..but your wearing pants?

[Recharge]

Hello, just curious if it seems alright to describe something in your characters main desc that they would most likely have covered up.

For example:
'this fella' has got the most ass bitchin'est, fucking brutal looking scar
running down his abs to lead awfully close to his meat'n two veg!'

Curious if that would be something to be over looked if you met said character until they flash you or something.
I wonder how one would rp around this.

thanks in advance

[Qzzrbl]

Hello, just curious if it seems alright to describe something in your characters main desc that they would most likely have covered up.

For example:
'this fella' has got the most ass bitchin'est, fucking brutal looking scar
running down his abs to lead awfully close to his meat'n two veg!'

Curious if that would be something to be over looked if you met said character until they flash you or something.
I wonder how one would rp around this.

thanks in advance

People do it all the time.

[maxid]

People do it all the time.

This did literally nothing to answer the latter part of his post.  Why even bother?


If this is ever described yes, I would ignore it until the Rp lead to a place where I saw the scar.  With the wearloc scars in the map room, though, I dislike this sort of thing being in the main desc at all.

[Cutthroat]

Generally if someone has something in their mdesc that you can't see due to equipment covering it, you should ICly not know it exists. That goes for scars, tattoos, even simple body features. So essentially, yes, it should be overlooked.

[Akaramu]

Scars are quite easy to have coded equivalents for, the same is not true for unique tattoos. Sure, there are a variety of tattoos available, but your character might not be able to afford paying for the tattoo they supposedly had all their life, or that exact motive might not be available anywhere. There really is no workaround except for having it in the mdesc. I've found people have been fairly good at ignoring them until they were exposed through roleplay.

[Zoltan]

What everyone said, yes, but if your unique mdesc-mentioned tramp stamp is mentioned in your sdesc, I'd probably end up mentioning it when it comes to description-relaying time. Fortunately, in my experience most players are vague enough with the sdesc word, or have the tattoo in question in a prominent location.

[Qzzrbl]

People do it all the time.

This did literally nothing to answer the latter part of his post.  Why even bother?

Because it answered the former part of his post.

[Xeran Van Houten]

This "problem" has always annoyed me greatly with the shoulder locations... just because they see a tattoo or scar there (mostly happens with tattoos) people will ignore that I've got multiple layers of clothing on top of it... ankle locations give the same sometimes, too.  Makes for an awkward "roll with it" moment sometimes, but plenty of opportunity to accuse them of being a mindbender. 

But yeah, if you can't see it because it's covered by something, even if you can OOCly via mdesc or code, you probably shouldn't point it out unless they do something that would let you see it. Sometimes you got to look at their other clothing to make sure first, though.  Both scars and tattoos are able to be moved to a pc's mdesc from their coded spots through making a desc change request, and I think somewhere on the website it says that staff love tattoos and scars on a pc, so I don't think there's any problem with putting them in your mdesc to begin with.

[Majikal]

I wish when putting scars and tattoos into your mdesc you should also look for it's coded counterpart, as someone said previously there are many scars available on character creation that can fit nearly any need I can think of. I've always been sort of bothered when I read an mdesc and have to siphon out what can and cannot be seen by my pc by checking mdesc tattoos with equipment, especially while I'm trying to hold a conversation with said pc.

[shadeoux]

I'd like to see a desc written for all wear loc's in ARM2, so that when it's covered up it is not visable.
It might take a little more time, but then as you go over the Main Desc. you would start from head to feet,
showing all the desc's inbetween. I'm sure this would be a nightmare to do, but would add annominity if a
if a player wanted. Simply by covering up most of their wear desc's locations.
Sorry if it doesn't make since, not much sleep.

[MeTekillot]

A multi-part description that you write piece by piece such as

Write your description for your face
Write your description for your head
Write your description for your neck
Write your description for your torso

etc etc?

[Sam]

I don't know if this (below idea) is codedly possible but I think it sounds nice.

What if you were asked to write a description for each of the main zones of your body such as head, torso, arms, legs.

