Injuries/treatments

I've been pondering a few things as far as treatments on unconcious or sleep avatar characters. Currently npc's can only be treated when they are unconcious (which led to some windows of time which could have been awkward holding Hek's clothing and not being able to give it back. Also, the times of drink your dang medicinal tea Hek!)  so maybe a way to hand medicine to npc's from characters they trust would be nice too.

Being able to uncover feasable areas would maybe help with some injuries, like ankles or arms for sleep avatars and npc's. For those playing dedicated healers, any thoughts?

I saw a mention of demeanor and first aid treatments on the wiki , and was wondering how those work together currently.

So I am not a dedicated healer nor do I know everything but I can tell you a few things:

Inaya is able to treat Hek while conscious based on relationship/demeanour. When this happens, he does an emote something along the lines of "gives you a slight smile."

She is NOT, however, able to take things from him when conscious - he still fully objects to that (as he should, people you like shouldn't steal from you any more than people you don't like).

When a PC has you (as the healer) set as a "loved one," you no longer ask permission to treat their wounds - it's given automatically, so the command "treat <person's> <wound>" goes through without a pause. Same goes for bandaging.

Absolutely agree that being able to simply uncover areas would be pretty ace, rather than having to take things, but don't know how complicated that would be to code.

Awesome, ty for the reply! I figured Inaya was able to given him being awake more now but treated, but wasn't 100% sure how it all works. 

My character has never recieved treatment from  another so I wasn't certain on it.

And yes, the coding part xD

I -think- the intention was to eventually code in a cover/uncover to used on others instead of stealing people’s clothes, but I’m not totally sure where that stands presently. 

My best shot to letting people treat NPCs (and maybe sleeping avatars, but… maybe not) is to allow for some sort of ‘healer’ relationship to be set. Not quite a loved one… but someone who the character might allow to move clothes covering a wound, treat, redress, give medicines, etc. 

Regarding sleeping avatars - tying the uncover to wounds specifically might be more feasible? <Uncover gash on Firo’s Right Hip> or something to that affect? No power to indecently expose them, but can get access to areas in the event of “oh shit my character might die in this obscure place and is passed out but I’ve got to go”. 

Sorry if this is a lot of unhelpful rambling! <3

I think it is interesting and good idea rambling!

I like the healer relationship idea, and being able to do something those cases of a sleep avatar having a threatening wound, maybe the uncover/treat happens with the same command. And we could maybe presume if they got stabbed or have a gash recently we can see it or blood.

Rambling myself

Yeah, I am sorry these healing fixes have taken so long (and still are!)... we had a lot of discussion along these lines when people first started encountering difficulties with mistmonster attacks and the entire hold being turned into a medbay practically. 

The hope is that we'll everntually make it so:

• wounds are treatable through clothing if the clothing is damaged (as it would be, if a wound was just inflicted)
• others can uncover and cover-back-up people's body parts 
• NPCs should accept treatment for worse wounds from anyone who wasn't marked explicitly as an enemy
• there's potentially a 'triage' ability that will automatically make you do the next needed step in the healing process on someone (useful for cases of mass destruction, maybe)

Any other ideas, feel free to keep discussing! 

This is not related to healing, per se, but I believe this thread has raised some broader questions. (Apologies if this is too off topic :B)

What purposes is the mechanic of sleep avatars intended to serve?

What role does the player's choice to leave a sleep avatar (when they don't have to) play in what should/should not be possible ways to manipulate sleeping avatars?

Could leaving a sleep avatar not serve as a kind of consent to risk physical manipulation (with all the accompanying legal/investigatory angles available to seek redress for any wrongs done)?

I realize that injured persons gain a benefit from leaving a sleep avatar in the form of healing ticks and possible medicinal assistance (as in the original topic), and I'm also aware that there are situations where the player of a conscious character may decline medical care, which they cannot do when not present. So I understand why allowing people to be manipulated freely, even in purely "beneficial" ways, may lead to undesired outcomes. I also think it is unfair on its face to force people who want the healing ticks to be subjected to quack healers who may happen upon them and amputate the wrong leg, etc. So I think I more or less understand why the medical part, at least, works the way it appears to.

