Subject: Disguise generator overpowered?
Author:
Posted on: 2016-07-22 15:33:00 UTC
It seems like it is possible to just use the disguise generator to fix any physical maladies that you have. Too fat to run? Just give yourself a better body. Vampire that can't stand sunlight? Make yourself human. Don't have thumbs? No problem. Only have one eye? I've seen someone get fixed by their disguise.
The Disguise Generator, to my understanding as someone who's never written a story, is meant to serve one purpose: To make the mission work with established canon, thus protecting the people using it.
Example: Jay and Acacia mostly used Uruk-hai disguises in the Original Series because they could believably kill Fellowship members in-story where members of other races most likely wouldn't.
The Disguise Generator is not meant to grant crazy-overpowered abilities (although it can). It's not meant to experiment with a new body (although that's a fun aspect of writing it). Its purpose is to make the mission work with canon and not attract attention: That is, to disguise the Agents in question.
I know we've generally moved away from the Uruk-hai, reasonable enemy kill-style of disguise, but there's no denying that part of Jay and Acacia's early creation of the generator was to fit in with the theme of canon compliance. OCs enter a world, and are loud and attention-grabbing and put themselves before the world. Agents enter missions to put the world before themselves, and are quiet and try to keep out of the way until they absolutely can't anymore.
—doctorlit apparently had all these philosophical opinions about disguise generators he wasn't aware of
I admit that I'm somewhat guilty of exploiting the DORKS. Valon disguised himself as a Dalek once.
The key thing is, what Valon relies on is his wits. And just because he's been given a stronger body doesn't necessarily mean he'll be any better at fighting; even if he were disguised as, I don't know, an Ork, his aim wouldn't be any better and he'd still be really clumsy with a weapon.
He prefers to leave the actual combat (when it's necessary) to Kala, and relies on trickery and guile to deal with his problems.
And the DORKS can actually be part of that. In the mission I mentioned, Valon disguises himself as a Dalek not to fight, but to get the attention of a whole bunch of fake Daleks and lure them into a trap. Instead of using the DORKS as a blunt instrument of pain, he uses it to augment his trickery.
I can assure you Valon will always be a better shooter than any Ork around him. Period.
The decision of what disguise to use, or even to use one at all, can serve many roles in a mission. They can reveal an agent's opinions on the culture(s) they're about to enter, or even whole aspects of their personality they couldn't express in their regular body. (Hemlock, anyone?) Following from this, it allows the chance for discussion, or even outright disagreement, between the partners, which can potentially feed into a plot throughout the mission.
But best of all, locking your agents into a single disguise for the extent of the mission places a restriction on you as the writer. As Mark Rosewater says, restrictions breed creativity, forcing you to come up with clever solutions to any unseen problems the disguise leads to. Especially in crossovers: do you pick something that appears in both worlds, but may not be optimal in either? Something unique to only one of the worlds, and force the agents to be extra cautious in the other?
Now the DORKS? Yeah, I do consider that overpowered. It pretty much removes all the narrative strengths above by giving the agents a free, easy solution to any disguise related problem. That's why I chose long ago never to give my agents one. In fact, I'm going to start having my agents collect a set of costumes they can use when only their fashion needs to change. More restrictions! More creativity!
—doctorlit wrote this outdoors and kept passing out in the heat; many odd squiggle words had to be backspaced away.
It makes me want to have my agents lose their DORKS and not bother to get another one.
I think what DCCCV said is certainly part of it. Yes, the Disguise Generator can certainly be overpowered - but, since we're the ones writing the stories, we have the responsibility to avoid that. Very similar, in fact, to the TARDIS. Doctor Who episodes that are poorly written do tend to overpower the Doctor by overpowering the TARDIS or sonic screwdriver. Or, say, giving a secondary character the power to rewrite the memory of the entire species of Daleks, making an abs-- *ahem* Er, sorry, got a bit off topic there.
Point is, almost anything can make the agents in a fic overpowered. That's why good writing is imperative - write the Disguise Generator well is part of writing a PPC team well.
