Disguises

[NothingGoldCanStay]

I understand that Disguises are not officially supported, until you have the Disguise Self tool.

I play a character who is constantly changing her appearance, the way she talks, and even the manner of which she walks. Somehow though, people recognize her voice, and I get told "Disguises are not supported."

I don't think that "Not Supported" means that you have to not play along, and completely screw over a 'disguised' PC. There is nothing that I can do to change that my name floats over my head. I am pretty sure this is what is 'Not officially supported' means, Not, "Have a free pass at sniffing out this PC who is built around spying because you can hit tab."

If I am wrong, can someone please correct me and let me know what to do to adjust my play?

[Maimed]

Unfortunatly there really is no way to enforce people playing along with disguises, even if we wanted. In general, if someone seems to be concealing who they are (or they make it really obvious like *USES A FAKE VOICE*) I play along. Unless I have high detection skills i'm probably not going to identify someone by their voice and gait, anyway.

It's great that you're making such an effort, though.

[NothingGoldCanStay]

The solution is as easy as a NWNX Plugin that allows you to change players names. Though, that's too abuseable I guess?

[Saturnalia]

As someone who had a moderately successful spy in the past (But never got to Disguise Self tool) the most successful way I found to deal with this issue was not to rely on wardrobe changes, and emoting a different voice because you do run into the aforementioned issues and the fact that it is a very grey area without the tool. Bluff means you can be a good liar, but without the tool I would say its almost a DM issue to put on a quality undercover disguise.

What I did was try and develop a persona that was consistent and deemed harmless. Even after his cover was blown, my character was given the ability to turn it around well enough as a double agent. If the Law is after you, and you become strangely acquitted, you need a reason to go back to your criminal friends and explain why that happened. Its a small server, and one person seeing something they shouldn't happens often and spreads rumors like a wildfire. I would say the mark of an good spy in danger is being able to find a rational explanation, or a patsy to take the fall.

As an example. My spy was under cover as a merchant (Upper) and fence (Lower). People needed me for my ability to come up with coin for their goods on both sides. So when my file got too thick I got arrested by the Watch and cut a deal when an Agent came to save me. There was no way I could lie my way out of what happened, there were too many witnesses, so I owned up to it. Went to my criminal friends and said "I know you heard all that about me getting arrested, well now I'm signed on to quartermaster the Auxiliary and i'm IN!" They bought it and it worked great for a good while, and I could shovel shit to both ends for gold.

[Knight Of Pentacles]

Most people will make an effort to accommodate you so long as you're tasteful about it.  But it really isn't possible, even probably with fancy plugins/scripting, because people could still see your account name I'd imagine and meta off that.  Generally the best way to "spy" or disguise yourself is by making sure no one knows on an OOC level who you are or what your intentions are.

[Vlaid]

In my experience doing a ton of "personas" without the Spymaster rogue perk is a bad idea.

Having maybe one other "persona" is fine maybe, but you have to remember just as much as you are portraying your high bluff (at least I hope you have high bluff if you think your disguises should work) they might be portraying high wisdom/spot/listen/detective perks.

If you run into problems ask the player what they feel let them see through the disguise or ask a DM. Disguises require a lot of cooperation between players to make it tasteful and not just a free pass to put on some different items/change your emotes and suddenly the most wanted PC on the server is allowed to walk around Upper without any problems or vice versa. The more well known your PC is you less success you should expect your disguise to have.

I will still go with the idea that it is better to play a spy as someone who is using social engineering/lieing to engender themselves into whatever places they want to go into. Go talk to law enforcement and tell them you'll spy on Lower, go talk to Lower PCs and tell them you're spying on Upper and feed both sides information (or disinformation) to allow yourself to go wherever you want freely as a spy. That's just a broad example but I find that more tasteful than having five different sets of armor/helmets in your inventory.

[Pandip]

Don't do disguises. Period. End of story. Stop asking questions.

Look, NWN just doesn't support the process very well and making an effort to do something like this without the effects of shapeshifting or something similar makes it incredibly hard on both sides. Even in the best of circumstances, disguises tend to descend into a series of awkward tells before things are retconned for everyone around you. This is not only unwieldy, but it tends to lead to frustration. "But I have 19 bluff!" "Yeah, but I have 20 spot and the investigator perk and..." so on and so forth. These things only work if you're a shifter making his way to a discreet peace agreement or a wizard who has polymorphed into a girl for secrecy.

 We've gone over this topic numerous times in the past and it's not going to change. People have come before you with the complaint, and I can assure you that there will be people to come after you with the same exact qualms.

It just doesn't work. So stop trying and take a different angle on the spy/espionage/deception concept and do something that's more easily done without having to constantly interject with a "excuse you, but nononno!" whenever somebody isn't paying enough attention to you to care weather this outfit is orange or blue or has titty tassels or clings to your legs in a certain way. It's too much to keep track of and, frankly, it's generally more of a hassle for everyone else instead of being fun.

