Avlis policy on: Floaty Names

eNTrOpY · Post by **eNTrOpY** » Wed May 21, 2003 7:48 pm

Rule 1

The floating name above a character's head DOES NOT actually exist IC. It cannot be used to reveal a character's name if the said character has not told you his/her name.

example: Joe meets Sarah for the first time. Joe's player sees the name "Sarah" above Sarah's head. Joe (the character) DOES NOT. Joe cannot say "Hi Sarah"

example 2: Joe meets Tara for the first time. Joe says "Hi my name is Joe". Tara says "Hi my name is Jennifer". As far as Joe is concerned, Tara's name is Jennifer. He does not know that she is lieing.

Rule 2:

The floating name can be used if your character already knows the other character (as long as the other character told you their real name).

example: Joe and Chris know each other. They also told each other their real names Joe and Chris see each other and say "Hi Chris" and "Hi Joe" respectively. This is fine

example 2: Joe meets the same Tara he met in "example 2 of rule 1" again. If Joe says "Hi Tara" i will personally send a dragon to eat him. If Joe says" Hi Jennifer" he gets to avoid dragons for a little bit.

Exception to Rule 2:

A person you know under the effects of "Invisibilty" or "Improved invisibilty" cannot be identified by the floating name unless your character is under the effects of "see invisibility" or "true seeing".

example: Joe and Kelly know each other. Kelly is invisible but Joe "hears" her. Joe DOES NOT have "see invis." or "true seeing" on him and the floating name above Kelly's character says Kelly. If Joe says "Hi Kelly" Joe will soon feel the blades of a Sereg'wethrin Nwalmaer turning him into mincemeat. If Joe says "Who's there? I can hear you", Joe gets a cookie.

Sunscream · Post by **Sunscream** » Wed May 21, 2003 7:58 pm

What are the rules for seeing someone you know under the affects of Shadowshield or Stoneskin?

eNTrOpY · Post by **eNTrOpY** » Wed May 21, 2003 8:02 pm

Sunscream wrote:What are the rules for seeing someone you know under the affects of Shadowshield or Stoneskin?

Not the biggest deal, but if I was roleplaying this:

The first time I see a given person under the effects of either spell I would pretend not to know their name unless my character knows them very well.

On subsequent meetings with this same person under the effects of the same spell i would roleplay knowing them as i've seen them under the effects of the spell before

eNTrOpY · Post by **eNTrOpY** » Wed May 21, 2003 8:59 pm

Liartes wrote:People should also pay good attention to what others are wearing. Most people wear the same outfits day in and day out, so it's not very hard to associate people with outfits.

So if you see someone that you know well and they're wearing armor and a helmet that you've never seen them wear before... it's good form to not know who they are at first, at least until they speak. Am I right?

Correct. If someone is wearing different clothes/armor and a new helmet on their head you cannot identify them.

Mistcaller · Post by **Mistcaller** » Thu May 22, 2003 9:41 am

What about voice recognition?? When do u actually recognize someone by voice?

Vergilius · Post by **Vergilius** » Thu May 22, 2003 6:13 pm

eNTrOpY wrote:
Correct. If someone is wearing different clothes/armor and a new helmet on their head you cannot identify them.

Helmets yes, different clothes maybe. I think that would be more dependant on how well you knew them. The face is the most important feature for identification. I know from real life that I could identify well over 1000 people who wear different clothes on a daily basis if I could only see their faces. The number is probably larger and is probably true for most people. As for a person wearing different clothes whom I met 6 months ago, they'd may look familiar to me, but I wouldn't remember a name.

Also, we might want to consider the popularity effect. We know the name and identifying characteristics of a lot of people that we haven't meet personally. If someone is a leader of something, they probably stick out a bit more than others.

I sometimes RP that I dont' remember names until I've met a person 3 or 4 times, or I call someone by their wrong name, or I pronounce their name wrong or something. After all, If I might 6 people at once, I'll latch onto 1 or 2 names immediately. If I have a 15-30 min conversation with each person, I'll remember the names, otherwise, I'll just remember the one or two.

When in doubt on RPing names, use what is true for you in RL, as its the closest thing we have to having real RP.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 2:24 am

Is one allowed to just leave the name blank so theres nothing abouve the head, or would that be inconveniant to those with poor memories.

Keflex · Post by **Keflex** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 2:28 am

Anonymous wrote:Is one allowed to just leave the name blank so theres nothing abouve the head, or would that be inconveniant to those with poor memories.

Yes, it is allowed, but it's fairly obnoxious for both players and DMs, and a lot of people just simply won't RP with you if you do it, because we've had issues with blank-named changelings dry-looting people and logging off.

A lot of people just put up a floaty name that they never use (that's what I do, and I haven't had a *whole* lot of problems with it).

SpitwolF · Post by **SpitwolF** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 12:11 pm

Just an idea, but if a character tells me a false name. I always put it in my journal. so say if Tara sad her name was jennifer I would put:

True = False
Tara = Jennifer

Dunno whether this helps any others. But it sure helps me to remember and not look like a right jackass

Yellow · Post by **Yellow** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:55 pm

A question about detecting/identifying changelings with floaty name.

