Disguise

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krelji
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Re: Disguise

#21 Post by krelji » Tue Apr 13, 2010 5:38 pm

My suggestion would be custom thief equipment. I don't think it's a big issue to
provide thieves with a limited custom equipment shop. This shop would only
provide those items generally available to thieves, but would allow them to be
customized. Naturally if they'd want anything not available there, they'd still have
to visit the regular custom item shop.
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Re: Disguise

#22 Post by Olrane » Tue Apr 13, 2010 5:59 pm

krelji wrote:My suggestion would be custom thief equipment. I don't think it's a big issue to
provide thieves with a limited custom equipment shop. This shop would only
provide those items generally available to thieves, but would allow them to be
customized. Naturally if they'd want anything not available there, they'd still have
to visit the regular custom item shop.
While this would be fun (having custom versions of guild armours for variety and roleplay reasons), I don't like the idea of having it be exclusive to one guild. I also don't think that it should be necessary as a measure to reduce OOC/IC abuse.

Customized guild armours seems like an interesting feature for the whole MUD, if it could be added eventually.

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Re: Disguise

#23 Post by lanyara » Tue Apr 13, 2010 7:59 pm

I just want to clarify on one thing briefly, the "paranoia" aspect.
Im not saying you can't roleplay being paranoid, but I don't agree
with your statement that paranoia is code supported.
I meant this game feature wise, not with Lanyara (as character).

The code offers a lot of tools, some generally available, some only available to guilds:

NPCs accurately reporting when and who attacked whom, NPCs chatting about those with a bad reputation, watchtowers reporting on playercharacters, tracks revealing playercharacters, court systems disliking disguises and so on. Then there is the whole karma system revealing who is evil and who isn't and players of course don't want their karma ruined when teaming.

@Adanath gives another good example
because they continually had horrible reputation everywhere
they had bad karma
they snuck around all the time in conjunction with those two things
they were seen selling things at thief shops
they had armours befitting a thief
they had been seen using the same daggers (many times)
That's what I meant with "paranoia". There are tools given to players to use them. As for a specific incident, well - whenever Chani is active I suppose ... will be interesting to see how it's revealed and distinguished between playercharacters, or NPCs who could fit the description ... ;-)
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Re: Disguise

#24 Post by lanyara » Tue Apr 13, 2010 8:10 pm

An evil character can easily follow Lilith, and still manipulate enough to keep his karma decent in public.
I doubt this!

I could say why I think so, but this might discourage others, so - play a Lilith worshipper actively, and try to not be revealed for a long time. )But don't avoid the good areas as that would be too easy ... )

Just saying.

I am curious if anyone wants to try that. :)
(Ah and remember to note down the problems experienced. Sure, may all take a long time but hey... let's see in one year!)
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Re: Disguise

#25 Post by ganandorf » Tue Apr 13, 2010 11:25 pm

There's been a decrease in clerics going around and performing random favour checks. I think now as long as karma/reputation are kept high enough, its possible and much easier than in the past.
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Re: Disguise

#26 Post by luminier » Wed Apr 14, 2010 12:25 am

What you really mean is, there is less Tehanu going around doing random favour checks.
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Re: Disguise

#27 Post by adanath » Wed Apr 14, 2010 8:57 am

I get the point but I disagree Olrane. If you have a Crusader who knows exactly all the secrets about thief armour having thoroughly examined them and been shown things about them from other thieves, then it is quite a quick cursory investigation to find out if those "regular" leathers are thief leathers or not (have the hidden aspects in common with all other thieves or not). I see absolutely 0 OOC being used there at all. Now if you have a character that is not familiar already with the secrets then of course they should just discount them as regular leathers, and if they don't well that is bad oocly.

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Re: Disguise

#28 Post by luminier » Wed Apr 14, 2010 11:46 am

I agree with you there Adanath, what I don't agree with is a shakedown of every character who wears leathers just because they might be a thief.
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Re: Disguise

#29 Post by Olrane » Wed Apr 14, 2010 12:36 pm

Anything short of actually having the armours in your hands is completely unacceptable for determination of their special quality.

This is not just an issue of roleplay. This is an issue of playability. If you don't think it's important for rogue players to have fun, then you can hold that same opinion. I just think it's very unfair. The guild was destroyed and its players chased away. Not saying that they didn't make mistakes, but you won't see the guild come back into being played if they have such a hurdle.

