What did they look like?

[Jarod550]

Jarrod,

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

Well Moab, anything I respond to this will be considered flaming or whatever they wanna call it, so all I'll say is this, from the pms and aim messages I get every other day I play, you're opinion isn't going to sway me, there are more then enough people who enjoy my comments and agree.

Peace,

Jarod

[marko]

How I describe someone in the game is entirely dependant on the situation and the sdesc of the person being described.

If someone has a truly unique sdesc I will try and use it.  Every single time.

The reason?  Because it is so unique it is clear that someone wants their char to be described like that.  For example, if someone is as atramentous then, by golly, I'll use that to describe them no matter what character I'm playing.  After all, atramentous is the word that best describes the person and immediately comes to mind when looking at them.  Therefore, it would be an injustice not to use the proper adjective.

Of course, when dealing with the more mundane sdescs it is a matter of the situation and how much my char saw and / or cares.

A lot of times I don't bother remembering sdescs or names.  This creates some interesting times especially when asked to describe someone and you have absolutely no idea what they looked like ICly or OOCly.

[BucketheadWendi]

I happened upon this thread and it made me a little nervous. What people are saying is that if I use someone's sdesc to describe them that will be frowned on? I thought that was what sdescs and adjectives were for. I mean, uhm, let's say my char is walking down the street and suddenly a "tall, dark-haired man" jumps out and mugs her, knocking her out before I ever even have the chance to type look tall. So now if I tell someone "A tall, dark-haired man leapt from the shadows and knocked me out" that is twinkish? Or if I said "A tall man with dark hair" would that make some kind of difference? What if my character would sooner say "dark-haired" than "dark hair".  Now true, in RL if you go to the cop shop and tell the ociffer you were just mugged and he asks what the guy looked like and you tell him "He was tall, and he had dark hair." that won't get you too far but that's reality. Sure, maybe it he has a scar or two and it would help to mention that but maybe you just didn't notice. That's reality. You don't instantly take in a person's appearance and devote it to memory. I have a hard time describing life-long friends past "Yeah, he's skinny and tall." or maybe "He's skinny and tall and his hair is brown." MAYBE even his complexion if it's something to be remarked on. It has to be someone I've known for a while or care about alot for me to remember stuff like eye color, or near-exact height or other small details. This makes something like copying and pasting a desc seem twinkish, to me. I mean in RL there is no copy and paste command. You remember what you remember.
Now I'm not saying that including other things about the character wouldn't be great RP and definatley should be encouraged but it seems to me like saying that if you don't do that you're a twink is really extreme. I'm not just talking about extreme situations either. If my character is sitting at the bar drinking with a "pudgy, pug-nosed dwarf"  and someone was like, "who was that sitting beside you?" she would probably say "A pudgy little dwarf with a pug nose." or maybe "A pug-nosed dwarf, a pudgy one." or something to that effect. It sound stupid to go on like, "Well, he had brown eyes and a good tan, probably about four feet tall, bitten off fingernails, blahblahblah and oh yeah he was pudgy and pug-nosed." Now there are all types of variations on the shorter answer, "He was a dwarf, with a lil' pug nose." or "A pudgy dwarven fellow." and I might use those, but is that really too different? Really, I can't be bothered to copy and paste the desc of every char I interact with. That's just too hardcore. Does this make me a bad roleplayer? :/

[ale six]

Wendi, what you're describing is basically fine. It doesn't make a difference if you say "a pudgy dwarf with a little pug nose" or any other variation of that.

The trick is to describe somebody's most distinguishing features, not just their sdesc. These two may be the same thing (pudgy dwarf with a pug nose), or they may not be (tall, dark-haired man).

You can paraphrase a bit, to mix things up, or you can read their mdesc to see if there's anything else you could use. (After all, if the tall, dark-haired man also had purple skin, it might be worth mentioning.)

I'd go on, but I think Larrath basically hit the nail on the head.

[marko]

Does this make me a bad roleplayer? :/

No.  

[Lazloth]

If someone has a truly unique sdesc I will try and use it.  Every single time.

The reason?  Because it is so unique it is clear that someone wants their char to be described like that.  For example, if someone is as atramentous then, by golly, I'll use that to describe them no matter what character I'm playing.  After all, atramentous is the word that best describes the person and immediately comes to mind when looking at them.  Therefore, it would be an injustice not to use the proper adjective.

I'm personally of a different mindset, though I don't really worry with it too much.  I don't much care if someone uses the exact sdesc to describe another character or NPC, or completely rewords everything and peppers in references to their gear, tattooes, whatever.

