Thieves' Cant Feedback

[Aradin]

I've been struggling to figure out how to use Thieves' Cant effectively. I get the idea behind the language, but I feel like it has some problems in its current implementation.

For context, here's the description of Thieves' Cant from the wiki: "Thieves' cant is a creation of thieving guilds. They developed a language of inconspicuous hand gestures, sounds and body positions to use for signalling secret messages in public. It became a valuable tool for stealing or abducting in groups, indicating commands, targets or dangers (such as guards), et cetera. It is a very basic and simplified "language" for quick signs and not meant for carrying on full conversations, but rather quick orders or warnings only. Thieves Cant should only be used when necessary, since rogues tend to guard this language carefully. They would not want others to "interpret" it and learn their secrets."

Sounds good on paper, is problematic in practice.

1) As a mechanical language, it appears in other players' chat logs as a different colour than Common or Undercommon; specifically, as a white-hued language (like how Dwarvish is brown, Elvish is light green, etc.). This immediately alerts other players on an OOC level that you and whoever you're communicating with are up to something shady, even if those players' characters can't decipher what you're saying. Which defeats the whole purpose of "we're talking in plain sight and no one is the wiser".
Characters with particularly high Lore skills will even see that you're specifically communicating in Thieves' Cant, rather than just an unknown language.

2) The IC communication consists of certain emotes like *grins*, *touches eyebrow*, and so on. This is a specific kind of emoting style, and not one that all players use. For example, if you use quotation marks to denote when your character is speaking and just use regular text to denote when your character is emoting:
"I went to the shop today..." She laughs. "...and fell on my rear outside the door!"
As opposed to:
I went to the shop today... *laughs* ...and fell on my rear outside the door!

If you regularly do the former, then all of a sudden start saying things like *grins*, it's immediately suspicious as it breaks your normal style of emoting. So if you want to use Thieves' Cant effectively, you're pigeonholed into using the latter emoting style as your day-to-day style to not arouse suspicion when you do speak it. Which can be a pain, depending on the player, and peculiar in and of itself if you've already been using a different emoting style up until the point you learn Thieves' Cant.

3) Small pedantic point: lorewise, it seems somewhat strange that there's one single universal Thieves' Cant. I don't know enough about Faerunian lore to know if that's actually the case, or whether that's just a limitation of the Arelith language system we're working with. Wouldn't individual guilds have their own systems of communication? Why would a rogue who's come from Amn know the same Thieves' Cant as a rogue who came from Kara-Tur?
From a personal standpoint I'd prefer creating my own dialect of Thieves' Cant and then communicate in that via Common. And if that sort of thing is encouraged, why have the mechanical Thieves' Cant at all?

4) Because Thieves' Cant is a mechanical language and not just players roleplaying, it's not necessarily up to eavesdropping players to decipher what's going on. Characters with a high enough Lore skill have a chance at automatically understanding what you're saying if they're in earshot. So why risk using it in public at all when you're talking about illegal things, which is virtually guaranteed to be the topic of conversation if you're using Thieves' Cant?
If the whole point of Thieves' Cant is that it's a language that only needs to be used in public, to talk in crowded spaces without passers-by knowing what you're saying, then why take the risk of someone learning what you're saying by relying on the Arelith language system's mechanics? In that situation, I've found it really hard to make an excuse to use Thieves' Cant when I could just walk over to the person I'm trying to talk to and whisper in Common, which has the added benefit of not being limited to 25 characters.

All in all I'd like to find a reason to use Thieves' Cant but I'm having a hard time doing so. It seems like a weird method of communication to try and code into a mechanical language. Any thoughts?

As a final addendum, I know Thieves' Cant was even approved by Irongron to be removed outright four years ago but that still hasn't happened. So...*shrug*.
viewtopic.php?f=51&t=21631

[TurningLeaf]

From the lore perspective, if there can be a Common tongue understood by all, I don't see why its especially odd to have a thieves cant that's understood wherever Common is spoken. Presumably the gestures and so on relate to Common in some way. I think it would be amazing though if you had your own coded language, that you used by agreement as RP amongst your own small group. Is there some prohibition against doing that?

[stoneheart-]

Is there some prohibition against doing that?

Not at all. You can do this on any character, for any reason, not just as a rogue. Invent your own cipher to send coded messages with. etc.

[Ordo.Lupus]

Using local slang to disguise your intentions sounds awesome. Don't they do that in one of the Oceans movies?

Personally I'm of the opinion that TC and Animal get used in ways that are unrealistic and/or simply silly. I've had a animal companion call me 'necromancer' and later say 'I know you understand me' which to me is silly and borderline wrong. Animal language should be used with respect to simple words which is supported by the length limitation of 25 characters. After this encounter I'd almost wish the animal language had a white list of words or such that would make sentences much more animal'ish. "Come here", "Wait", "Bring friends" etc.

Another thing is Lore. If you can't learn these hidden languages then why should Lore allow you to understand them by a lucky roll. They are hidden for a reason.

[DM Monkey]

It's not implemented well in game. My best advice is that you come up with your own cant with your crew.

[Vespidae]

A big limitation is that the Cant will always appear written. In historical times, the benefit to having such a language was that the words mostly sounded like the patent language when spoken fast, so it would be impenetrable to the casual listener and obscure to one trying to listen in. Anything that pops up on screen is readable and therefore can be processed word for word even if the meaning can't.

I don't know what a solution would be.

[Distant Relation]

The random lore auto-translation and the different ooc color in chat log are probably two easy fixes.

In fact it could be argued that the random lore auto-translate should not happen to any of the 'secret' languages, like druidic.

[AstralUniverse]

Because thieves can't...

I am so sorry.