Using "Alias'" without modifying usernames.
 

EDIT: Sorry, but this was intended for 3.5. If someone could move it, I'd be much obliged.

This is a subject that came up on a forum that I'm staff at, and we beleived it was an impossiblity, but I thought to ask here to see if in fact it can be done.

The question of registering a second account of 'role-playing purposes', but didn't want to unneedlessly inflate member counts, and began looking for a new idea. Custom profile fields came up, but it doesn't do much for the purpose of what was asked.

Is it possible to code a modification that would allow a user to create a group of 'aliases' for use on a forum that would change their username based on the alias set per post, while still maintaining the name they registered under and their memberid? Or edit the postbit to show different names for users based on the forumid? (i.e., in forumid 1-3 I post as Naki, in 4 and 7 I appear as Kain)

Alternately, if not, is there a way to allow members to register that don't count towards the member count?

I doubt that would be possible without some heavy hack.