Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[DogsRNice]

So in the future development page “Making hiding impossible in wide open areas (at least in adv mode)” is something that’s been implemented and it makes sense but I thought of an interesting way to expand on this by allowing animal people adventurers to attempt to pretend to be the normal form of their species. Success could vary depending on the species, status, and weather or not that type of animal exists in that area. After all a polar bear person in a jungle is very obvious but a squirrel person in an area where giant squirrels are common could camouflage themselves well.

[IndigoFenix]

This is a rather specific suggestion, but it could be blended into a more general concept of disguises.  It's possible right now to assume an identity, but right now you can only invent an alias, and you can only assume the identity of a member of your own species.  But it would be neat if you could attempt to assume the identity of an existing historical figure (like pretending to be the king of a civilization), or a member of a different species (or a different caste of your own species).

Of course, imitating a different species would have to have some kind of mechanism to determine how similar two castes/species looked.  A female human could plausibly imitate a male human, or an elf, but would have a harder time imitating a male dwarf, and would have little hope in imitating an elephant man, or an elephant...but an elephant man might be able to imitate an elephant, at least to someone who wasn't very good at observation.

I'm not really sure how this could be done.  Possibly using creature tags, like [RESEMBLES:CREATURE:CASTE:amount], and [RESEMBLES_CLASS:CREATURE_CLASS:amount] for more general categories.  For example, a human female could have:

Code: [Select]

[RESEMBLES:HUMAN:MALE:50]
[RESEMBLES:ELF:FEMALE:70]
[RESEMBLES:ELF:MALE:60]
[RESEMBLES:DWARF:FEMALE:60]
[RESEMBLES:DWARF:MALE:20]
[RESEMBLES_CLASS:HUMANOID:10]

This wouldn't necessarily work both ways; it would just be a way of abstracting how easy it was to disguise yourself as a particular species.  Creature size range could also figure into it.

The exact means of disguise should probably be abstracted.  While it might be possible to implement something like face paints and makeup, this would be a lot of extra work for not a huge amount of gameplay payoff.  Maybe some articles of clothing like cloaks and masks could have some extra tag that lets them boost one's disguise ability (while also making the bluff target more likely to get suspicious if you're wearing them).

[towerator]

I could imagine that some species such as felines could become fairly sneaky by stripping some of their clothing. For extra trickiness it could even cause a malus in an environement that clashes a lot with their fur.

[delphonso]

How well could an elephant pretend to be an elephantman, though?

I really like this idea, though I think the game itself would need some rebuilding to pull it off. Animal men in the raws are just a template which uses animals, and animal appearences are mostly flavor text and not real data.

I still do like the idea of animal men hiding as animals. Perhaps that could be a form of historical trickery they could achieve? Decieve the populace that you were just a regular domesticated elephant all along.

Some make sense and some don't - snail and worm man, for example. And... kangaroomen, which are basically just kangaroos.

[DogsRNice]

Maybe they could have a tag like “resemblance to normal species” or something that determines how well they can emulate the appearance of wild animals.

[Pillbo]

Maybe some sort of Blends-Into-Nature or Nature-Disguise skill so a creature like a Badger person could be pretty high and tough to distinguish wild animals but a Elephant man will pretty clearly stand out as something else?

[MaxTheFox]

+1.