Head: She has three green eyes. Her head is average. It is covered in average scales. It has a striking tattoo of a hedra.
Torso: Her torso is super huge. It is covered in green scales. It has a tattoo of a shedra.
Arms/Hands: Her arms are completely bare of scare or tattoo, but only because she is missing her arms all together. Her hands are attached to her shoulders.
Legs/feet: Her legs and feet are also missing entirely. They would be hawt though.

Now, if she is completely bare, you get all of those lines in one nice, neat paragraph.  If she is fully clothed and with a face mask, you would only see the first sentence of each area.

[Talia]

I would hate to stifle players' creativity with multipart descriptions like that. Also, I think it might make character applications even more difficult to complete (for players) than they are right now. It could probably be done, with effort, in such a way as to make for nice descriptions, but I'm not sure that it has enough added value to justify the effort and the inevitable stifling.

For the most part, if your tattoo or scar isn't visible most of the time, it shouldn't be in the mdesc. Yes, that's what the wearlocs are for.

I think our players do a pretty good job overall with character descriptions. I just wish more of you would use spell checkers and make sure your punctuation is in the right place before submitting. I really do a ton of corrections for you guys.

Side note, descriptions in which the physical locations of a character's eyes, nose, ear and other body features are described crack me up. E.g.: "Between his eyes a hawkish nose is perched." I see this sort of thing constantly. I'm of the opinion that unless your ears, eyes, nose, chin, eyebrows and so on are in an unexpected location, then you don't need to tell me where they are.

The other thing I see a lot of that cracks me up is body parts "sprouting" or "branching." E.g., "From his torso two long arms sprout." I understand what you're saying, but here you're not only telling me where his arms are, you're also making him sort of plant-like.

[flurry]

You always have the option of using the tdesc (temporary description) and/or emotes for things that would normally be out of view. For instance, if your character is secretly a mutant, but tries to keep the mutation hidden, probably you'd want to avoid describing the mutation within your mdesc. Otherwise, it kind of ruins the secret. But still I think either way you do it is fine; it's more an issue of your preference for how you want to give that information to other players.

[Zoan]

RE Talia's post:

I tend to describe the face/head area a lot, and by then I'm exhausted and go, 'And his body is normal-shaped. The end.'

[Ampere]

I would hate to stifle players' creativity with multipart descriptions like that. Also, I think it might make character applications even more difficult to complete (for players) than they are right now. It could probably be done, with effort, in such a way as to make for nice descriptions, but I'm not sure that it has enough added value to justify the effort and the inevitable stifling.

For the most part, if your tattoo or scar isn't visible most of the time, it shouldn't be in the mdesc. Yes, that's what the wearlocs are for.

I think our players do a pretty good job overall with character descriptions. I just wish more of you would use spell checkers and make sure your punctuation is in the right place before submitting. I really do a ton of corrections for you guys.

Side note, descriptions in which the physical locations of a character's eyes, nose, ear and other body features are described crack me up. E.g.: "Between his eyes a hawkish nose is perched." I see this sort of thing constantly. I'm of the opinion that unless your ears, eyes, nose, chin, eyebrows and so on are in an unexpected location, then you don't need to tell me where they are.

The other thing I see a lot of that cracks me up is body parts "sprouting" or "branching." E.g., "From his torso two long arms sprout." I understand what you're saying, but here you're not only telling me where his arms are, you're also making him sort of plant-like.

I respectfully disagree, and here's a song to inspire even more redundant descriptions.

[Talia]

I respectfully disagree, and here's a song to inspire even more redundant descriptions.

Hah.

"This young human man's head bone is connected to his graceful neck bone. His neck bone then connects to his shoulder bones, which poke out dramatically in the typically-underfed manner of the common Zalanthan..."

Etc etc.

[RogueGunslinger]

I especially like when people use words like "sprouting" +1 for creativity in word-choice.

[Qzzrbl]

"Between his eyes a hawkish nose is perched."

Sure flows a helluva lot better than, "He's got a hawkish nose."

