Faketell

Thought that came to mind while I'm bored at work, for people with a high enough dissembling it could be interesting to let people use fake tells with a much lower threshold to spot, for the kind of consummate liar who can feign those little twitches and expressions that most don't even see. 

I had never considered this use case for a lower tell threshold, and it's absolutely fascinating.

My own previous thoughts that I idea'd a while back were that tells should probably have a slightly lower threshold with increasing trust (e.g. a loved one should know you better than a stranger/acquaintance and should be able to read you better - so they should roll with a bonus - IF this is not the case already, which I actually do not know, pilgrim's clever enough that it might already be a thing, I haven't experimented enough to really test it properly!), and that it'd be neat to be able to set your tell "effort level" so to speak, so that you could choose to give away more (because sometimes, what's the fun or the use of writing a tell if nobody's going to see it?).

But the idea of using it to fake things is really cool actually, I kinda love it. Would someone with a really really insanely high ability to see tells be able to determine that it's faked? Would there be any way to tell the difference between faked and real tells, or would they all just show up the same? Would it be a different tag?

I do like this idea, though....

I'm not sure how it'd play out, even if it was relatively easy to implement, and I'll try to explain my thoughts here.

Current Set-Up

• Right now, tells require a more social roll than an acuity roll to figure out.
• HMOTE is a hidden emote -- it takes acuity and physical proximity to notice. There isn't any way to embed hidden things into an emote, currently.*1
• TELLMOTE is a deceptive emote -- it takes intelligence, like logic or intuition, and some measure of being able to read people -- investigation, dissembling, etc -- to be able to figure out.**2 You can embed a tell into a regular emote/hmote/tmote with <tell> tags.
• Although you currently see 'you're not sure if anyone else notices' -- that is the placeholder for a system of being able to see if anyone else notices.***3
• There are some bugs and clunkiness with using the tags, such as the fact that you can't use them in the middle of speech, or sometimes you'll have an extra space or a comma, etc.*4
• There is no mediation for tell difficulty based on demeanor or relationships.*5

Reasonings

Tells were initially implemented because:

• We want robust, quality CVC in a story game, as conflict is a great driver of narrative.
• CVC is not always solved by physical means. We wanted to make sure there was space for all sorts of characters in the game world, not just warriors. And thus, there has to be a sense of 'social combat' that is governed in just as fair a way as 'physical combat' -- or, at least, as fair as an arena of political backstabbery might be. One part of having comfortable CVC in a game is that there are multiple routes for characters to take in order to instigate conflict or get their revenge. This is also why combat is so dynamic, theoretically, and you could fling sand in someone's face or push them off a wall.
• I, pilgrim, can sometimes be a very CVC player. But when I am involved in a situation where my character is purposefully deceiving another character, I tend to feel a little uncomfortable. I want there to be some measure of fair play involved. But I don't want it to be as overt as me just telling them, because that's not fair to me -- their character is probably deceiving mine, too. I mean, I've been in situations where this is definitely happening. Anyone who has played RPI muds has probably been in such a situation as some point. *6
• Mistsparrow can be a very benignly secretive player who plays non-CVC scenarios where characters are nevertheless involved in purposeful deception -- most usually of their own private lives that are not intended to impact too terribly upon anyone in specific. This is honestly an attitude that I would love to see in Avaria too: that sense of depth in one's own story, rather than a constant pressure to be murdering or betraying each other. We weren't really classifying SoA as a RPI, strictly, because it's not really supposed to function like one. The focus is on stories rather than just the roleplay itself. So, when we were talking about the idea of tells, Mistsparrow pointed out that they could be utilized to also contain elements of a character that aren't necessarily antagonistic, but simply a personal facet that the character (and also the player) might be uncomfortable sharing.

Misuse

We never planned to police tells. In fact, Mistsparrow and I had some direct conversations about how we were *not* going to police tells. If we saw someone using tells nicely in CVC conflict, we'd reward them with some extra Presence or XP, but other than that we wouldn't demand the use of tells, because...

