Can we talk about stealing?

[ReverentBlade]

You walk through town and the statue of a dead friend is gone. The memorial for a battle you fought in is gone. You go to the tavern you work at and the portraits on the walls are vanishing one after the other. You go home and your enchanting basin in your home is gone and there are things missing from your chest.

And you can do nothing.

It doesn't matter if you are a powerful diviner.

It doesn't matter if you are a skilled tracker.

It doesn't matter that you are a master sweet-talker and NPCs are standing two feet away from where the fixtures were.

Every once in a while someone leaves a note to give some token RP (always anonymous or disguised, of course), but most times they do not. The token notes are almost worst because it just emphasizes how little you can interact with it further. Your rogue friend that specializes in documents can't study the handwriting to generate any leads. The diviner can't use it as a scrying focus. The ranger can't let his wolf companion sniff it for scent.

You bring it to the PC guards and all they can do is shrug and console you because they also have zero tools to do anything about it. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for them, as well.

Simply put, the ball is entirely in the hands of the PC thieves to make this a fun experience, and they drop the ball every. single. time.

There are zero mechanical ways to approach the scenario without dragging a DM into it, and I've never had any success in finding a DM interested in touching theft RP with a ten-foot pole.

Can we please consider implementing some mechanical systems to actually make locating stolen property possible, or turn it off altogether? Its getting frankly ridiculous and feels entirely one-sided.

[Chosen Son]

I have on two and a half years on the server experienced only a single situation where theft of a placable resulted in something resembling meaningful rp. I have lost count of all the times that it did not amount to anything more then a bad taste in someones mouth.

[xanrael]

I do wish that intrusions would auto-generate a "note" at your door with a bit of description that then could be used with other features like -investigate to provide more data.

As far as disabling fixture theft though, I think it would probably be daunting to turn it off completely in a useful manner.

For example it would make redecorating a newly purchased home impossible barring seeking a DM if the previous owner rolled their PC.

I'm personally a bit less concerned about public stuff being taken. On the one hand it's annoying like a tailoring station being stolen in a common area to downright distasteful such as mass theft of stuff a player built that is now dead IRL, though the DMs did step in there.

On the other hand I'm not a huge fan of "well I placed this here first and thus it stays forever regardless of anything else". If it required DM oversight to remove an item then I think you'd need DM oversight to place the item in the first place. As a silly example someone could make a statue/painting with a description of "Yondalla suplexing Lolth" and place it in the Devil's Table temple.

We've had cases over the years for fixtures in public areas gaining permanent versions in the past and I'd rather leave it towards petitioning the DM/Dev/Admins for that sort of thing than under player control.

[Tathkar Eisgrim]

You walk through town and the statue of a dead friend is gone. The memorial for a battle you fought in is gone. You go to the tavern you work at and the portraits on the walls are vanishing one after the other. You go home and your enchanting basin in your home is gone and there are things missing from your chest.

And you can do nothing.

It doesn't matter if you are a powerful diviner.

It doesn't matter if you are a skilled tracker.

It doesn't matter that you are a master sweet-talker and NPCs are standing two feet away from where the fixtures were.

Every once in a while someone leaves a note to give some token RP (always anonymous or disguised, of course), but most times they do not. The token notes are almost worst because it just emphasizes how little you can interact with it further. Your rogue friend that specializes in documents can't study the handwriting to generate any leads. The diviner can't use it as a scrying focus. The ranger can't let his wolf companion sniff it for scent.

You bring it to the PC guards and all they can do is shrug and console you because they also have zero tools to do anything about it. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for them, as well.

Simply put, the ball is entirely in the hands of the PC thieves to make this a fun experience, and they drop the ball every. single. time.

There are zero mechanical ways to approach the scenario without dragging a DM into it, and I've never had any success in finding a DM interested in touching theft RP with a ten-foot pole.

Can we please consider implementing some mechanical systems to actually make locating stolen property possible, or turn it off altogether? Its getting frankly ridiculous and feels entirely one-sided.

I completely agree.

Mechanically, there is a noticeable identity check occurring which flashes up the "this item does not belong to you" when you move a placeable. Surely on that basis, a script could be written to attach an appropriate "Is carrying stolen goods" invisible flag to the thief? And that flag could be scried for? That would be a new and interest avenue for Diviners to pursue.

As a player, I love the concept of Thieves, Thievery and Thieves' Guilds. However IF you choose to play one -- you really, really, need to be on the top of your game and playing them well. Because people will get upset.

Bottom line, Arelith is a Roleplay server. Thieves have a responsibility to generate roleplay through their actions. The roleplay opportunities for thieves to sell back stolen items are there. But it doesn't happen. That hurts Thief concepts in the long run.

