What did they look like?

[Inky]

When ever someone asks me this, I cringe in real life. I know it's easy enough to give away the sdesc of a criminal or something similar enough so that they could easily be recognized. But is that realistic? To be able to point out someone with just a few words like 'the short brown dwarf'? There would a be hundreads of short, brown dwarfs in a city state. How would someone like a templar find the exact dwarf so easily in a crowd?

I thought this was especially weak once when I was on the receiving end to this. I had a character once who was really young (3 hours max of gameplay) and who committed a single petty crime. The next day I walk in to a tavern and get grabbed by a giant by the orders of a Templar. A templar who I am sure had never seen my character before. I could be wrong, but I am 99% positive that this templar was given my sdesc.

Thoughts?

Edit: Wrong forum! Someone wanna put this in general or roleplay discussion? Thanks.

[Marauder Moe]

I agree.  Verbally describing someone by their sdesc is utterly twinkish.

The only exception being when the sdesc contains something especially unique, like two heads or rainbow-dyed hair.

[LauraMars]

What was it?  Hey!  Weird sdescs have their uses!

"The whelp looked like...a dappled...dickens."

SEE?  Even a twink would be ashamed to say those words!

[mansa]

It is solely up to you, the player, to change how interactions with other players happen.  You should never do things that you think are 'twinky' or 'cheap'.  It just strengthens your argument when you don't break your own logic.  Your example will change this game to the better.

Obviously, Templars are in a High Profile position and they are also the Highest on the Karma list.  The Player of that Templar -must of- had other information going on, rather than what you could observe or see.  The players of Templars themselves know of the toils and pains of twinky interaction to the fullest ammount possible.

Perhaps you should make an exaggerment with the next person asking you what they look like, by saying, 'They were tall, and muscular, and a man!'  That usually makes people realize that they are being silly.

[Armaddict]

I got sick of this as well.

I've started getting in the habit of trying to remember things out of the mdesc, as well as armor, clothing, or jewelry.  Tattoos are good, scars only if they're noticeable or described as being prominent.  (I don't know about you guys, but when I first meet people, I don't notice scars that much, unless they're on the face.  Even then, sometimes faint ones are just...damn hard to notice.  And that's when you're -talking- to them, not just looking at them from across the room.)

It's made it a lot harder to describe people well to people, especially after any period of time...and it's a change I like.  It feels more real.

[proxie]

I had a greatly fun and reasonably long lived character that I purposefully made to make people have to read my long description.


The petite young woman


*chortles*

She had gorgeous red hair in a huge thick ponytail down to her butt if I remember correctly, but I'd like to see someone try and describe her without reading her description.

Proxie

[moab]

I love to ask "what did they look like" with my characters.  I kinda view it as a test, a challange to the other character.

Are you going to reveal yourself as a twink by rattling off the sdesc?  Are you going to be creative and real?

Yeah. Helps me figure out who I'm going to spend time with.

[Larrath]

I virtually never use the same words from the sdesc, unless they happen to be the best words my character can come up with to describe them.  If the sdesc is "the woman with the tremendous, opalescent temboeye-hued eyes", my character would probably say she had freakish eyes that looked like temboeye gems, as long as he knew what that stone looked like.
Otherwise he'd say shiny brown eyes.

Some of the times I use clothing, tattoos or scars, and other times accents or anything else that makes sense.

My biggest pet peeve is when people use sdescs instead of names, and I try to avoid doing it myself.
It makes me want to make a character and name him Sinewy McVerytall.

[spawnloser]

I'm not too opposed to using sdesc terms...but ONLY as long as they are paraphrased...like, when talking about 'the obese, muculent man' I'd say, "He was a big fat guy, like orca fat and he looked like he'd been coated in grease!"  I mean, your sdesc is SUPPOSED to be your most defining characteristics...so if that's the things about the person that most stand out, I say use them.  Just don't use the same words...that's just lazy.

[Akaramu]

I have made it a habit to copy mdescs of people my character interacted with into a word doc. If I need to remember what they looked like later on, I'll skim over it and pick a feature or two that would have been realistically easy to remember. For example 'He was big, bald, and had a scar all over his forehead'.

If My PC doesnt see the other character again for awhile, I erase their mdesc from my sacred word document.

