Great post. Under the legal authority entry, I found: "Legality aside, there is tremendous social pressure to respect one's betters." I would love to see this come into play a bit more - though certainly it doesn't have a lot to do with law. :)
It's interesting when it comes up in play, partly because there are several valid IC points of disagreement (aside from general deliberate IC misunderstanding) about what constitutes one's "better
( ... )
Though I add as a note to my first point, there are probably quite clear rankings between the various lords, the position of GC titles, and so forth that come up when used for things like where to sit people at formal dinners. But this does not mean that everyone in such a ranking considers "You're the kind of Lord who sits two places closer to the front of the table than I do" a very important distinction when offering respect or not.
Naturally very complicated. I am eternally going through +finger and PBG information to try and discern the social status of someone. Also, I refer to gossip to try and determine whom is in favour with whom. Maybe that sounds dry, but I find it adds an important dimension to social situations and roleplaying them.
I have seen how little gestures by the Royals(but certainly the phenomena is not limited to them) can completely boost someone's status. Likewise I have also seen socially inconsequential people snub Princes. It's a very complicated thing. And I can see how it might not be for everyone.
I find that kind of play very interesting. However, it's difficult to tell when a social snub is intentional because someone wants to spark conflict there, and when it's merely a matter of the player not understanding (or simply not caring about) the setting's social distinctions. I suppose that's what checking OOC is for.
+fingers should, ideally, give relatively complete data on someone's social status. If it's not in someone's +finger, there's no reason for a random stranger to plausible recognize that such-and-such is a High Poobah of Cibola and deserving respect (or mockery) accordingly. Again, it's not always clear if a lack of data in the +finger means that someone has no titles or relevant social standing beyond "commoner" or if a player just didn't bother to enter that data.
There is always OOC paging for confirming either way. But I appreciate it when players put that data in easy to find places so that I have a better idea of what they're interested in playing.
One thought I had was if it were possible to add a dimension of lore usage to someone's +finger. For instance, having a player with their UPPER lore at 3 might give them access to information about a character due to their knowledge of that particular sphere of influence.
I have seen that code employed on a MUSH before, and thought it worked wonderfully. I know there is code for descriptions that allows the posession of specific lores(and perhaps gifts) to reveal a description coded with that in mind.
It would take some work to set up the code, and players would have to care about the feature if it were to be useful. Personally, I love the idea. So you could put in, for instance, Karm-specific information available only to those with a certain AO-KARM lore - and the like.
How does this relate to the above topic? I think that would be a great vehicle to readily communicate to other players what they might know about a person, their status, and the way in which they might approach the player socially.
The ability to do so already exists; I've seen it used in at least one PBG. (I am not, unfortunately, familiar enough with the code to replicate it myself without asking someone else for help.) It could be a useful way to giving more targetted "publicly known" information to people with the right lores, if players wanted to use it.
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I have seen how little gestures by the Royals(but certainly the phenomena is not limited to them) can completely boost someone's status. Likewise I have also seen socially inconsequential people snub Princes. It's a very complicated thing. And I can see how it might not be for everyone.
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+fingers should, ideally, give relatively complete data on someone's social status. If it's not in someone's +finger, there's no reason for a random stranger to plausible recognize that such-and-such is a High Poobah of Cibola and deserving respect (or mockery) accordingly. Again, it's not always clear if a lack of data in the +finger means that someone has no titles or relevant social standing beyond "commoner" or if a player just didn't bother to enter that data.
There is always OOC paging for confirming either way. But I appreciate it when players put that data in easy to find places so that I have a better idea of what they're interested in playing.
Reply
I have seen that code employed on a MUSH before, and thought it worked wonderfully. I know there is code for descriptions that allows the posession of specific lores(and perhaps gifts) to reveal a description coded with that in mind.
It would take some work to set up the code, and players would have to care about the feature if it were to be useful. Personally, I love the idea. So you could put in, for instance, Karm-specific information available only to those with a certain AO-KARM lore - and the like.
How does this relate to the above topic? I think that would be a great vehicle to readily communicate to other players what they might know about a person, their status, and the way in which they might approach the player socially.
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