Poll most players and I bet they would hate a thief more than an assassin.

[AstralUniverse]

As someone who doesnt play thieves all that often, I would find the server significantly more boring without the risk of having things stolen from me.

[ReverentBlade]

I don't mind the risk if there's counterplay.

[AstralUniverse]

Not everything has to have counterplay. The weather has no counterplay.

Also, not everything has to be interactive. Some things are just a part of the world. You lose some, you gain some. As long as someone isnt stealing from YOU specifically every 24h they arent breaching the Be nice rule and I really dont see a problem. Fixtures come and go. Gravestones dont last forever.

Just because you have to adjust your gameplay to something's existance, doesnt mean you have to yell "no counterplay - please remove".

[Nobs]

This is the reason i never made a high open lock / disable trap toon.

I rather use pickpocket or stalking and sneaking in after some one if im trying to steal stuff.

For the simple fact that you can find out that im sneaking into your house behind you and you can detect a pickpocket.

Breaking into a house when some one is not even online with your bard pall or your rogue pall if you are the bard is so meh.

[AstralUniverse]

Breaking into a house when some one is not even online with your bard pall or your rogue pall if you are the bard is so meh.

I'd like to give people the benefit of the doubt that if they make a quarter-breaker (which takes some serious build decisions and sacrifices in other fields) they are doing that for the RP and not for the chance someone is still leaving their adamantine in the quarter instead of settlement storage.

[Nobs]

Breaking into a house when some one is not even online with your bard pall or your rogue pall if you are the bard is so meh.

I'd like to give people the benefit of the doubt that if they make a quarter-breaker (which takes some serious build decisions and sacrifices in other fields) they are doing that for the RP and not for the chance someone is still leaving their adamantine in the quarter instead of settlement storage.

Thats not the point , there is no counter play to quarter breaking unless the thief is a 8 int toon that leaves notes with clues....

[NPC Logger Number 2]

People who bin historical fixtures are the worst.

[Ninjimmy]

It may sound cheesy but I always felt B&E style robberies should be planned like Heists, sending a calling card first to give the recipient a chance to take RP steps. ~

But then it all but guarantees a failed robbery as pretty much anyone would move their REAL valuables with some notice so... guess it works best with a fixture and a ransom, RP the whole exchange.

[Scurvy Cur]

Not everything has to have counterplay. The weather has no counterplay.

This is a stupid analogy, and I'm sure you know it. The weather also does no harm to players, outside of the occasional 50-60 damage lightning strike (for which there is ample counterplay, in the form of amassing more than 60 HP) or gust of wind (acquire discipline and/or saving throws). It is completely irrelevant that the rain has no counterplay, because it literally does not affect you.

I concur with the original poster. I cannot think of one time a housebreak or pickpocket attempt to steal items was actually roleplayed in a constructive fashion in the 14 years I have been on the server. I have seen housebreak mechanics used occasionally to invade someone's home to kill them in a place where they think themselves safe and (provided all the other RP around it is sound, and the players involved are willing to live with the possible consequences) I think this is a desirable and even laudable thing. I have no such praise for housebreak to commit theft, and have never once seen a thief put themselves in an intentionally vulnerable position for followup RP. To the extent I have seen a post break-in note, it's always been functionally useless as a prompt for followup RP, and most often serves only to gloat a little after the fact.

I feel much the same way about pickpockets; I have seen no player go out of their way to make the experience more enjoyable or fulfilling for the victim. Pickpocket is mitigated only by the fact that a spot check will inform the victim when the other party must be killed to retrieve the stolen item. However, if either spot or the ability to kill the thief is lacking, the victim similarly has little recourse Furthermore, since the thief is informed whether the pickpocket attempt is spotted or not, most pickpockets quickly learn which characters are a danger to steal from, and which may be freely looted once per 24h with absolutely no risk; it is likely that pickpocket will remain interactive in practice only so long as it takes the pickpocket time to develop a list of perfectly risk-free marks to hit.

A side note: yes, I know about blade orbs. These are not counterplay, except in a theoretical sense. Amassing enough of them to be reliable protection is tedious and will block out a significant fraction of your inventory space, since they must be unpacked to take up inventory volume in order to work. Furthermore, the consequence for the would-be thief is seldom more than a few hundred XP worth of respawn penalty (and often, they will learn that the mark has not detected their attempt, and is thus reasonably safe in the future). I haven't seen one go off since about 2010.

I am forced to conclude that, regrettably, the server playerbase is temperamentally incapable of making burglary RP compelling, engaging, and interactive. Because this toy cannot be used responsibly, it ought to be either altered or taken away.

