Character Descriptions: What Makes a Good One, Good?

[Kronibas]

A couple of my first memories of writing character descriptions involve a friend straight up pasting the main description of a /highly/ visible NPC after I'd ask for help, which I still think is hilarious, I mean, I was like 14 and no idea for the LONGEST time.

And I remember the trouble I had, as like a freshman in high school, coming up with eight — EIGHT — whole sentences to fill the unofficially-official minimum length requirement for a Muarki main description.

Now, I see a game will with amazing, in-depth main descriptions, when such wasn't always the case. In fact, once upon a time, it was a minority of players who cared about how "detailed" their main description was, and those sentiments are still echoed, especially by coder types who claim they won't even read a description of it's over X lines, hmm.

Lately, I've alternated between both ultra-detailed and ultra-minimalistic main descriptions and character biographies. I think both can be pulled off quite well.

What I think makes a good short description, especially, is something that *sticks with me,* somehow. Because you have to think: dude, there are only so many adjectives that can be shared between thousands of characters and NPCs. So, you're going to experience redundancy, which isn't necessarily BAD, like, I am not saying "tall, dark-somethinged" men are wrong, or bad, or lame, or anything like that:

What I'm saying is I'm genuinely delighted to see new and interesting descriptions — short descriptions, in particular — but what limits or constraints should there be, especially given the fact that we have an ample amount of ESL speakers, when it comes to producing authentically original and/or memorable short descriptions and main descriptions?

In terms of grammar, how strictly should we adhere to a university style guidebook like the one issued by the Modern Language Association? Should we be tagging people for errors relating to joining clauses, sentence fragments, comma errors, etc? My answer is this: unless it's a glaring mistake like improper subject/verb agreement, there should be a LOT of leeway, like, a WHOLE BUTTLOAD, as long as it is the realm of remote understandability. Or if it's a hairy dwarf, or a dude with a leopard print bathrobe in his main description.

Anyway, I'm rambling here, but really, what I'm asking, is what do YOU think makes a good short description and main description, as well as why.  And sorry for the ending digression, but is the template of "the blank, blankety-blank dude" something that has just become so ingrained to some of us over the years that anything else almost feels unnatural?

[Tuannon]

I'm fairly anti synonym for sdescs, and also using trumped up words that mean something basic.. 'Atramentous' is a popular one. I also don't like using eye colour in sdescs, noticeable stuff only please.

In terms of ldesc? mdesc? The thing that people see when they look at you, I personally go for a top down plan, but I try to stick to notable stuff only. But I need to mix it up a bit so I don't get player sniffed.

Also, I don't tend to 'look' at other people unless I'm talking to them or need to be vigilant for something 'I'm looking for a dude with an ivory hook on their stump'.

[Night Queen]

I am always disappointed when I see a mover and shaker social character, or high karma powerful character, with a five line look description (Mdesc in more normal language - it's bad to use terms like that with no explanation because there's no help file with that term in, it's just needlessly confusing for new people)... It seems sort of like trying to deliberately attract less attention when you know for a fact they aren't really a newbie, just seems so lame.

- I think maybe we need the length minimum to be higher once you have that 1 karma, maybe 7 lines or something instead of 4?

And there are some things that should be compulsory to put in like eye colors and stuff like that, because it's unreasonable for that to not be there for RP reasons of talking about a character when trying to not be one of those people that do the whole cheapness of referring to exact keywords/Sdescs in reporting crime etc.


I saw a high karma dwarf character that had a desc implying they had a size comparable to a mul, which should ABSOLUTELY not be allowed, and I don't get how that was approved. It should not have been approved by any kind of sense of realism or fairness to other players. If common sense is not enough, maybe something needs to be added clearly to have a warning that you can't write things in the description that suggest your dwarf character is bigger than they are, or giant is small etc. So there's absolutely no gray area on this. The ASSESS command will prove that description is blatantly wrong, but not everyone uses that - it's not right to have a description that is deliberately misleading. I think sometimes people want the broken stats of dwarves (and magic) but don't really want the appearance.


It's also silly when people use purple prose and are obviously digging through a thesaurus to use needlessly inappropriate words for simple things, definitely. Sometimes it seems just a bit too fanfic style. But at the same time I prefer reading those to the boring simple ones...


And YES I see descs all the time with spelling or grammar mistakes, I remember reading before that this might be a problem with the approval system where staff can currently only reject or approve and not make edits themselves or something like that? It makes sense not to turn someone down for a few typos. That could be something to look at with the new website stuff, making it easier to edit, and having a website option to submit a new character since stuff like Firefox has built in spellcheck

[Nao]

In defense of shorter mdescs - I prefer them on the shorter end with 8-10 lines or so, not because I hate reading but because the overall picture tends to get lost in too much detail. I have creating a mental image if I have to put detailed descriptions of bodyparts together. NPCs tend to have shorter mdescs and I find it much easier to picture those. Descriptions of my recent PCs have ranged between 6 and 12 lines. It's not 'I don't want to make the effort', it's a conscious decision. If there is nothing out of the ordinary about my feet or legs, maybe they don't have to me mentioned in the mdesc.

