Use of disguises/hidden names

[Skibbles]

Interesting. I didn't even know it was against the rules to roll up a character and immediately discard their real name in favor of a moniker or pseudonym. I've seen this a lot, thought it was a weird meta-power-thing, but never really gave it much thought afterward.

If that's the case this appears as a pretty rampant issue. (Though I've also seen characters use a disguise so long they eventually had their name changed to it).

Then again it's also entirely possible that my characters just weren't around, or with the right crowd, to perhaps learn the character's real name.

That would make it really hard to report. What if that character really does share their name fairly often, just not with you or your own network? Could you be accidentally reporting someone who is playing well within the rules? I'd hate to do that.

[Ninjimmy]

I mean... I do this on a character where the name over his head isn't his "real name", but it's because his "real name" is awkwardly long and IC difficult to pronounce so he uses a pseudonym but that's so ubiquitous that everyone just calls him it.

It still has narrative potential for "real name" malarky, but largely in the form of "Oh this person we both know has an actual name too" or "I'm looking for Buster McLongname" "Who?" "Oh they mean Bust", rather than "Nyaha, now I can't be exiled or scryed and I can force people to keep notes on my character"

If you're creating alter-egos, you gotta have the real name out there too so it's at least discoverable, otherwise it's just exploiting a system. In my opinion.

[Watchful Glare]

I imagine you could as soon as you create a character, disguise him as "Shadowy person" and introduce him as Ivan von Incognito.

Then you change his disguise to "Radiant priest" and he calls himself Jake, and another disguise as "The janitor" who calls himself Billy Bob and so on, and so on, but he disguises so much and all the time that people call him just Ivan, to the point where saying Ivan immediately has that person recognised no matter the disguise he's wearing that day. "The resin seller" "That's Ivan" "Ahh, Ivan"

Let's remember that Ivan is still, also, a false name. And you never let the true one be known by anyone. Would doing that for the purpose of avoiding assassination/scry/etc be acceptable or bordering on rules breach?

If every time I log in I change my disguise to another, and you need a name (even if it's a disguised name) to scry, and I'm reading into this correctly?

And, trying to put a contract on Ivan would be fruitless because it's neither a mechanical name, nor a 'disguised' one.

[-XXX-]

As far as scrying specifically is concerned:

Technically you can open up the player list, select anyone from it (disguised or not) and send them -scry in a tell
This is what the mechanical side of scrying makes possible - it's not how scrying is supposed to be used however


Here's what the wiki says regarding scrying:

"It is a rule that your character must know the name of the character you are intending to scry. Players may mutually agree to waive it, such as a potential "-scry victim" giving permission to use their hair/blood/so on to -scry them without their name, but without this mutual agreement you must have the name"


So yes, that would suggest that a character must know the real name of the character that they are scrying.
I further interpret this as disguise names not being sufficient information to qualify for a scrying attempt.
This would make sense because it's entirely plausible for multiple characters to be using the same disguise.

[xanrael]

It would be neat if there was a sleight of hand option that would let one get a blood sample or hair that could then be used for exile/assassination/scrying.

Same for harvesting from a corpse.

[Duchess Says]

I would guess a lot of the rules on this are intentionally ambiguous? I certainly hope you can attempt to pull of a long-term and consistent disguise for infiltration or whatever story you are telling and only share your real name with a select few and with extreme caution. If this is handled and done for a good reason, well that's a wonderful story. Some might also do this to cheat the system and avoid all repercussions but that should be obvious... I would expect they don't make any attempt to flesh out their alter ego for one thing.

I suppose I'm not too worried about a character that only disguises, never owns property or joins a faction, never shares their real name with anyone, never has known associates who they can be traced to. They're not going to be involved in much that matters playing that way so what's there to even scry?