There will eventually be more active players in that currently dead guild. They will want to wear their guild armours - and, I'd say, they have a right to do so. I'm imploring you to ignore what you may know and always be confused by what look like plainclothes at a glance. It will be hard enough for the players to roleplay their characters well, without the fear that simply wearing their guild armours, specifically tailored to look normal, will confirm them as evil.

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Re: Disguise

#30 Post by Zehren » Wed Apr 14, 2010 12:47 pm

adanath wrote:No, manipulating karma and deceiving the Gods is devious and evil. Stealing then doing some things to make up for it could be considered balance or manipulating.

An evil character can easily follow Lilith, and still manipulate enough to keep his karma decent in public. Chaos..what better chaos than to be the continual proverbial wolf in sheeps clothes. Much of it fits just fine. It would be nice if the karma system was a massive AI that could oversee and give you a more public and private karma as you become a manipulator for your god, but bad roleplay for any aligned character..I don't see it.
Deceiving the Gods.
The gods who, if you read through the forums, albeit it is not canon, 'know all' and 'see all'.
One thing is striving to be as close to what your deity wishes; another thing is to use the system in a way as to hide yourself. Especially given your karma is a reflection of what you do, and attempting to deceive and manipulate is hardly a good thing this should perhaps lead to worse karma, not successful deceiving of the gods. Picture ants attempting to deceive wood-elves.

I cannot understand the 'karma in public'. Karma is the result of your actions, and is controlled by the gods. You have 'a karma' not several.

I think similarly about 'following one god' and 'hiding behind another'. Deceiving the gods should really not be possible. Not in a world where all the gods without doubt exist, and they apparently take time to make small actions such as stealing a loaf of bread affect karma.

Favour checks make this 'seem neccessary', I imagine. Given the gods... Meddling? amongst themselves in the game of gods (I think that was what I read somewhere) it might be hard for one deity to discern much of another, though. (Now we're talking deity vs. deity. Peers, instead of deity vs. weak mortal.) This could be reflected by having favour checks only work on people who worship the same deity (Tanielites checking Tanielites only, et cetera,) or perhaps simply having a high chance of failure when checking others. Perhaps a critical failure where your deity cannot discern much. (Other deity hiding things from the deity of the checker.) And perhaps common failures with wrong information. And a chance of success too. This'd be rather interesting. :)

Edit: Oh, and I completely agree with Olrane about the thieves' leather armour. If it is intended to look like common clothes, 'cept on careful examination, they should look like common clothes, 'cept on careful examination. Of course, feel free to be suspicious towards anyone wearing clothes at all. :mrgreen:
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Re: Disguise

#31 Post by ganandorf » Wed Apr 14, 2010 2:37 pm

I agree with olrane, anything else is just unfair/stupid.
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Re: Disguise

#32 Post by adanath » Wed Apr 14, 2010 3:12 pm

Look, I am not downing the rogues, and I wish there were more active ones. There were many mistakes before it wasn't just some players being unfair, and it was brought up multiple times that there was all this ooc cheating and there wasn't.

They should be able to wear their guild armours, but if they are going to have bad karma (which isn't as much of a problem anymore because it just simply isn't checked for on a whim, and keep in mind the Crusaders used to have an ability that showed red flames if a person was evil, and they used it to that end, but no longer have it). Then I don't know what to tell you, roleplay wise it cannot be ignored, and like I said if someone who has terrible karma and reputation is caught and they are wearing leathers, and the person who catches them has intimate knowledge of thief leathers it would be nothing more than a simple logical completely understandable search to find out if they are thief armours. If the person acts suspiciously or has bad karma/reputation yet gives no explanation for it at all especially I will do this every time as a Crusader. It just makes sense, not to is to roleplay very poorly.

Do I inspect everyone's leathers? Absolutely not. Am I going to inspect someone's leathers who was backstabbing me and seen in Narveed etc..absolutely.

As far as disguises go, it is what it is. There are complaints like this about every guild the shaos aren't powerful enough, the thieves are too visible etc..etc. There are ways around it IC. There are ways to be disguised and not arouse tons of suspicion. I think perhaps if anything maybe the disguises should be made more effective. Like a rogue should be able to disguise as a feeble old man and to others it would appear he has no strength, little agility etc, or much older, or heavier or lighter or what have you.

As far as the Gods, I don't know that any of them have absolute omniscience, surely they can oversee things, but complete omniscience, and omni-presence, I don't know how that has ever been shown in the game and is anything other than opinion. I am sure some Gods (Lilith especially), would be delighted if one of their slaves could somehow fool another God into thinking they are better than they are, and help to cause further chaos. There are at least tangents to roleplay against there.