You rarely find super-detailed descriptions of people in books, and I think there's a reason for that. And yes, I may not read your 25-line mdesc because the scene around me goes on while I'm reading and chances are I still can't picture your PC in the end.

Please, please, please put your race (or man/woman) in your mdesc. I should still be able to tell if you're a mul, a bald human, or a bald elf, even if you have your hood up. This is a rule for mutants and should be one for everyone else, too.

Kronibas, you know how I feel about obscure words. If they can be gleaned from context - fine. If it's every other word in your mdesc, there's no context left to derive the meaning. If I have to spend 20 minutes googling words because they're not even listed in my regular, go-to dictionary and you've stuffed as many as you can into the mdesc - I won't be happy with you. The purpose of the description is to communicate what your PC looks like, and if it takes me too long to decipher that, the communication has failed.

[Kavrick]

In defense of shorter mdescs - I prefer them on the shorter end with 8-10 lines or so, not because I hate reading but because the overall picture tends to get lost in too much detail. I have creating a mental image if I have to put detailed descriptions of bodyparts together. NPCs tend to have shorter mdescs and I find it much easier to picture those. Descriptions of my recent PCs have ranged between 6 and 12 lines. It's not 'I don't want to make the effort', it's a conscious decision. If there is nothing out of the ordinary about my feet or legs, maybe they don't have to me mentioned in the mdesc.

You rarely find super-detailed descriptions of people in books, and I think there's a reason for that. And yes, I may not read your 25-line mdesc because the scene around me goes on while I'm reading and chances are I still can't picture your PC in the end.

Please, please, please put your race (or man/woman) in your mdesc. I should still be able to tell if you're a mul, a bald human, or a bald elf, even if you have your hood up. This is a rule for mutants and should be one for everyone else, too.

Kronibas, you know how I feel about obscure words. If they can be gleaned from context - fine. If it's every other word in your mdesc, there's no context left to derive the meaning. If I have to spend 20 minutes googling words because they're not even listed in my regular, go-to dictionary and you've stuffed as many as you can into the mdesc - I won't be happy with you. The purpose of the description is to communicate what your PC looks like, and if it takes me too long to decipher that, the communication has failed.

I agree with all off this except the species in m-desc part. Using people's m-desc to see what they look like when their hood is up or they're wearing a mask feels like poor form for me. There's also plenty of room for certain races to have similar figures to other races. Half elves are a very good example of this, Muls, from what i've seen could be similar in shape to a short, brawny human and there are other similar overlaps for the tallest/shortest of certain races (the shortest you can have a full elf is something like 6'3 I think and I'm pretty sure you can have humans that height).

Edit: Thought it would be a good idea to actually describe what parts I agree with. I don't personally have a preference for short/long m-descs. But Sometimes m-descs can get convoluted and messy with no particular gain to the reader. I myself prefer a 'concise but descriptive' style of m-desc but I do also think the reason why books do it the way they do it is that you can usually slowly garner what a character looks like in a book through descriptive actions. You can do the same in something like Arm but sometimes you only really have the chance to look at someone once and you shouldn't have to spend a bunch of time rping with someone to find out what they look like.

[Night Queen]

I usually just feel like they might as well be a NPC when there's barely a description, not only letting down others but letting down yourself etc

And yeah, that's another one of those stupid unwritten rule things that Armageddon really needs to get in writing so people know where they stand, I think a few people have found that staff frown on identifying people that your character wouldn't have any idea, but there needs to be something that makes it clear to newer people what this is and why, so it doesn't just seem like it's being mean or whatever. If someone has their face covered, don't say to the Templar they have custom tattoos across their face in the main description. It's common sense, but if it's not explicitly against the rules then people will inevitably push things until they get shouted at, it's better to not need that shout in the first place. It's a similar thing to the people that got caught supplying verbatim Sdescs/keywords to Templars, or abusing the way the code works for the Way etc (when there's thousands of virtual characters) etc. Yeah it's great when staff can get on the top of it, it really is, but it'd be better to just not have those situations happen so much, have some clear guidelines on things that are not good RP. And sometimes there's situations where the code and text doesn't really make it clear what the actual truth of the situation is, for example cloaks without a mask, can I reasonably know who that is? Maybe if got time to look under it? Etc.

[Tailong]

First word I have to google, I stop reading.  If I look and it takes up most of my client, I stop reading. Just not enough time to sit there and decipher what you look like when all I am ever going to use is your sdesc.   It's great to be descriptive, unique, but too much is just a waste.

[Hestia]

We have a 4-line minimum because many players come from games that have canned sdescs and no mdesc options at all.

>You see Joe, the pale-skinned human man.
>You see Mary, the green-eyed dwarven woman.

And so on.  They're not used to lots of writing, but they're also not opposed to writing. So we give them a 4-line minimum. Four lines is enough to fill in with the basics: general build, a mention of hair/color, eye/color, skin/color, distinguishing marks.

For me personally, I don't bother reading anything more than 10 lines. I don't care which part of the red desert the exact hue of your skin resembles, so I don't read it. I see the word "red" and "skin" and I have the information I need.

What information do I need:

I need to know what to tell the templar when he asks me to describe guy who mugged me, after I tell the templar I got a close look at the mugger and the mugger's hood was down.

