eightofswords
Memento mori
Ten... Nine... Eight...
Deep in the bowels of the station, the assassin silently counted down ten seconds. On the other side of the door, the sound of booted footsteps marched toward her with milspec precision. She whispered a hurried prayer to the gods of science that her cloaking field last until they pass.
Six... Five... Four...
The assassin slipped into position in the corner next to the doorway. She breathed in deeply. The cloak would protect her from visual observation, but did nothing for sounds.
Two... One... Zero.
The door slid open, right on schedule. A quarter of guards in body armor and face-concealing helmets marched through. A whole four seconds passed between the last exiting and the door closing. Plenty of time.
The assassin slipped through with a grin. That was almost too easy. She moved into the corridor, only for her smirk to turn into a look of horror.
"EMP detected," her earpiece warned, moments before she winked back into visibility.
---
On the other side of the fourth wall, the assassin's player growled. "Now that," he complained, "was metagaming."
---
"It was not!", the engineer's player posted back. "I had plenty of in-character reasons to suspect you, and my character has seen you use the cloak before. Setting up an EMP is a totally sensible precaution, and definitely the kind of thing my character would do."
---
Both fumed.
Alright, folks, how would you go about preventing the above situation? I'm thinking primarily about online RPs, but if anyone has a technique that generalizes to tabletop RPGs, that would be even better. In my hypothetical use case, figuring out "whodunit" is supposed to be part of the fun, so mandating that everything be posted publicly isn't a great option. Solutions that work even with multiple factions or multiple PCs on the same faction are preferred.
Deep in the bowels of the station, the assassin silently counted down ten seconds. On the other side of the door, the sound of booted footsteps marched toward her with milspec precision. She whispered a hurried prayer to the gods of science that her cloaking field last until they pass.
Six... Five... Four...
The assassin slipped into position in the corner next to the doorway. She breathed in deeply. The cloak would protect her from visual observation, but did nothing for sounds.
Two... One... Zero.
The door slid open, right on schedule. A quarter of guards in body armor and face-concealing helmets marched through. A whole four seconds passed between the last exiting and the door closing. Plenty of time.
The assassin slipped through with a grin. That was almost too easy. She moved into the corridor, only for her smirk to turn into a look of horror.
"EMP detected," her earpiece warned, moments before she winked back into visibility.
---
On the other side of the fourth wall, the assassin's player growled. "Now that," he complained, "was metagaming."
---
"It was not!", the engineer's player posted back. "I had plenty of in-character reasons to suspect you, and my character has seen you use the cloak before. Setting up an EMP is a totally sensible precaution, and definitely the kind of thing my character would do."
---
Both fumed.
Alright, folks, how would you go about preventing the above situation? I'm thinking primarily about online RPs, but if anyone has a technique that generalizes to tabletop RPGs, that would be even better. In my hypothetical use case, figuring out "whodunit" is supposed to be part of the fun, so mandating that everything be posted publicly isn't a great option. Solutions that work even with multiple factions or multiple PCs on the same faction are preferred.