I just have a hard time believing it is that absolutely impossible when I was around when the thieves were destroyed and largely it was because of characters who were very careless, not to mention a lot of characters who ratted out others once they were found out through their carelessness. Of course at the time there were many many accusations against many in the Crusade especially of abusing ooc knowledge, ALL of which were found to be unfounded.

All this to say, I am sorry it is so hard, and the guild got destroyed, but it is still there, and someone who is inventive enough and clever enough I am sure can find ic ways to be able to make it work within today's environment. If you disguise yourself and my character doesn't find out your karma or rep, while seeing you or (towers) seeing your disguised character running in and out of seedy suspicious places all the time, or someone else sees you backstab and rats you out without you ever knowing, then of course my character wouldn't check. If all that stuff does happen though or even a lot of it and there is an altercation, you can be sure there armours will be checked, and checked for ic reasons, with ic logic and very reasonably.

The gods, maybe it is roleplayable that Lilith can help you in deceit or help adjust your karma or roleplay that she thrives with your deception, I don't know. Have fun, don't get caught.

Obviously the armours would need to be in your hands to insepect. By quick cursory examination I mean quick and cursory while the armours were in hand. Not on the exterior, but armours that look alike along with a host of other suspicious reasons merit quite a lot in itself. The other suspicious reasons just have to be avoided being found out.

Not to mention it was a different time when all of this happened. It was a witch hunt. The thieves Guild was under Elvandar for crying out loud. Thieves were everywhere, many were caught, many many ratted, and alignment was very easy to check.

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Re: Disguise

#33 Post by lanyara » Thu Apr 15, 2010 12:41 am

As far as the Gods, I don't know that any of them have absolute omniscience, surely they can oversee things, but complete omniscience, and omni-presence, I don't know how that has ever been shown in the game and is anything other than opinion.
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=532&p=4917#p4917

Gods are all knowing right now by definition and assumption by the code at least in regards to the actions which cause karma changes (positive or negative in regards to different deities).

Crusaders may not have the ability to directly reveal the karma anymore but at least clerics can, and crusaders will definitely encounter situations where they want to request the clerics to help them with aura checking, since when you can actually reveal someone who is evil, it for sure makes sense to do so for the crusaders, since one big goal is to combat the truly evil. It would be kind of weird to not try and reveal who is evil for a crusader ... imagine a lazy drunk crusader flirting with women (or men) hugging and snuggling people sitting in pubs.

About the favour check miracle, I do think that it is probably not 100% accurate since it seemed to give slightly different results, but if a Taniel cleric sees a pitch black aura then he could assume that the target is very ... different from folks with a better aura. It's really trivial to find out that way - takes a few seconds for the miracle, and that's it. And if folks run away, well ... who has a reason to run away from it in the first place? Only suspected evil folks! Zhakrinites may dislike it and others as well but the only ones who really fear it are those who stand to lose a lot. Which are the opposing deities. ;)

Reputation helps a bit in that those with negative reputation are more easily revealed:

ask npc foo

"That scum! We hate him! Please murder that bastard will you!!!"

Well, the last part is exaggerated, but I think you get what I mean :D
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Re: Disguise

#34 Post by adanath » Thu Apr 15, 2010 8:41 am

Yes but it becomes an even more difficult question in terms of roleplay. Do the gods for instance know all the thoughts of the other Gods? If so then are they just apathetic when another God is planning something, are they pro-active? Can the gods hide anything from each other. If so then they aren't all powerful obviously or absolutely omniscient in the strictest sense. Also if they can, then a God could roleplay-wise conceal things for a follower or allow a follower to maintain good karma even while being evil inside by working deception.

There are plenty of ways to look at things, and plenty of ways to get around things, there always are, without cheating, without OOC crap.

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Re: Disguise

#35 Post by Zehren » Thu Apr 15, 2010 9:53 am

adanath wrote:Yes but it becomes an even more difficult question in terms of roleplay. Do the gods for instance know all the thoughts of the other Gods? If so then are they just apathetic when another God is planning something, are they pro-active? Can the gods hide anything from each other. If so then they aren't all powerful obviously or absolutely omniscient in the strictest sense. Also if they can, then a God could roleplay-wise conceal things for a follower or allow a follower to maintain good karma even while being evil inside by working deception.