That's it. I don't need anything more than that.

I need it spelled correctly, I need it no more than 10 lines long, and I need it using whatever grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure will make it "sound right" when I say the sentences out loud at my keyboard. I don't use some fancy college stylebook.

When I'm checking applications, I use Strunk & White's Elements of Style as my -guide- but not as my bible. I use my 40 years of actual writing experience to judge what seems right and what doesn't. And of course if I'm unsure of a word I'll look it up in the dictionary.

[Night Queen]

I don't bother reading anything more than 10 lines.

Maybe a description under 9 lines is a good reason to not bother to pay as much attention to messages from that character, too, since their character probably isn't as fleshed out as others? It's definitely a helpful way to know who to prioritize...

When I'm checking applications, I use Strunk & White's Elements of Style as my -guide- but not as my bible.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/50-years-of-stupid-grammar-advice/

The book's toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules. They can't help it, because they don't know how to identify what they condemn.

..
English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own misbegotten rules.

[Night Queen]

I think the important thing from all that is that being dismissive of character descriptions can cut both ways - are people more likely to care about a character with a short description, or leave alive the person spamhuntgrebbing? Probably not. Stuff like this builds a them and us divide bigger than anything else, especially when it's a post by staff endorsing one side or the other, even if it's a personal opinion.

[Nao]

So why don't you explain what makes long, verbose descriptions inherently 'better' than a short, concise one, instead of just dismissing the players as letting themselves down, drawing conclusions about the character and how fleshed out they can possibly be and so on?

[Night Queen]

More detail in RP means more detail in RP, the point Kavrick said about how books tend to introduce descriptiveness over time instead of in one chunk is a really good point, you usually don't have that in these kind of settings because it's very random on what level of stuff is seen or experienced, so you can't really get a complete picture relying on emotes over time, and so most just don't do that. Everything is in the look description, entirely, that's all that's relied on. So if there isn't much in there, it's like having half a character kinda. The person with half their body/face missing, AI art style. It's really useful to have that descriptiveness if if say someone wants to later put a character in a mural or make a statue or something, sure you can just make it up, but that ruins the magic a bit.

[Dracul]

I think the important thing from all that is that being dismissive of character descriptions can cut both ways - are people more likely to care about a character with a short description, or leave alive the person spamhuntgrebbing? Probably not. Stuff like this builds a them and us divide bigger than anything else, especially when it's a post by staff endorsing one side or the other, even if it's a personal opinion.

As far as preference of length...

I read it as an LOL preference...so I think it goes both ways. A quick description can be bland for Amos, the tall, muscular man...but on the other hand I've seen some incredibly well written main descriptions recently and I really don't have the time to read and absorb their description and be able to respond to them in a time matter.

emote takes five minutes to read their description
ooc Yeah hey, hold on, I am looking at your
emote continues to look at ~figure, never blinking

There there's me who lets a typo or two slip by and perhaps my writing skills is not that good or english is my fifth language but I am deeply in character. ...side tangent, I do struggle between going back to correct a typo, vs getting an emote/say out quickly/responsively.

[Night Queen]

Yeah I can understand all those kind of good reasons, and you don't always know the reasons - I just don't like the whole thing of implying that long character descriptions are bad or won't be read and so putting social pressure on people to conform to a lower standard, it's better to have something nice to aim for, than not bother, really.

Armageddon has this weird thing where people sometimes seem sort of bizarrely proud of how little effort they put into writing RP, it makes it harder to win back players that left to MUSHes and stuff like that. Especially when someone's new it's more understandable too, but when high powered responsibility roles just don't bother putting that in, it gives a bad impression of the game to people.

[Nao]

Yeah I can understand all those kind of good reasons, and you don't always know the reasons - I just don't like the whole thing of implying that long character descriptions are bad or won't be read and so putting social pressure on people to conform to a lower standard, it's better to have something nice to aim for, than not bother, really.

Armageddon has this weird thing where people sometimes seem sort of bizarrely proud of how little effort they put into writing RP, it makes it harder to win back players that left to MUSHes and stuff like that. Especially when someone's new it's more understandable too, but when high powered responsibility roles just don't bother putting that in, it gives a bad impression of the game to people.

And yet you're dead-set on the point that long descriptions are inherently better. You don't like them? Fine. But you're talking about social pressure to write descriptions in one way (shorter), while you keep putting down players with shorter descriptions all over this thread. Even in the same sentence, when you claim that there's a 'lower standard'. Me and other players have stated reasons as to why they don't write 20 liners, but you still default to 'they put in so little effort' or 'didn't bother' as the reason these descriptions are written the way they are.

I can write a 20 line description in 5 - 10 minutes. Would it be a good one or would I be happy with it? No, because verbosity does not automatically translate to quality. I usually revise descriptions several times before I'm happy with them. If I decide that my eyebrows aren't important or just don't fit anywhere into the text, this does not mean that 'I couldn't be bothered'.