Ultimately, using a tell when it goes against your character's plans to reveal something, especially when it comes to CVC deception is.... a measure of good CVC sport.  The tells are highlighted in the emote text like that because there should be a sense that *something is wrong, something is off* if a person notices a tell -- even if the tell is something like 'she slowly fidgets at a lock of hair while gazing at her hand of cards'. But if there is something that you, as a player, genuinely wish to be revealed -- you don't really have to use tells at all. That said, there's also an element of good sporting to your character trying to hide parts of themselves that someone else may not see, and making it so that potentially someone else really doesn't see that part of you. Since it's a story game, that makes the development of relationship dynamics more complicated and intense and potentially more fun and mysterious. One of my favorite things to do while roleplaying is to have my character dig at someone else and learn things about them, and it's fun for there to be hidden depths.

So, we had expected that people would use tells when they wanted to: either because they wanted to make more of a game out of discovering their characters' depths, or they genuinely felt secretive about their characters' depths but like to have those depths in case someone notices, or they are involved in CVC deception but want to be a good sport about giving others a fair chance to notice. And we figured that outside those use cases, people wouldn't be using tells.

 That said, we recently had a very unhappy situation with a player who was using tells as faketells, pretty much exactly the way you are describing, pof Kinsa. And this is really not what tells are for. We struggled a lot with how to deal with this, and in the end, after weeks of warnings, we temp banned this player. I reflect unhappily on the whole debacle fairly often, and I've come to some conclusions.

• While Song of Avaria is not your typical RPI, it still has some measure of the RPI Problem which is that... players get invested in their character, and attached to the stakes involved in conflict.
• There is a long and terrible history in the genre of metagaming. This sometimes isn't as overt as someone saying "My alt is gonna drop some phat loot over at the east gate and then I'm gonna git ova on muh main and pick it up". It can manifest in many ways.
  • "Get online, there's an event happening!" (Not so bad, although you probably shouldn't pressure people regarding calenderized events.)
  • "Get online, Paldeo is killing my character in the alleyway behind the caravanserai!" (Very bad, please don't do this.)
  • "I'm kind of uncomfortable with Oliye, something about him just gives me an OOC red-flaggy vibe." (This is bad if you're chatting with another player, and poisons people against each other. If you feel that way, please report it to staff via ISSUE. You can do anonymous issues if reporting a staffmember.)
  • "Aw, your character is so wonderful, give me more time to hang out with you!" (Low-key bad, especially if it's part of love-bombing as part of an OOC manipulation scheme. Alternative: just schedule a time to play together.)
  • "Hey, I just wanted to get in touch and find out if you had any boundaries you'd prefer we don't explore in roleplay." (Low-key bad, especially if you have a gaming history of specifically violating people's boundaries and using it against them. Alternative: just use xcards, or do a quick yes-or-no 'are you okay' check-in.)
  • "Let me share my character's goals and dreams so that you can decide whether or not you want to play your character with me." (This is not necessarily bad. This style of collaborative writing is frequently used on other games, and you can go play one of them. However, this is bad and metagamey if you are lying either blatantlly or by ommission in order to influence another person's gameplay choices.)
  • "Oh, I am tired. I must go to rest." (Said while roleplaying, under the intended presumption to convey to someone else that you're logging out, when really you're hiding outside the door to ambush them with a backstab.)
  • "There's a storm here, I have to log out before my internet crashes!" (When you just want to ditch the current interaction. Like, just don't say anything then, don't OOCly lie in order to retain some manipulative metagame foothold on people's feelings.)
  • Using mechanical exploits that don't fully make sense in roleplay in order to 'get ahead' in a CVC environment.
• Historically, RPIs have attempted to rule out metagaming by forbidding all OOC communication. But...
  • This rules out the chance of a pleasant online community based around the game.
  • People are going to communicate OOCly anyway, and this just ensures that they do it secretively, and potentially also makes metagaming worse because an established inner clique of metagamers will grow and gain control.
  • So, we wanted to have a pleasant and relatively-trusting OOC atmosphere where we all utilize our discretion about IC secrets but enjoy pleasant community-building interaction. 
    • The problem is not OOC communication. The problem is metagaming, and this is a problem solved by moderation rather than forbidding players from talking to one another.
    • To a degree, of course, the metagaming problem requires keeping IC secrets -- because it's impossible to unsee some things, and that makes it difficult for players to play immersively. Some things still need to be kept IC.
• Highlighting this because I think about it a lot: Roughly 15 years ago, a fellow MUD gamer told me something that has stuck with me. "There's the game, and then there's the metagame, and you have to play both." This was in response to some whining that I was doing over AIM about the outcome of some in-game political fiasco. At the time, this was legitimately a great piece of wisdom, and that could be why I hated it so much. I didn't want to play the metagame, and I still don't want to, and I don't want to see people playing it. I don't want to see people who are doing IC manipulation also doing OOC manipulation. *7 However, we have to acknowledge and grudgingly respect the fact that this established reality has been our gaming tradition for... a really long time. I have also metagamed in the past, in some ways (hell, whining to someone over AIM about IC events is metagaming already), and probably all of us have at some point if we've been playing MUDs for that long. And if we want to change this metagamey environment, we'll need to have some patience, forgiveness, and understanding towards players who are habitually perpetuating such an atmosphere. 
• That leads to the last of my conclusions: that it's going to take time, patience, and concentrated effort to land on the cultural CVC attitudes that we want to see. However much forgiveness and understanding we might have, though, and however much we might try to implement mechanics and policies that help decrease the pressure of the metagame, we are not going to just... let people boundlessly leverage the metagame, and send Song of Avaria into the same toxic pits that RPI games have fallen into in the past. Some parts of that effort include:
  • Sincerely moderating any metagaming that we see: by first warning players and then utilizing stronger measures like temporary bans.
  • Encouraging the reporting of metagaming: I sincerely want people to report when they feel like someone else is metagaming, or even just negatively letting OOC stuff influence IC actions. Part of this poisonous historic atmosphere that MUDs have is... the sense that others must be metagaming and there's nothing you can do about it. This often leads to suspicion of metagaming when there is no metagaming happening. I love to investigate and set those suspicions to rest, so please never feel bad about reporting suspicions that turn out not to be true. I hope that every disproved metagaming suspicion is a nail in the coffin of the toxic-atmosphere-residue from other games.
  • Recognizing that some aspects of metagaming are unavoidable and acceptable: Players might want to vent feelings to each other, encourage each other to log on, establish character concepts before rolling into the game as a team, and other such things that could be considered metagaming. But there's a boundary at which it becomes toxic, and we have to develop a sense of where that boundary is, and respect it.
  • Develop clearer policies: Because of the above, a policy like "no metagaming" is too vague. Something like "Do not OOCly lie to each other" and "Do not OOCly reveal ongoing IC secrets" is much clearer and more useful. 

