Status to temporarily change character appearance

[Zahrah]

This is something I've seen on other MUDs and it's something I wish we had here as I think it would just help add a bit more depth to the RP. How I've seen it work before is that it's usually just a line of text you could set to modify your character appearance until you changed the status or turned it off. And it could be, say... you had woven flowers in your character's hair or put on some war paint, or uh... maybe your character has been experiencing haunting visions and their eyes have dark circles beneath them and they look tired. That way, when someone looked at you, they would see that and it could prompt some RP.

Or just add a little flavor.

[Jirato]

I'm always a bit hesitant to let players change their own appearances, stuff like that always needs to go through a GM first. This isn't a MUSH. That said, there are several mechanics (such as wearing flowers) that do what you suggested already. It's just not something that you can freely type out.

[Dorn]

To be fair J, no different from emoting really. It's just a RP tool that adds flavor. I can lean on a bar, but unless I keep repeating that in emotes when people walk in, they'd have no idea that is the case. If I put it that in the look, it would be there for people to see.

I've seen plenty of MUDs, that aren't MUSHs, that allow this sort of freedom. I can understand the hesitation, just like the () around emotes, but these things do make the RP crowd feel welcome if they have some flexibility in how they can express their character beyond just EMOTE.

[Zahrah]

It wouldn't REALLY be changing their appearance, though. It'd be temporarily modifying it for a specific scene. Like in the example Dorn gave, it'd let people see what his character is doing/something special. You wouldn't be giving people the freedom to write their own appearances. It would be like... when you look at someone, you would see just a sentence like:

(It looks like she has been crying.)

(He has dark red glyphs painted on his face.)

And that would just be above their proper, game-generated appearance description.

That's all I'm suggesting. And the command could just be something like status He has dark red glyphs painted on his face. And using the status command again with an appropriate sentence following would change it while status off would wipe it.

EDIT: I probably should have titled this "status to temporarily MODIFY character appearance" because that's what I'm really suggesting.

[jilliana]

I don't see much room for abuse for emotes such as these. I too have seen them in other MUDs/MOOs and they are wonderful to play around with.