I was speaking in general about switching. And dingbat artifacts are not regular artifacts, and as they are bought with something as silly as a dingbat, it would make sense that they look silly too.

So because they're harder to get, they should be worse than regular artefacts?

I would have preferred they not have made the snout at all, though.

So..."yes", is what you're saying, basically.

Veil makes sense, but I'm not sure about a mask. How big is the nose? Would it really fit under a mask and not over it?

I think the real issue here is the "nose" noun, since even stuff like the dancing cow boots could be customised into something less loud. But with a nose, you're stuck wearing a nose (and the snorting message, hee!).

Um, I don't see how buying a silly artifact with silly currency is penalizing in any way shape or form. You chose to buy it in the first place.

Because you get an aesthetically obnoxious artefact instead of a normal one. If you want a normal one (and remember that you can't even customise this in such a way that it salvages it) then it's obviously "penalising" you. What is the fact people choose to buy it supposed to have to do with anything?

The appearance of the snout isn't really the problem because it's easy to just not wear it and alias "scent" to "wear snout;~scent;remove snout". Plus it could be customized, not very easily but it's at least possible. It's the third-party version of "You snort and snuffle at the air, sensing through the ridiculous nose upon your face the faint traces of others in the surrounding area." It would be nice if that were hidden when you're shrouded like so many other actions are. But generally speaking, the fact that you can't customize the messages when using artifacts really limits how much it helps to customize the artifacts themselves; Estarra was keen on the idea that you could make it "a cute button nose" but even if you did it's still going to be "the ridiculous nose upon your face" when you use it, and you can't customize that for a frillion credits.

You keep missing my point. It is SUPPOSED to be silly looking. Everything else that is bought with dingbats is silly, so why should this one be any different? Just because it is useful doesn't mean it has to look pretty. If your character wouldn't wear it because of how it looks, don't have them wear it. In fact, don't even buy it in the first place.

The point is that sometimes people who like to RP want their characters' appearances to be just so. The pig snout is too good for utility and combat to pass up, but it messes with RP like heck, thus creating another dilemma in which one might well have to be sacrificed for the other.

Customisation is supposed to deal with this, and I suspect I'm not the only one who would gladly shell out an additional 50 credits to customise it. But the unfortunate thing here is that no matter how you customise a nose, it's still a nose.

Now, you're saying that this dilemma is a good thing, implying that we should be made to sacrifice one for the other. If the intent behind that was to make people not buy it, well, it didn't work out. But now we've got a number of people running around with obnoxious pig snouts. How does another character walking around looking like an unwilling jester benefit you? Actually, how does that benefit anyone, when a win-win solution to both players and Lusternia is to charge another 50 credits or so to make it more aesthetic?

@Lendren: The third-party message of the snout -is- obnoxious, but spamming everyone with "She slips into a nose; she removes a nose" would not be a good deal better. It's the same with the illithoid-cubix which is icky, but at least that one only gets used once an hour instead of once every few seconds.

Why not just make it a gold plated nose or something? Tycho Brahe had a golden nose (bridge)!

Since Dingbats are bought from a specific person, in-game just complain about Gyphta's choice of artifacts. You bought it from some crazy mountebank, after all.

Some dingbats are meant to be humorous. There's a tradition of this in both games (the earliest D&D had some weird pun-based magic items), and many books. Clearly, many Denziens reflect this, from Weeky Pedia and many of the others. Put it this way--if the thought of having an artifact actually named "Ridiculous Pig Nose" bugs you, you may not want to play Lusternia, since that type of humour is likely to always have some elements in the game. If the admin choose to have silly artifacts from dingbats, you either need to deal with them as is or opt-out from them.

If you're shrouded, the wearing and removing the nose part is hidden, I'm fairly sure. (I should confirm that though.)

Edit: Nope, it's not! Gah. In that case, all three should be shrouded. Or, the sniff message should also be customizable... maybe not for every artifact, since people can use that to get around triggers on some things for combat advantage, but who really needs to trigger on someone else snuffling?

Tully, would you think it hypocritical if a person tolerated the Weeky Peedia character IG but would have refused out of principle to use the name for their own character were it suggested or something? I would argue that it's not. Likewise, being totally fine with this bizarre guy in his mountain and the existence of these artefacts but wanting a bit more seriousness and dignity for onesself doesn't really seem to deserve a response like "deal or quit."

I don't see how it messes up RP to have your character wearing something silly or doing something silly now and then in exchange for a benefit. If you're playing a character who thinks that looking silly is bad and who must always look just so, but wants to use the snout, play out the character's irritation or resignation that they must make such a sacrifice for the greater good. If someone mentions how silly it is, your character can sigh or rant or whatever. I really don't understand how anyone would get OOC irritated at something like this, honestly. They don't have to wear it all the time and enough people have them that a character can say, "It is awful isn't it? But I saw how useful it was when RandomBob was using it and decided it was worth sacrificing my dignity for a few moments to use one. Believe me though, it stays in my pack when I don't need it!"

Well, you're right that it's really not that big a deal. Probably half the reason there's this much fuss over it is that people keep trying to argue about it.

You have a choice to buy the artifact or not Shiri. The artifact's name implies you're going to look strange wearing it. Anybody buying it knows this. IC, anybody buying it will know this. OOC, you know the dingbats are meant to be weird. Consider that the penalty for having the ability to use scent if you're not of that class. If you're such a hard-core RPer, then accept the limitation.

Noola's got the right idea. Basically, what I'm also saying is that there is humor in this game and it's part of the world. Nobody's saying you can't play your game as serious or as funny but you will have to be part of the fun in some ways. The world isn't Discworld, but neither is it Call of Cthullu either. The humor factor is somewhere in-between. I dislike people telling the admin what tone the actual game should be set at. They give you a lot of leeway, but if we have candy-land bubbles and Gorky Hardbottom and hamster hunts and pun-filled names, having a few useful artifacts with a humor-effect seems okay, and since it's entirely the players option to buy/use or not, it seems a little odd to complain about not being able to change it.

Perhaps you can do an alias that includes 'em cups his/her face and futilely tries to hide his/her ridiculous snorting'? That way, you can blame other people for being too observant.

Yeah, or if someone brings it up, you can just melodramatically sigh and make it part of your RP that you really, really hate this pig nose but it's too damn useful to not have. Or, just... don't have scent, and sell dingbats for real credits?

Um, on this, I'm going to have to say... wrong. The Pig Snout is by no means a required artifact. It is not too good to pass up. Many, if not most of us, did indeed pass it up. No one forced anyone to buy it if they don't want to.

: Hey, look, a ridiculous looking pig snout!
* buys a pig snout and puts it on*
: OMG I look ridiculous! Change it Admin, change it!


I understand that it's a neat ability and people will want it. But if you sacrifice your RP because you believe that you absolutely must have an artifact or as many artifacts as possible, because "the game can't be played without them", then I have to call you out on it. The game can and is played without these artifacts, and people do just fine.