More detail in RP means more detail in RP, the point Kavrick said about how books tend to introduce descriptiveness over time instead of in one chunk is a really good point, you usually don't have that in these kind of settings because it's very random on what level of stuff is seen or experienced, so you can't really get a complete picture relying on emotes over time, and so most just don't do that. Everything is in the look description, entirely, that's all that's relied on. So if there isn't much in there, it's like having half a character kinda. The person with half their body/face missing, AI art style. It's really useful to have that descriptiveness if if say someone wants to later put a character in a mural or make a statue or something, sure you can just make it up, but that ruins the magic a bit.

I'd argue that what we know about the physical appearance of central characters in most books (or even across several books, if it's a series) would not add up to more than 4-6 lines, if that much. If they don't stand out, details of someone's physical appearance are the least important parts of a story. Too much detail tends to 'drown out' the more important parts that do stand out, so you end up with a murky mental image.

[Night Queen]

Yeah I can understand all those kind of good reasons, and you don't always know the reasons - I just don't like the whole thing of implying that long character descriptions are bad or won't be read and so putting social pressure on people to conform to a lower standard, it's better to have something nice to aim for, than not bother, really.

Armageddon has this weird thing where people sometimes seem sort of bizarrely proud of how little effort they put into writing RP, it makes it harder to win back players that left to MUSHes and stuff like that. Especially when someone's new it's more understandable too, but when high powered responsibility roles just don't bother putting that in, it gives a bad impression of the game to people.

And yet you're dead-set on the point that long descriptions are inherently better. You don't like them? Fine. But you're talking about social pressure to write descriptions in one way (shorter), while you keep putting down players with shorter descriptions all over this thread. Even in the same sentence, when you claim that there's a 'lower standard'. Me and other players have stated reasons as to why they don't write 20 liners, but you still default to 'they put in so little effort' or 'didn't bother' as the reason these descriptions are written the way they are.

I can write a 20 line description in 5 - 10 minutes. Would it be a good one or would I be happy with it? No, because verbosity does not automatically translate to quality. I usually revise descriptions several times before I'm happy with them. If I decide that my eyebrows aren't important or just don't fit anywhere into the text, this does not mean that 'I couldn't be bothered'.

More detail in RP means more detail in RP, the point Kavrick said about how books tend to introduce descriptiveness over time instead of in one chunk is a really good point, you usually don't have that in these kind of settings because it's very random on what level of stuff is seen or experienced, so you can't really get a complete picture relying on emotes over time, and so most just don't do that. Everything is in the look description, entirely, that's all that's relied on. So if there isn't much in there, it's like having half a character kinda. The person with half their body/face missing, AI art style. It's really useful to have that descriptiveness if if say someone wants to later put a character in a mural or make a statue or something, sure you can just make it up, but that ruins the magic a bit.

I'd argue that what we know about the physical appearance of central characters in most books (or even across several books, if it's a series) would not add up to more than 4-6 lines, if that much. If they don't stand out, details of someone's physical appearance are the least important parts of a story. Too much detail tends to 'drown out' the more important parts that do stand out, so you end up with a murky mental image.

It is a lower standard, absolutely. If there isn't that detail, it doesn't exist, it's not there in some other way, if detail isn't there, it isn't there, and it's just a shame really, especially if you know that person should know better. You've given one example, but sometimes it really is just a case of missing basic things like eye color because it's just a minimum description. And it turns out that character is a sorcerer or whatever, it gives the impression it might have been left low on detail on purpose to try trick people OOCly, which is just cheesy. There isn't many reasons to have SO much missing detail that is what you get when it's the bare minimum - this isn't a case of eyebrows, it's a case of important details, or a lack of them which are important for so many things in RP with reports etc. So there should be a higher minimum lines needed for more experienced players because I don't think the "newbie impersonation" meta of magickers atm brings people down. At this point I've learned that if someone isn't a newbie, but has a super short description they're probably a secret gick - and I hope saying this gets more caught, because it's like a bad joke at this point. You can only change such things by better rules, really.

[valeria]

I like a main description to include at least some mention of build, skin tone, hair color and characteristics, and facial structure. I can take or leave eye color for anything beyond 'light' or 'dark' because I could not tell you the eye color of any single person I work with. One thing that I keep in mind is that real writers writing character descriptions generally limit themselves to three defining or unique traits, because that's what the brain easily remembers, and people are going to fill in the rest of the details in their own mind's eye anyway. I like to make sure that each of my sdesc words gets at least one sentence devoted to why you would notice that first when looking at my character.

I'll read a long msdesc at least once, because I like to know what that person thinks of their character, but I'm not going to refer to that to make sure that I'm getting the details of a person's look exactly right any time that I'm talking about them.

The idea that people with short main descriptions are impersonating newbies strikes me as both amusing and patronizing. The way that I've written my mdescs hasn't changed at all in the 15+ years I've played off and on, with the exception of incorporating a suggestions by Lizzy many moons ago that sdesc words should be clearly incorporated into main descriptions and it would be nice if people devoted at least some attention to build instead of just facial features. I thought those were nice tips.

I have a Excel spreadsheet of the 1082 unique sdesc words that I've personally seen along with the number of instances I've seen them, for a total of 3767 sdesc words for characters that I've seen often enough for me to write the sdesc down in my notes. It's pretty difficult to come up with an sdesc word nobody has seen before. I would recommend sticking with whatever sdesc words you feel personally puts across the general sense of your character. If that's 'the tall, muscular man' because your character is tall and muscular and pretty mundane otherwise, then 'the tall, muscular man' is fine.