[mansa]

Speaking about copying and pasting full main descriptions into a txt file...

I just do it all in my head, like my character would.  I mean, unless my character had a photographic memory and could remember how many fingers and toes the dude had...

[Maybe42or54]

Well personally, I think it is fine to use words from their sdesc as those were picked, hopefully, because they are the most memorable traits.

Sometimes those traits are just normal.

Sometimes those traits glow in the dark.

So yea, normally I use a combination of sdesc, armor, and tattoos/scars to describe someone.

[Bebop]

I love to ask "what did they look like" with my characters.  I kinda view it as a test, a challange to the other character.

Are you going to reveal yourself as a twink by rattling off the sdesc?  Are you going to be creative and real?

Yeah. Helps me figure out who I'm going to spend time with.

Short Description is something I think most people choose as what they want people to notice first whenever they look at you.  What is most prominent and noticable what are people going to see first without really looking you over.  These are features that would standout most, and would most likely be most memorable.  What's wrong with using that?

To get storylines going sometimes you have to kind of be specific and players have to interact with players.  Not to mention I don't see any problem sending a clear image of said person via the way.

As for the above quote I would like to comment my own opinion that I think it's pretty bad if you are purposefully testing someones ooc opinions and deciding whether or not to play with that person based on that, I would think that would make you miss out.  But to each their own.

[Marauder Moe]

What's wrong with using that?

It doesn't actually work in real life.  That's what's wrong.

Try it.  Have someone give you a one-sentance description of someone you've never met, then go find that person.

[Bestatte]

That might not be a bad thing Bebop, but I recall seeing several PCs whose sdescs either didn't match up with their main descs, or had features in their main descs that were FAR more prominent than what their sdesc suggested.

Hypothetical examples:

the lean, tall man

in main desc it states that the man has an uber-thick neck and white eyes.

If I was to describe that man to a templar, I think the fact that he has white eyes and a neck as thick as a tree trunk would be FAR more identifiable than the fact that he's lean and tall.

Another example:

the thin, long-haired girl

whose main desc points out that she has very pale skin, which is unusual enough that most people would notice that LONG before they noticed her thin-ness, which is a typical trait of most Zalanthans.

Then there's another problem, where you have a sdesc that has nothing to do with the main desc.

the red-headed freckled boy

whose main desc doesn't even mention that he HAS skin, let along what kind of markings are on his skin. If his hood is up when a templar looks at him, the templar won't have any reason to identify this boy as being the one with freckles. Not even in broad daylight standing up close and personal.

main desc should include the same information (though not necessarily the exact same keywords) as are mentioned in the sdesc, and vice versa. And if a feature really stands out, more than anything else, then that's the thing that should be included in the sdesc, rather than just the fact that your PC is tall or thin.

If people adhered to that, then it would be almost reasonable to use the sdesc to verbally identify someone to someone else. But it isn't adhered to with any regularity, and as such it makes MORE sense to use the info in the main desc rather than in the sdesc.

[Maybe42or54]

Then maybe it is twinkish not to have your most distinguishing features in your SDesc?

[moab]

I love to ask "what did they look like" with my characters.  I kinda view it as a test, a challange to the other character.

Are you going to reveal yourself as a twink by rattling off the sdesc?  Are you going to be creative and real?

Yeah. Helps me figure out who I'm going to spend time with.

Short Description is something I think most people choose as what they want people to notice first whenever they look at you.  What is most prominent and noticable what are people going to see first without really looking you over.  These are features that would standout most, and would most likely be most memorable.  What's wrong with using that?

To get storylines going sometimes you have to kind of be specific and players have to interact with players.  Not to mention I don't see any problem sending a clear image of said person via the way.

As for the above quote I would like to comment my own opinion that I think it's pretty bad if you are purposefully testing someones ooc opinions and deciding whether or not to play with that person based on that, I would think that would make you miss out.  But to each their own.

True. I was being a bit extreme.  I'm not actually that bad.  
:-D

[Bestatte]

If it's on purpose then yeah I'd think it's twinkish. But I don't know that it's always on purpose. Sometimes you'll just run into someone who made the sdesc right away, and as an afterthought added stuff into the main desc they decided would be nifty. They might forget that they probably should go back and edit the sdesc, or it might just be an oversight on their part. And then it would be an oversight on the staff's part when they approve it. I doubt, very highly, that the staff would intentionally approve a PC where the main desc and sdesc aren't somehow linked to each other. They're all human afterall. Except for Saikun of course

[Folker]

forget it heh.