I have a few suggestions on how to deal with each:

Pickpocket

Because pickpocket requires the victim be online, it is a much easier system to correct, being simply a matter of adjusting the risk/reward ratio and making countermeasures easier. While I believe nothing would be lost by disabling the skill entirely, I feel that the following changes would put it in a much more reasonable place:

-Blade Orbs Rescripted. Currently, blade orbs function as follows: when an thief rolls a successful pickpocket check, they may receive either items or gold, determined by RNG. If items, pickpocket will select a filled square in the target's inventory, and if that square contains a pickpocket-eligible item, the pickpocket will take it. If the item in taken this way is a blade orb, the thief will be paralyzed for several minutes, the infection vfx/sfx will play, and a cloud of insects vfx will hover around the thief. As well, a text message will make it obvious that a blade orb has been tripped.

The upshot of this is that, for blade orbs to be statistically relevant, they must be unpacked into your inventory space to fill as much as possible.

I would suggest a rescript of the blade orb function such that it scales with the number of blade orbs in your inventory rather than the number of inventory spaces filled. Each character has 360 slots of inventory space; with that in mind, I would suggest that blade orb proc chance = n/(90+n), where n = total number of blade orbs in inventory, in whatever stacking arrangement, capping at 0.8 for n = 360 orbs.

DC Adjusted. Currently, pickpocket DC will not, under any circumstances, go above 30, and unless the opponent is hostile (usually by succeeding the spot check), will not go above 20. This is a pretty trivial number to hit. I would propose that the base DC for a successful attempt increase by 10 for all characters, regardless of hostile flag, to 30. I would further suggest that, for characters with spot investment, the DC should be the highest of either 30 or the average spot roll (Spot + 10).

Single Items From a Stack. Finally, I would suggest that, when a pickpocket hits a stacked item, they be given only one item from the stack, rather than the entire stack.

Detection Flag Hidden from Pickpocket. Give the "you have detected a pickpocket attempt" only to the victim, to make it harder for a pickpocket to develop a list of safe marks. The victim needs this information to know how to/if they can properly respond, but the pickpocket does not need it.

Burglary

This is trickier, because it can be, and often is, done with less interaction with the victim than pickpocket. In order for this system to be made healthy, I think one of three things needs to happen.

1) A system to enable and encourage followup roleplay, even if the burglar declines to offer any meaningful cluse. An example system might look something like this:

Any item taken (fixture or chest) should automatically generate a generic [piece of evidence] that will persist through reset, in place of the stolen item. This evidence should allow a character with whatever investigative skills seem appropriate (spot, lore, search, and appraise all seem reasonable) to roll against a DC determined by an appropriate skill of the thief's (bluff, hide, ms, pickpocket?) to:

a) glean some -investigate-style information like race, gender, hair/skin color on a success.
b) on a great success (DC exceeded by 10+), allow a character possessing the information (in the form of a deciphered clue) to identify the thief via the examine option, provided that they break any disguise the thief may be wearing.
c) on a really great success (DC exceeded by 15 or 20), generate an item that allows a diviner to -scry the thief through a -scry_evidence command.

2) If the above system is too much effort, a rulechange that mandates some level of interactive roleplay on a burglary may also help. This could be achieved by requiring either that the victim be physically present in the quarter being burgled or that the thief must leave a reasonably helpful hint with some details about his or her identity. Failure to do so would be treated as PvP action without interactive roleplay, and disciplined accordingly. The downside, of course, is that every such hint would have to be subject to DM review every time a victim felt it was insufficiently helpful, and any enforcement at all would add to DM workload.

3) If neither of the above systems is appealing, simply ban theft from quarters. Breaking in to confront someone in a spot they felt was safe would remain permissible, as would theft of fixtures left out in public spaces. This option boils down to "you can't play responsibly with this toy, and we're taking it away", but I think it is preferable to the current situation.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

I am less concerned with theft in quarters because to me, purchasing "private property" in Arelith is itself a kind of invitation to all the consequences. I do like Scurvy Cur's suggestions.

Theft has always been an awkward conflict here. I think you'd have better chance playing a forthright highwayman than a burglar.

And if one is concerned about the destruction of "historical sites" on the server at large - let me tell you, there's a Arelith-canon knightly order you could resurrect that focuses on combating just that.

and largely, the server is not as "pro-history" as the forums might suggest. You can't combat any mentality that doesn't care about places or items of significance, especially when you couple that with the Lingering Epic Syndrome and weird Before Reckoning lore.

