Shattered Kingdoms

Seriously, some of you are harming the argument to add the cloaks/hooded thingies into game with how you are presenting use of it.

I'm almost down to suggesting that this a bad idea not because it wouldn't work, but because players couldn't be mature enough to use the tool properly. And I really would prefer not to venture down that sad, but often traveled road.

I personally am just against hardcoding anything that makes the RP of players lazier. I know this might sound stupid or cliche, but the effort you put into your RP is what you will get out of it.

This is a game where you make your own world and tools are fine, but I can remember Yaric (spelling on that?) who was a secret member of the MC for well over a year -- and he was a shaman without a robe or the ability to polymorph/disguise. The fact he didn't use a crutch such as this was a testament to his player's magnificence. That should be the gold standard, not everyone running around in nondescript robes pretending to be supar-sekret.

Cabal secrecy is one of the less important things on SK, and quite frankly, if you can't do what you normally would out in the open, you most certainly can't do it while being supar-sekret. This game isn't about trying to trick someone oocly, this game is about:

A) Creation of another world.
B) A flowing book, who's outcome is decided by many writers, not just one.
C) Fun and interaction, with a heavy twist of playability (hence mechanics).
D) Memories.

If you can show me where cabal-wide secrecy (IE: including the cabalites not knowing wtf is going on) has lead to anything but dead cabals that do nothing (I can start naming, past and current), then sure, I'll hop on the bandwagon. Till then, I'd rather have everyone's group affiliations posted on SK's mainpage and force you to actually rp with/around situations then agree to this idea.

I didn't have the guts to read through the entire thread, however - it cannot really be used to cloak the identity of cabal members after death with the destruction of corpse/eq. Not only would this be increasingly annoying for shamans and the spirit doll system. But it would also be possible to determine who you have killed simply by checking who died recently with spirit sight.

The thing with the "hooded" adjective would be an incredibly nuisance in combat.

All in all, I don't think it is a good idea. It is already possible to stay anonymous in a cabal if you so please, at the cost of the usability of spells and the degree with which you are able to defend your relic.

So, some random thoughts as I read through this:

Robes shouldn't cover all of your eq. Symbols, hands (both gloves and weapons), feet, wrists, fingers, neck, and head should all be exposed. This basically means if someone wants their robe to actually make them hard to identify, they lose 6+ eq slots worth of enchants and mods, making them combat-worthless, but still have a purpose RP-wise and aren't cheap for PK and whatnot. Don't make robes do ANYTHING more - no junking of eq on death or any other feature that makes them impossible to identify. Robes shouldn't hide your description or adjective, either.

Hoods present a more complex problem. They shouldn't alter/hide your adjective, as that makes diguise usless, and it presents all the other issues people keep talking about. It's not realistic to have them hide your description, because any decent description talks about more than just the face. It COULD however, hide your gender or your race, when used in tandem with robes. Thus, a robed/hooded person would appear like this:

OR

We still face the problem of the description - if you look at the half-elf, his description will almost certainly say "man" or "half-elf" somewhere, belying the robe/hood.

Overall, this just seems like a huge hassle, but it sounds cool if it can be worked out. This isn't a feature that should be used as a crutch to maintain secrecy, but just another tool to play with in this big old sandbox of RP and PK.

Who are you trying to kid? You've been opposing this idea since your first post in this thread.

No one. Read the rest of my sentence.

"That this is a bad idea BECAUSE players are too immature." As opposed to it just being a bad idea for the game because it, in itself, is bad.

Thanks.

Fine, you included a reason why you think this is a bad idea. Ultimately, you've been opposed to this idea from the very start. By saying “I’m almost down to suggesting this is a bad idea not because…” you are implying that you think it is a good idea except for that one aspect. Anyone reading your posts in this thread knows that just is not the case. Try to paint that pig any way you want, but you attempted to make youself look less bias against this idea then you really are, for whatever reason. I just called you out for it.

This idea is going to turn every cabal into Al Queda terror cells...

...the only people who know who all the members are will be the people at the top, and all the other folks in the cabal don't know who the other people are.

ILUVIT!

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This isn't a good idea.

It will do a little to stop the OOC leaks, and I think it's going to encourage a lot of cabals (and the players in them) to be isolationists amongst themselves. That's not a good thing for unit cohesion, if you ask me. Sure, you can point and say "Leadership can totally handle this and make people play CRS, blah blah blah", but I don't ever put any stock in those arguments. SK is full of incompetent players and leaders, and it will become a problem for CRS.

Will these offer some terrific RP opportunities? Perhaps. I just don't think that you can keep them from somehow being abused, and offset that drawback with the RP benefits.

I also have reservations on the tactical advantages these robes could potentially offer. I don't see how you can hide someone from all sorts of identification and spells and the law without making it an UBER feature for players. Very "twinkable".

I think this idea will be a waste of everyone's time, and worse, I think it will hurt a currently malfunctioning CRS system even more.

You're worried too much about proving someone's bias instead of offering unbiased opinions on the subject yourself. I'd give up on 'thread bashing' people and just discuss the topic.

My two cents.

While I am for the idea of robes (although I'm only for the idea of robes as a command for cabal leaders to maintain secrecy, and perhaps have the command represent a cloaking power rather than an actual real live cloak), I don't think it's right the way LK attacks everyone who disagrees with the way he thinks.

Seriously dude, just calm down. This is from someone who's nominally on your side of the agreement.

That said, more on cloaking. If you only let the leader of a cabal/tribunal use it, it gives a(nother?) perk to leadership, it allows a cabal/tribunal leader to maintain some sort of secrecy RP as to who the leader of the cabal is (even within the cabal), and it prevents what most people seem to be worried about (and may indeed become a problem if the entire mud gets access) - the fact that maybe everyone will just wander around cloaked all the time.

You're killing like fifty birds with the one stone.

(Could I have used more brackets in that little speech?)

Oh! And because it's mostly an RP skill that won't provide bonuses in combat, it's not like you're making leaders 'too powerful'. There could also be a rule that just says a person shouldn't use it unless they're doing RP as the leader of a cabal and it's reasonable to believe that secrecy would be required of them in that circumstance.

I still don't think that 'hood' infringes much on disguise. Hood lets you conceal yourself, but you aren't fooling anyone - it is obvious that you have something to hide. Disguise lets you pass through the room with your worst enemies and they might not even notice.

And as for polymorph, adjective changing was only a minor benefit that came years after that powerful spell had already been introduced.

But still, the best way to introduce this might be to ignore the hood part for now and just do the cloaking to see how well it is received.