To my knowledge, it is entirely possible to use The Disguise generator for that, but that is not the DORKS' intended purpose. You could definitely use it to keep yourself in optimal shape, and that would make for a great character flaw. Why have you brought this subject up, exactly? If you are going to be exploiting this, the DORKS may need to be changed, but if you will not be, I assume that no one else would. It's an integral part of what makes this organization The PPC, like The Pokeball to Pokemon, or the TARDIS to Doctor Who.
Basically, I'm trying to design a character where the Marquis would look like an idiot for letting them be an agent right away.
Morbid obesity should be a reason for keeping someone out of the field.
Basically, I'm looking for something that can be overcome.
That, or the Marquis could just say no because of some intangible reason.
Bascially I want someone who is overtrained because they had to struggle to become an agent.
...OK why? I mean, first off, Agent isn't the only job there is, nor is it a particularly glamorous or rewarding one, let's be real. More importantly, the PPC a) has a ton of disabled Agents one way or another, and b) has a great medical program. If they're unhealthy to the point where they can't move or have cardiac problems or whatever, then Medical should be able to help, if they're healthy enough that that kind of medical intervention isn't needed then... there's really no problem. PPC doesn't care how pretty you are, as long as you can get the job done, and there's any number of ways to do that job.
The disguise generator and the DORKS are not the same thing. The disguise generator is part of the console, and (the way I've always written it) it takes effect when the agents step through the portal. Before the invention of the DORKS, it was not possible to change your disguise once you were in the fic; you'd have to go back to your RC to do that.
The DORKS, on the other hand, is a handheld device you can take with you into the fic to switch disguises on the fly. It operates on the disguise generator back in HQ the same way the remote activator operates on the portal generator.
At least, that's always been my understanding.
Also, exploiting the devices (or not) is totally on the writer. If you wanted to write an OP agent and erase all their flaws, you could do that—and you'd be critiqued heavily for it, or ought to be.
Or you can do what I do and always have the character's physical disability manifest in their disguise, too. Derik is always blind in one eye, no matter what. The reasons and the appearance of his scars may change to be setting-appropriate, but he's still half blind, because it's part of his character and I think it would be pretty silly to give a character a physical disability just to take it away at the first opportunity.
Another note, maybe unrelated: I've never had my agents remain in disguise in HQ; the disguise always drops when they come out of the portal. That's another style choice. I know others have written it differently.
~Neshomeh
... the disguise generator as drawing a 1:1 correlation between body-parts. It will transform your feet into paws, or your hair into leaves, but it won't and can't transform the stump of an arm into a hand, or a missing eye into a working one. It doesn't have the material to work from, or your residual self image is too strong to let it repair you, or your morphic field won't accommodate the new part, or whatever other techmagbabble you come up with.
This is supported by Acacia's experience with the arrow, and also by I-think-it's-better-that-way. It's probably contradicted by someone being burnt down to a disembodied brain but restored through a disguise somewhere, but luckily we're only loosely sharing a canon, so I can ignore that. ^_^
(It also explains why regeneration locks you in your new body: it scrambles your cells, meaning if you changed back, you'd probably be a bucket of goo. The disguise generator won't change you back if you'd die on changing - that's bad for business.)
hS
I've been meaning to ask this for a while. What would happen if a Time Lord got shot while disguised as a human or similar non-regenerating species?
Given the precedent of the TV movie, they could probably still regenerate if their partner got them back to HQ and out of disguise before too long. They'd probably have the same amnesia Eight did, though.
Alternately: regeneration is an intrinsic property of them, rather like Selene's vampirism. If they set the disguise up correctly, they would regenerate as normal. They might find side-effects, such as their regeneration sharing traits with their disguise instead of their normal body (such as species), or a change in the number of regenerations left, or finding their entire new personality informed solely by what happened while wearing the disguise...
Basically, the answer is the same as always: whatever's funniest. ;)
hS
I believe it was from the sporking of The Rainbow Factory. It may have been a one off thing, however.
The Disguise Generator is built into the console. The DORKS is a portable and oft-malfunctioning version.
hS, walking encyclopaedia