Concerns about server preservation, combating vandalism, dealing with theft, etc., all sound like a great trigger for a new faction in-game.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

Here's some things I'd like to see.

1: If Quarter is locked and/or trapped, and someone successfully enters without using a key after disabling the trap and the lock -> THEN: Combat log produces a note when you open the door with a key, just like it does when you open the door and have mail attached to it. "Your trap has been triggered/disarmed/broken." "Your locks have been tampered with."

2: If Quarter Chest is locked and/or trapped, same as above. Further, if intruder interacts with locked Quarter chest, they leave appropriate tracks in front of chest.

3: If intruder spends less than X amount of time in the dwelling, they did not spend enough time to adequately clean their trail- when the owner returns, a hair or piece of clothing or some other tidbit belonging to the invader spawns inside the building. This object can then be brought to a diviner who can cast a divining spell on the hair to scry the person who intruded- they won't automatically know the name (this can be explained in the combat log) but descriptions are possible.

[-XXX-]

The weather has no counterplay.

You know that's not true!

[Aardra]

The weather has no counterplay.

You know that's not true!

Wild Mages want to speak with you.

[xanrael]

As far as policy, changing the rules to match an assassin's to something like "Thieves can interact with their target, and then afterwards, steal from their target at ANY point WITHIN 24 hours" might be a positive change.

The interaction wouldn't need to be hostile, the thief could ask them some innocent question then be on their way.

So as a victim you know that the list of suspects for a quarter theft or pickpocket are among the people you've RPed with in the past day so you have a shorter list of suspects to consider. It may or may not be enough for a single theft, but as more and more thefts mount either on the same individual over time or over multiple residents the suspect could be narrowed down and confronted.

Also if you can't login for a few days you're not going to come back to an empty home.

[AstralUniverse]

The weather has no counterplay.

You know that's not true!

Shuuuuuuush!

But I mean... seriously now...

A character in Arelith needs to have that constant knowledge that thieves are a thing in life. I dont want to see that gone or replaced with a scripted mechanic. Its one of those things that, while they dont provide interactive RP, they provide a nich where PCs can fill the "living" part of the world, rather than leaving everything to scripted mechanics away from player and DM agency, if that makes sense? The whether example wasnt perfect, I admit. But it was supposed to serve a point beyond the whether itself. The risk of theft should exist same along with the risk of being stuck by lightning in the bad whether, except we cant let players be Talos, we CAN let them be thieves though.

[Tathkar Eisgrim]

The weather has no counterplay.

You know that's not true!

Shuuuuuuush!

But I mean... seriously now...

A character in Arelith needs to have that constant knowledge that thieves are a thing in life. I dont want to see that gone or replaced with a scripted mechanic. Its one of those things that, while they dont provide interactive RP, they provide a nich where PCs can fill the "living" part of the world, rather than leaving everything to scripted mechanics away from player and DM agency, if that makes sense? The whether example wasnt perfect, I admit. But it was supposed to serve a point beyond the whether itself. The risk of theft should exist same along with the risk of being stuck by lightning in the bad whether, except we cant let players be Talos, we CAN let them be thieves though.

I see the point you are trying to make about Thievery being a Laissez-Faire / Hands off mechanic. I just don't think it's credible.

A hands-off approach runs counter to good player standards. It runs counter to interesting thief RP, intrigue and the desire to chase down the thief and / or regain stolen items. It runs counter to a strong thief culture and undermines the class by allowing cheap and unaccountable gaining of wealth and property.

Thieves can indeed be and remain a fact of Arelith life. We are actually discussing *improving* the lot of PC thieves, so their reputation is not OOCly spoiled by bad apple behaviour.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

I really like the idea of having a script that leaves clues behind, but what is to stop the thief from just taking the clues also? We going to include that in the one item per 24 hour rule and punish them if they take it? Or add another script to stop them from being able to take the clues they leave behind at all? If we do the latter, what is to stop them from bringing along a friend to pick up the clues they leave behind so there is no trail? It would need a lot of thought put into it to make it work in a way that could not be gamed/exploited.

[magistrasa]

I am forced to conclude that, regrettably, the server playerbase is temperamentally incapable of making burglary RP compelling, engaging, and interactive. Because this toy cannot be used responsibly, it ought to be either altered or taken away.

This is so contrary to my experiences that it has me questioning reality a little bit.

"I can't think of one time theft has turned into roleplay" - bruh. Are you kidding me? Have I just spent years of my life not roleplaying? The fact that you've been around for 14 years and not seen that kinda roleplay happen even once probably says more about you than about the server culture.

