Similarly, hoodie-wearing NPCs should probably spawn with nakeds or at least clothes and gloves.
A simple code check could even throw an OOC reminder to players that they must fill those nakeds up before any disguise is applied.
Like, for example.. load appearance Woman', and you automatically change your description to what you already wrote for the disguise, etc.
It seems super gamey to me. A character's physique is their physique. If they're muscled, they're not going to suddenly be not muscled. If they're flabby, they're not going to suddenly be not flabby. If a character is worried about the physical attributes of their naked giving away their disguise, they can cover up those body parts with clothing.
Otherwise it seems to me that adjusting physical descriptions is borderline genetic engineering. That is not something people should be able to do without a huge amount of training and preparation.
At the risk of dragging eal life into this, look at some of the Transformations that actors have to go through for playing roles. Christian Bale is a really good example of an actor who goes to pretty extreme physical lengths in order to embody different characters. Those Transformations don't just happen overnight. They require physical trainers and dietitians and doctors. Then it takes weeks if not months to gain weight or lose weight or hit the gym or do whatever is required to get the body into the condition that the person wants it to be in.
Not a fan of being forced to write aimless nakeds either. In my case anyway, if the character has something to write about there I will, otherwise they're hands. Everyone's got 'em, we know what they look like.
Intent obviously matters though. If someone is clearing distinctive @nakeds then that's something else, but my own feeling is that gloves are just as ambiguous as hands are.
So no, I don't think you know what they look like. I mean, IDing someone on hands alone is (depending on the circumstances) unreasonable, but skintone, size, all of those things are clues.
Realistically players pattern match the prose and the work backwards. As I said, removing @nakeds to enable a disguise is bad intent but really if someone's @naked reads '%s has ordinary hands' and another player reads that, are they really going to ID someone based on IC information, or OOC writing?
I really don't see there being some huge issue here. Hoodies reveal most of a character's other clothing, which is far more justifiably identifiable than their hands would be.
ID. None of those things are enough on their own to give enough information to ID, but putting together the pieces through all of the available data sources helps.
More than that, the fundamental unfairness is this: if you aren't allowed to clear your nakeds to help a disguise, why do you get to make the decision to just not write them? I'm all for allowing people time to get their stuff together, but by the time a new character is acquiring disguises we should expect nakeds. At that point it is a strategic choice and not laziness. It strikes me as very strange that you can get a strategic benefit from choosing not to engage with the game's systems at CG.
Also, as a practical question, it makes it hard for staff to intervene. If it's against the rules to clear nakeds but not to never set them, how does staff handle an XHELP of "This person doesn't have nakeds set on their disguise?"
There are easier ways to manipulate disguises to better outcomes, it's hard to imagine anyone going to the length of forever forgoing some @naked to get some tiny edge with one piece of equipment in a system that is much better when taken advantage of in other ways.
I seriously doubt this is a big enough issue to force all players to start writing totally unnecessary junk @nakeds, which is reactionary and overreach for what amounts to a non-issue. Players mostly just metagame as it is when it comes to descriptions and ID, I really don't see any pressing need for further fuel for that, especially something so drastic.
Or staff can just be stricter about them in those situations. If someone is clearing them while disguised, and that someone is obviously not a new player who just hasn't set nakeds, it's a very easy distinction to understand them saying 'but there's no rule saying I have to have nakeds set' is being said in bad faith, and they're being meta shitbirds, which is breaking the rules.
I suppose over time this -could- become a situation where no one ever sets nakeds to just avoid being accused ot clearing them, but people doing that will probably just get weeded out over time, for being meta shitbirds.
If someone wasn't writing any @nakeds that would be one thing, but @describe is already mandatory and I don't see the need for something so incredibly drastic when full body disguises are the default anyway. I've never seen this happen at all that I can recall.
We are no longer allowed to identify people based on their name, and so nakeds are one of our only tools to identify people.
As asinine as this is, can we at least recognize that it has next-to-nothing to do with disguise?
A whole 'nother thread seems called for on this subject. Oh wait -
As far as erasing certain nakeds entirely when disguising? I can't imagine any reason for doing that other than gaming the system. Be it that a player finds it too tedious to write a new one or for any other reason, it's a detriment to the individuals who -could- use that data ICly, and to the spirit of cooperative competition as a whole.
This isn't the thread to broach this but I really have to say that I really think the messaging (and reception) of this change is exactly the opposite.
Staff saying complaints of disguise meta / abuse in most cases won't be investigated = meta shitbird DREAM.
For example:
- face
- At least 1 of left/right hand
- At least 1 of left/right thigh/shin
- At least 1 of left/right foot
Put it this way, I am a player who doesn't write @nakeds unless there is something pertinent to my character to describe in that location. I don't wear hoodies to begin with since they're just flat out inferior compared to the alternatives, but let's say I did and there was newly implemented restriction that I had to set all @nakeds to wear one -- what am I going to do?
I'm going to write some to wear that item, and then discard them when I'm done because I don't want a bunch of junk nakeds clogging my character's description. So now anyone who has seen my hand @nakeds while my character is walking around without gloves for whatever reason, has meta information that provides exactly zero context clues to identifying my character.
The actual actionable clues to my character's identity (build, clothing, voice, et cetera) were always there to begin with, the restrictions which only handled one item and one very narrow use case, contributed nothing to my character being identified.
Players are required to be appropriate and not exploitative with their disguises. That requirement is enough and anything beyond that are solutions in search of problems in my opinion.
What isn't pertinent about it? And don't you think by saying that there's nothing pertinent there, that that's pertinent to identifying your character? I feel like you're making an assumption that no @naked = nothing pertinent there, when it would be more accurate to say no @naked = immy/newbie.
