I've noticed that sometimes sdescs can be confusing and misleading sometimes when it comes to character age. There have been characters in their mid to late teens who have had woman or man in their sdescs. Some characters in their late teens to early twenties have girl or boy. Still others use young man or young woman when they are past their mid twenties.
My suggestion is this: Set an age range for such descriptors. You can only use girl or boy up to a certain age, young man or young woman up to a certain age, but not below, and not man or woman below a certain age. Once you reach certain ages, you must submit a request to have your sdesc altered to be appropriate.
I partly agree and partly disagree.
I don't see why I should be forced to put word "young" or "old" or "in a middle age" in my sdesc. - man/woman is neutral, saying nothing about the age.
On the other side, I agree there should not be boy/girl above certain age, because it can be confusing.
And, it's a DESC.. because some people look older than they are, and some look younger than they are. I think leave it up to the player. Misleading or not, it's still a desc, and people never look all the same or uniform. Hell, I'm 23 and coule pass for 16 given what I'm wearing, make up or not, how my hair is done. That's a big diff.
Leave it up to the player's discretion. The boy and girl thing does make you think of a kid, but teen and young - those, in my opinion, are things that can be interchanged.. but if you're fifteen.. 'woman' alone wouldn't be my first choice.. I don't even think 'girl' would be.
Quote from: "Cuusardo"My suggestion is this: Set an age range for such descriptors. You can only use girl or boy up to a certain age, young man or young woman up to a certain age, but not below, and not man or woman below a certain age. Once you reach certain ages, you must submit a request to have your sdesc altered to be appropriate.
I completely disagree. Whether the character is young, old, girl, boy, lad, lass, whatever, it all depends what they look like. Eg: A 20 year old man may look like a boy/teen in some perspectives like an 8 year old boy may look like a teen/man to other perspectives. Just my 2 sids.
I strict rule is unneccary, but I do believe one must be careful one choosing age related sdescs. I have a funny encounter lately.
I was playing a 25 years old human, then called "lad" to a PC which has describtion like .... young man, then I assesed and see He is quiet a bit older then my character. That means about 33+. I could not decide what I should call next.. heh.
I know I assisted in this problem lately, my char is in his mid twenties with the desc of 'juvenile'. Though, there is a reason for it, I can see why it may be misleading to some people but I've worked myself into a habit of comparing everyones age to me through the assess command before I read their desc all the way through.
I think the solution is to stop calling people lad.
Young and old is relative. I think people should avoid using them at all myself.
And I think.. we should just keep ass -v on hand. very useful.
I say, first of all, that appearance is the key factor in deciding such things as short descriptions. The assess command and other mechanisms should be the only way to tell when someone wants to hide something, whether by choice or nature.