However, if I'm playing a character who would never utter "atramentous" in any context, I wouldn't break his lexicon when singling out someone else.

Somewhere in the slums..
> "His hands were, well, atramentous."
> "What the hell does that mean?"
> "Uh, you know, atramentous."

[marko]

See, the way I see it, the adjective used is what the player considers to be the best descriptor of the character and would be used by everyone who sees that character.  If there was an issue with using the term in the game it wouldn't have been allowed in the first place.

Therefore, to describe someone using their most prominent traits and the words that come to mind, you need to make use of the adjective.  So as to make the point that I'm not trying to pick on atramentous  (which, for those who may not know, means "darkish" - I randomly picked a good one from a thesaurus) let's go with oleaginous this time.

If there was a character who was the oleaginous, chocolate-haired man - and I needed to describe them with any character I had, I would use each of those adjectives.  I'd probably use some other terms as well to give it some context but I'd definitely make use of the impressive adjectives.

I wouldn't be breaking lexicon because, clearly, these are the adjectives that best define the character and are the ones that come immediately to the tip of your tongue when you see the character.  That means if I had a half-giant - yup, first thing outta his mouth would be oleaginous.  Again, the wonders of the thesaurus have provided me with that gem - it means, roughly, "oily."

Yes, I'm a bit weird when it comes to using the more creative and extreme adjectives in sdescs - I can't help but use them.  If someone spends a long time seeking out the perfect word to describe their character in an sdesc then I'm going to honor them and use that word when describing their character.  

I don't see it so much as breaking vocabulary but honoring the creative abilities of the player behind the character.  If they felt the terms were the best ones to describe their characters who am I to argue with that?  Therefore, I'll describe their character as they meant them to be described.  

I had the experience of having to describe a chocolate person once in the game.  That was interesting.  

After going on about how the person was brown and kinda sweet looking my char ended up shrugging and saying,
   "Well, I guess I'd say he was chocolate... but don't ask me what that really means.  That's just the word that comes to mind."

I don't mind if someone doesn't use exact sdesc adjectives nor do I mind if someone does.  It's entirely up to the player to decide that.  If the sdesc was allowed then it the terms are acceptable to be used in the game.  I like embedding the actual adjectives in an overall description of someone but that's a personal preference.

[Larrath]

After going on about how the person was brown and kinda sweet looking my char ended up shrugging and saying,
   "Well, I guess I'd say he was chocolate... but don't ask me what that really means.  That's just the word that comes to mind."

I would throw my hands up in disgust if I ever encountered such a statement in-game.  I'm not saying this to be rude or mean, I just feel a little strongly about it.  There's no such thing as Chocolate in the Known World, and at least the vast majority of people won't know what Coffee is, either.

I don't think that repeating the exact same word in a PC's sdesc is a compliment to that player's writing abilities; in fact, I think this actively discourages using colorful words in sdescs.

If your sdesc is "the tall, muscular man", or "the brown-eyed, dark-haired man", you still have a fighting chance of escape after your exact sdesc was passed to a templar.  If your sdesc is "the sun-kissed, sienna-maned fellow", people will be all over you in two seconds.
This means that anyone who wants to be a high-profile criminal will be forced to pick the most boring, generic sdesc out there, simply to allow themselves the 'advantage'--which nearly anyone should have--of being able to melt into the crowd.

[Agent_137]

I try to take one word from their sdesc and draw the rest from synonyms of their sdesc and mdesc. For the first time I've ever seen, I think marko might be a bit off, and might be taking things too far.

[Jherlen]

Yeah, I normally agree with marko, but I can't here. Just because someone chooses an obscure word as an sdesc, it automatically becomes a word in your PC's vocabulary for describing them? I don't follow.

Sdesc keywords exist mainly so we can have unique ways to target different PCs, IMO. If we wanted PCs to be instantly identifiable, then rather than using sdescs at all we should just have people's names show up as on other MUDs. If someone has a unique sdesc keyword and everyone starts referring to him as "the chocolate skinned man", you may as well just let everyone know his name is Jimbob right from looking at him.

As Larrath said, it'll discourage unique writing if everyone is going to be tagged based exactly on what adjectives they pick in their sdesc. I'd rather people read the mdesc, pick out outstanding features, or use synonyms rather than just say "Oh, Amos? Yeah, I know him, he's the caramel-haired cerulean-eyed man."

