Body Part Descriptions

[Tamarin]

Staying up until three in the morning makes my mind come up with these wacky ideas...


What if you had the option to individually add a description for each of your body parts?  So when someone looks at you normally, they see your regular desription...but if they do, say:

look <person's> arms

they get a more detailed description, as written by you.   This would only be visible, of course, without some piece of clothing covering it.  Otherwise, they could get a message like:

That person's arms are covered by <item>...

[spawnloser]

Um...there are already scars and tattoos that you look at by 'look dude's arms' and such.

[Callisto]

I'm thinking he means extra descriptions like the ones in rooms, but for PC/NPCs.

>look noble's boobs

This woman has an incredible set of fun bags, so spectacular as to cause grown men and strange women to go weak in the knees. They have no equal and you should begin making suggestive comments in an attempt to woo her right away, since everyone knows Oashi nobles enjoy the affections of the common man (or woman!). Go get 'er, tiger!

>tell noble (with a lewd smile) sup? a/s/l?

I like the idea, it would allow people to create a general description and still be able to give people the option of exploring the person's appearance in greater detail. In your main description it might say, "... soft, almond-shaped eyes of a pale blue.", but if someone took a closer look at said person's eyes (IE: look noble's eyes), it would go into greater detail about the green flecks and a darker sapphire ring encircling the pale blue center, blah, blah, blah.

It would need to be strictly optional, since making it required would make the application process even more daunting to newbies, but simply allowing people to expand on key features without it being overwhelming in the main description would be a major plus. Just add another option (IE: Would you like to add extra descriptions to your character? (Y/N)) during creation would make it quick and easy. You use the same type of menu as you would to select a race, enter the descript with the description editor, and your off to the races.

Since you currently see tattoos and scars when you "look noble's arms", it could be added into the description listing for that location:

You look at the slender, incredible hot noble's arms.

Arms:
She has slender, supple, sleek, svelte arms of +3 sexiness, yadda yadda yadda.

Tattoos:
An uber vine of razored death tattoo:
A razor-edged thorny vine that is also beautiful with blood and perfectly inked in spite of the fact it was done in half in hour in the middle of a storm-blasted bazaar by a cross-eyed half-breed who had trouble not staring at the afore mentioned super rack. Those were super, weren't they?

Scars:
A faint, tiny scar:
A tiny imperfection, barely noticeable, was placed here in order to avoid being labeled a F-me PC, since it means this ivory skinned super model isn't perfect, and in fact is actually quite harsh and gritty. You know, because she has a scar. The scar is also sexy, in a dangerous and subtle sort of way. Awesome!

In fact, such a setup could allow people multiple tattoos and scars on one location, but it would need to be limited in order to avoid being too spammy, not to mention limited skin space and such. It would also prevent people from tattooing over old tattoos like it isn't a thing, since it never seemed realistic to get a rose tattoo over your gigantic jade dragon tattoo, completely hiding it.

God I'm tired, so no proof reading or spell checking for this post. I'm sure someone can clean up the idea and make it more workable, such as Rindan or Creeper...  oh wait...

Whatever, fuck it, I'm tired and cranky and bah humbug. I can't believe they ate all the fucking pie before I could get a piece. I paid for the damned thing, is it so much to ask for a slice? Oh sure, there's cake, but who the fuck wants cake on Christmas? I want pumpkin pie and I want it now, god damn it!

Edit:

I'm thinking he means extra descriptions for rooms, but for PC/NPCs.

That's what happens when I post without some Christmas pie.

[Mr.Camel]

I love it.

[Louten]

It's currently possible, I believe, but for now it would take Imm intervention. I wouldn't suggest wishing this, but rather e-mail it into the MUD account. Please only do this if some of your body parts warrant extra description, like say... you have gills on your under arms, and scales on your forearms and uberspikeofdeath on your elbows, which would normally take up your entire main description.

It may not be as easy as I make it sound, since I don't know exactly, since I'm new and fallable.

[Angela Christine]

I've seen a couple MUSHes that had something like this, not linked to specific body parts though.  One I remember was a "details" command.

>details Babette

The hot chick has the following details:

boobs
arms
tinyscar
rosetattoo
mutation


>detail babette tinyscar

A faint, tiny scar:
A tiny imperfection, barely noticeable, was placed here in order to avoid being labeled a F-me PC, since it means this ivory skinned super model isn't perfect, and in fact is actually quite harsh and gritty. You know, because she has a scar. The scar is also sexy, in a dangerous and subtle sort of way. Awesome!

>detail babette rosetattoo

Under this small rose tattoo you can still make out the outline of a gigantic drooling dragon tattoo, but only if you look closely.

The main advantage of this over body part descriptions is "details <keyword>" part, which gives you a listing of what details are available.  That way you don't have to "look eyes, look face, look arms, look torso, look legs," etc. on every you see in hopes of uncovering some extra bits of description.  

It is also good for things that are only visible some of the time, like boobs, penis, teeth, belly button peircings, and so on.  Most PCs wear clothing and many wear armor, so some of there phisical details are obscured most of the time.  But they aren't obscured _all_ of the time, and when they are visible you don't necessarily want to have to emote them out.  You probably won't want to emote out your penis everytime someone walks in on you while you are squatting in the Byn latrine, but you may still have some remarkable penis-related qualities that would be obvious if someone did catch you with your pants down.  This gives you the option to discribe your dong if you want to, without subjecting everyone who glances at your fully-clothed self in a tavern to the description.