There was one character I've read who started each left-hand line with a new sentence where the starting letters combined to form a word, and another character I've read who had each and every line the exact same length. I found those distracting.

Please don't flag people for grammar stuff unless it's completely jarring. I'm an editor in my RL profession, and you won't believe how often people who edit things for a living argue about what is and isn't an independent clause that needs to be set off by commas, or whether 'each' refers to a series of singular events or can encompass plural events. There are different manuals of style that disagree about grammar basics. (We work from The Gregg Reference Manual and the Chicago Manual of Style, for anyone who wants some light reading.) We currently have an entire committee devoted to whether we're going to switch from two spaces after a period to one space after a period. There is not one grammar truth, no matter what your high school English teacher led you to believe.

The main thing about language is to communicate things in a way that other people understand. Almost nobody speaks in a dialect that exactly matches formal written grammar.

Ultimately, people should do what makes them happy as long as it passes the rules helpfile

[Windstorm]

.

[Night Queen]

If there's missing details, a lot of the time no one is going to get a chance to see those special emotes planned to add detail later or whatever. A lot of situations do not lend themselves well to such things, and it leaves what appears like mostly an empty character, like an AI generated figure. Sure, the idea of just building in the mind's eye can be nice, but take that too far and you might as well not have the description at all. Details are good, for a LOT of different reasons. Good and bad things, IC. Not having those details means your character is more forgettable. But less interesting.

Please don't flag people for grammar stuff unless it's completely jarring. I'm an editor in my RL profession, and you won't believe how often people who edit things for a living argue about what is and isn't an independent clause that needs to be set off by commas, or whether 'each' refers to a series of singular events or can encompass plural events. There are different manuals of style that disagree about grammar basics. (We work from The Gregg Reference Manual and the Chicago Manual of Style, for anyone who wants some light reading.) We currently have an entire committee devoted to whether we're going to switch from two spaces after a period to one space after a period. There is not one grammar truth, no matter what your high school English teacher led you to believe.

Better...
I'd argue that much of what you just said is irrelevant due to using bad sources, and one would be better off instead with those teachers so patronizingly denigrated in such a classist way. What's interesting in this situation is as you say, there is no agreement, so none of what is said matters. But there is general agreement on a lot of things, like most spelling, it just seems weird to ignore really glaring basic mistakes in descriptions when they are so easy to fix, even automatically. Just ignoring it all can make it a bit less atmospheric when that Templar has a mention of a tattoo on their solder or whatever. Or descriptions that say they are taller than they are or look like a different species, etc.

both amusing and patronizing.

[Malken]

We should be allowed to have a tl;dr line at the end of the main desc for other characters to refer to quickly: He is a tall human with blue-eyes, long black hair and a star-shaped scar across his left cheek.

[Brokkr]

• Concise:  Done well, respects the reader's intelligence and time.
• Verbose:  Often more confusing and ineffective than the author thinks it is.
• Mine:  None of the above.

[Riev]

What did this discussion turn into? Night Queen argues against the world?


A good character description gives you enough to describe a character. A bad one does not describe the physical attributes of the character.
You can do this in 4 lines. You can do this in 12 lines. You can use synonyms, or simple words. Whatever it takes.

Saying things like "you know that person knows better" and assuming its "because they are a sorceror and trying to trick you" is just bad faith. Frankly speaking, you people "know better".

[Pariah]

I love a well written character description as well as the next guy.

My only issue is that people are torn against using it.

So if you make your character have gorgeous silvery locks that flow down to her buttocks and she does something and I mention it, I'll get folks who go, "she had a face wrap on! You couldn't see it."

So while I do enjoy a well written description, the fact that hooded or face hidden items are supposed to make me not see it has always been sorta jarring to me.

Don't want me to see your description when you're hidden by a cloak? Code it that way, don't just expect me to make arbitrary decisions on whether I can ID you or not.

[Night Queen]

A good character description gives you enough to describe a character. A bad one does not describe the physical attributes of the character.
You can do this in 4 lines.

Not in a way that is interesting, no, it's like the difference between a stick figure or a picture.

just bad faith

Using "bad faith" is "bad faith" itself, it's always used as a term to bludgeon people who call attention to bad behavior. Sometimes by the actual people engaging in it, as a way of trying to make it more dangerous for people to call stuff out. And also cruel to suggest to people that trusting blindly in people who would take advantage of them is somehow a noble thing. Sure, it's not always the reason, but some people do bad things, looking the other way and saying that people are bad to mention it hurts everyone.

[Aromit]

I spend more time considering sdescs (24hrs or more sometimes) than any other part of the character generation process, its generally what the world sees of you. At a distance in the wastes, while casting, while beginning a tense scene, when combat starts, when you walk into the bar your first impression is your sdesc so I think on it long and hard, often I want to present a particular image with a character concept so my sdescs usually lean towards that image. Savage, wasted, starveling (I loved this one), mutilated, refined, spartan, clean-cut etc. I've used some rather non-standard sdesc words to present the image I felt fit the character.

