System Overview
TDN’s Personas system allows you to use your Bluff skill to assume new personas - a mixture of deception, performance, makeup, and misdirection - in order to conceal your true identity. Characters who become acquainted with your personas will remember them in the future, and particularly perceptive characters may even be able to identify you by your alternate aliases if you interact with the same person across multiple personas.
[Critical Note]: The Personas system is intended to facilitate roleplay and storytelling. Abusing this system for bad-faith player conflict will not be tolerated. If you aren’t sure of the difference then you are highly encouraged to review TDN’s PvP & Conflict rules and are discouraged from using this system until you are sure you intend to use it appropriately.
Personas
1: You can use the `!personas` command to create new personas, edit your personas' physical appearances, and mark personas as active/inactive. You begin with one persona: your “true” identity (the “default” persona). Any additional personas are considered “disguise” personas and your character is treated as actively trying to conceal their identity when you set one of these alternate personas as active.
Characters receive the ability to create additional personas based on the number of hard ranks they have invested into the Bluff skill. They gain their first additional persona after investing 5 hard ranks in Bluff, and their second additional persona after investing 10 hard ranks into Bluff. Players with less than 5 hard ranks in Bluff will have 0 additional personas and will be unable to select an alternative persona to their original persona.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS SYSTEM IS TO BE STRICTLY USED WHILE DISGUISING ONESELF. IT IS AGAINST THE SERVER RULES TO USE THIS SYSTEM FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE.
Each persona is comprised of the following attributes:
- Active: Whether this persona is currently active or not. An active persona means that you are presenting as this persona to other characters. When a non-default persona is active, it means you're trying to hide your true identity from others. Only one persona may be active at a time.
- Label: An identifier to aid you in keeping track of your personas. You will see this label above your character while the persona is active. Although this label is never shown directly to other players, it is highly recommended you choose a label that matches how the persona will introduce themselves to others.
- Physical appearance: Attributes which allow you to change your disguise's physical appearance (this may be roleplayed as makeup, voice acting, wigs, dying hair, etc.) such as portrait, voice, hair, and colors. These are automatically applied to your character when you assume the persona. Your character’s head (face), eye color, skin color cannot be changed. Almost everything else can. To change your persona’s portrait you will need a portrait ID. You can find portrait IDs for most of the built-in/default portraits here. To change your character’s soundset, you will need a soundset ID, which you can find here.
NOTE: You are currently free to pick from any soundset and portrait in the game, unrestricted by things like gender, race, etc. Be sensible with your choices as being silly with this freedom will result in that freedom being revoked.
- Description: A description that is automatically applied to your character when you assume the persona.
1: When other players use the `!name` command on you, they will apply a name to the persona that is currently active and will see that name above your head when that persona is active.
2: Players who have not yet used the !name command on you will see a generic identifier such as "Stranger." You can choose some short descriptors for your persona (such as “Fair-Haired Elf," "Armored Man", etc.) which will replace “Stranger” from the Personas Manager.
Persona Identification
In order to identify a disguise, an Listener must pass two skill checks against the Speaker within the span of 3 real-life hours, where failure of the Listener to pass both checks resets the Speaker to Unidentified with the Persona in effect as normal. The details are as follows:
1. Identification attempts occur passively when the Speaker speaks within "good"* audibility range of the Listener. *See 3
2. Identification attempts only occur on players who are actively attempting to hide their identity from someone who has not yet identified them.
3. The Listener must be standing within "good" audibility range in order to make an identification attempt ("good" audibility is the same radius that dialogue appears clearest/white).
4. All brand new disguised personas who you have just met begin in an "UNIDENTIFIED" state. "UNIDENTIFIED" means that the Listener does not know that the Speaker is disguised and is unable to connect them to any other personas who they may have met before. Default personas are identified automatically.
5. Upon first meeting and then every 5-45 minutes during conversation with other players, invisible opposed skill checks are made in the background.
If the Speaker succeeds this check (rolls higher):
- Nothing happens. Speaker and Listener roll again in 5-45 minutes.
