The figure in a black leather and steel-grey sandcloth cloak

[Reiloth]

Does anyone else find it a little jarring to see "steel" associated with every Salarri you ever encounter?

To me, its a strange duality that I find..Where plenty of people try to associate colors not neccesarily apparent in color. Baobab-haired. Cylini-skinned. Numut-eyed. People aiming to kind of give you an idea of what color it is, but you gotta think about it, and you have to start believing your seeing baobab, not a purplish sort of brown color.

So the question I pose to you all is, do you find seeing "Steel" on a day to day basis in a world where metal is exceedingly rare, used as an OOC point of reference for color, jarring? Or do you not care in the slightest?

hit me.

[Anael]

"He's got his cloak of almost the same color as the big ass dragon statue up over there."

The fact it's extremly rare and expensive doesn't mean it's non-existant. I imagine citizens of both cities know how steel looks, just as well as they can see silver pretty often (and you get so many silver-hairs and silver-eyes about!)

[bloodfromstone]

Kind of a derail, but I feel similarly about people saying that they've "gotten rusty" at a given skill. I'm guilty of it myself, but most people probably wouldn't know what rust is.....

[Reiloth]

Good point. I was thinking of the point of view of a Northerner, but a good point notwithstanding.

[John]

It jars me from time to time, but not enough to want the imms to change every single item (or application) with it.

Having said that, wasn't there a project run by Ashyom earlier to get rid of silver from every item in game (unless the item is of course, silver)? Was it extended to steel as well? If so, might want to give her an e-mail and ask if she's still working on it (I don't think she'd change the Salarri uniforms, but any other item with steel would be changed ).

[Manhattan]

This is kind of like saying "That pecan pie tastes like shit."
But seriously, how would anyone -know- what shit tastes like?

[Dracul]

Steel exists. Right?

So I dont see anything wrong with it being used as a color.

[facehugger]

Well, that's no difference then say, the color orange.

There's no oranges on Zalanthas.

Silver?

Sky-blue eyes in a red-skied world?

These are shades of colors that we, as players know. They are used in game, because we are able to, in our mind, put the color to the world. This helps us, as the players. better envision the game world.

I mean, sure, we could rename the shade of steal as "the color gnarflestark" and we could have a bunch of Salarrs running around with there krrtnavian-blue eyes wearing their gnarflestark cloaks, but I think that would just be really confusing.

[Jherlen]

Gnarflestark sounds more Kadian to me, really.

(and no, I don't get jarred by the cloaks.)

[Anonymous]

Does anyone else find it a little jarring to see "steel" associated with every Salarri you ever encounter?

No, because color descriptions are an OOC concept.  It's communicating what dye of grey was used on the cloak to me, the player.

[sacac]

It bugs me, but I get over it everytime.

[Bestatte]

Also regarding the "orange" thing - orange is a color, AND it is a fruit. It is both, independently. I believe the fruit is called an orange because it has that color, and not the other way around.

So orange wouldn't be jarring at all, because it's a valid color name independent of anything else.

Steel exists in Zalanthas, and even northerners would know that a steel dragon exists outside the allanak gates. Not all of them have seen it, but they'd have heard tales from travellers who could describe the color, the metal...etc.

The thing with the sky-blue eyes does kinda jar me a bit, since the zalanthan sky is shades of red. But I don't really give it enough thought for it to bug me.

[Cuusardo]

I think it's no more jarring than people who describe parts of characters as being the same color as water.

[Swordsman]

I'm pretty sure I remember some areas described with a blue sky, though maybe this has changed over the years. It might well be that there are some areas described with a red sky, though I can't think of one just now. To me, a red sky would make the world a bit too alien in character. I also used to think the walls of Allanak were black, until one day, long ago, I actually looked and noticed they were red (if I remember correctly ... it might be the other way round). Just a bit of reminiscing.

Swordsman

[Sholdyn]

I think as long as it's used in moderation, OOC concepts can be used in descriptions to help players picture game stuff better. As long as it doesn't overlap with in game stuff; like, if you say 'honey coloured', you should mean green, not golden. I don't think OOC phrases should be spoken, like 'Getting rusty' as bloodfromstone said, but *shrug* it happens.

[Anonymous]

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I'm having a hard time understanding how the use of a color type in a sdesc, one that exists in the game, is jarring for people, some of whom presumably have IM's, web browsers, winamp and the like running on their desktop while they mud in a window.

Honestly it seems a little absurd.  We aren't talking about a desc that reads 'the black cloak like the one Ozzy wore in that video 14 years ago' or something similar.  There is steel in the game and it's also a good way to describe a certain shade of grey.

[flurry]

It doesn't bother me.  Something like "snow-white" would bother me, but steel exists in Zalanthas.

I remember a while ago in the Weekly Update or maybe on the GDB, one of the Imms mentioned an effort to change item descriptions with "gold" or "silver" to "golden" or "silvery" to stress that it's describing the color, not the materials.    Would it be less jarring if it said "steely-grey" instead of "steel-grey"?   Maybe for consistency it should.