I'm not a great writer, my vocabulary/grammar is not impressive and the large majority of playerbase's talent with wordcraft and imagery blows me away. I've had the pleasure of experiencing a wide variety of styles from a wide variety of players over the years and its helped me grow in my writing and definitely in my roleplay. I've written long and verbose descriptions? Yes but it's not comfortable for me, I'm often self-conscious about my writing and settle on something either short and concise or something a little more around ~10 lines or so.

Short, long, simple, verbose, poetic, so long as the character is described fairly then I'm happy with how players choose to portray their creation.

[FantasyWriter]

1. Sdesc and mdesc match and compliment each other. Everything in your sdesc should be in your mdesc.
2. Sdesc contains the most "obvious"/"strange"/"unique" thing from your mdesc. (if you spend three lines describing your eyes, face-tatt, etc, include it)

3. Don't make people with good high school level vocabularies have to look up more than one word, two max. Go easy on Zalanthan words
4. Go easy on the abstract. I ran into one PC since I came back  that if I only had their mdesc, I wouldn't be able to tell what race they were and I had no idea what they looked like. I like pretty language. Just... be gentle.
5. Min Length: I have read good 4-5 line descriptions. As long as someone is not being intentionally vague to make what is essentially Amos, the tall muscular man to avoid identification, I have zero problems with a short mdesc. I just need enough to form a picture in my mind that looks roughly like what others might see from reading the same mdesc.
6.Max length: Nah, we don't need one. If you have a wall of text, i am probably going to skim it the first time of five that we meet, before I actually give it a good read though, especially if we are meeting in dangerous areas.
7. Going off #5. Have at least one thing that stands out a little to help me remember you, especially if you are in a locale where cloaking yourself is the norm.

8. Style-rules (OP's specific concern): I LOVE that we don't have strict style rules, and that we have everything from a simple to verbose.

9. A neat thing I notice a lot of people doing and usually do myself is have your mdecs reflect what part of the Known you are from based on key-words. I am not going to write a Stormer who uses agafari or grasslands-green in my mdesc or a Tuluki that uses silt or desert-hued. I see this a lot and LOVE it, especially since there are no hard rules on what commoners look like in the various areas for the most part.

[Riev]

A good character description gives you enough to describe a character. A bad one does not describe the physical attributes of the character.
You can do this in 4 lines.

Not in a way that is interesting, no, it's like the difference between a stick figure or a picture.

just bad faith

Using "bad faith" is "bad faith" itself, it's always used as a term to bludgeon people who call attention to bad behavior. Sometimes by the actual people engaging in it, as a way of trying to make it more dangerous for people to call stuff out. And also cruel to suggest to people that trusting blindly in people who would take advantage of them is somehow a noble thing. Sure, it's not always the reason, but some people do bad things, looking the other way and saying that people are bad to mention it hurts everyone.

Please argue on topic.
Your opinion on "what is interesting" not withstanding, you are saying a "bad" description is one that falls within the rules of the game and that are approved by the staff of the game.

I would go with a lot of what FW posted. +1 to that nerd.

[Vwest]

What did this discussion turn into? Night Queen argues against the world?

Snobs gonna snob, especially on the GDB.

I've done both incredibly elaborate and bare bones descriptions, with the latter being my preference in most characters. I tend towards zoning out when faced with an excess of self-indulgent purple prose and based on the thread responses, I'm not the only one. The game is usually fast paced enough that the essentials are all I need to pick up and go with just about any character I happen to run into, especially when I end up having my own mental image of what the character looks like based off of interactions with them after a while.

The description is basically there to give me some core information for my imagination to work with, so describing the tiny flecks of rainbow snowflakes dancing in eyes is... kind of wasted on me, really.

With how quickly AI is learning to write, we're all going to be second rate irrelevant soon enough.

[Aromit]

Please adhere to the rules of the gdb as found here.

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,51856.0.html

[whengravityfails]

Number of lines or word count is, frankly, rather arbitrary. Some characters require more detail than others, and in some cases the basics will do just fine. If there's an eye color, skin color, hair color and style, facial shape and at least vague nod to body shape/size and race I'm fine with it (or at least a majority of these elements). If people want to go into detail, I'm all for it. I love detail. Please do. I'll read every mdesc I encounter in its entirety at least once (although I admit I will likely forget parts of it) and if it is artfully written, I will enjoy it.

But if it's clear and concise? I'll still appreciate that, too. Just avoid misspellings and heinous grammatical errors and we're good.

[Night Queen]

You can't write a good description in four lines, it's a stick figure.

So the issue is that the minimum length that was meant to be something to be accommodating to new players is used by more experienced players as the normal. And that is one of those Armageddon things that encourages the ones that have left to not come back when outside Armageddon it's more normal for people to put more effort in, it's a hard sell: "Come play with the people that have been playing ten or more years, but have character descriptions that are four lines long."

And the other issue is that as people have joked about before, some people deliberately do this as the meta to try avoid their characters -being identified, when their role already has many social or coded advantages over newer players, which is just terrible. When there's no rule, there's no rule, you have to have something to make it fair for everyone. Why should it be ok for basic details to be missing?