[Angela Christine]

Sometimes people just can't figure out a smooth way to mention the "most noticable" features in 30 characters.  Or they are trying to focus on features that would be noticable from accross the room no matter what clothing they are wearing -- some people won't include eyes even if they have really freaky eyes, because eyes are only really noticable close up.  I don't worry about it.

[Gaare]

That's one of two side sharp blade situations. I do not think saying exact short decs is -always- twinking or something bad similar to that.

i) Let's assume your PC had a long chat at bar with another PC. Then one or two days, later someone asked you that person. It looks funny and stupid not to have an answer. Of course either if you copy long desc and items of PCs your PC met, or have an excellent memory...

ii) You had a talk via the Way, and you are asked to describe.. well.. That is a mental image.

iii) Worst case... You see a PC occasionaly but the desc is "the ?,? woman." You do not remember the long desc as well since it was boring to read text full of "?'s" for you. There is the dilemma.

[Jarod550]

"I feel" that if there are folks searching out twinkish behavior by asking questions that will garner a in their opinion, "twinkish" responce, they are just searching for twinks.

Besides, who memorizes someone elses description, I have a character I've had for a bit, and I still am sometimes surprised when I type look figure or something and it defaults to me, takes me a second to realize it's my character.  If you were to ask me that question, I would copy and past the sdesc, no.  But I would probably say something like:

say (shrugging his shoulders slightly) The fellow was a tall guy, and had black-braided hair.

It seems like "in my opinion" I feel some of you are searching for what you consider twinkish behavior so that you can complain or try to mold people into your exact copy or mold that you choose to play.  If they aren't doing something blatently twinkish, who cares?  If my character doesn't -em nocks the arrow in his buff ass bow, aiming at a distant object.- with every shot, who cares.

"I feel" that some of you people -are- well established players, and -do- have great forms of play and emotes ect, however, some of you offer suggestions, some of you act as if it's your way or the highway.

"I feel" more emphasis needs to be spent in enriching the role playing environment and less on "You are a twink because!".  Just play the damn game..

That's my piece.

Jarod

[Larrath]

The problem isn't that people use features described in the sdesc to describe PCs.  This is perfectly fine.

The problem is that people use specific words.  There are thousands of sinewy humans with dark skin in Allanak, but codedly there are only a couple of "sinewy, dark-skinned human"s in Allanak.  Now, if you say that that person had dark skin, brown eyes and had a large triangular scar on his face, the Templar (or whoever) still has enough information to identify the character without hearing a Ding! the first time he sees "the sinewy, dark-skinned human" is standing here.

There is a reason why Arm shows sdescs instead of nicknames for the characters.  If you honestly think about it, going to a police officer and describing the attacker as "being tall, and with deep emerald eyes" is weird and unhelpful.

[moab]

Jarrod,

I feel you have never had anything positive to say about the game.

I also probably shouldn't feed the trolls, but sometimes I'm weak.  It's something I struggle with.

Edit to Add Something to keep the post topical:

I think Larrath hits it on the nose.  Don't use the exact wording of the character.  Be a little vague.  Be a little creative.  Pick out features of the character that stand out but aren't in the short desc. People are deeper than just 80 characters (or whatever the length is).

I love this:

Scene: Busy Tavern in Outpost
Person 1: You see an elf 'round here recently.
Person 2: Yeah, like forty of 'em.  Most of tall, skinny, dirty lookin'.
Person 1: Uh. Yeah. Thanks.

[Maybe42or54]

The problem is that people use specific words.  There are thousands of sinewy humans with dark skin in Allanak, but codedly there are only a couple of "sinewy, dark-skinned human"s in Allanak.  Now, if you say that that person had dark skin, brown eyes and had a large triangular scar on his face, the Templar (or whoever) still has enough information to identify the character without hearing a Ding! the first time he sees "the sinewy, dark-skinned human" is standing here.

And if they blend in so well with the normal population, it should be damned hard to find them. Even with specific tattooes, or special armor. Those had to be sold to someone else too.