Short descs for PC's

(Edited by Heeru at 6:22 pm on Sep. 17, 2002)

Whether or not it will ever come into use I do not know.

Or did I miss that.

oi.. that was rambly and not very contributing.  

and 2) people can see you looking when you look at them??? really? *blinks*  i did not know this� like typing �look bob� bob gets a message saying that i looked him over? -why- did i not know this?

As for the knowing NPC thing. I can honestly say that when I was actively playing… I RPed my into meeting all the gangers and most of the NPC shopkeepers. It took hella work, and for what? To know some names. However, it was some of the most interesting and challenging RP I had. Try it sometime. ; )

And yes Dom, you ramble.

What would you all think if we actually implemented it? It'd call for some semi-major to major changes throughout the game. But it is Kev's, and my, personal belief that this could do wonders for the game.

I want your opinions on this. Kev and I think it can be done, and done well. The question remains, do you want it?

--Wren

Before I go into some of the outward changes... note that when I said major changes, I meant mostly things you wouldn't see. And since you wouldn't see them, I am not going to bring them into light.

Each player could very well see every other player in a different manner... as a result of this, emote would be removed or altered to work like pose. When you pose with a name/alias of someone you know, each person in that room would see the person you are refering to as THEY know them. As of right now, whatever you enter for your emote... is displayed to everyone else.

So... Tylissa emotes : Tylissa sneers at Kevlar, "Bastard."

Now, in that same room is Johnny, who knows Kevlar as Jake. Kevlar lied to Johnny about his name. Suddenly, Johnny OOC's : Who the hell is Kevlar?

Busted.

One of the greatest advantages to this new system is the possibility of disguising yourself (Perhaps use the actual skill...? I don't know yet.). Emote works AGAINST that by displaying whatever you type.

Otherwise, the bulk of the changes would simply be in how you see things.

Instead of: Tylissa and Johnny are standing here. You'd see, A tall blond woman and a short fat man are standing here. (Assuming you do not know them...)

Now... as of now, the way you'd remember someone MAY look like this...

Johnny tells Tylissa that his name is Fred, Tylissa would then type

@remeber short fat man as Fred

From then on, whenever she saw Fred, she'd remember him as Fred. Or whatever she wanted to put in... like...

@remember short fat man as Asshole

Yea... anyways...

These are simply ways that it COULD come about. We may take a completely different route with this, or go exactly on that route... I lay this out to you so that you know at least a little of what it may result in if we do eventually impliment the system.

I hope that helps a bit...

So it really would be helpful in preventing that and doing away with some of those messy ooc/ic situations that can occur.

Now, I'll admit there are some situations where emote is much easier to use, like if you're typing a really long post with lots of actions… that doesn't involve someone else in a crowd.  But there's always the ! feature for that.  That's a good one that a lot of people don't make good use of.  Will the ! thing be taken away as well, as this could have the same problem as emote, or would that one stay in the game?  Because I find that one rather essential for starting out sentences with something other than my character's name, or largely descriptive posts.  I can't really think of any other reason why we would absolutely NEED to keep the ability to emote, but some people may not want to do away with it.

With the new system, when you looked at someone would your memory of them appear in their desc?  

i.e.: You see a tall man dressed all in black.... etc, etc, etc...  It's the asshole who robbed you!

But, i prefer emotes and ! when i don't need someone specific out of a crowd to see it say "you." It's just a lot easier, you know?  What would you do about this problem?

–-----------------------------------------------------------
Players in the room you have remembered.
Johnny : A wiry american guy with thick glasses.
Chaim : A rather large mexican man.
Heeru : A tall japanese man with shadowy eyes.
--------------------------------------------------------------

etc etc etc, anyone involved in my examples, please understand they are simply thus, hypotethical examples.

Why have a coded @introduce?

What's to be gained here? Why can't someone just tell you their name is Maximillian, and you can just @remember male as maximillian

I mean the most obvious example in my mind is that of Gunnar. Thoes who knew Gunnar well knew and called him by his real name. But for a lot of people, he was Jet.

