Scrying Beats Disguise & Metagaming Names

[Darkstorn42]

Removing disguise quotes solves lots of these meta problems. Also removing failed message from spotters and broken disguise message from disguisers.

On the scry note, I wonder if it is possible to make all targets in the area appear to be wearing simple outfits, or make everyone look like smoke, like a drug effect? That way we remove the ability to describe by clothes.

[L I C E]

you're getting caught by scry and metagamed because you're a pale skinned human who is tall and has several tells that you're the same person. you're also not disappearing for long enough to let people forget you between disguises. when my disguises have been blown i shelf the character for 2 weeks and ive never had a problem. ultimately it's a game of gaslighting and deceiving other players on an ooc level because passive MG will also exist. this problem you list really isn't scry, i think it's just the disguise system itself and your use of it. if you're exposed as Karl Bobson from ur alias "Edgy Man" and you immediately go and make another disguise "Dark Brooder" yes of course people are going to know its u and scry to check. it'd be stupid if they couldnt. the game is convincing people not to scry Karl Bobson because your new alias "Paladin Joe" is so far removed from how Karl Bobson and his aliases have been known to act it would never cross their mind you're the same person. anyone who goes server to server and goes through a list of names to scry every day is absolutely a loser and hates fun ooc however.

anyway rant aside, i think scry should require a physical item as well as a name. devs have a muling script that knows which character has owned which item - this should be repurposed somewhat to allow scrying of people only if u own an item that that character also owned. set a value limit so people cant scry u over acid bombs and food rations and boom, system fixed. i mean isnt that how scry is in lore anyway? you need an item of relevance to the person ur tryna peep on or a true name (nobody on arelith has access to true names so forget that).

[Paint]

A feat that gives you some small skill bonus and makes it so your 'true name' can't be scried while you're disguised -- forcing people to use your disguise name instead -- would be a pretty nice remedy to this, as you'd have to sacrifice a feat for the protection.

The existence of a feat like that could make some top-performing meta builds make some hard choices, since feat margins for most of those builds are razor thin, and I like that. Meaningful sacrifices are fun.

[Anomandaris]

A feat that gives you some small skill bonus and makes it so your 'true name' can't be scried while you're disguised -- forcing people to use your disguise name instead -- would be a pretty nice remedy to this, as you'd have to sacrifice a feat for the protection.

The existence of a feat like that could make some top-performing meta builds make some hard choices, since feat margins for most of those builds are razor thin, and I like that. Meaningful sacrifices are fun.

This would be super cool, but then people would just put on random disguise names and never be scriable. It sounds more problematic than the alternative IMO.

[PowerWord Rage]

Removing disguise quotes solves lots of these meta problems. Also removing failed message from spotters and broken disguise message from disguisers.

On the scry note, I wonder if it is possible to make all targets in the area appear to be wearing simple outfits, or make everyone look like smoke, like a drug effect? That way we remove the ability to describe by clothes.

Removing disguise quotes might solve meta problems but will trigger a whole can of worms which defeat the purpose and generate more chaos.
Just quoting two examples that if the Disguise quote is not there and someone saw "Thomas Castemont" without quote killing civilians and he actually ran off quickly before anyone had a chance to 'right click examine', what's fake becomes truth.
It's super bad faith and there's simply no counter measure.

Another example will be on Ship whereby people uses 'shout' and not actually even have the chance to examine
Without quotation, someone say, "Khardar Goldenbeard" without quotes shout, "Surrender all your treasures or ye shall be sunk!"
There's no counter measure as well.

[Darkstorn42]

Just quoting two examples that if the Disguise quote is not there and someone saw "Thomas Castemont" without quote killing civilians and he actually ran off quickly before anyone had a chance to 'right click examine', what's fake becomes truth.
It's super bad faith and there's simply no counter measure.

This is exactly what should happen ICly because the quotes are OOC. The presence of the quotes doesn't change the ICly outcome. OOCly it just let's people know not to bother following the story thread because of meta information.

Another example will be on Ship whereby people uses 'shout' and not actually even have the chance to examine
Without quotation, someone say, "Khardar Goldenbeard" without quotes shout, "Surrender all your treasures or ye shall be sunk!"
There's no counter measure as well.

I agree that the lack of counter play makes this one problematic, but once again, my previous statement stands.

However, in previous discussions about removal of quotes, Grumpy proposed no disguising as specific NPCs or PCs, without OOC permission being an added rule, which solves any of the OOC toxicity that would come with no quotes, at least for the transitional period.

[Aodh Lazuli]

While I agree that scry is, frankly, one of the most annoying and difficult to counter features Arelith has (and it has been for a long time), recognition of a disguised person is... Problematic too.

Let us assume that Mike The Anonymous disguises himself all the time. He has nine different disguises, and very very high bluff or perform. It is a rarity that his bluff is ever breached. However, Mike also exhibits exactly the same behaviour on every one of those disguises. He talks in the same way, using the same vocabulary, syntax, patterns of speech. He has the same fixations, he pushes the same agenda, he puts forward the same opinions. He fights with the same weapons, makes the same emote gestures and associates with the same set of people. There is no functional difference between his disguised personas, except their appearance.

Are we to expect everyone to roleplay not noticing an exceptionally obvious pattern because they can't beat the spot check? Are we to assume all observers are house-brick-dumb, unless they have high spot? Sharp eyes and basic recognition of patterns are not the same thing. Dear Mike isn't really putting in the work, and is getting rather a lot of reward.

It strikes me that high bluff or perform, can be exactly the same sort of low-effort mechanical "I win" as scry - If the player only needs to change outfit and blank their description, then continue their behaviour exactly as before. It seems to me that there is some responsibility on the disguising player to render their character not recognisable by behaviour, in order for the disguise to be worth anything mechanically.

