Standard @LP for Disguises
Avoiding the Meta

To avoid the work of having to come up with different, rotating look places, I propose that a standard look place be applied whenever anyone dons a disguise meant to obscure ones identity (as opposed to one meant to create a new identity). Players should be able to change their temp places still, so they can take a smoke or hunch over a bar drunkenly if they so choose. Rotating and coming up with new look places when disguised is just extra typing without any real roleplay value.

This "work" is part of the play. Have you read the update to "help disguise"? See the "Preparation Required" section Slither just wrote this month.

https://www.sindome.org/help/game/disguise/

I'm missing something, explain how it doesn't remove one potential point of meta if every disguised person has the same @lp?

Someone who's masquerading absolutely should come up with a unique @lp and apply it. I agree that in this situation no default @lp makes sense, but, really, in this situation the player has to prepare.

Someone who's just trying to conceal their identity can have a default disguised @lp, or a @macro'd one, and it doesn't reveal anything because you already know they're disguised. I'm still not too wild about a default @lp for them, because there still are at least 6 different points of preparation this person needs to at least think about, why single out @lp.

I think @lp is different than any of the other points because it comes with no in game sacrifice and has less of an analog to what one would need to do in a physical manifestation of the game. Buying different hood colors costs money. Changing your demanor and physical appearance requires skill investments. Changing locations, or doing other things to make it harder to identify you, comes with costs and is part of the fun. I don't see much RP value in thinking up new ways to say, "I'm blending in."

@voice is the closest thing to @lp, but that's still different in that you don't necessarily want to disguise your voice when you disguise yourself, and you don't necessarily want to disguise your physical appearance when you disguise your voice.

I will also bold, italicize, and underline the fact that you're looking for -IC REASONS- that someone isn't who they say they are, not OOC ones. Yes, there are plenty of tells where I immediately have to laugh to myself and go "Okay, I as the player know, but my character doesn't." And carry on.

This is, absolutely, me stabbing a contrarian stake in the ground, but I feel it's important to discuss when the conversation starts to lean towards this sort of (healthy) meta-discussion. Chalk it up to posterity's sake, but let's remember to keep our reasoning IC for the sake of RP, despite some subtle and glaring OOC tells.

Particularly in light of appear and non-appear shortdescs, I can't really explain what my character is doing when I change their @lp, and unlike appear shortdescs, there's no coded limitation on them. I understand I could rotate around with say four or five macros, but then I'm using up a lot of valuable macro real estate for concealing.

I don't want to get rid of the work that goes into disguising. I think this one aspect of working on your disguise isn't as fun as the rest because I can't really envision what's happening and the only limitation on my ability to change it either typing out new sentences or using more macro real estate.

If "proper" disguises retain @lp options, giving shrouds a default would make complete sense to me.