I don't think anyone minds genuine newbies that are just starting out, but the minimum for newbies turned into the minimum for everyone, because there's no rule or guideline even encouraging people to try a bit harder with special characters and roles - There should be a at least 7 line minimum once not a newbie anymore. It's not about judging people, it's about making a better experience for everyone, and everyone is capable of at least trying.

[Hestia]

You can't write a good description in four lines, it's a stick figure.

Some people can write excellent 4-line descriptions. And some people can write lousy 12-line descriptions.

The topic here is what makes a good description - good. Not who is good at writing and who isn't.

A good description in the context of ArmageddonMUD will give enough information to provide a reader with a reasonable idea of the person's physical appearance.

Flowery text and 12-line descriptions can be flowery and long and not even mention whether the person has eyes, let alone what color or shape they are.  That would make that flowery 12-line description lacking.  Similarly, a 4-line description dedicated to the exact color of a person's skin, without mentioning anything else, is also lacking.

Conversely, a 15-line description so prosaic that most people don't even read past the first two lines - is equally lacking.

A "good" description will get a reader's attention. A "good" description will hold the reader's attention. A "good" description - in the context of this game - will include general build, skin color, facial features, hair (or lack thereof) and any significant marks/deformities that would be obvious at first glance.

You can do all of that in 4 lines. You can also do that in 12 lines.

[Night Queen]

A four line description can't be excellent, there just isn't the room for detail unless the character is totally one-note, but in that case they should be an non-player character instead of a player character - That you can seriously call 4 lines excellent, I think this is seriously part of the problem with Armageddon that staff shouldn't be encouraging stuff like this, with Armageddon struggling to retain roleplayers as people mentioned on other threads recently that it seems that there's more of the code-focus amongst people that have remained - Stuff like this doesn't help, and things like this should be worked on as much as the code to improve and revitalise RP instead of just accepting it and continuing to let things die down! There's been a few other points on this thread too where people have said the gaps in the rules on other issues like cloaks have issues as well - it could be improved, it's not saying things have to be bad.

A "good" description - in the context of this game - will include general build, skin color, facial features, hair (or lack thereof) and any significant marks/deformities that would be obvious at first glance.

But people don't always include those things no matter how many lines, and because there's no clear rule, why would the code-focused people, who want their magicker to not be noticed?

[mansa]

When I teach new players how to write a character's main description, I point them to this thread:
https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,57907.0.html

When thinking of what your character looks like, I do it this way. I fill out these points, and then build up from there:

• What does their Face look like.
• Their Hairstyle...
• Their Eyes...
• Their Nose...
• Their Mouth...
• Their Body Shape...
• Their Height...
• Their Weight...
• Their Hands...
• Their Race...
• Their Sex...

...And then I add any other feature I want to display.  Are they disfigured?  Do they have prominent tattoos or major scars that will never be covered up?

Here's an example:

Face	Narrow and Long
Hair	Shaved
Eyes	Blue
Nose	Flat and crooked
Mouth	full, luscious lips with perfect teeth.
Body Shape	Tall and Skinny
Height	Tall
Weight	Skinny
Hands	Narrow fingers, dirty fingernails
Race	Human
Sex	Male
Other	Has a peg leg

From there, I put the words together into sentences.

This human male is tall and skinny.  His hands have narrow fingers, with dirty
fingernails.  He has a peg leg attached to the stump of his left leg.  His
face is narrow and long.  His hair is shaved, his eyes are blue.  His nose is
flat and crooked, and he has full, luscious lips with perfect teeth.

New players usually are unsure of how to do it, and are overwhelmed at being told to be creative.  My example basically has a template that you can follow, and it will produce a simple description that will allow the character application to be approved, so they can enter the game.  This is one of the biggest roadblocks for new players - creating a character and applying for it in game.

The question of, "What makes it Good?" or "Better than Others" is usually one of poetry, uniqueness, and taste.   What makes one "Bad" is an easier question to answer, because a lot of examples of "Good" descriptions are "Does not do BAD THING".

[FantasyWriter]

A four line description can't be excellent, there just isn't the room for detail unless the character is totally one-note, but in that case they should be an non-player character instead of a player character - That you can seriously call 4 lines excellent, I think this is seriously part of the problem with Armageddon that staff shouldn't be encouraging stuff like this, with Armageddon struggling to retain roleplayers as people mentioned on other threads recently that it seems that there's more of the code-focus amongst people that have remained - Stuff like this doesn't help, and things like this should be worked on as much as the code to improve and revitalise RP instead of just accepting it and continuing to let things die down! There's been a few other points on this thread too where people have said the gaps in the rules on other issues like cloaks have issues as well - it could be improved, it's not saying things have to be bad.

1. Staff does not "encourage" four line descriptions. That is the bare minimum.

2. Please tell me what is "wrong" with or missing from the following 4-line description:

Code Select Expand

This half-elven male stands a little taller than the average human with bronze-
tanned skin covered in a variety of tangled scars. Blue eyes stare out from his
narrow-featured face--a thin nose and sharply-pointed ears contrasting his bulky
frame. Long, sandy brown hair hands down to his shoulders in a tangled mess.

[Night Queen]

A member of staff just said four line descriptions can be excellent. I don't agree. That's allowed. What should not be allowed is four line descriptions, for people who are not newbies!