Edited: Spelling and clarity.

[AstralUniverse]

If Bob and Joe have the same opinions and act and sound and speak exactly the same.... that's on the player... It was never against the rules to act on IC info that gives up someone's true identity. Sure, your character cant prove it beyond reasonable doubt and confirm it with visual descriptors, but they can still think Joe is Bob and be correct and go tell everyone that they think Bob is Joe. It's acting on purely IC information. But for that to be fair, they need to actually be able to prove OOCly on how their character arrived the conclusion from IC info only.

[EnigmaticSpirit]

Hey it's that scry thread again.

I really hate scry too.

Cheers.

This.

Elsewhere in the Forgotten Realms world, scrying windows are normally, and should be, a lot easier to spot. A suitable spot or spellcraft check should give you an alert that you are being scried, if not the person on the other side.

The buff to -ward was welcome and needed. Thank you again to the DMs for that one.

[Anomandaris]

We're still glossing over the 100% reliable way to cost-effectively block scrying attempts available to (almost) every PC on the server with minimal investment, or investment already made due to other value associated with these investments (ESF Abj, UMD). I don't get this obsessive fear of the "power" of scry. If you don't want to be scried, spend the pittance in gold or use the class features available to you to protect your character from it. Meanwhile the scrier will be burning far greater resources day and night to get nothing, as is the norm.

As far as removing quotes go... Who can perfectly reliably identify 100's of people from a mere shout across the waves that they barely know? Who can tell that the man dressed in full plate identical to match another, standing 50 meters away is actually the real person or someone in disguise? These sorts of points of confusion are not a bug, but a feature, and for more representative of WYSIWYG. The presence or lack there of quotes gives the player, and player character certainty they in fact should not have.

The team can set rules for exploits and rule breaks. And the server community will adjust to to actually be "less sure" about everything (which would be a great thing), and not just assume the guy murdering innocents on the road is actually the neighborhood friendly paladin they were dressed as. I don't see an issue here.

[PowerWord Rage]

The way i see about Quotation marks and the need of it to be there is to prevent mischief and griefing.
I do not care if the player likes to be in their disguise identity 24/7 nor they simply like to be anybody esle than themselves for 24/7 because what i'm only concerned about removing Quotation marks is still, prevent mischief and griefing.

You may say that the existence of Quotation Marks for Disguiser(s) is a huge disadvantage / metagame / spoil the fun but none of these will cause cause mischief and griefing.
Griefing isn't just complaining in forum, it's includes, and is more than that.

There may be others that think that i'm over-exaggerating but the current player base are mostly, if not all adults, even actively participate in politics and schemes IG.
It takes only mere moments to cause grief but months if not years, for them to recover.

The existence of the Quotation marks, at the bare minimum, if someone disguise as "Aleksander Hornraven" wore the same outfit as him and decide to use this disguise to sabotage a very dear friend of him may feel like interesting RP but not everyone takes betrayal the same way. And if doing so, causes them having the need to use Discord as an OOC means to resolve this kind of mischief, it defeats the purpose of removing the Quotation marks in the first place.
We all know that OOC method to resolve any IC issue is against the rules so why, even open the venue for such cases to happen when you don't need to actually keep testing the limit of the our own sanity.

With all intent and purpose, "Be Nice Rule" should be the first thought before making any changes that simply invites more troubles.

We're here to RP and not actually here to /live/ in the game world.
There should exist a curtain and i think, the quotation mark is the curtain.

[Xersaoth]

The way i see about Quotation marks and the need of it to be there is to prevent mischief and griefing.

You may say that the existence of Quotation Marks for Disguiser(s) is a huge disadvantage / metagame / spoil the fun but none of these will cause cause mischief and griefing.

Wait until your character gets targeted by some faction for having quotation marks as well as the same race and phenotype as someone else who is extremely wanted. Although in that case your character might get saved, again, by some form of metagaming, like seeing the other person in the player list or anything I previously described.

[PowerWord Rage]

I must apologize first if i'm a little too blunt because i do not understand the rationale behind your argument.

The reason is because to play as disguised, is a proactive effort and there must be something that you plan to do, with that disguise. It's fair game if you get caught because getting caught is always a matter of time, I believe that there is never a perfect disguise that is unbreachable no matter how good you are.
The existence of a perfect disguise with no counterplay is a flaw if it exists.

And the case whereby i mentioned, griefing and mischief, belongs to passive effect because the victim cannot say, "Hey, please don't play this kind of disguise sabotage, i don't like it" since they won't even be aware that it is something going on.

That's how i view quotation marks, I believe that protection should be given more towards those who are passive.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Scry (and disguise, since it's a subtheme of this thread) both fall under the category of "neat thing that has the potential to be abused". As a result, both sides of the debate that crops up around it tend to be correct. As with all things like this, it needs to be evaluated with one question in mind, "does the benefit outweigh the pitfalls?"

For me personally, scry is one of those things in forgotten realms that fall under the "too powerful for gameplay" section and if my magic wand worked it would be gone thirty seconds after I finished this post.

Disguise on the other hand I find to be neat but also see the issue with perma-disguises. I don't think it should be used to permanently infiltrate a city for months on end for an easy example, but like the idea of it being used in short bursts to accomplish a goal. As such, I actually think one's bluff/perform skill should deteriorate at a defined rate when using a particular disguise. It would take some finagling to get right, but I think it would solve a lot of the potential issues around disguise. It also wouldn't eliminate long term infiltrators; it would just stop them from having an easy on/off button to help them along since they would have to infiltrate as themselves to do it for an extended period.