Arelith

magistrasa wrote: Tue May 19, 2020 6:07 pmThieves should absolutely create roleplay around their crime when they can. But at the same time - and I'm sorry for the strong wording - I really think it's just selfish and small-minded to expect to simply be told when it happens. There's give and take (figuratively and literally) on both sides of the equation, and when it's done well, criminal roleplay has some of the best experiences you'll find on the server.

I agree, in a perfect world a loot goblin would emote taking the item out of the chest, turn around, laugh evilly, make some grand speech about how their evil God is the best and everyone should bow to them, before dropping said item on the ground and challenging the rest of the party to PVP. What happens though is someone else asks if they found anything, they say, "No, empty!" and everyone goes home disappointed. If you want to call me selfish and small-minded for wanting better, that's alright, but I think it is selfish and small-minded to waste everyone's time, literally steal from them, then blow off any possible chance of repercussion by lying. That's not even role playing an evil character. It is just being a jerk.

I honestly do not see a problem with adding a 'removes x from chest'. If you want to add a layer of possible obfuscation, add spot vs y-skill check. Makes perfect sense to me

There is no way that this can be solved by "player has to emote taking something out" or a script that just tells you if someone took something, because all that does is ensure that no one will ever play that way. A skill check would be cool, but seems like a lot of unnecessary work as well since it will cut down on the amount of people doing it to almost nil unless their bluff is extremely high for their level range. The ic solution is also rather simple- assign someone the majority of the party trusts to loot. Then if someone goes darting for a chest that isn't the assigned looter, you know that guy has a high probability of being shady. IC reaction follows.

I mean, I'm not a fan of the "thief" style of play either. But people like it, its within the rules, and there is so much gold on arelith it seems silly to not just accept its part of the game.

I am all for some kind of generic item description given to the party whenever someone on screen opens a chest and ninja loots.

Deal with it IC, sure, but first, you justify to me how you opened the chest, rummaged around in it, and pulled out metal/ jewels/ coins without me hearing or seeing it.

We hand wave people carrying thousands of pounds of gear because magic bags, because that doesn't affect anyone else. That rune ingredient you just swiped though, is hundreds of thousands of gold you just effectively god moded away from your party, because there's no visual for you looting chests EVEN THOUGH IT'S A RPG and the item doesn't magically teleport from the box to your pack.

Personally I think there should be some kind of script to detect this behavior in parties, and that egregious offenders should have their inventories forcibly emptied by dms. (I am a big fan of karmically disproportionate retribution as a deterrent when people are demonstrably being intentional asshats.)

Rping theft/ greedy characters is great. Employing lack of visible mechanics to cheat other players is toxic, not nice, and not fun. If you aren't RPING being a scum bag IC, then you're being one as a player.

A spot vs pick pocket check would make sense, with the same restriction that anything over X size (plus any pile of gold over x amount) is ineligible and automatically announced to the party.

Edit: And in this vein, since you're effectively stealing from the party, I'd also argue that like pickpocket, it should have a 24 hour timer that immediately triggers for every member of your current party as soon as you swipe it, because their collective fun is more important than your thief narrative, which is still being allowed to happen.

Marisakis wrote: Tue May 19, 2020 7:21 pm Assuming the worst, the player emotes nothing (because he's a nasty loot goblin and wants it all for himself). That player thereby suggests that nothing out of the ordinary is happen. I don't see how a conscious lack of emoting something being done is any different from emoting falsely. They both impact players, on an IC and OOC level. Sure, doing so is a break of the 'be nice' rule. But there's no way to know for sure.

Report. The DMs will know for sure. Worst case, your report will be proved invalid and that's alright.

Aelryn Bloodmoon wrote: Tue May 19, 2020 9:17 pm

Rping theft/ greedy characters is great. Employing lack of visible mechanics to cheat other players is toxic, not nice, and not fun. If you aren't RPING being a scum bag IC, then you're being one as a player.

This is so true.

In the process of inquiring of higher minds that do visual changes for modules to see how hard it would be to get a character animation that plays exclusively when taking items out of loot containers - this simple visual would make sense, and would give people a logical reason to be suspicious or not when someone takes a breast plate, 160 gold, and some rare crafting components from a chest then announces "It's empty!" I'm hoping the answer is "not difficult" and that it would be a sensible enough solution to the problem if doable, rather than trying to create a new host of rules around the situation.

Would anyone in the thread have an objection to this, and if so may I ask for reasoning?

Edit: Biggest flaw I can see is that without some kind of item description that at least categorizes the item, you could then have people swap bunk loot for good drops and still look clean.

Creating a animation for this would be more then likely difficult, but there are easy solutions. You can have the default be that all removed items are visible to anyone within a certain distance, and allow thieves to use pp skill against a dc based on the size of the item. On a successful role you would just not have that item on the list of visible things removed. You could also make the descriptions generic, like "Joe the thief removes one gem and a cloth armor from the chest" depending on how much flexibility you want to give the situations that come from this. You could even go nuts and add a spot check to the mix from the players within range, but that gets a bit more complicated.

I don't think the question is whether or not it would be too hard to do, as I said my old server had something along these lines. The questions are "is this a big enough issue in the minds of one of the devs that have the skill to do something like this," and "do the powers that be want to go down this road". Only they can answer that.

It's great when the party theft is emoted. Generally speaking any action that might be relevant to others should be emoted. Even if not necessarily obviously.

However I am confused about the claim that there is a lack of cues. When you loot a chest it visibly opens. Anyone near the chest when that happens is a suspect.

TBH I think it' just lame to loot like that I honestly don't care if you say it's ic for my character to steal from there companions, it's still lame when I have seen someone doing this ive stopped them from being invited along to anything else from that point forward.

This is a policy I will not change no matter what IC justification someone thinks up after the fact.

I think there definitely should be a message when an item is added or removed from a chest or corpse, subject to a contested perception roll (brainstorming: pick-pocket vs. spot/listen). Maybe, depending on the degree of success, revealing the size category or the item name. In the absence of visible animations, it only makes sense - this is something your character *should* be able to spot.

And to add to Liareth's thoughts - perhaps a spot check vs. pickpocket skill to be able to detect those would-be thieves?

Liareth wrote: Wed May 20, 2020 2:03 pm I think there definitely should be a message when an item is added or removed from a chest or corpse, subject to a contested perception roll (brainstorming: pick-pocket vs. spot/listen). Maybe, depending on the degree of success, revealing the size category or the item name. In the absence of visible animations, it only makes sense - this is something your character *should* be able to spot.

The only reason I would not want them on a corpse is because I see the potential to flood the chat box

Xarge VI wrote: Wed May 20, 2020 10:55 am It's great when the party theft is emoted. Generally speaking any action that might be relevant to others should be emoted. Even if not necessarily obviously.

However I am confused about the claim that there is a lack of cues. When you loot a chest it visibly opens. Anyone near the chest when that happens is a suspect.

There is no suspect because there's no evidence of a crime to act on- person A opens the chest, loots everything in seconds with auto-loot + some quick clicking, and tells the party there was nothing in the chest. The party is put into the position of having no evidence and often no IC reason to distrust the person, and I'm sure plenty of times the person is being truthful.

The problem isn't the truthful person- it's the hypothetical jerk that's taking advantage of the fact that you can't see inside the chest, nor can you visibly see them take anything from the chest, even if it's a suit of plate mail that they have no possible way to hide in the course of transferring it from chest to pack.