Dreamer location reform

StrikesBrain

It was both a good and bad thing that locate dreamer could locate anyone.  In the end, I think the wicked never truly got rest because of that.  Not to mention it was easy for a few people to get harrassed (thankfully lyra is rather fast acting on cases like that.).  Upon thinking on the issue I had one (rather elaborate) way for the locate dreamer art to work.  That is if you guys are looking for ideas.

When evoking locate dreamer, let us suppose it would bring up a list of dreamers you COULD locate.  Here's the catch, you can't just add dreamers to the list.  You'd have to do something to get them on.  Generally just getting the dreamer's consent is the easiest way, but if you really want to locate some scoundrel there'll be a few ways around that which I'll outline here.  And if someone adds you and you want your name off their list, I'll get to that too.

Giving your name:  All dreamers has a basic avatar function that allows them to "give their name" to another dreamer, allowing this person to locate the dreamer freely.  It would create some token or some such that the dreamer could hand over to whoever they wanted to be able to locate them.  This power should be used wisely lest you regret someone being able to track you done later on.

Essence talismans:  Presuming you have something equivilent to "identify talisman" you could use that art on a dreamer's essence talisman to attempt to attune to their frequency and add their name to your locate dreamer list without their permission.

Public access:  If this game features in game public forms, like the quest boards in the threshold pits, and library, then it'd be an idea for someone with no fear of being publically known to allow people to add their name from their post.  This would be more of an option for those GM teachers and also those high end teachers who need to be easily accessed in order to practice their trade.

REMOVING a name from someone else's list:  I figured on two ways to go about this, both involve an art "Erase Name"  the way that makes this easier is an art that everyone knows.  The catch is, this art does nothing so long as your victim is coherent, he or she must be collapsed first.  A successful evoke of the art removes the evokers name from the locate dreamer of the victim if its present. 

An alternate option for this art is to have it something that must be learned, dreamer, however needs an essence talisman of the victim, he or she must also have the name of the person to be striken from the list in their locate dreamer list if it is not the evoker.  This option makes it harder to erase names then the previous one.

Either way this system creates a few interesting options.  First off, if someone can be hard to find, they can be real hard to find if they are smart about it.  Secondly, sloppiness, such as getting collapsed often can hurt you both ways, you become more easily found with each collapse and any names of the enemies you have collected get whiped away.  Thirdly this makes an interesting system of trust.  If someone gets your name and turns out to be spying for an enemy faction, they could use your location to report to superiors or whatnot on your position, people who would otherwise have a hard time locating you.

Now on to my second topic SENSE DREAMERS!

Seriously, it needs to be set so, if there is an art like that in this game, 1 dreamer in a plane will not make it pop up.  I'd say at least 4 dreamers before it starts triggering the art, otherwise the evoker will merely find that there's not many dreamers around right now.  In the right conditions with a few intellegent inferences in low population situations someone can track a person who'd otherwise be hard to follow by watching what planes are the "most populous" when there's only say... 2 planes with people in them.

With all this there would need to be a way to keep track of dark mares and the like, and here's an idea on how to do that, "Sense Mares"  This art, when evoked would tell the dreamer if there's any darkmares either in the same plane as the evoker, or within a few rooms of the evoker.  The art is instantaneous though.

Khyperu

I think this is a great idea. I remember when I played and because I was one of the higher level teachers I had people chasing me around all the time. I think all the idea on this post are good idea's to put into the works, along with sense dreamer. I got tired of locating dreamer and it would show a plane just because 1 person was there.

jonci

Well Underlight did have an art that concealed you from Locate Dreamer. I'm sure it will be in Reclamation as well.

Seriously, can you imagine the chaos of having Locate Dreamer require consent or the essence of the dreamer? Bad guys beware, hand over consent or die.

You have ideas for balance to the idea, but this is over-complicating an art that tells you where someone is.

If you want to limit it, wouldn't cutting the detail of where the person is a better way to go. Instead of a name of the room, limit it to some section of the plane or just the plane. Or base the amount of detail of where the dreamer is by comparing orbits/spheres/Locate Dreamer level...

Don't mean to sound like your idea is bad, but it would require adding extras arts, extras interfaces, good amount of extra code. All for an art that probably is 2 or 3 functions that just returns a string back of the room's name that gets sent to the chat window.

StrikesBrain

But mindblank was nothing for the persistent.  Plus there was that whole weird soul shield thing.  I still wonder if the purpose of soul shield codewise did anything other then blocking minblank.  I'm just throwing out random stuff and ideas.

Not to mention mindblank required a few spheres under your belt in order to get.  If you were going to be naughty, you better be higher levelled!

But the idea WAS chaos!  Shake up the system a little!

Dent

I think it should be quite simple.  Either have an art to give your name freely to dreamer to be located, or you get the head tailsman when they collapse, only the tailsman vapes when you add the name forcibly to locate so you can't pass it around to everyone.  If you gave your name freely to be located, you should be able to just as easily remove it with another art.  If your name was forced on locate through a head, you need the locaters head tailsman to remove your name from thier list.  Through all of this, Mindblank would still have it uses, but does need to be learned at a lower sphere.

NighthawkUL

I kinda wish they had made minblank a toggle thing or at least made it last longer per evoke but as far as sense goes yeah, its pretty cheap when there are too few dreamers around... kind of... but I wouldn't want to dream without it either. Anyone else have alternate ideas for sense? If only 4 dreamers were dreaming and sense didn't work you'd be running around bored... even though you wouldn't be able to abuse it. Maybe people can choose whether or not they set sense off if the amount of dreamers is too low...

jonci

Sense Dreamer wouldn't have seemed like such a broken art if Underlight has a stable player base. Seriously, peak hours was the only time to play otherwise the city was empty. But yeah, I like the idea about allowing the player to set the minimum requirements of # of dreamers to pop the plane.

SN!PER

I like the idea behind Sense Dreamers that StrikesBrain had. I also like the idea of Sense Mare. If there were to be such an art that would allow you sense if a mare is near by, perhaps it could be with both daymares and dark mares. I don't really think the idea for Locate Dreamer is very good.It seems to be too much of a pain to put people I talk with a lot on the list. Rather than just adding a name like in UL. I say stick with the old Locate Dreamer art, but make it so you are able to add more names to the list than you currently are.