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- QueenZombean 1m
a Mench 13m Doing a bit of everything.
- zxq 1m
- Napoleon 3h
- Ameliorative 10m
- Bruhlicious 49m Deine Mutter stinkt nach Erbrochenem und Bier.
And 21 more hiding and/or disguised

@disguise-name
am I me, myself, or I?

After using the command myself I realized that I have no idea what the extent of the protection it provides is. It's obviously a step up from just wearing a shroud, but does it make you seem like an entirely different person when paired with @disguise-desc? In my experience even if I'm super-disguised people still look at the weapon my character uses or their build and immediately start looking for things that would clue them in further.

The question here is if putting in the effort to be able to disguise yourself completely is supposed to fool people completely and make them think you could be any of the other 78 mil people they haven't met before, or if it's fine to immediately focus on a character they know of because they seem similar.

Sure it might help fool some people OOC, but if your character is the only amazon with a ceramic composite in Red and they do something supposedly as a different person all eyes are on them anyway. Not sure if it's just a personal issue or a meta issue.

I believe there are IC ways to learn to be a master of disguise, but HELP DISGUISE suggests you should be trying to fool both the player and the character.

As a brief overview, I'm blatantly stealing Supermarket's post for this:

"The former Chief of Disguise for the CIA was interviewed about how you can change your mannerisms and clothing to escape notice. Some people rely on this in-game so I'm linking to the video for them to check out. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JASUsVY5YJ8"

Beyond that, learn ICly. ;)

As far as I'm aware:

It creates a false positive which is another layer of obfuscation. If your real name is Emily and I see a shrouded hulking woman who does something to very strongly suggest that she's Emily (like she's out walking Emily's dog), then maybe if I'm smart and perceptive and not metagaming I can put two and two together for an educated guess.

If your disguise name is Hilda then I am SURE I saw Hilda. You would have to actively work to convince me you were Emily or I would be left wondering why the hell Emily was letting Hilda walk her dog.

I don't think it's possible to fool a player if they don't want to be fooled.

That said, I'll explain exactly what I'm looking for clarification on. Say Bob uses a sledge and you've met him before, right? Bob suits up completely in a poncho and @disguise-names to Pat. Pat proceeds to go on a rampage and kill thirty people, with his @disguise-desc completely off from what Bob would look like. Pat fucks off and becomes Bob again.

Now, aside from both Bob and Pat using a sledgehammer, unless Bob's disguise slipped would it be immediately thought that they could be the same person?

You don't need a @disguise-name for that to be relatively foolproof. There are thousands and thousands of sledges in Withmore. Even a rare gun numbers in the hundreds. If someone is 'recognizing' you because you are a shrouded tall man and use a ceramic katana then definitely xhelp.
If someone's making an assumption based on build or disguise without some seriously compelling extra evidence or context then it's meta.

There might be more to it that you don't know about of course, but I'd just XHELP to make sure. Some people get lax about this stuff when they haven't been yelled at by staff for awhile.

Slither gave me some guidelines back before @disguise names were a thing. Even if you know roughly where someone is and what size they are and what color their hood is, it's still not kosher to make assumptions out on the crowded streets. You want two or three firm points of data before you jump to conclusions like that.

Disguise is easy for people to accidentally meta because we don't always think about the fact that there are hoods and amazonien bietches and AK-47s everywhere.

Players gonna suck.

Perhaps next time @disguise-name Tyrone and bust out that ol’ rickety katana instead of the ceramic.

A petite girl who smells floral (Tyrone) goes west.
Also, Tyrone can slot a platty daddy and pop out of the trash can with a sawed off. You wanna fool these fools you gotta play 4D intergalactic chess when they’re playing checkers.
@Vera I'm crying, laughing.
If Pat was wearing the same clothes as Bob and you saw Pat driving Bob's car (verified via license plate), then 3 minutes later Bob exits the vehicle, Pat was probably Bob.

If you saw Pat kill someone and 3 minutes later you see Bob spattered with blood and throwing the same body into CnC, Pat was probably Bob.

If you saw Pat get hit with a sonic, beaten to a pulp, and dragged towards Fuller Med, then 3 minutes later see Bob in Fuller Med wearing the same clothes and being treated for those same injuries... well...

You ever get that feeling where you can't -prove- something, but your gut says it's true simply due to the surrounding factors?

Now if you see someone disguised well, multiple times, and under a different name each time, BUT following a naming theme...whyyyyyyyy??? don't do this to meeeee...

@ynk.

For that last bit I don't think it matters if they have a different name each time you see them. The city is huge and that could mean two things. The first being that it's a different person that looks similar and the second being that it's the exact same person. However, if Bob were doing multiple 'names' there would be no IC way to tell that it's Bob because he's not wearing a nametag for each name. He'd just become all of those different people at different times.

If you're fully disguising your character with those high-skill functions, including obfuscating distinctive clothing and uniquely identifiable possessions, and avoiding conspicuous circumstances, the protections provided against being ICly identified are substantial. Although players may be able to OOC identify disguised PCs, communicating this to others IC is a meta violation and it's taken pretty seriously.