[whiterabbit]

Obviously the best way to keep a disguise is to stay OOC'ly obscure as well as IC'ly.  However, if your PC lives a while, there will come a time when he/she becomes known.  Most players on this server have high standards and will not use metaknowledge.  They'll respect your disguise so long as you make it obvious to them that you are in fact disguised.  There are some players who are just plain new to a server like this, and don't understand what it is to be disguised.  Then there are perhaps some players who will just read the text above your head even if they know you're wearing a disguise.

I like to think that about 90% of EFU falls in the first group.  Once your PC is known, your goal is to try to keep your disguise from inconveniencing them.  If you make sure your disguise causes them the least OOC pain possible, they'll respect it and even enjoy it.

Here are some things that I think accomplish this goal:

• Alter your description every time you put on or take off a disguise
• Put in a good description of what you look like (gear), what weapon you are carrying, what your accent is
• Put the name of your alter ego in the description
• You could possibly put something in like "//This PC is in disguise", but some players (or DMs) might consider that to be in poor taste - I don't know


• Try to take actions early on that let the other person know you are in disguise
• Introduce yourself as your alter ego as early as possible, make it clear that this is a first meeting
• Use an obvious (but hopefully not annoying) different pattern of speech
• Develop the personality of your PC andthe personalities of your alter egos;  Send differently styled forum letters, and make sure the letters say something about the personality of your alter ego
  
• Try not to be "cheesy", for lack of a better term.  Don't make people embarrassed that they're respecting your disguise
• If you're wearing a disguise in Sanctuary, you'd better make sure the name on your ring is appropriate;  I've had a DM tell me the name on your ring is easily readable by those around you

Disguises are not supported by DMs, probably because the enforcement would be a nightmare.  A DM doesn't want to go around getting he-said she-said opinions to try to piece together what happened in what might be a highly subjective situation.  That being said, the DMs want people to RP their characters well, and don't want people in general to metagame or use metaknowledge.  I imagine if a DM caught somebody in the act of willfully ignoring a disguise, they would probably do something about it, but they've made it  very clear that we shouldn't expect it.  Just assume a DM won't do anything if somebody ignores your disguise.  It sucks for you, but DMs are here to have fun too, and enforcing that isn't fun.

If somebody willfully outs me on a disguise after I've gone through a lot of trouble to show them that I am in fact disguised, I usually say something IC'ly to shame them for their use of metaknowledge.  "That's amazing!.  Wish I could see through clothes like you."  Thankfully, that rarely happens on a server with such high quality players.  If somebody outs me on disguise by accident, I say something like "What did you call me?" or "Do I know you?"

My current PC has excellent spot and the detective background (which lets me see another PC's bluff).  Unless they have no bluff whatsoever, I just respect their disguise, assuming my PC has not identified them.  If I wanted to try to identify them, I'd politely ask a DM if they would let me roll a spot check - and if the DM said "no", I'd just keep going along with their disguise.  I've had a player use barkskin to disguise themselves, and I just went along with it.  I PM'ed a scion that had claws for hands to ask if they were disguised.  They said they were, so I went along with it too.  The game is more fun with the intrigue that disguises bring, imo, so give the players the benefit of the doubt.

From this thread:

You certainly can use very distinctly different type clothing and setup to "disguise" yourself. You are expected to hold high bluff, possibly charisma to back this deception up as well.

First and foremost, however, it should be painfully obvious. It cannot be enforced, so we certainly can't tell people they could not recognise your speaking, voice or so, unless we can oversee these events and represent your possible skill with bluff and similar. I repeat, we cannot enforce this in daily play. We can surely have a say if we can oversee specific attempt, but outside that, it's difficult. We expect players to RP these things within reason. It is not an excuse either that nobody wants to keep track of it, while I totally understand it and it is sometimes very difficult in game like nwn because of it's visuals and lack of subtle mechanics. It also is not an argument to just do different coloured robe and claim you have a disguise with that and a pot helmet. It needs two to play along.

People however have responsibility on their own as well. You should make some effort to think if you know some person by face, name or what. If you've only seen clothes, spoken and heard name, you likely would not know much better if the same person appears in totally different garments and masks or something, and gave another name, unless you have some greater familiary with them. Again, there is just no way to enforce this, so it's all to all up to players. If you try to keep disguises, mostly it falls on you to represent your appropriate skills and attributes, and make it so painfully obvious, that you have somekind totally different disguise - leaving really no room for doubt.

[NothingGoldCanStay]

Some of these posts are more helpful than others. Thanks for all the information. I will try to enact some of the good points that I've read.

[Caster13]

This is not only unwieldy, but it tends to lead to frustration. "But I have 19 bluff!" "Yeah, but I have 20 spot and the investigator perk and..." so on and so forth.