[Inky (not logged)]

I want to clarify, my problem is not that that PC's are trying to describe anyone with their sdesc. My problem is that PC's often spot other PC's in a virtual crowd just becuase they know their sdesc.

Allow me to illustrate again using an example of law enforcement. Suppose the local authority is told that a blue eyed, baobab skinned elf is causing michief and what not. And suppose that milita is given extra information from the mdesc: such as it's gender, braided hair and one or more tattoos.

In the above situation there are several questions that might be considered, if only to maintain a bit of realism. Should the militia  recognize the elf (essentially 'knowing him by face') immediatly as the culprit once he/she just happens to be seen walking down the street/pub? Even knowing that there might be hundreads of elves (vnpcs) milling in and about the road/tavern every day? Should the militia even bother watching for an elf with such a vague description and such common traits?

Considering all of the above I would probably let the elf walk. That said, I wouldn't call it twinkish someone did pick out the elf for questioning; as long as the anonymity of a large city was considered at one point.

[Anonymous]

The problem lies in the difference in effectiveness between what the eye perceives and presenting a verbal description of the person perceived.

If you look at a person, generally you'll have an easy time recognizing that person if you see him or her anytime soon afterwards. To this extent, the sdesc system works well.

But you'd be hard put to describe that person adequately unless you specifically took notes. It's where the system breaks down; telling someone else the precise sdesc is like handing that someone a photograph of the person you're trying to describe.

All you really should be able to do verbally is describe a set of characteristics belonging to that person (at least without a police sketch artist). What I suggest here is that people give out partial sdescs. Most sdescs mention two characteristics; just recall one of them, and augment that with what you noticed in the ldesc and clothing. That way identification is a fuzzy business again. If someone has used a fancy word like "chocolate" that only one sdesc will have, replace it with a verbal equivalent like "really rich brown skin".

However, it's not so clear whether this would be true using the Way? Could you transmit an image of someone using the Way? Especially if you're looking at that person right then?

[Marauder Moe]

Here's my take on how to non-twinkishly describe someone: first, don't use obvious and obscure words from their sdesc.  People don't describe others as having emerald, cerulean, or chestnut eyes.  They say green, blue, or brown, maybe with a dark or light qualifier.  People don't describe others as barrel-chested, corpulent, sinewy, or petite either.  They say big, fat, slim, or small.  Basically, use simple words!  Don't pull out flowery adjectives you (OOCly) read in their (OOC) s/description.  Secondly, physical description is not enough.  In any given part of the city there are probably several dozen big, blue-eyed human men.  You need context to narrow it down.  Perhaps your target has a job, and thus may wear the uniform of a house.  Even so, though, each house probably also has many employees that could be the big, blue-eyed human man.  If your informant could tell you that he likes to hang out at the Bard's Barrel, then I'd say you would have enough information to justify walking up to the barrel-chested, cerulean-eyed man in the Bard's Barrel who's wearing a Salarr cloak and asking if his name is Amos.

As for the Way, I've always been under the impression that communication is verbal with occaisional emotional undertones being felt.  The only image you see is the image of the person you're talking to.  No pictures.

[BucketheadWendi]

Well, I'm just going to continue to use sdescs at least as a guideline for describing someone IC. I hope no one looks down on, but I feel like there's a pretty compelling argument for it.
What if we never see the person's mdesc or what they're wearing? Are we just supposed to pretend there was no shortdesc? The only exceptions I can find are if the sdesc uses words that your character wouldn't ICly know or understand. But if their desc is "the sinewy young man" or the "tow-headed girl" then it's totally reasonable to say that the young man was thin and muscular, or that the girl had blonde hair, doesn't it? If you don't recognize the word: dictionary.com is right there. It's alot easier than copy and pasting their whole desc. I'm not trying to say that we should never go the extra mile and include some of their other attributes, or their clothes, but that doesn't *always* seem appropriate to me. It makes sense to tell people what my character would remember about the other person. So it seems to me that it should be the player's responsibility to include their most prominent features in their sdesc. If you are a ripped male dwarf, with muddy skin and HOT PINK eyes your sdesc should not be the dwarf with muddy skin. It should probably be the ripped, pink-eyed dwarf. And it's definatley the fault of the person who runs and identifies the first tow-headed girl they see as Bambi, that person is the twink. Not the person who told them that Bambi "was a tow-headed girl". I hope this doesn't keep people from RPing with me.

[Marauder Moe]

What if we never see the person's mdesc or what they're wearing? Are we just supposed to pretend there was no shortdesc?

