Alteration Rules

[Wrathbringer]

It seems like over the years these have increased to the point where it's almost as bad as the tax code. My gripe is with Spituio' last evening. I had asked for "a spike-capped vultite bastard axe with sharply curved opposing blades". According to ALTER 3, I'm in compliance with the 12 word rule and everything else. To my surprise, he refuses, stating that although I'm under the word limit, I'm "way over the maximum allowed character limit." I just had him lighten the weapon instead in order to keep things moving, but I was thinking, What? There's a max char limit on a long descrip? And I exceeded it in a 9-10 word alter that included the words "axe" and "with"? I always get long descrips as opposed to shows and this is the first time in 16 years I've ever heard about this. Can anyone shed any light on what he's talking about here? Is this new and I missed an announcement?

[HouseofElves]

From my understanding, Spituio is a super new GM and as such is being a stickler for possibly non-existent rules or is perhaps internally bound to exceed not more than 58 characters which is often the limit on "off-the-shelf" longs. Some other people were having a similar issue with getting longs altered.

[Wrathbringer]

That explains alot, thank you. I thought he was really entertaining and enjoyed my time there last evening.

[Stry]

I think all GM's get the rules mixed up at one point or another. I even had Thandiwe try to tell me you couldn't have scars in your feature descriptions.

A quick review of the ALTER verb helped us set this straight. Though, I likely wouldn't have politely disagreed with her had I had a line of 200 people behind me.

Whoever plays Eybria told a friend of mine that they'll never alter your height/stature. We didn't argue, but ALTER 13 (or whichever one talks about height) makes it pretty clear that's incorrect.

I think simply knowing the ALTER verb well and being able to reference it quickly in time of need to a GM can be useful if done tactfully and without causing huge delays. Though, sometimes I don't know how they manage to function or get any work done at all with the amount of whispers and other idiocy that goes on during these events.

[Mogonis]

Would a new GM be able to add weighting/padding?

On the other hand, when I whispered to him about Kranar's wolves' head, Spituio said something like, "I have someone fixing it." So I thought another GM was going to find Kranar and fix it, but Kranar came back to the booth for Spituio to fix.

[Stry]

Even if he's a new GM, if he knows how to code it really shouldn't be very difficult to add weighting. (of course the retired GM's who post here can correct me.)

I managed to catch a glimpse of the code behind an invasion creature before. (An accidental glitch where I invaded the restricted section of a poor ususpecting GM's office who will remain nameless hehe.) It wasn't to difficult to decipher what numbers meant. I recall this critter had some natural crit padding and some pretty nasty AS and DS. I imagine it is likely the same for a weapon or set of armor.

Change the number next to the padding/weighting code from 0 to 10. Or, worst case scenario, copy/paste in a pre-written code from your GM buddy. Ta da.

[DCSL]

For those who whined and bitched and politely asked about the skirt thing (Jimbrov, I'm lookin' at YOU), this was behind that delay as well. Tried several different designs that might have been acceptable to other GMs but not, apparently, to a new GM trying their hardest to stick with the rules they know. Rather taken by surprise by the character limit too. In the end, passed the turn with nothing rather than take up more time suggesting designs that something would have been wrong with.

There's a learning curve for everything. I'm sure it was frustrating on both sides, but we all learn. It was nice of the GM to stay as long as that to try to make up for the crash that wasn't in any way their fault, at least.

[petroglyph]

Whoever runs Demois is also fairly new, I think. He refused to change a sash or belt into a girdle, saying nouns weren't alterable. Mildly frustrating, but he let me run to a playershop and buy a girdle for him to work on, so no harm done. Hopefully eventually he'll feel comfortable enough with the lists of approved nouns to alter things more extensively.

[Stry]

I wondered about that with the axe and skirt, but I figured it wasn't the players who were at fault after it started happening on a regular basis...

[m444w]

A few bad alters are the least of their worries these days. They should let people do whatever they want. Those that care about RP are going to be responsible anyway.

[4a6c1]

DOES THIS MEAN YOU ARE NOT BANNINATED ANYMORES?!

[4a6c1]

FOR IMPERSONATING PEOPLES?!

[Jhynnifer]

I had a perfume holding snowflake I attempted to have altered the other day by Plaitime and was told the noun could not be altered. Considering the perfume holders were mass sold and then created from normal items via a passing merchant, I believe this was incorrect as well. Also had an issue with having a Yansio shirt altered with a simple base description and no show because Whuid was worried about working with it.

New GMs are often watched like hawks, or worried an illegal item will come back and haunt them someday. You also have a LOT of scripted stuff now. Though its standard procedure to have a series of do's and don'ts coded into the script itself so any GM, regardless of scripting clearance, could easily see the creator's wishes for the item... you sometimes get folks who err too far on the side of caution.

The character limit thing was really odd, though.