There are plenty of ways to look at things, and plenty of ways to get around things, there always are, without cheating, without OOC crap.
They're rather omnipotent and omniscient towards mortals, I believe.
The gods are peers to each other, and vary slightly in power, while they're still all deities.
They can hide things from each other, since they have obviously done so in the past. I somehow doubt Evren went up to Sathonys, told him of her plans to make his worshippers and creatures attain free will and leave him, for instance.
I imagine the deities to know everything which happens, while thoughts and such are kept private to the mortal, perhaps unless directed at a deity.
Some game lore also suggests a 'game of the gods', where they... Well, compete against each other, likely for effect upon the world. *shrug unknowingly*
Most of my ideas about polytheistical religion come from reading several books about greek mythology, where the gods were 'allmighty' when compared to mortals, the gods had certain rules amongst themselves, and when the gods did go off against each other, there were always trouble. :mrgreen: *didn't exactly read those books this year, and might misremember small things*

When considering all those things, I deem it bad to hide behind different gods than the one you 'actually worship.' IG lore suggests deities are strengthened by having worshippers, and to hide thusly you have to pay worship to the deity. I cannot imagine sathonys being very happy when people actively strengthen Taniel (or Evren, for a wild example) while 'actually worshipping' Sathonys. The only deity I see who might like this is, of course, Lilith. Chaos, confusion, et cetera.

As for manipulating karma. (Difference between trying to actively acquire the prefered karma of a worshipped deity and manipulating ones karma so as to 'not be evil.') When you continuously try to improve your karma with many good deeds, keeping it higher than neutral, while you worship an evil deity, and commit plentiful evil deeds: The other gods will notice. :mrgreen:
In my opinion.
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Re: Disguise

#36 Post by adanath » Thu Apr 15, 2010 10:00 am

Yes, however, all I am saying is following Lilith, I believe it could be done, and perhaps even with a lot of prayers to Lilith she would bless it and (roleplay-wise), help conceal the ruse if you will..I don't know I am just trying to throw options out there on how to blend in, and there are more, just takes someone inventive enough to play a character to find the doors neccessary to open.

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Re: Disguise

#37 Post by ganandorf » Thu Apr 15, 2010 12:02 pm

One thing i would also like to see is that if someone who follows lillith fights and kills creatures of lillith no favour/karma loss is suffered. Lillithians are the main combat training component in this game, theres no training as good as them. And roleplay wise, lillith likes chaos, lillithians killing lillithians? Anything more chaotic than that?
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Re: Disguise

#38 Post by lanyara » Thu Apr 15, 2010 3:12 pm

I have heard this before :)

To be honest it sounds a little bit too extreme. Imagine an army of Lilith creatures marching forward and suddenly they start bickering, and then they start hitting on each other ... first the goblins make fun of the orcs, then the orcs start hitting the goblins, the goblins fight back, the ogres try to separate and get sucked up in more fights until the giants try to separate ogres and orcs and all hell breaks loose.

Perhaps Lilith would be amused, but I would have the slight impression that she'd be more amused when this bickering happens after having engaged humans and other non-worshippers. Also, changing deities is virtually effortless ... you just listen to a few sermons and et voila - new deity for your char?

Imagine you'd be a Lilith worshipper who kills Lilithian creatures again and again - and then has the faith changed to another deity. What benefit would Lilith have here? Would be a twofold loss... having lost creatures, and having lost a worshipper who probably got stronger by killing her creatures. If I'd be Lilith, I'd get really mad (but then again, all gods seem to get too mad too easily)

In my opinion having Lilithans slaughter other Lilithan followers just to train up is too extreme. If there is a lack of training areas, then I think more training zones should be added, or existing ones extended. Be this with new continents ... or new villages (didn't @Isengorn suggest a new village, let's adapt it and move it to Giat !) or some other ideas! How about a medium sized castle with somewhat strong human NPCs warriors ... or how about the tshahark castle, that would probably one of the coolest castle in game ... or how about.... :D
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Re: Disguise

#39 Post by ganandorf » Thu Apr 15, 2010 4:28 pm

My opinion is that this is a game, it's not perfect. Sometimes you should have to sacrifice the 'ideal' roleplay to make things work.
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Re: Disguise

#40 Post by adanath » Thu Apr 15, 2010 4:51 pm

I agree, in general as an evil character I would think following Lilith would make it very hard to train because it SEVERELY limits what you can train on. Then you are stuck what? Going all the places the Crusaders check on, well you'll get found out there. It would be nice if there were more.."neutral" creatures..like golems or the such.

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