[HailTheAbyss]

I don't know if this (below idea) is codedly possible but I think it sounds nice.

What if you were asked to write a description for each of the main zones of your body such as head, torso, arms, legs.

Head: She has three green eyes. Her head is average. It is covered in average scales. It has a striking tattoo of a hedra.
Torso: Her torso is super huge. It is covered in green scales. It has a tattoo of a shedra.
Arms/Hands: Her arms are completely bare of scare or tattoo, but only because she is missing her arms all together. Her hands are attached to her shoulders.
Legs/feet: Her legs and feet are also missing entirely. They would be hawt though.

Now, if she is completely bare, you get all of those lines in one nice, neat paragraph.  If she is fully clothed and with a face mask, you would only see the first sentence of each area.

There are a few muds out there that do this. To be honest, when I tried that out I found it really really annoying, and as Talia said, it does stifle creativity - the current mdescs are far better at conveying an impression of what a character looks like.

It would be good if we could write custom tatt and scar descriptions at char creation though - so they would be coded. It is possible to have unique tatts added by the staff, so there must be a way to do that automatically, subject to char approval, of course.

[hyzhenhok]

Side note, descriptions in which the physical locations of a character's eyes, nose, ear and other body features are described crack me up. E.g.: "Between his eyes a hawkish nose is perched." I see this sort of thing constantly. I'm of the opinion that unless your ears, eyes, nose, chin, eyebrows and so on are in an unexpected location, then you don't need to tell me where they are.

The other thing I see a lot of that cracks me up is body parts "sprouting" or "branching." E.g., "From his torso two long arms sprout." I understand what you're saying, but here you're not only telling me where his arms are, you're also making him sort of plant-like.

Oops, that would be me.

I do it for verb variation. I prefer a "poetic" usage of verbs like perch, sprout, sits, grows, etc. to the repeated use of to be.

Though I would never write a sentence like your example, which is passive voice! NEVER! Edit: Oh, wait, yes I would.

Yes, I realize character descriptions are probably the wrong place to be freaking out about overuse of to be and passive voice.

[Talia]

Side note, descriptions in which the physical locations of a character's eyes, nose, ear and other body features are described crack me up. E.g.: "Between his eyes a hawkish nose is perched." I see this sort of thing constantly. I'm of the opinion that unless your ears, eyes, nose, chin, eyebrows and so on are in an unexpected location, then you don't need to tell me where they are.

The other thing I see a lot of that cracks me up is body parts "sprouting" or "branching." E.g., "From his torso two long arms sprout." I understand what you're saying, but here you're not only telling me where his arms are, you're also making him sort of plant-like.

Oops, that would be me.

I do it for verb variation. I prefer a "poetic" usage of verbs like perch, sprout, sits, grows, etc. to the repeated use of to be.

Though I would never write a sentence like your example, which is passive voice! NEVER! Edit: Oh, wait, yes I would.

Yes, I realize character descriptions are probably the wrong place to be freaking out about overuse of to be and passive voice.

Actually, it's more common that players do these things than not do these things. So you're in the majority. Nearly every desc I see contains location descriptions for body parts, and odd verb usage.

I'm still of the opinion that unless you're writing something like: "His arms are attached to the left side of his head," then players don't need to tell me where the dude's arms are or to what body part they connect. I'm just gonna assume the nose is between the eyes, and so on, unless it's stated otherwise.

Also, IMO, body parts do not "hold" a color. "His eyes hold a green color" is just not...correct. I'd rather see: "His eyes ARE as yellow as dwarfflower," "Her skin GLOWS the burnished bronze of good Zalanthan health," "His hair GLEAMS the darkest black even under Suk-Krath's strong light," "Gritty dirt covers the dull brown tone of his hair," "His skin IS the dusky red of the desert sky," etc etc etc. (And although it's correct, I don't really like seeing "has the tone of" either in color descriptions. It's clunky and boring.)

But even if I don't prefer descriptions to be written that way, they're still allowable.