I could tell you about a shadow auction that was planned by the Temple of Mask that had a dozen thieves in the server scrambling to collect old pieces of art and relics of past DM events to sell off, leading to team heists and espionage to locate and secure these items.

I could tell you about the big scandal that happened in Andunor involving the patron of a drow house who was framed for the theft of a valuable item, and how widespread the political fallout of a simple mistaken identity and a well-timed true seeing scroll came to become - to this day, I still don't know if I was being played for a fool in that whole situation, but it's one of the most memorable moments of Andunorian history in my eyes.

I could tell you about the thief who found a serial killer's stash of limbs and skeletons in the closet, who turned that revelation into a riveting game of cat and mouse, where it was never quite clear who was blackmailing who.

I could tell you about a guy on the surface, who's STILL playing the role, that makes himself extremely accessible to thieves as a fence and helping hand, and is a master at connecting people to one another and turning stolen goods into stories.

I could tell you about all the meaningful roleplay I've experienced from spotting pickpockets failing to steal from me - or from other people - and approaching them with an offer to help them in exchange for some favor and another, using that business relationship as a foundation for incredibly poignant personal stories to be explored together.

...Or I could tell you about how many times I got a PM by someone who told me they got caught and one-lined and had their name spread all over the place and put under a Kill On Sight order and iced out of roleplay everywhere they went so they felt like they had to roll the character. Heck, why don't I tell you about all the thieves who let themselves get caught by people they thought were chill OOC only to be met with so much vitriol over the act of stealing a measly 37g that their trust in the people around them was shaken for a good long while to come.

Thief roleplay is vibrant and diverse and is just as meaningful and impactful as any other avenue of roleplay - if not MORESO, because unlike the opt-in consequences that people typically have to volunteer into, theft carries real, material consequences. The fact that there's so much riding on the line makes it so much more immersive and engaging than anything else you're likely to experience. However, the victim of that theft doesn't have to be part of every facet of the interactions surrounding it. Sometimes you have to be able to take the loss and move on. If anything, it's the victims of theft who regularly demonstrate that they are "temperamentally incapable of making burglary RP compelling," because 9/10 times, a thief who gets caught is going to get one-lined, no matter the circumstances. Gee, no wonder thieves don't want to get caught! Simply put, if having virtual currency stolen from your video game character is making you upset, your head is not in the right place to be making any suggestions.

One concession I will make is that it's strange how quarter chests are all unlocked by default. If a smelly goblin hole dweller knows to lock their chest of valuable loot, why wouldn't an adventurer who regularly breaks into those chests do the same? Put a high-DC lock on quarter chests - something doable, not the crazy quarter DC - just so that it requires more investment to steal from someone than high sneaking skills.

Anyways, back to the Original Point - I think the best way to prevent public fixture theft is to make it so you can't rename or redescribe fixtures that you don't have a tag on. Because the lowest form of theft is the kind that happens solely because you don't want to put in the effort to make your own fixture so you recycle someone else's. There's simply never an excuse for it. Sure, let them be moved around and stolen for any other reason, but let's just put a stop to the unauthorized repurposing of public fixtures.

[Xerah]

I honestly haven't seen any real good thief RP either. I'm glad you've seen so much, but it just hasn't been my experience.

It was a really hard battle setting up fixtures that provided proper aesthetics to a role-play atmosphere I was trying to create (even going as far as asking DMs to move things to non-accessible areas) when people would just bash or steal them all the time that I couldn't keep up with making them due to the high cost of producing them (I made about 30-40 and 1-2 were left by the end). Some would even go around stealing message boards, which was extremely frustrating since it was a way for people to keep up with the evolving role-play situation. It was very likely there was no rule breaks going on here, so I didn't really report it (other than the message board) but there was no real follow up I could do either.

Some of the stuff you've listed sound really cool, but I wonder if that is the exception rather than the norm.

[-XXX-]

In case of fixture theft I think there's two options:

Just recreate the fixture. It's really trivial, especially if you saved the description somewhere in a text document. Then again, this is about as interactive as the act of anonymous fixture theft itself.

Rebuild the fixture from the scratch with new descriptions and everything. Also try to include other characters in the resource gathering process etc. - just get them invested. That way more characters will have a reason to get mad if the theft happens again.

[CononTheAthenian]

It's funny to read a thread dedicated to this subject, I had a conversation with a friend about something to this effect a few days ago, and I agree 100% with what you've said. Die Hard wouldn't be a good movie if Hans Gruber sneaked (can we talk about whether snuck is a real word or not?) into the vault of Nakatomi Plaza without ever being detected, the whole party went off without a hitch and at the end of the movie you see a newspaper describing that the crime happened several days later.