Thanks to Vera and everyone else that clarified things for me. And again I'm gonna say, just so nobody takes this the wrong way, this is not me accusing anyone of anything. I was just confused and wondering if I were doing something wrong.
I've got it wrong and been yellowtexted about this a few times and I've been metagamed to death others. It's a sticky subject!
players gonna be players

shrouded? too bad there's you're the only tall PC in the game who uses a katana

people just subconsciously assume you whenever a tall shroud with a katana is out

As a side note, the next time someone runs up to you claiming they saw X person doing Y thing, it can help to consider that the player telling you a story might be jumping to conclusions they shouldn't be. Don't be afraid to ask followup questions and nudge people away from bad behavior IC.
That's what I feel happens most of the time, someone gets excited and doesn't realize that maybe they shouldn't be saying that particular thing at that time because they don't really have enough to assume such. After which the person they've told spreads it like wildfire and now there's nothing that can be done. It's not like they intended to screw around, mistakes happen.

Now, somewhat unrelated but something that gets to me as well.That one ninja amazon with a sledgehammer just did something so one of their enemies picks up on it and, without being sure who did it, decides to 'frame' their one enemy for whatever that was. It just always ends up seeming like this is secondhand meta to me because they're leading a char that had some mean shit done to them to believe this person wronged them and very few PCs are going to contest a chance at revenge.

Not going to go into detail on any specifics, but I get your first point and I know that I may not always realize what's up.

As for the second paragraph. I think the issue there is that as soon as that one enemy is brought up everyone just roll with it and nobody ever questions that it could be someone else. And if that's the case then should the possibility not even brought up at all unless someone is certain? It's not really an investigation if everyone is already screaming and pointing fingers then the people looking on buy it.

If it's the same guy every single week doing the same thing then logically your character would know to suspect them but it's a situation where you kind of have to play a little bit stupider than you would in real life. Even if you strongly suspect someone of something because they're a habitual enemy you should try to get concrete evidence before making a fuss about it.
honestly people take it too far

I was in a situation where someone sniped someone my character ICly disliked, so that someone instantly assumed -- without even SEEING anything -- that it was my character that sniped them, spreading it, ENTIRELY convinced it had to be me

so yes, the 'frame' shtick is something that happens very often and I honestly think it's smallworlding in a sense where you think out of the millions in that sector there is only one person that'd shoot at you

without any kind of evidence too

Well, let's say you have an enemy that uses swords.

Someone with a sword attacks you. Completely disguised. You get vatted and wake up to hear that you died because of a sword.

Out of everyone that uses swords in the Mix.. gangers, solos, whatever. Is it not smallworlding to assume it HAD to be your enemy that also coincidentally uses swords?

Maybe you pissed off a ganger who cut you up with a machete. Maybe you were in a solo's way and got sliced.

Sure, maybe you can eventually reach the conclusion that it was your enemy through RP and IC investigation. Go talk to Snakes, talk to witnesses, try to figure out what happened.

But INSTANTLY going 'oh no it had to be Joe, because he hates me and uses swords!' I think is not beneficial to RP at all, but is also smallworlding.

The problem with that Eph is that player knowledge vs character knowledge works such that if you guess it's your enemy because he uses a sword then you're going to be correct a lot more often than you really have any right to be. You have to play kind of stupid because realistically there's a very large and very dangerous ambient population that we don't really interact with in the game.
What Vera said.

When people do that, even if you actually get a clean job done and get away, it doesn't matter at the end because your enemy instantly assumes it had to be you, thus ruining the entire point of you trying to be discreet.

Another thing to consider is that IRL if you guess incorrectly on who an assailant is it could really come back to bite you in the ass. What if you say that it's Bob and it turns out that Pat is actually actually person and ends up being spotted the same time as Bob? Well, in that case you'd be screwed.

In SD that's not possible because on a player level you know that Pat is most likely Bob anyway. If you think about it as long as you and a person already hate eachother you can perpetually 'frame' them as much as you like because there's no actual third party that might be a psychopath and go, "Hey, that was ME. Stop giving away credit for what I did."

In general it's like Vera and waddlerafter said. Disguises and ambpop MEAN something and players need to respect it even if it means that their characters have to hit a dead end. Get over it. Sometimes the other guy gets away with it and there is nothing you can do. Please top being meta and small worlding.

At the same time, Ranger and Grizzly are right. people ARE going to do this. It's not even that they mean to be malicious. Sometimes they don't realize what they are doing. Sometimes it's in the heat of the moment and they are typing faster than they are thinking. So take extra measures. Make sure you put in the extra touches that will make IDing you even harder.

Lastly, please do not take 'gut feeling' and 'my character is just that reckless and impulsive' too far. The fact is that if you applied these things in a real city of 70 million people you will be wrong far more often than you can be in Sindome given player density. And the impact on you for being wrong will be far less. Though we can start doing something about the latter. Maybe start killing informants that give you wrong or weak paydata. Go for it!

If you want to use 'but my character is impulsive and assumes things' as an excuse to ID people when that ID makes no sense, then I want to actually see you get it wrong too. Even id you the Player has to make it happen. If all I see is a string of meta guesses that were right and the constant excuse that 'my character is impulsive and assumes things,' I'm sorry I'm calling that meta.

In general I urge you all to ask two things. Seriously slow down and ask these questions. Think about them. Imagine a GM like myself asking you these questions and picking at your answers.

Do I have solid reasons to believe X?

Are there reasons why X might NOT be true?

You need a Yes/No result here before you should be acting like you know. The fact of the matter is that many people feel that their reasons are far more solid than they really are and that most do not even ask themselves that second question. That second question will often demonstrate that what you felt was 'solid reason' was actually a boat full of so many holes it's sitting on the bottom of the ocean and you're drowning. :-P

That Yes/No thing seems familiar...
I will also point out there is code that spawns NPCs with the same disguise you have A LOT. So there are literally other shrouded short dudes walking around when you are.
This post is miscategorized and should have gone in game problems and complaints.

In the future miscategorized posts will be deleted.