If at any time a conversations sounds like this, a DM should be involved and the one who asked for those numbers and rolls in the first place!

[granny]

Contrary to people who try to avoid trouble, difficulty or headaches I'm one that go for challenges, even more to learn and figure out stuff that people find hard to do. So, if you ask me, I will say: DO DISGUISES (and follow the awesome tips given above). But, always, relax, chill and try not to get stressed (I must say that to myself too). As LPFF's name says: let's play for fun. Trust our community, sometimes we commit mistakes but most of the time we try to be fair and kind.

Now, one thing I recommend you to work upon is your emotes. Have stuff prepared that you might use fast when you firstly approach a group/ individual (I had some hotkeyed on a PC of mine in the past once). I'm horrible with examples, but let me give you some ideas, yes? Do not get them as perfect, although. It's good to polish them to fit whatever you want.

• [this strange woman walks in clad in dark, tattered robes. It's hard to distinguish her features, even more with the hood that covers most of her face]
• [the heavily armored warrior before you speaks slowly, as if having issues to coordinate her thoughts.]
• [with the back curved, this woman seems to walk with difficulty. It is not obvious although if she is young or old]
• [with the curves of a woman and the deep voice of a man, this robed human steps into the Crone and greets you] "Hey, sweetie! Looking for fun?"

Also, give it back to players. I usually try to ignore the name of the character above their heads. If I do not remember their names just by looking them, I make it so that my character has forgotten too. There is this dwarf that I kept forgetting his name so many times that he (the character, not the player, mind you) turned to complain ICly ("Oh, damn ye. Can't ye remember mah name".... or something) and it was great.

Another trick I used once was to give up on trying to bypass the metagaming of the blue name above the head by never giving it to anyone. It was a beautiful name (to me) but it was also slightly complicated. Loreli O'yria would go around presenting herself with easy to remember aliases (Sarah Macfangs was one, the other had Moonflies in the surname, I think), which would differ when in Upper and Lower. As she had easily discernible characteristics  (yellow scales), I had to trick people by confusing them with different names. Of course, somewhere in the process people knew that she had multiple names. But it is good in a place where people track bandits more by names than by descriptions (lazy watchers, I see you).

And last, but not least: depending on the concept I'd make your description vague. You don't need a description for each of your disguises. A good shady double-face should melt into the crowd without going noticed (or more often than not at least).

In the end, whatever strategy you prefer, you must create an atmosphere. I've seen awesome examples of people doing it better than what I have suggested above and I fall in love with their style and careful characterization. I try to observe them and learn with them. There is no cake recipe for this, you need to figure out what works better for you.

O-oh! And try to be fast and cunning. If you think that you'll need to explain people OOCly that you are disguised, that often means that you weren't clear enough in your RP or that you didn't took care in describing yourself before any interaction.

[OuterSanctum]

I've found that the majority of players play along with my character's disguise, although he uses it incredibly sparingly and I change my description fully for it.  I also make it quite clear that he is deliberately hiding his face.  Still - Here's my thoughts on the matter:  

It's one thing if you change your description, change everything about your appearance, aren't wearing your Sanctuary ring, and you simply walk through "hostile" territory.  I'd imagine most players, on seeing a black-clad thug with a helmet on walk through Lower, won't be like OMG that's obviously XYZ from Upper let's kill him/her.  On the other hand, I don't think if an established Upper character decided to go around questing with Lowerspeople in a disguise...they'd adventure and fight with him/her without noticing their identity.  It depends on the extent of roleplay.  

I don't think skills play into it that well.  I don't care how good your spot is, if you've never met the character before you can't discern who it is, if they're wearing a helmet you can't see their face.  Even if you said "my spot is so good I can tell from your muscular build", I'd disagree.  Also, it doesn't take bluffing skills to be able to dress differently and put on a helmet.

[whiterabbit]

I don't think skills play into it that well. I don't care how good your spot is, if you've never met the character before you can't discern who it is, if they're wearing a helmet you can't see their face. Even if you said "my spot is so good I can tell from your muscular build", I'd disagree. Also, it doesn't take bluffing skills to be able to dress differently and put on a helmet.

No, but if you don't have bluff, it would probably be a good idea to RP it.  Maybe put a costume error into your description.  Maybe emote nervous ticks, or betray clues as to who you are in things you say.  "But Agent Du'Ponte told me.... oops".  I agree with you that if you haven't met the person before that you should not be able to identify them - that's just common sense.  But you might be able to tell that they aren't who they appear to be - that they're obviously hiding something important.  I personally would ask a DM if they would let me make a check against their disguise if I could tell the PC was in fact trying to be disguised (And I've seen your PC's disguised description OuterSanctum, a lot of thought went into it - it's sitting here in my notes where I can use it if I ever want to act on it ;) ) before identifying them.  I think it's higher quality RP to respect disguises unless there's a very good IC reason for identification of the PC.