Example:
Joe knows Sarah in her human form. Sarah changes to a wolf in front of Joe and he makes his spellcraft-check - now knowing that Sarah is a Changeling.
The next day joe meets Sarah in wolf-form. Does he know it is Sarah?

dougnoel · Post by **dougnoel** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 3:00 pm

Yellow wrote:A question about detecting/identifying changelings with floaty name.

Example:
Joe knows Sarah in her human form. Sarah changes to a wolf in front of Joe and he makes his spellcraft-check - now knowing that Sarah is a Changeling.
The next day joe meets Sarah in wolf-form. Does he know it is Sarah?

Yes.

Nzifklm · Post by **Nzifklm** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 3:02 pm

Just to make sure i understand this rule (and others don't)

My char may or may not have thrown a shuriken at a farmer near Elysia.

The farmer turned out to be immune to any type of physical damage and proceeded to send my char to hell, a couple of times, before getting stuck in a tree to my chars relief. Anyway, after paying his dues in hell, my char was returning to his corpse where he found 3 PCs standing around it. After a long annoying discourse on what did and didn't happen, the PCs decided to "let him go". During the discourse one short smelly dwarf who revealed himself to be a member of the OoG cast what i believe was detect evil on my char (twice, which is annoying and deserves a whole seperate post). After wising up and trying to conceal his identity a little bit better (namely buying new clothes and wearing a hood) my char was walking through the countryside several Avlissian days later when he was stopped by another short smelly dwarf. This dwarf said "I heard you were attacking farmers the other day" This annoyed me as a player because i had not given my name to any PCs and had distinctly changed my appearance. Am I correct to assume that there is no way this second dwarf could have known IC that I was the one attacking farmers before. Also do the Detect X spells make PCs identifiable? (my own brand of evil maybe) In all fairness my char has several distinguishing tattoos (all of which were concealed by his clothing when meeting the second dwarf, but not in the initial encounter) Also, is it conceavable for a PC to know the class of another PC? One of the three (who was not a short, smelly dwarf) asked my char what order of monks he was with which i thought to be in bad taste and replied with a "monks?"

edit: sorry about this long, distracting post in this nice neat forum/thread.

Vichan Lyonsen · Post by **Vichan Lyonsen** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 6:27 pm

Nzifklm wrote:Just to make sure i understand this rule (and others don't)

My char may or may not have thrown a shuriken at a farmer near Elysia. The farmer turned out to be immune to any type of physical damage and proceeded to send my char to hell, a couple of times, before getting stuck in a tree to my chars relief. Anyway, after paying his dues in hell, my char was returning to his corpse where he found 3 PCs standing around it. After a long annoying discourse on what did and didn't happen, the PCs decided to "let him go". During the discourse one short smelly dwarf who revealed himself to be a member of the OoG cast what i believe was detect evil on my char (twice, which is annoying and deserves a whole seperate post).

So your character, who may or may not be evil, and who possibly might have attacked this farmer who took offense and killed you for this thing you might have done

When this character returned and was confronted by the G2S's of Elysia, one of them, apparantly a malodorus dwarf of the OoG attmpted to detect if you were evil....

What about his attempt on you bothers you, it seems reasonably IC to me......

After wising up and trying to conceal his identity a little bit better (namely buying new clothes and wearing a hood) my char was walking through the countryside several Avlissian days later when he was stopped by another short smelly dwarf. This dwarf said "I heard you were attacking farmers the other day" This annoyed me as a player because i had not given my name to any PCs and had distinctly changed my appearance. Am I correct to assume that there is no way this second dwarf could have known IC that I was the one attacking farmers before.

That sounds like a good assumption to me, if its a different dwarf, he wasnt there at the first event, then it would seem unlikely he knew you.

Also do the Detect X spells make PCs identifiable? (my own brand of evil maybe)

No Detect evil doesnt make you any more identifiable than any other evil detected by it.

In all fairness my char has several distinguishing tattoos (all of which were concealed by his clothing when meeting the second dwarf, but not in the initial encounter) Also, is it conceavable for a PC to know the class of another PC? One of the three (who was not a short, smelly dwarf) asked my char what order of monks he was with which i thought to be in bad taste and replied with a "monks?"

edit: sorry about this long, distracting post in this nice neat forum/thread.

I think the question about the monk class thing was merely supposition on their part...you see a person dressed not in armor, using shuriken, and perhaps they looked into the inventory of your fallen body before you returned....no that seems like a reasonable guess on their part.

Phrasing the question like it was a certainty, might have been an effort to get you to slip up.

Nzifklm · Post by **Nzifklm** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 7:31 pm

What about his attempt on you bothers you, it seems reasonably IC to me......

The thing that bothered me is that i made the save the first time, so he just did it again. Others will probably disagree with me on this, but it doesn't seem right that he should just be standing there casting detect until I fail a save, but like I said, this isn't the place for that discussion.