2. That's a description suitable a NPC, not a player character - it is lacking all but the most basic details. They have eyes and a nose. Great. Fantastic. Just like everyone else. What does their face actually look like? Where are these vague "scars"? What are the shape of the scars, to even have an idea what caused them? Not caring, or deliberate omission to make it hard to describe what kind of scars they have to a Templar? If it's a more experienced player, I'd hope they'd at least care about that kind of background stuff.

[Patuk]

I'm tempted to make my next mdesc four lines just to spite you now.

[FantasyWriter]

What should not be allowed is four line descriptions, for people who are not newbies!

Why do you think you should get to dictate other people's creativity? There are a lot of great RPers here who aren't excellent description writers but can tear it up when it comes to expressing themselves in game.
Can you imagine how someone might feel reading your post and only have a 4-5 line description that they worked really hard on?


As an aside:
There is also something to be said that some people put WAY too much in their descriptions including things you wouldn't be able to see unless they are buck naked.

I dislike this personally, but I would never go so far as to say you are not a good description writer if you include/omit thing that I dislike.

[Night Queen]

Can you imagine how someone might feel reading your post and only have a 4-5 line description that they worked really hard on?

Mansa's post was a good example of how anyone can follow the basics to fill things out, even if it's not particularly poetic, there's no need to literally just not bother to add details - if people aren't very good at writing, why are they playing [insert incredibly powerful character here]? I'm not saying be mean to newbies. People definitely choose to leave out detail sometimes, and it's a problem that affects the more RP-focused people less than the code-focused people, because the latter don't get any penalty for having a faceless description that can't be identified verbally other than metagaming with Sdesc keywords. That's not fair on the people playing nice, and you can't have fairness without stopping the people who don't act fair.

I'm tempted to make my next mdesc four lines just to spite you now.

Maybe this is just a cunning plot to incite some peoples' group tendencies to witch-hunt and band to try bully anyone who speaks out, to make the playerbase look bad when this thread is linked to other people - and encourage players to do just what you said and not bother putting effort into RP, to speed up the haemorrhaging of RP-focused people to non-MUDs, that has been talked about on the other threads. Maybe I'm from the competition. Maybe not? :p

[DesertT]

I'm tempted to make my next mdesc four lines just to spite you now.

Four lines, but it's a poem!

[Night Queen]

No, better, just three words on each of four lines. Show those mean RPers how much you care!

[FantasyWriter]

I'm tempted to make my next mdesc four lines just to spite you now.

Four lines, but it's a poem!

With bulging muscles and eyes of blue, surrounded by rings--white as escru.
Raven hair, skin of brown, and on it, not a scar to be found.
With parting red lips and teeth so straight, a shit-eating grin, never to abate.
Never does he dress or act a slob, for a ring of silver adorns his great knob.

[Night Queen]

Way too many words to be "excellent".

[zealus]

Just because a description is long, doesn't make it a well-written one. It is a style choice. Please do not imply that people who choose a different style are poor roleplayers.

I personally sometimes go all out, sometimes not. Depends on how inspired I am. Sometimes I just want a simple description, sometimes I want a longer one.

[Hestia]

So this turned into a snipe-fest rather quickly.

Four lines is the minimum number of lines we ask for.

More does not necessarily mean better, and the minimum does not necessarily mean worse. Stop criticizing each other on this forum. You don't have to like the way someone writes their description but if it satisfies the minimum requirements, then it is NOT bad, and no one should be criticized for choosing to satisfy the minimum requirements or for adding some prose to their description and making it longer.

This is the actual documentation regarding a character description in this game:

Now you will be asked to write a few sentences describing your character's physical appearance. Your character's description is one of the most important parts of character creation. A good description gives other players a clear mental picture of the character, enhancing the roleplay for both you and them.

Descriptions are a minimum of four lines; around 7-10 is good. You should only describe your character's physical features. You can include their gender and race in your description. You can include their body type - are they tall or short, thin or fat, muscular or flabby? You can include their facial features - their eye color and shape, the shape of their nose, jawline, or cheekbones, the color of their lips or eyebrows, etc. You can also decide your character's hair color, length, and texture, but do not indicate the hairstyle unless that is how you always want your character's hair to look. Clothing and equipment should never be mentioned in the description of your character. Items are available in the game, and since they can change over the course of play, they should not be part of the description.

Follow basic rules of spelling and grammar, and write the description in complete sentences, in the form of a paragraph. Write the description in 3rd person; i.e. 'This is a tall and sinewy elf' rather than 'I am a tall, sinewy elf'. Don't put your character's name in the description -- it's not something a person would know just from looking at them. Do not describe how your character moves or speaks, since the viewer may be looking at them while they are asleep or knocked out, and wouldn't know how they customarily move or speak. Similarly, don't have your character performing actions in the description, such as nodding or whistling.

Keep your lines 80 characters long or less, (more than 80 can cause scrolling problems on some people's terminals), use a spelling checker, and proofread your text. Terminate your description with a ~ on a line by itself.

There's no need to feel intimidated by this process, or feel the need to write the greatest description ever. A few lines in plain English should be fine.

If you need some help, we have provided some sample descriptions.

Bolded for emphasis.