I'm sure you weren't expecting all this weighty conversation over something as simple as a suggestion for faketell. But what I'm trying to explain is that I don't believe we are ready for something like faketell yet. We first have to get good at regular tell. 

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1. I'd like to add a way into emotes to embed hidden information, such as quietly mumbled words, or a non-tell small tick, etc. A tag like <hid> or <hidden> or <hide> or something could potentially work for that.
2. We need to refine the rolls used for figuring out tells. Right now it isn't completely sensible, though it is rather dynamic in the sense that it can use different stats or skills depending what someone's good at.
3. We need to further develop tells to the extent that you might be able to realize who in the room has been able to notice the tell.
4. We want to streamline the tell system so that it'll be easier to use. This might also involve changing the syntax, or adding new ways of using the syntax, and even making it something with non-tell alternates like: <tell: There's a pleasant nod.| There's a subtly-impatient nod, and even though it comes with a smile, that smile doesn't touch the corners of either eye.>...
5. I love the idea from pof Inaya about things influencing tells. I believe this could be something like how PEMITs work between players if they have a certain length of relationship history. You might be good at noticing even an enemy's attitudes if you know them well enough, whereas just trusting someone to a loved degree doesn't necessarily mean that you know them very well at all!

6. A tell, in these situations of CVC deception, is just for you: for your character, for your character's story. If you have invested feelings into your character and your character's goals, you genuinely don't want the other person to see it; you are writing it for the sake of fair play. If you're more healthily invested in the story alone, then you probably care a little less whether someone sees it or doesn't.

7. I'd actually like for all human beings to learn the signs of manipulation and be very good at protecting themselves, both IRL and in the OOC atmosphere of online communities.