You're supposed to pretend your character didn't get a good look at said person.


As I said before, in real life you can't accurately identify someone after being  given only two physical characteristics (an sdesc).  In Armageddon you can, but you shouldn't.  

Unusual characteristics are the exception.  Obscurely-named colors don't count.

[BucketheadWendi]

How accurate do you get in RL? When someone asks you what your friend looks like do you start telling them "Well, he's about 6'2" with blue eyes and medium blonde to brown hair. He has a fair complexion with some redness and a light beard. blahblahblah etc." I don't know about you but when someone asks me what someone looks like I can usually just say 'Well, he's brown-haired and tall." That's an accurate enough description for off-handish conversation. Which should be suffecient for the casual inquiry.
Like I said, it's the fault of the person doing the identifying with little forethought as to RP. I shouldn't be expected to pretend I didn't get a look, when I obviously saw that he was "a tall, dark-haired man". It should be the fault of the person who makes the OOC conclusion that the "tall, dark-haired " PC is the guy that I'm talking about. I can RP not getting a good look, seeing as tall and dark-haired is pretty vague, but there's no reason that I can see why a vague description is bad RP.

[Moofassa]

This is exactly why I always use fairly simple words to describe my characters.

If someone sees a tall, dark-haired man. That's what they saw, and I'll have no complaints if someone describes me as just that. Up to the indentifier now to decide if they can pick me out of a crowd.

I think people who use ridiculously obscure adjectives SHOULD stand out in a crowd.

[flurry]

I wasn't planning to reply to this thread, but I'm seeing some opinions that really surprise me.

First of all, I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask IC what someone looks like.  People ask that all the time in RL.   Asking IC with the expectation of getting an sdesc word-for-word as an answer isn't right, IMHO.  

My first impression on reading this thread was that people are entirely too focussed on what makes someone a twink.  I think most of the time, if someone rattles off an sdesc verbatim IC, it's an inexperienced player.    Not bad.  Not twinky.   Inexperienced.   That what it seems like to me, most of the time.

I think people need to remember that an sdesc is an OOC thing.  It's a brief description of a PC by one player for other players.  It's not something PCs have any awareness of at all.  It may contain words that wouldn't make sense for most Zalanthans to use.  In some cases, it may contain words that wouldn't make sense in Zalanthas at all.

I really think that paraphrasing is a very good way to handle it.  Sometime you don't know, or don't remember, details of clothing or mdescs.  But all of us are creative people, and I don't think it's too much to ask to paraphrase the sdesc (with added and/or omitted details according to what seems reasonable).   That doesn't mean never to use the same word(s) as the sdesc.  Brown hair is brown hair.   But try as I might, I can't see the justification for using the same adjectives time after time as a rule.

And for goodness sake, if your character wouldn't know what the word means, don't have them just say the word just came to them but they don't know what it means.   :shock:   I'd hope people were joking, but I've actually seen that happen in game.  

I guess to sum up I'll just say that while the sdesc is a nice handly quick description, it's not a fingerprint.

Paraphrase, paraphrase, paraphrase.   IMHO.

[ibusoe]

Totally agree with original post.  I consider telling one player another player's straight sdesc to be twinkish.  Too busy to read rest of the posts, but I hope the discussion is going well.

[Folker]

I think people need to remember that an sdesc is an OOC thing.  It's a brief description of a PC by one player for other players.  It's not something PCs have any awareness of at all.  It may contain words that wouldn't make sense for most Zalanthans to use.  In some cases, it may contain words that wouldn't make sense in Zalanthas at all.

While most of your post is fairly reasonable. I find this portion to be at odds. If you were right, then there would be less pressure on validity of the keywords mentioned in that mdesc. There wouldnt be such any rules against ... steel-coloured hair, or the eyes of pure sea green/blue colour. etc

[flurry]

I agree with what you're saying Folker.

All I'm saying is that on rare occasions there are sdescs with terms that only make sense OOC.   Things like icy-blue or sky-blue or ocean-eyed or chocolate-haired, etc.  It's rare, but it happens.  

I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing.  All I'm saying is that those sdescs, good or bad, don't justify using those terms in game.  You might see some OOC terms in them that probably shouldn't be used IC.

[sarahjc]

Here are my two sid.

I use both if I can.  But I am also fine with using just the short desc. Lets say we are looking for bony, black haired man. Well.. you are looking for half the known world.