If you're purposefully using no naked to signify nothing pertinent without the intent to metagame, then when disguising up, I think it's fair to write something about exposed parts, even if it is, "There is nothing pertinent about %p thighs."
Unless you're attempting to disguise as an immy/newbie?
I don't wear hoodies to begin with since they're just flat out inferior compared to the alternatives, but let's say I did and there was newly implemented restriction that I had to set all @nakeds to wear one -- what am I going to do?
I'm going to write some to wear that item, and then discard them when I'm done because I don't want a bunch of junk nakeds clogging my character's description.
Yes, that sounds fair.
How are you going to just not have hand nakeds? Are your hands average and ordinary? Okay, then describe them that way. Don't just leave major body parts, especially the most visible ones, such as hands, arms, face, hair, etc. blank.
On the flip side. We're supposed to change our nakeds to match our presented gender when using APPEAR. So I can see where there's suddenly confusion about this, because you can't very well change the bone structure of your hands, or an adam's apple, or the width of your shoulders easily. Some of these things you can handwave off as prosthetics, but again, there's not really a coded gameplay mechanic here.
It's one of those things where players are expected to self-moderate, but some are going to completely ignore/abuse it as much as possible until they start getting yellow texted. If you see a problem where someone walks into a dead end room like a bathroom with @nakeds, then walks out a moment later with a hood and no @nakeds, that's probably a situation you should XHELP.
...but if you the player reads 'there is nothing pertinent about %p thighs' on a character description, and identifies that character based on that prose, you're metagaming anyway. Characters don't have some quasi-omniscient perception of the fabric of reality.
This doesn't get policed anymore so it's a moot point, but let's be clear about what's happening there. This to me sounds more like asking for required tells characters should not be able to use anyway most of the time.
1. Requiring modified descriptions for disguises.
In my case, all I did was replace "he / him / his" with the appropriate pronouns (help pronouns) so that when my character switches to an opposite or non-gendered APPEAR, the description aligns with it. That is the extent of what staff expected of me / my character.
My opinion here is that people are going way off the reservation with the direction to "change your description" to completely re-work their @nakeds in a meta and gamey way. (see my previous posts about physique being physique). Again, this is my opinion. HELP DISGUISE mentions the following for CREATING disguises (please notice the LACK of @nakeds)
Players who wish to effectively utilize disguising material should be changing their @shortdesc, clothing, @voice and @Look_place, using @holdback, updating their @describe, and using the 'appear' command.
and
Characters have disguises, stealth, appearance, @describe, @holdback, @voice, clothing, weapons, pose, and emote that can all be used together to craft a 'different' appearance.
HELP DISGUISE mentions the following about assuming / recognizing someone who is / was disguised
Again, if a player chooses to ignore these and make assumptions about who your character is, through a disguise, a disguised name, an appearance change, their voice, their description, their nakeds, their clothing, their attitude, the slang they use, the actions they take, the actions they fail to take, or anything else, that it fair game.
In case this is not clear, based on the help file it is implied that it is okay to use @nakeds to recognize someone. There is no mention of it being okay to change @nakeds as part of a disguise. It is intentionally (?) omitted from the long list of character elements that players should consider changing when adopting a disguise.
2. Essential nakeds (hands, face, etc)
These are things that everyone should have. HELP DISGUISE explicitly says...
DISGUISE FROM THE PLAYER & THE CHARACTER
You should strive to not only disguise yourself from the other character, but also the other player! If they can't OOCly guess who you are via meta cues such as recognizing your characters clothing, you have won half the battle.
That includes things like prose, word choice, etc. Not describing (hands, face, etc), even as simply as "Jane has hands." is gaming the system and giving characters an unfair advantage.
Statements like "A character would just wear gloves anyway." is dodging the issue. What if gloves aren't available? What if a character just got mugged and lost them? What if a character "didn't have a hand issue" because they "always" wear a shroud, but then they lose their shroud?
We are all smart people here. We can come up with a million different ways to justify to ourselves and others why "we" are special snowflakes and shouldn't have to conform to convention. Let's be honest though. Not conforming to convention, not having a basic set of "visible" descriptors like hands, face, etc. is creating an unfair advantage.
FWIW - I don't like having to describe ears. None the less, my character has ears so I gave them an ear description. It's not eight sentences about the sweeping curve of their cartilage and the perfect shape of their unpierced lobe, but it's enough to be a potential data point to identify them by.
I think we can all agree to adopt some basic nakeds OOCly, or we can start getting ridiculous ICly.
"Oh my God! That mona has no hands. Mona, where are your hands?!?!"
"Joe Baka has no Feet! No Feet! How does he even walk with No Feet?!?!? We call him Joe No Feet. He just stuffs DuWear boots full of newspaper and pulls them onto his stumps."
Isn't "build" in the short desc (lithe, chunky, gangly, etc)?
Or do you mean something else by build?
For me the description should be things you can reasonably tell in most circumstances. height, build. Maybe complexion. Maybe how they move. I prefer Descriptions to not overshare but a the same time hit all the key points.
The rest I save for nakeds and while I do not feel every naked needs to be filled (just because I don't have a neck naked doesn't mean my head floats above my shoulders) I do think that some key nakeds are important for all characters (PC and NPC).
And while some PCs are offenders, it's really the NPCs that need to get their act together. :P
Giving them those items would go a long way towards removing the obvious tells that they are NPCs.
I agree with @Grey0 that not all nakeds are necessary.
I think that we should all strive to describe any naked that is visible when a disguise is worn, or could be visible if a disguise item slips.
