Character Descriptions

[Sotsa]

I was reading the Good/evil alignment thread, and while such a system is not fitting for this game, it gave me some ideas i've been toying with for the last 30 seconds. Maybe there should be a skill or action you could choose, maybe from the flower menu when you right click a person allowing you to inspect a person. This would take some time, and you would have to be relatively close. Maybe it would take less time the closer you were, and maybe a skill such as perception and/or intelligence would make it faster. A perceptive character would be able to glance things from a character quickly.

I'm not thinking about good/evil stull like horns or red skin, but rather signs of what the character you are inspecting has been through.

For example, maybe a character having been in many fistfights would be described as having calloused knuckles, unless wearing gloves to hide it. having taken many punches might give you a broken nose or the like, unless you are wearing something to hide it like the bandit mask. Having taken sword hits might give you scars for others to see.

Likewise, being skilled in combat skills might give you a description of a 'confident pose' or way of walking or some such. High stealth/int could hide such hints. Maybe having criminal acts turned on would make you 'shifty eyed' or have a 'threatening presence' , depending on your stealth/int and combat skills.

I think this might grant some more depth to social interractions. Maybe let scars and the like have a chance of small, yet permanent debuffs so that factions could not scar their warriors to being intimidating simply with scarring them themselves without any downside.

Edit: thought i'd put in some examples.
"This character is shifty eyed, has sunken knuckles, a crooked nose and carries himself in a threatening way. "
Obviously a character you want to be careful of. He has given and taken a good many punches and has criminal acts turned on with at least theft, trespassing, rage and maybe murder.

"This character moves smoothly and has a penetrating glance"
A character of high agility and perception. Hight intelligence and stealth might be hiding high combat skills as well.

"this character is hulking, has several scars and carries his sword with confidence."
A character with high strenghts and high Melee skill who has been in several sword fights and survived. Criminal acts are not turned on.

"this character has a great many scars, several missing fingers and a limp"
This character has either been very very lucky, or has got a long career of soldering behind him, and a very high stealth/int.

"This character Has hard eyes, a penetrating gaze and carries his bow with confidence"
A character who has committed several murders, has got a high perception and high marksmanship. Not of high enough stealth/int to hide the murder trait though (hard eyes)

some of these might be a bit too revealing.. discuss.

[DaMaGe]

+1. Creative, realistic, and interesting post.

[sabinati]

awesome

[ImpalerWrG]

Seeing numerical values even if not perfectly accurate +1

Seeing Ambigous and hard to remember descritive phrases -1

The basic premise of see player stats when nearby is very sound and would help a lot.

[Junkfist]

Seeing numerical values even if not perfectly accurate +1

Seeing Ambigous and hard to remember descritive phrases -1

The basic premise of see player stats when nearby is very sound and would help a lot.

Ughghg either some graphical representation or what was suggested let's not enumerate everything into a spreadsheet.

[kholhaus]

This would be great if there were a more distinct, less poetic way of going about it.
I'm all for creative outlet, but we're trying to make these people easy to understand, not easy to fall victim to.

[Sotsa]

Meh, It would only take so long to remember the different phrases. Only some are not very descriptive, like 'hard eyed' but it should be possible to name them so that an average understanding of the english language would be enough to understand what they meant. if there are a couple that has to be memorized by the player, atleast it's better than just getting a plain stat sheet. it would look less silly with stealth hiding traits having it written out.

I for one oppose numerical values.

[LimaZulu]

Speaks with a hearty drawl = High farming

I love this idea, OP

+10

[DDDsDD999]

I find Numerical values dumb. The poetic version of sotsa's post would be much more realistic, and give a not so, "This person has 300 UA, 29 Melee, etc." It would be rather cool to use, and would have your character be unique, not a pile of numbers.

[Kaldo]

I guess this would look something like Dwarf fortress' dwarf biography? It would be useful and fun but make it so that the amount of information you get is (soft?)capped by your charisma stat