This Man is an Impersonator

Here is the more-polished half of my current notes for the assassin skill, Impersonation. I have had a good burst of assassin-related ideas recently.

Impersonation

Impersonation is pretending to be someone you are not, whether subtly (through your speech and your motions) or overtly (through your appearance and your skills).

Core Ideas

The further removed you are from the target, the harder it is to impersonate them.

The further removed an observer is from the target, the more likely they are to take your disguised self as genuine.

If you spend time in proximity to an observer who is suspicious of you, they will periodically make checks to see if they become more suspicious of you. If they fail these checks, their suspicion will lessen, and the periods between checks will grow greater, until eventually they are no longer suspicious.

On the other hand, if someone doesn’t see through you right away, they’re not going to get another chance if you don’t stick around. Move fast, assassin.

Physically disguising the body is only one portion of impersonation. Depending on the scenario, one must also take care to disguise one’s voice, odor, or, most importantly, mannerisms. Here, “mannerisms” is considered to encompass all factors of a person’s personality, even those which are not explicitly described during the course of the game.

The next section discusses those factors which influence the accurate acquisition of a person’s mannerisms.

The amount of time the character spends acquiring target mannerisms, as well as the character’s level of skill in impersonation and the exact talents of impersonation which they have acquired, will determine whether they are able to imitate specific persons or not (the difference between imitating “Jergen the alcoholic, down-on-his-luck timber merchant” and “a timber merchant.”)

Disguising as a specific person will require the assassin to spend more time observing said person.

Factors Related to Acquisition of Mannerisms

Time Spent Observing

One dimension is how long you have observed a person, or a type of person, in order to imitate their characteristics. [What counts as “observing” a person is yet to be detailed.]

You:

• have never observed them
• have observed them for less than a month
• have observed them for 1-6 months
• have observed them for 7-12 months
• have observed them 1-3 years
• have observed them 5 or more years ## How Close You Are to the Person

You:

• have never been in contact with this person
• are from the same area, but at best have met them briefly or just seen them around
• as above, but you are in the same profession or have spent time casually with them
• have spent time with them to conduct professional or official business
• have studied, worked, or fought alongside them
• have done them a non-trivial favor
• are friends with this person
• as above, and have been friends for at least 1/4 of your life
• are in or have been in a romantic relationship with this person
• grew up as part of this person’s family

Additional factors are social class and cultural background.

You:

• are/are not in the same social class as this person
• are/are not from the same or similar cultures

How Close the Observer Is to Who You Are Impersonating

We could use exactly the same factors as detailed above in the section “How Close You Are…”, or we could use the following condensed list. (Heck, we could replace the list above with the below one. Whatever floats your game-boat.)

When compared to the target, the observer:

• is from the same area but a radically different social class, or is from an area distant enough so as to not know them (the exact distance varies based on geography: two mountain villages might only be five miles apart, but their residents mostly wouldn’t know each other.)
• is from the same area
• is from the same area, and might be an acquaintance (moves in the same specific social circles or has the same profession)
• is a coworker, compatriot, or neighbor
• is a family member or lover

Players Paying Attention

Player observational skills are not obviated by the presence of the character’s impersonation talents which deal in counter-recognition of disguised or concealed enemies.

Disguising yourself as bandits coming back from a hunt in order to get into their main encampment will work only if it fits with the facts, i.e. if:

1) some of the bandits went out for a hunt already and haven’t come back, and

2) you are not trying to do anything other than get in

Thus the player will not be successful if they speak thoughtlessly. In general, the principle is that character skill cannot undo pure player error, except in special circumstances which are almost always known ahead of time. (For example, a character with high Wisdom may gain from the background generator a once-a-week ability which allows them to retroactively have bought one item the last time they were at market.)