alternative would be to show both appearance and build in the shortdesc:

Molly Millions (good-looking lithe mona wearing a black WAI D-Fence bodysuit)

Appending was my suggestion in other threads on this topic. It'll add a bit of bloat to everyone's terminal output, but honestly, it's the easiest way around people being ''too dirty,'' ''too well dressed'' or ''too shabby'' to see how tall, short, thick or thin they are.
I'd prefer a bit more bloat personally, rather than having to shrug because they were too shabby/dirty for me to tell they were obese and four-foot-nothing.
As a feature, I could take it or leave it. This hasn't really impacted my play style. I will say if more details could be available - it seems like a nice thing for perception and dare I say forensics to play into.

A good snitch/witness should be a talent, not a de facto ability in my opinion.

In my mind, the ability of a snitch is not in their ability to spam 'L ' but rather their ability to locate buyers and market their data accordingly. YMMV.
Therein lies the difference between a fixer and a snitch. One focuses on buyers and markets. One knows what to watch for and doesn't keep their mouth shut.

If perception and/or forensics is impacting the short descriptor available to said Snitch - it's not about them spamming L. It's about them just taking it all in which should happen organically as those descriptors echo to the room without constantly glancing or looking.

Further details available upon glancing or looking would be a nice to have I've brought up before in Forensic Mayhem but I don't think are needed in this scenario .

https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/game-discussion/ideas/forensic-mayhem-207/

As an added feature, maybe you don't always *know* what other people see your short descriptor as. There's how you see yourself and make yourself appear...and there's how other people see you. A mirror, forensics, and perception would help reconcile the two but you could have a tell that you have no idea about.

Thinking it over, always including build in the post-name shortdesc is the much better option because it covers every use-case where you need to see what someone looks like.
"Forensics

The use of science, technology and common sense to investigate physical evidence to discover factual details."

Mmmmmaybe give Forensics some love by giving it the ability to see increasingly verbose shortdescs?

My personal feeling is that knowing whether a character is big or small, tall or short, is necessary information to roleplay well with them and wouldn't require specialist know-how. It's also very important information for just basic identification of characters, now that we're directed not to recognize solely by display name.

Forensics allowing a characters height and weight to be determined accurately might be a more logical advanced specialization, so that any player can see a character is tall, or lithe, or whatever, and then an expert forensic examiner would be able to inspect someone and get their specific height in cm and weight in kg. That might be something worth making an idea post for those interested in expanding forensics.

The short descriptors that we promote are more noticeable aspects of a person than those we don't promote. I do like the idea of putting build/height indicators at the end of a person's description based on your character's height and ability to estimate. We could also add eye color automatically when the eyes are visible. You'll have to adjust your nakeds (which could be a problem for folks with biomods on those slots), so its a bit messy to get there. But I like the goals.