If the Listener succeeds this check, the following events occur:
- The Speaker makes an opposed Sense Motive + d20() + Bonus vs the Listener's Bluff + d20() + Bonus. If the Speaker succeeds this check, they are immediately notified that the Listener is catching on to their deception and that they have a small time window to distance themselves from the Listener, or else the Listener may identify them soon.
- The persona progresses to an IDENTIFYING state.
- Roll again in 5-13 minutes. This check cooldown is intentionally shorter than a failure or UNIDENTIFIED → IDENTIFYING check, as the Speaker should be attempting to extract themselves before imminent discovery by the Listener.
If the Speaker succeeds this check:
- The Speaker has another opportunity to roll their Sense Motive vs the Listener's Bluff to be tipped off that the Listener is on to them, as above.
- Nothing else happens; roll again in 5-13 minutes.
If the Listener succeeds this check:
- If the Listener has not yet Identified any of the Speaker's other personas, they receive a notification alerting that they suspect the Speaker is hiding something from them (e.g. "You suspect that Beatrice is hiding something from you.")
- If the Listener has previously Identified any of the Speaker's other personas (including their default persona, which is Identified automatically), they receive a notification alerting them that they suspect the Speaker is the same person as the other identified personas (e.g., "You suspect that Cleopatra is also Abbie and Beatrice!").
- The Listener can also examine the player to be reminded of the same information they learned in the notification above.
- The persona is moved to the IDENTIFIED state, where it remains permanently for that Listener.
Skill Contests Calculate as:
Listener's Spot Total = d20() + Spot Skill + Bonus
Listener's Sense Motive Total = d20() + Sense Motive + Bonus
Speaker's Bluff Total = d20() + Bluff Skill
Bonus = (Current ID Status × 5) + (Crowd Size × -2)
Where UNIDENTIFIED is ID 0, IDENTIFYING is ID 1, IDENTIFIED is ID 2.
As example, in a crowd of 4 people, a Listener's Spot Total for UNIDENTIFIED to IDENTIFYING would look like:
d20() + Spot Skill + ((0x5) + (4x-2)) which equals to (0-8) for a -8 'Bonus' total.
Speakers can make use of large player numbers to negatively impact a Listener's Spot or Sense Motive Total enough to pass checks they would otherwise find difficult or impossible. Weave in the crowds! Similarly, Listeners can purposefully isolate Speakers to have a much easier time sussing them out, with IDENTIFYING to IDENTIFIED roll Bonus without a crowd looking like: d20() + Sense Motive + (1x5 + 0x-2) for a +5 'Bonus'. Crowd is specifically counted as nearby players in "good" audible range that are not the Listener or Speaker.
6. If more than 3 real-life hours have passed since two characters last spoke with each other, the state of their persona will be reset to UNIDENTIFIED if it was in the IDENTIFYING state. This means that if a Speaker successfully susses out that an Listener is catching on to their deception and they manage to flee the scene and remain out of contact with the observer for 3 real-life hours, they start over with a fresh clean slate once again the next time they speak (though the opposing skill checks will continue and the observer may very well begin to suss them out again).
Persona Limit & Abandonment
You are currently limited to 1 disguise persona per 5 hard ranks in bluff, to a max of 2 personas at 10 ranks.
You may abandon personas through the Personas Manager. An Abandoned persona may not be used anymore, but it does not count towards the Persona Limit. Beware: other characters who previously identified the abandoned persona will not forget you!
A Note on Metagaming
A high Bluff score is not an excuse for a player to be complacent about their character’s behavior. If a Speaker behaves in such a way to elicit suspicion or implicate themselves, Listeners are within their rights to accuse them even if the Listener did not pass the spot checks. It is the responsibility of the Speaker to avoid arousing suspicion even if they have a very high Bluff score.
Reports of metagaming will be investigated by the DMs, but the Personas system provides you with many tools to prevent metagaming on your own. If you REALLY wish to avoid any possibility of metagaming (and even accidental metagaming) it is recommended that you additionally practice restraint with the information you share with other players OOC.