That's because he introduced himself to them as Jet.

So I ask again: Why have a coded @introduce?

-Kevlar

Lets go back to example land.

Lets say a Withmore Globe reporter has paid me to get info on the ganger wars, so I hide assuming my skill at hiding is better than their perception, where they tend to meet up, I think listen in on their conversations, and as gangers do, they will call each other by their ganger names, when they greet each other, there is no reasonable reason, why I can't @remember that name right then and there, but with an @introduce system I would be screwed out of a logical remember situation.

Now lets say a street judge comes into the scene, and pumps your buddy in the room for information, rather rudely, and you say to your buddy, who the hell is that?
He then tells you he is Judge John Madden™ j/k. You have everyIC right to remember him as such, and @introduce would once again block that situation.

1. Clothing that changes yoru short desc, judge armor, security outfits? so you at least see A tall amazonian -JUDGE-

2. SIC scanners would reveal the person's true nature. Judges would be able to find it out. And COULD tell others but wouldn't have too…

3. I really like it. Always have.

might havea few ideas later...

-BA

(Edited by BattleAngel at 1:24 pm on Sep. 21, 2002)

The @remember feature is used to store the name, and any thing you want to remember about that person.  In order to recall the notes you've jotted down there, you type "remember Tylissa" instead of it being part of what you see when you look at her.

You can still use the look command to see people with their full normal description.  What's the point of having a short desc? When would it be used?

In all my meditations I came across another slight problem with this system.  Let's say someone went to that ganger meeting and learned all their names, and typed them into their @remember.  Then Chaim notices and … pulls out his nifty paincauser and kills them!  They wake up in the vats and can't remember what happened.  You'd have to ensure that like @stats, the @remember command would delete anything you had learned since your last update, which would probably make it a little more complex.  If you don't do that, they'll forget that they died later on and "remember Chaim" and they'll still know his name even though ICly they wouldn't have, and that's just as much a problem as what we have now.

And another thing... if you don't want someone to see "Tylissa walks in from the north." until they know Tylissa's name, then what would they see?
"An attractive auburn haired young woman walks in from the north."  ?  That's all well and good, but... then you get things like this:
"The attractive auburn haired young woman turns to you and says, -hey what's up?-"
"The attractive auburn haired young woman sits quietly and thinks to herself..."

etc, etc, etc. It seems that if you want a short desc to be seen instead of the person's name, it would be a huge pain cause you'd end up with the same desc over and over again, instead of a short and simple name.  Then, if you want to have me see the actions as "Tylissa sits quietly" after I have learned her name... then you can't use @remember to store other info as well.  The only thing you would be able to store in it is the name, and that's not such a huge improvement. What would be good is if you could put things like "that's the asshole who mugged me!" and then recall those statements with "remember"

Ok, this post has been somewhat choppy but I hope it got across what I am trying to say.

As for the cloning part, yes. That will be taken into account. As will the corpse idea. If its not too decayed, and someone tells you who it is, you can remember that.

As for the part Tylissa mentioned... yes, the short desc will be used. But your desc wasn't short. Two words, maybe three.

A short blond man.
A fat funny looking woman.

Etc.

We'll probably restrict it by characters and not names.

What else what else....

Thats all I can remember about the posts...

If I'm sitting in say the Drome with Jackson and Tylissa and Bobthen00b and the following ensues:

.nod to Jackson and .ask, "Hey, how's it going?"

And Tylissa and old Bob see:

Tash nods to Jackson and asks, "Hey, how's it going?"

Are they not supposed to react like this:

Tylissa, who knows Jackson, recognises that Tash is nodding to him and thinks nothing of it.

Bob, who doesn't know either Jackson ro Tash sees it more like some woman nodding to some bloke and asking him a question.

When did it become that a person's name used in an emote or pose, apart for in direct quotes identified them?

I have always seen the use of names as a way to make it clear to others in the room who it is that is being addressed, looked at, followed, laughed at - whatever. Not as a way to identify them.

