Ambient Population and NPC Interactions
Who sees who and when?

Given that every block in Red seems to be claimed by a gang, that would imply that ANYTIME you want to tag, you need to xhelp. Is that true?

If not, that leads me into the point of this post.

I will use gangers as an example because they are what comes up most frequently. There are millions of people in Red. When players complain about it not being IC for gangers to toll "everyone", the point is made that the streets are teeming with people. While a single PC ganger cannot toll everyone, there are hundreds or thousands of other gangers out there tolling NPCs day in and day out. We kind of hand wave it as PC Ganger A notices PC Non-Ganger B and A then tolls B.

My take away from that is although there might dozens or more gangers on any given "block" (MOO room), unless there is a ganger character object there, the gangers are too busy dealing with other NPCs to notice / interact with my character. Is that a correct interpretation of the way things are supposed to be?

Does the opposite hold true? If there are not any ganger character objects there, does that mean all of the ambient gangers are too busy doing other things? It's not that they aren't there. They just aren't aware of / don't want to be aware of my character at that point in time.

What I wrote above makes sense to me in the context of characters not wanting to attract attention to themselves. "Nobody" is going to jump up and down to attract the attention of the gangers in hopes of getting tolled and beat up. Therefore on blocks without ganger objects, those characters are successful. They manage to make it another block without being hassled and effectively "blend in" with the ambient population. The gangers are still there, they just aren't going to interact with the character. On the other hand, on the blocks with ganger objects, although characters might want to remain low key and out of the way, unless they intentionally "sneak" or "hide", the gangers are aware of / perceive them.

Which brings me back to the original question. At what point when tagging / doing things that gangers oppose, are the gangers actually "aware of" a character to the point than an xhelp is required?

Unless it's vehicle theft? Then the ambient gangers will jump in?

Staff will instruct you on how to go about things if you get into RP related to this, and these guidelines change over time and sometimes from gm to gm. If you are planning to do something you're unsure about you can just ask.

Making the GMs aware makes the situation as complex as it should be and you still very well have a chance to get away with it. Thus the 'one-off plot' comment by Vera.

Also, not everyone has access to private garages.

GMs do get alerts about a player attempting to break into a car or hotwire it, but if the GMs are not around or are busy, they can't respond. Since players can't know what they don't know (someone paid the gangers in the area to watch the car while they handled some biz for example), we do request folks xhelp. Xhelping to make sure GMs are around to respond and getting the okay DOES NOT MEAN THEY WILL RESPOND. It means they are there and have the opportunity to if need be.

That might just mean they leave a note with your description or shrouded disguise in case the owner comes around looking for their car and dropping chy to figure out who stole it. We don't want to hand wave or have to xhelp after the fact to figure out if you were disguised while it happened. It's just a lot easier when we are aware of stuff like this because more often than not NPCs are engaged by the vehicle owner at one point or another before, during, or after a car theft.

It's not ideal, and I'm open to suggestions on how we could improve the system so it's able to be more self service as it were.

I just used vehicle theft as an example of something that players should xhelp before attempting.

What I am looking for is a list of things that players should "know" they need to xhelp for.

1. vehicle theft

2. any topside crime

3. tagging in front of ganger character objects

4. ??

5. ??

For the purposes of educating players, I think the simplest solution is to modify the 'hotwire' command to throw an OOC message similar to installing security devices. Mention that the player should xhelp and then give them a Yes / No prompt to 'certify' that they have.

@Hek: I agree that having this list would be great. I will ping the GMs to ask them to weigh in on this thread.

I get where you are coming from and understand that what I'm proposing is not a perfect system, but we can either have a system that allows NPCs to respond to automatically to vehicles being stolen when no GMs are available, so that people don't need to xhelp before they make the attempt, or we can continue to require that players xhelp before they take this kind of action. Given the feedback I've heard from the players and from the GMs, a bit of 'the npcs just know' may be called for.