[JollyGreenGiant]

Steely Dan what?

[Anonymous]

Steely Dan what?

You just broke my roleplay.

[bloodfromstone]

I don't mind things being described with ooc concepts, but I do agree that color coding things like honey and the sky should be kept in the game world's coloring. It's even better if there's additional information in the main descrip to indicate this, for the sake of new players. I know I'm still settling into associating Zalathan references with certain colors.

[Armaddict]

I always thought of it this way...the sdesc is an ooc grouping of words to tell what someone looks like, IC'ly.

Icy eyes are...well...not common, but I've seen it enough.  I don't really care...it's the player telling me what the eyes look like, and IC'ly...that word has nothing to do with anything.

[John]

I think it's no more jarring than people who describe parts of characters as being the same color as water.

Unless they're describing something as murky and brown.

[Whira's Luck]

I don't find any use of earthly colors as descriptors in Arm jarring because the only frame of reference I have is what those things are defined as in the english language. The phrase isn't being used literally but metaphorically as in: the color is the grey color of steel. Not that the cloak is made of steel. Since you know what a color is, and you know what color steel is, you now can visualize the color that is meant by it since it's specified or narrowed down the color. How would you relate the same exact color meaning in zalanthan terms so that anyone who saw it would get the same, or near-same visualization? You could say 'grey' but that would imply a full gamut of grey, from eggshell to charcoal. You could say 'dark grey' and you're furthur pinpointing that it comes from the range of dark greys. Steel-grey is a distinct and specific hue.

The only way you can derive comprehension is to understand the definitions and context that the words are being used in. For example, you could say well in zalanthas, steel-grey is the color of tregils, so you could call it 'tregil-grey'. However, in order to understand this, you need to know that all tregils (or even most tregils) are the color of steel-grey. For someone who has no frame of reference as to what a tregil is or what color a tregil is, this designation is completely meaningless. It is far simpler for a reader to comprehend steel-grey as a color since that falls into the realm of what most people understand. You are, by no means, required to use that phrase signalling IC comprehension and can generalize: "Well, it was dark grey and black, a Salarr cloak."

The same goes for honey (when used in context to amber colors), sky-blue, icy, or whatever other OOC descriptors are used in the game.

I guess I fail to understand how this could be jarring, unless pinpointing exact shades of colors is jarring. It's no more jarring than a 'leaf-green' skirt, when leaves in zalanthas may be black, purple, green, blue or red (hell, even on earth leaves can be brown, purple, green, red and in some cases many other shades, depending on what leaves you're talking about). Leaf-green denotes a specific hue that relies upon your terran definition of leaf-green to work so that you, not your character, can comprehend the meaning of those words in the context that they are being used.

[Selie]

For what little it's worth, I agree that the descriptions are for my benefit as the player. Within the context of the game, my character would presumably see someone's face and build in a physical way, rather than particular descriptive words. If my character describes someone, I don't necessarily use the words in the character's actual description - for example, even if it's not the most accurate match, to my non-artistically-inclined character, "auburn" becomes "brown". People seem to try very hard to have flowery descriptions of their characters, but it's highly doubtful that the majority of people on Zalanthas would think to use such pretty, occasionally high-vocabulary words anyway. So does it make that much difference if the word is an our-world color reference? That's not how the character would interpret it. If I happen to know the color of a particular plant - which I don't, as I'm still reliant on the help files - then I may describe something of that color as looking like it, IC - but first, I have to understand the color OOC.

I'm all for allowing people to easily visualize what my character looks like. They can do what they will IC with that information, but my first responsibility is making sure that my fellow players know what I mean. There's somebody who describes their hair a certain way, but I misread it and now my mental image of that character is stuck with that misreading. I'd like to avoid making that mistake again if at all possible.

Does this make any sense? I'm always worried that my posts will be circular or incoherent or somehow both...

[Reiloth]

Being misunderstood. But that seems to happen a lot on the GDB.

Merely I was saying there is a sort of duality, not that I particularly am saying "SAYING STEEL IS NOT INCREDIBLY IC BECAUSE THERES VERY LITTLE STEEL."

-proven otherwise tactfully by noting the huge steel dragon just inside of Allanak's gates.

Rather i'm saying there is a split; some people would say "purple-skinned". Others would prefer "Baobab-skinned". I was merely questioning which is preferable, and which is -more- jarring. The more OOC, legitly recognizable terran descriptions, or the more IC, armageddon-esque descriptions.

Personally I don't see a problem with either, until it becomes a completely obscure IC descriptor that I have no idea what the hell it is, or what color it is, or what its texture is, etc.

If someone said to me for instance, Your hair feels like a dog, I would assume its shaggy and furry, and cute.

If someone on the other hand said to me, Your hair feels like that of a quirri! I would be somewhat confused as to whether they were insulting or complimenting me, and if my hair was obscenely long and shaggy or short and furry. And cute.

in sum, what do you think is "prefferable". Less "jarring". More understandable, or perhaps adds more to the flow of the game.