/appearance Commands

[NinerTwoGolf]

An idea that’s been bouncing around in my head is away to describe character appearances that aren’t supported by script or items in the server. This is to allow more natural description of characters in conversation.

A few examples that I’ve seen recently that got me rethinking the idea:

Lester Conway losing his eye and now wearing an eyepatch.

Solomon Cobb missing his leg.

Celeste Bulfinch with her pregnancy and now routinely bringing her daughter to places.

Unless you interact with these people regularly, they remember to casually (and sometimes awkwardly) insert it into the conversation or they remember to throw out the /do every time someone new walks up.

There would be various commands and systems that would work together to make it happen while providing some QoL things to keep it from getting annoying.

I will say some things here where that make you go, “Niner, what the hell are you smoking,” but when you hit one of those parts I please ask you read the commands and how it would work as I will go into more detail about more nuanced parts of the system.

The text for appearance should be colored, either the same as /me and /do to fit with the RP enhancement, or maybe it’s own thing not to get lost. There are good arguments for both sides.

When you log in, the server should tell you what your current appearance is saved as to remind you, in case it is no longer relevant. Appearance should automatically appear when you get close to another player, say 5 meters. (There is a command that will override this so before you recoil in horror at what events’ chats would look like, let me finish.

The commands and how they’d work.

/appearance [message]: this would be worded similar to a /do but be worded like a /me, so “would have a scar on his left cheek” becomes “Player 58 would have a scar on his left cheek or “Nathan Zachary has a scar on his left cheek.”

/toggleappearance: Sets whether you want your appearance message to be visible or not. An example if Nathan from the previous example is wearing a mask or if Cobb is wearing pants where you couldn’t tell his leg was fake.

/disableappearance: Blanket command to disable seeing appearances. This would be helpful for events and parties where there is large number of people, want to play someone who is just a little clueless, or just don’t want to engage with the system.

/appearance [id]: This would be if you disabled it for an event but found yourself talking to someone and wanted to read them a bit more. If they had no description, would just have a little “You’d see nothing notable about Player (32).” or similar as feedback.

/disableappearance [id]: This would disable the automatic message from chat for individuals. For example, if you work in SASG you’d probably get pretty tired of being constantly reminded that “Lester God Bless Conway (43) would be missing his left eye.” With that command, you would disable the automatic message from appearing when close, as you’d be well aware at that point and didn’t need the refresher. However, if someone changed their appearance, this would automatically disable as you’d have notice something new about them.

As stated this is meant to just add a somewhat more natural way of character RP without having to spam a /me or /do every someone walks up. Perhaps you want to show your character has been through the wringer a few times as part of their story. Perhaps you got jumped and you want people to naturally react and ask about a black eye.

Love to hear thought, comments, criticism, and menu recommendations.

[Ash]

Saw a similar suggestion a while ago where /setdescription <text> would set it for your character then /inspect <id> (within range) would show you what they wrote in there.

Your suggestion is obviously more in depth than that but either way this would be a neat addition. Obviously rules around it should be the same as those for /do

[inorigj]

Yeah has been several suggestions on this same topic over the years. its clearly wanted by the community

+1

[Saint_]

This is a feature on a couple other servers, very good for QoL and boosting immersion. Big +1 on this from me 

[CalvinKlein]

+1 for more personalized characters