Now in the MUSH it was also used for less tangible things.  Like in addition to standard attributes you also had a "charisma" score.  Some people, usually ones that had especially high or low charasima, would include their charasima score in their details so that you wouldn't confuse the player's ability to portray charisma with the character's apparent charisma.  A geek might choose to play a suave character, but being a geek they don't necessarily know how to sound suave.  The also had a system of merits and flaws, some of which would be mentioned here.  Like you could have merit that makes you seem innocent, even if you aren't, or a flaw that makes you give off creepy vibes that make other people vaguely uncomfortable.  The details command let you see these right away, because it is something your PC would unconciously pick up on right away, but that it might take the player quite a while to get accross subtly in their roleplay, especially if the character isn't deliberately trying to be creepy or innocent.  That generally wouldn't apply in Arm since we don't have a system for social attributes, merits and flaws.

AC

[Kalden]

MOOs have this, but I don't see it as necessary on a MUD. Too complicated and annoying.

[Bestatte]

There's already so much stuff to look at on people. Their sdesc, main desc, each article of clothing, every visible tattoo, you can look at every one of these things, and the overall "look" will give a pretty good indication of the type of person you're dealing with.

Personally, I don't really give a shit if Susie-Que Kadius has black hair on her arms, and probably wouldn't give it much notice even if it was already in her main description.

Also, we're allowed a huge amount of space to describe our characters in those main descriptions, and I just can't see how adding more body part descriptions will enhance that, when you can just include every detail you feel is necessary in that.

If we're gonna do body parts, I'd rather they focus on something more pertinent to roleplay - injury locations and injury types.

[Anonymous]

Here's what I'd like:

Your description is comprised of 4 parts of up to 3 lines.

Part 1: Head/Face

Part 2: Torso

Part 3: Arms

Part 4: Legs/Feet

During chargen you wouldn't make one complete sdesc, you'd write out a couple of sentences for each.

If you wore sleeves you wouldn't see anything about the arms, but you'd see everything else.  Conversely, if you were wearing nothing but a mask and pants you would see torso and arm descriptions but not Head/Face or Legs/Feet text.

The way it is right now either people can see everything about you, or nothing.  So someone whose desc makes it clear that they have Patrick Duffy for a leg pops on a mask and now it's hidden to us all unless they have the grace and composure to emote it out.

It's one of those ideas that is admittedly very low priority assuming it even has merit, but it's how I'd consider doing it.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

You know, this is something that I have heard before, and even then, I thought it had merit. I would like to see what CRW has suggested come to reality.

[creeper386]

I personally thing it'd make things too complicated. Especially the idea CRW has. As it WOULD modify the character creation process forcing everyone to change how they write descriptions. Arm already has high standards. No need to add to that a complicated description system that new people have to deal with and old people have to constantly keep in mind and section up their descriptions. Personally I'm fairly set in how I write my descriptions and although it tends to go in a similar pattern to CRW's idea, the system would make it so I couldn't include the general body shape and such. And it'd make it wierd to detail things that go between different body parts.

Already masks that hide main descriptions have been made fairly scarce. Thats from something I read from the staff someplace. I might be mistaken but they were pretty damn scarce in the first place. So hiding everything with just one item of clothing isn't going to be common.

I somewhat like the idea AC has with details, or extra descriptions as originally stated. Both of which are different from CRW's idea. The problem though is it'd have to be added in to the character creation process, or be handled by the staff, case by case. For one, character creation isn't the easiest thing. The amount of options and thought going into it already chases off new players. Added further options rather they were required or not would fuddle things up all the more. Also, going by a case by case process probably wouldn't be the best idea. Either the coded changes and work needed to make these things possible would only go out to very few of the population, or the staff would spend alot of time adding these. All the above in my mind not only puts it way back in terms of priority, it basically makes the whole thing fairly fruitless.

I'm with Bestatte, already there is alot to work with. Both to make your character how you want him to look, and alot for the lookees to deal with. I don't know, but I would think the number of people that even figure out the details of whats between their characters legs are probably outnumbered, even less that want to convey that in their descriptions. I've yet to even need to think about the details there, let alone even describe them in an emote. As for other things... Well come on people. It's called RP. If someone has in their description something thats covered by clothing, it's not that hard to not give notice to it. It's like tattoos on the arms or legs when they are wearing a sleeved tunic or an anikle length dress that don't cover up those locations. It might be abused from time to time but I hardly see it common place.

Anyways... Yeap. Thats all I have to say. Sure it'll all get skipped over but thats alright. I don't like you guys either so we are pretty even, eh?


Creeper

[Comrade Canadia]

I think this idea wouldn't suck if it was changed somewhat.  Too often we run into this problem.

'What did the perpetrator look like?'

'Uhm... he was tall... muscular...'

Some sort of very short, point form, intermediate desc of distinguishing features would be nice.  Of course, you can find them in the mdesc, but in a paragraph or sometimes two of stuff, distinguishing features can be lost in the paragraph.  

So something like

ass -? muscular

the tall muscular man has cauliflowered ears
the tall muscular man has extremely curly hair
the tall muscular man has a very long nose

Methinks this would be feasible, although it would obviously require work if an idea like this came up.  Anyone else think this would be a good idea?

-Der Comrade

[sacac]

yeah.. if the first idea was good,
look babe's breasts (I think it should echo to her)

So.. I think it would add some interesting roleplaying

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Man, the four section desc would be perfect.

Ah, Fuck it.