But if it was like this:

.nod to Jackson and .ask, "Hey, Jackson, how's it going?"

Then Bob would be perfectly astute in thinking that this guy this chick is talking to is probably named Jackson.

I have always thought that anyone who saw scenario A and suddenly _knew_ who Jackson was was being twinkish, but maybe I've been doing it wrong all along.

First and foremost, trying to tick off a list of who you know, is not ooc, its all ic info, thats how it got on your remember list in the first place.

Secondly lets say a Judge asked me for a description of Johnny, but lets also say I have known, and have rped with Johnny for a bout 5 months now, theres a very slim chance I am going to remember his short desc myself, but technicaly my character sees him as that short desc all the time, not the name tagged on. Lets also say Johnny has been in hiding, so obviously hes not in the room, there logicaly would be a means of "recalling" the short desc, so that I can at least give a rough outline to the Judge that he would be able to recognise, eg: Johnnys short desc is this, A tall American male. I could see that and the say, well he is tall, I think he is American, "then state other things I remember Johhny."

Lots of them. Like, what if my character changes appearance over time? What if he stinks? Or is ugly? Or has been in the sewers and STINKS.

Would all that be in these small descs? And if so, these small descs are gonna get awfully large. But on the other hand, I love the idea that people will have to -ASK- eachother and do -INTRODUCTIONS- and all that jazz.

Amnesty would be a must.

I dunno.

Blah.

If there was amnesty
And
If there was a way to make sure that poses and emotes did not reveal an IC unknown name
And
If it affected NPCs as well
And
You could change who/how you remembered someone (maybe you caught the short fan man you remembered as Fred in a lie about who he is and now want to remember his true name, Myron)
And
Corpses/clones and all that were properly set up
And
Introductions were done as RP and not with @introduce

then I'm all for it.

Tash, to you it would look like:
You [to Bias] Did you see those purple goat ninjas outside?

But to the guy who just walked in and didn't know Bias or Tash, it would say:

Pretty Asian female [to nervous young female] Did you see those purple goat ninjas outside.

I think this coding would be to change the whole way  you see a person's name… you wouldn't see their name properly until you had learned it ICly.

Also, as far as people looking alike, I'd say that's the beauty of it. You'll still be able to read their full description and begin to recognize them... but think about it. If you walk down the street, you'll see lots of faces that look alike until  you get to know them. I love the idea of seeing Tash or Alia and both are "pretty Asian female."  Sure, well I'm sure there are thousands of pretty Asian females in Withmore, but until you know Tash or Alia, you wouldn't really make a distinction between them. They're just faces in a crowd.  I like that about it.

A good point was made awhile ago that I agree with...I think this would have to apply to NPC's as well, especially since learning their names OOC and using them IC is even more likely to happen with them.

I'm thinking this could be a bit of an adjustment, and a bit of a pain for awhile.  But just like the new speech system, I think I would get used to it and then realize, looking back, that the new way is really better.  This would add a layer of realism to the game that is lost the more OOC chatter and interaction we have.  This would mean that newbies who wander in would actually be unsure of the players' names, so they can't ruin RP by saying the names anymore.  There may be a few disadvantages, but that's why this post is here: to hammer out those flaws and deal with them...

Amnesty is a must.  It would be ridiulous for us oldbies to have to go around looking at everyone just to learn our friends' names again.

Ok, that was enough of a post! I'll stop now...

Tash to [Mary]: Did you see those purple goat ninjas outside?

Or would he still see it as
Tash to [A pretty wench in a smelly jumpsuit]: Did you see those purple goat ninjas outside?

And if so from that wouldn't the player - and that's what this is really about, OOC knowledge being assumed as IC knowledge - realise that Mary isn't really named Mary, but something else?

But how lazy have we gotton.  Couldn't we get rid of pose(or emote whichever doesn't use aliases) and to?  This would take care of that whole To bias problem.  you could :smile at bias.  and see Dom smiles at short girl.