But I wonder if we're not giving up more than we're getting in the bargain. Or if there aren't other ways to safeguard against any real threats that might exist (and perhaps some of the threats we're safeguarding against aren't so real?). It's very hard to roll smoothly IC when the code prevents you from doing things that you would and should do. Some of these things involve medical treatment, but anything from lowering the hood of a disgused sleeper to stealing their pocket change may be unavoidably IC for one character or another. Petitioning and then waiting a day and then pretending you didn't have to wait a day, is an option, and a legitimate one, and the one we are using now, more or less. And it's fine! But I wonder if there are not other options that feel more immersive.

What are ways of manipulating a PC that you logically should be able to do to a helpless person? Which of these is possible, and which is impossible -

* with a logged in sleeper?

* with a logged out sleeper?

* with a PC who is awake and tied up?

* with an NPC who is awake and unbound?

* with an NPC who is asleep?

For those things you're not able to do (for instance, take their stuff), what behavior is this intended to prevent? Why does this seem to need an OOC solution?

I know I may sound a bit off the wall, and I would not probably raise these questions in other MUD communities where there is a sizable contigent of players whose default approach is trying to get away with as much OOCly profitable behavior as possible, in violation of all relevant policies against twinkery and metagaming. But this is not one of those games, and I wonder if it means other things are possible. What is preventing waking up without one's pants from being fun rather than an OOC problem? (Not a rhetorical question. :D)

All of those sound great (and understandable fixes take a bit, especially with targetting others.) (reply to Pilgrim as Esfandiar posted as I was writing.)

I think triage was certainly needed for the trample of mass destruction >.>

Much of what you wrote was in the background of my mind making the inital posting. You have good points to bring up.

 Going to wander off my own topic onto thoughts. Figuring out a balance between logical, feasible and fair is difficult balance. I think it is very logical to be able to remove the hood of someone sleeping, and as far as the rest, what would someone logically get away without waking someone. Stealing pants, vs reaching into their pockets. If there was a chance a sleep avatar could have dreams of said thief so it isn't 100% risk free theft, and the sleeper can remember something, others may be wary from messing with them. An example, an attempt to interact however with the sleeper leads to them grabbing a possible thief's hand and gives them a stare down. Or, they recognize their favourite healer or friend and go, eh okay slap bandages on me. They may then be in a lightly sleeping state so any further attempts would more likely to get reactions. Sleeping in public drunk, drugged, injured or sick could make a sleeper less wary. Something like light sleep/deep sleep.

The main purpose of sleep avatars is to leave an imprint of where your character is existing in-game at the time, when you're logged out. It's useful for a situation like:

• You are a prison warden who is peeking through the bars to see if the prisoner has escaped. Uh oh, he's not there! Did he escape? Or... did he just log out?
• Your friend is a reckless wacko who just escaped from prison and wants to go attack the prison warden's festival. You talk him out of this dumb plan, and make him promise to stay in the room, but then you have to log out. When you log back in, he's gone. Did he go to attack the prison warden's festival or just log out?!
• etc

Other nice side purposes are....

• It's useful for an injured character to be treated, theoretically, when otherwise they might be waiting online for hours for the town physician to be around and help them.
• It's also useful for injured characters to take advantage of 'sleeping' healing ticks while they're offline.

It's not really intended to leave your character vulnerable to sabotage while you're offline. While I'm really happy with the kind community we have so far, I don't want to invite bad vibes by mechanically making it easy to abuse others when they're not even online. While I love how roleplay characters take on lives of their own, and I love it when players genuinely put themselves in their characters' shoes and act as their character in the virtual world of the game, I still believe that it's perfectly possible to imagine ways not to absolutely-have-to-do something that is either mechanically impossible or unfair/unwanted play in some way. As anyone can probably tell I am a big fan of having mechanics that support fair play. I think that for a mentally-healthy game, there has to be some measure of comfortable security in being logged out, even when leaving a sleep avatar. But as you pointed out, there are some ways that sleep avatars are already not perfectly-safe. You could get grabbed and moved elsewhere. You could get medically treated against your intentions. So maybe it'd be useful for people who did want to be open to further sabotage while sleep-avatar'ing to set a config option or something? Hmm. Just kind of thinking-out-loud with this.
 

I'd probably wake up if someone was trying to take my pants off while asleep. But it's possible that maybe we should include the option to 'take' items when said character is actually unconscious and not just only asleep. 


Edit: Damn pof Ighlaf, your ideas there are FIRE.