These are all good points, but I really think it comes back to the idea of totems detecting cities. We have accepted that this is good RP, or at least passable roleplay. The totem really has no way of knowing that an untitled Magnagoran citizen is in fact Magnagoran. What if it was a Magnagoran with ", Seren Brave" as their suffix? What if the whole life of this character they had told no one they were a Maggie, masquerading as a Seren their whole life. Its a bit odd, but suppose this was the case. Suddenly, they walk into a Seren room with a totem fixed against Magnagorans. It kills them. The totem could not possibly know that person's loyalties without reading thier mind, and I will not presume to know how totems operate. But if we accept the above scenario as acceptable RP, we must also accept the secret clan example.

Sure, I'll admit the totem seems to have no logical way of knowing that the person is a Crow, but in the city example or any city example it can't really know they're a member of that city either, unless its telepathic. If the totems are telepathic, then they could divine the loyalties of the character whether or not the clan is "visible" to most people.

Either way if we accept one type of detection as okay, its hard to say the other isn't.

That said, it does remove some interesting RP. We must however keep in mind that we have little justification for actually changing it since we've allready accepted totems should be able to detect city members.

Olan makes good points, but I find it hard to justify the changes necessary to fix the problem he outlines

I agree with your first point sekreh. I think that the totems should be tuned against specific people only. You can't tune it against all of magnagora, because, like was said, how would you know? However, if someone has a title that would suggest they are in magnagora, it should be possible to hit them.

Tune it against known crows. Enemies of the commune (speicific people).
This creates reason for Secrecy in game.

My two soverngs.

The private clan shouldn't get special treatment just because it's a private clan. I agree with those who said you can't see cities and orders and so on so a private clan is not really any different to using a totem/statue enemied against them. My point is make it consistent, either leave it as is so that people can tune against whole organisations, or make it so they can only tune against enemy lists.

As for "how does the totem/statue know"... it's an inanimate object. How does it know the enemy list if you're tuning it that way? Magic...

I'd say that making it so that it only is tuneable against enemy lists is a good solution.

That would be the best approach from an RP perspective.

Citizenship is not something you can hide, unlike clans. It does show up on your guild score. And given how tightly guilds are tied to cities in Lusternia, anyone who does a standard honours on a guildmate and doesn't see their city rank should be concerned. The citizenship issue is, in my mind, entirely UNlike the secret clans.

Was gonna say something else, forgot it.

Three people, one from Celest, one from Magnagora and one rogue. No titles, no public clans. Serenwilde can tune a totem/statue against Celest or Magnagora and it's still going to hit these people despite not being able to check their guild scores.

As far as I could tell, we were discussing the practicalities of the totem-tuning rather than "Serenwilde shouldn't use this method to keep an eye on their citizens' clans/citizenship".

This is all nice if there would be ANY halfway real chance to catch a spy. If the spy doesn't make a major mistake like a mistell or something similar there is not the slightest chance of knowing who a spy is.
I understand Visaeris as I mentioned before but even if the idea of DoC was nice, there were made too many mistakes in the beginning and now it appears rather screwed to me.

There is a relatively simple way to catch a spy - get a loyal serenwilder to infiltrate the crows and start spying on them. This leads to lots of funky rp opportunities for both sides - can Serenwilde *really* trust this spy, and can Doc trust anyone who wants to join? Much more interesting than 'line up every Serenwilder and march them past a totem' imo

If you can't figure out ways to catch a spy, you're not real good at RPing.

Sorry, Visaeris, but I am thinking about smart spies. You don't want to tell me that I should watch tells and such endlessly or watch where everyone goes....please be serious. If the spy isn't dumb then there is no way to catch him.......and by the way, what does catching a spy have to do with roleplay?

Seriously?

If you want to be a secretive crow person... don't hang around where totems will be when you know totems go up against a group you join. Or be incredibly evil and when you get hit shout.. "OMG theres some bug!"

Imagine the totems to be some soul sniffing dog. After all a totem is a mystical device based on spirits, and spirits know things about you that even you don't know about it.

That wouldn't be incredibly evil, Daganev, that would be blatantly ooc.

ooc evil... not IC evil

I don't think he was serious, I think it was more of a "Don't be dumb."

Not to say I have opinions whichever way it goes. But if your logic is that the person who tunes it tells the totem who to hit. What happens when you add a new Enemy to the list...it magically knows? Or are you suggesting we should have to retune everything, everytime?

The totem is currently only one of several things we are doing to discover members of the DoC all of which have provided accurate information to us, removing the totems just gets rid of our kicks of watching crow die when they are in a forest they shouldnt be

Think of it this way. If I attack a tree in Glomdoring it knows I have intentions to harm it so it hits me back, you are a DoC wandering around serenwilde and a totem suddenly goes, wait that person is trying to harm me....ZAPPPP KABOOM POW!.

It makes just as logical sense as anything else.

Think outside the box you shmucks!

If being member of a "clan" allows members to be detected, if you truly want spies within an organization have them within the organization, but outside the clan.

You talk about RPing the spying, well perhaps then you'd actually have to RP meeting with them face to face, have them relay things to you in secret ways, rather than just copying and pasting city tells over a clan channel.

For an RP explanation, just say that being attuned to certain aether waves makes them detectable by the totems, and so they have to keep themselves untuned, but still within the DoC.

And if you say that you spent a lot of gold on the clan and therefore deserve to have it work for you, so help me... grrrr....

But there's the solution.

Ta-da!

I'm awesome to the max!

Oops, double post.

I'm still awesome though.

THANK YOU!

I was wondering why no one had thought of this and was going to suggest it but you beat me to it. You might just be awesome.