But.. In a conversation, if I said.. Well, he was bony, real thin like and I'm pretty sure his hair was black... Dunno remember what color his eyes were. Then I have given a few points to identify that person.  They just happen to be the short desc ones.

I don't always read a person's main desc. I most likely won't read it unless I interact with them, or they seem like someone my PC would take note of. If twenty people walk into a bar, you are just one out of twenty blended faces. I may glance at you, pick up a few key points of what you look like, and that's about it.  

I look at short descs as the quick imprint of you on my mind. We are playing a text game, so I can't pick up on other things in a short glance like I could if we were playing real life.

So if I see you walk in, then watch you run out of the bar carrying my ubersword of death, yeah, I'm gonna tag you with your short desc.

And if a Templar drags you in, and asks me to identify you, I'm going to do it by your short desc, and then take a look at you and nod and say, yeah.. that's the guy.  Because your short description does in fact identify you.

That is why you are to take a couple of key features from your main desc and put them in your short desc. Short descriptions aren't designed to "trick" people, they give a quick and dirty version of who you are. They are there as a means of quickly identifying who you are to the rest of the room.  So, as such, I think they are a perfectly fine means of describing you.

I think it's better if you can give other words that are in the main desc as well. But when you identify someone, you should be at the least using the words in thier short description or something that makes it easy to identify them by those words.

[amoeba]

RL is filled with people giving really crappy descriptions, why should it be any different IG.  So what if it describes half the people in the world?  If all you saw the was sdesc of "the  tall dark man", describe him as a tall man with dark skin, duh.  For some reason what keeps running through my mind is an ongoing skit on madtv, "He looka like a man."

[Rindan]

Personally, I think it should be a challenge to identify someone for sure.  I dislike it when a Templar shows up at a bar and snags the first blue eyed, dark skinned elf he sees with a pair of half-giants as soon as the movement lag is over based upon a description given to him by the militia.  The game is hard enough in the regards that there are only ever 20 or so people in a single area.  Specify "elf" and you have narrowed it down to less then 5 people.  Throw in the fact that there is no real way to conceal your identity and this makes it pretty trivial to find the person you want.

I use the sdesc to identify people I know.  I figure my character has a human like ability to recognize people that he has seen, and so if I have seen your sdesc, I have no problem recognizing you.  As for describing someone to other people, I do not like just giving sdescs, and I don't like other people recognizing people they don't know just by sdesc alone.

When describing someone, I think you really need more then just their physical features.  Rarely is someone so unique looking in the real world or Zalanthas that you could describe them in such a manner as to be able to pick them out from the other half a million people living in the same city as you.  The way you describe people is not only by features, but who they hang out with, where they hang out, and what their personality is.  

So, if I am going describe an elf that has been ripping people off, saying that he is the lanky, long haired elf is not enough.  I would probably say his name is Bobby.  He is a 'rinther judging from his clothing and his scrawny and lanky build.  He tends to hang out with an elf named Freddy.  He is always spiced up and always willing to sell spice.  

If your goal is to kill Bobby the elf and you then saw a 'rinther hanging out with Freddy the elf, you might be suspicious that he is Bobby.  If you saw the elf hanging out with Freddy snort some spice, you might become even more suspicious that it is Bobby.  I still wouldn't try and kill him though at this point because the description is still a little too vague to really act on.  If I walked up to the suspected Bobby the elf, and told him that I was looking for a fellow named Bobby because he might have some spice to sell me, and this elf turned around and said that he was Bobby and that he would sell me some spice, THEN I would feel okay stabbing him in the face.

Honestly, I think that people should hold a pretty high standard before taking hostile action against someone.  Sdescs like descriptions along with some other qualifiers might make you suspicious, but unless you know the person you are looking at, I would refrain from assuming that you have the right person.

If nothing else, it makes the game a little more of a challenge.  Picking out one person in twenty is trivial.  If you are talking about an elf, you are probably down to picking out just one person out of three or four.  If someone gives you a vague description that is just a list of a few physical features, I would probably consider it less then useful information in a city of a half of a million and take no action on it.

In 99% of all cases,  a physical description, regardless of whether it comes from the sdesc or mdesc simply isn't enough.  I personally would prefer people to not instantly recognize people they have never met.  If you really want to know if someone who looks like someone you might be after is your guy... go talk to him or pay someone else to do.  The game already errors massivly on the side of making it far too easy to find and reconize people.

[Lazloth]

For some reason what keeps running through my mind is an ongoing skit on madtv, "He looka like a man."

You made my day, amoeba.  Ms. Swan is the best.