Descriptions in AR

[Stiehl26]

I was hoping to get some consistency in regard to what is acceptable and not acceptable for descriptions. Our current help file for descriptions indicates:

Your description should not describe detailed clothing. Describing dark
leather armor with glowing sigils, when you're wearing red dragon armor
would be out of place. If you were to say "His armor has been let out
a bit at the waist to accomodate his girth" This would accentuate the
fact the character is overweight, without telling you how it actually looks.
Small personal effects, such as trinkets and jewelry, are permitted in a
limited quantity.

Your description should contain no actions of any sort (e.g. Davairus
says hello when you look at him) and it should not tell the reader how
they feel or what they think. It should not describe your personality
or your history. These should be left to your interactions with the
other players inside the game world.

I adhere to these description rules and have been called out when I have not and been asked to make changes. That being said, I see SO many descriptions saying I hear something or see something or feel a certain way when a person comes into the room. As a player for immersion, I find that distracting that every time I look at someone I hear a boom or smell something.

Could we make description evaluation consistent based upon the rules in help description or take out the need for a description to be evaluated, since the evaluation is subjective, not based upon rules as written.

[lionSpyre]

I made a point about this a while ago as well and I totally agree. I find it a very overt intrusion of my immersion when someone tells me how I'm feeling or where I'm looking. There's some leeway there (smell and sound don't require you to specifically focus on them in order to pick them up). But for the sake of RP, PLEASE stop telling me how I feel or where I'm looking in your description. Is there a description-stickler among the Imms or in the Consortium bold enough to thwart these reckless immersion breakers?

[BlackWidow]

One other thing to keep in mind about descriptions - you look the same regardless of whether you are standing/in combat/sleeping/etc. so including actions is a bad idea. Also, having them meet the viewer's gaze makes no sense when they are asleep or the viewer is concealed (invisible etc.) in a way that the character cannot see.

We've had somewhat notable characters who did not meet the standards properly - there was a duergar druid who tagged along with Eurayel in the distant past whose description included metallic equipment and it was obvious that not enough thought was put into the character's description.

[Stiehl26]

ChatGPT is writing a lot of descriptions/backgrounds.

[Dogran]

I consistently make people remove actions and anything that involves someone else's thoughts or feelings. If you see someone's desc that breaks those rules and it's bothering you, report them. At the very least it might get some oversight on who's approving descs with illegal stuff in it. Just be sure you are reading the other files referenced in help desc ie desc2 etc.

[Kornhole]

I am a mixed bag on this. I agree wholeheartedly with actions not being allowed. But if you go too far into the "Immersion"....one could never even add eye color (what if I look at you when you are asleep, oh man.....my immersion!?!?!?). Oh man, I looked at his ghost, and it said his clothes and armor were well kempt......my immersion!?!?!?) Not disagreeing at all that it has seem to have gotten subjective, and some descriptions that I think have many RULE breaks in them get approved. There was an elevated description not too awful long ago that broke a description rule. Would be nice to see it more uniform.

[Davairus]

I hear you guys complaining about people's descriptions being against the description room/helpfile "guidelines". However, it kinda sounds like its coming from a position of grievance rather than actually giving much of a fuck about this. i.e. I had to fix my desc to remove my deerstalker hat, so Bob the warrior needs to.

Some descs break every guideline on *very* high profile characters and nobody ever said a thing about it.

Case in point, this one:
https://abandonedrealms.com/players/display.php?name=taurth

[Stiehl26]

I think maybe the point is, we have description rules, we have people who approve descriptions not taking those rules into consideration. Either get the people who approve on the same page or get rid of/modify the help description. This way you don’t have some people who just hit the approve button and others having a 10 minute discussion about placement of punctuation.

[Davairus]

Please provide specific examples.

[Stiehl26]

From the rules:
Your description should contain no actions of any sort (e.g. Davairus
says hello when you look at him) and it should not tell the reader how
they feel or what they think. It should not describe your personality
or your history. These should be left to your interactions with the
other players inside the game world.

Descriptions that are in the GY or have been distinguished:
"Looking about this place, you can't help but notice the little gnome
standing before you."
"Breaking your eye contact, you look over the rest of his face."
"A tension fills the air around her of magic ready to be bent to her whim. It causes her blond hair to wave constantly as if caught in a wind. "
"Several more warts have nestled themselves on either side of
her nose, one in particular appearing ready to pop. Your attention is then
drawn to a small pustule just below her left cheekbone, perhaps a wart that
did pop, as it secretes something vile."
"The only challenge to the elf's beauty is a series of brands that begin near
her left temple and trail down her jawline. They correspond to celestial
landmarks in the Serin skyline. The faint glimmer that pulses behind them
suggests a motion that should be impossible."
"You espy that she is in fact a female of the race, uncommonly seen in these realms. "
"The disparity of the colours of this females features are the first thing
you notice about her."
"You notice a tattoo of red and black on her left hand showing to be an eye
surrounded by a ring of fire. "

Why do I notice these things, why are they the first things I notice and therefore everyone notices, why does my character know that your hair blows in a constellation, breaking my eye contact - i wasnt making eye contact...etc.

[Dogran]

I get your point, and I feel like I am turning into a bit of a desc nazi myself. This is because, I was careless at the beginning and if I thought it was cool I commended it, without regard to the rules, and Vanisse and Vevier set me straight. Now, I am much more conscientious of it and tend to probably go a little overboard on what's allowed and not allowed.

Heck, I remember my first interaction as an imm. Do you know what it involved? It involved the person I was talking to asking why it was ok for me to do it if they couldn't do it, causing me to rewrite my desc at the same time they did. I am much more considerate about my descs after that experience.

[Mogu]

I understand why the rules are what they are but I am also of the mindset that we're playing a text game and some suspension of disbelief should be expected. Descriptions with that sort of language and detail often add depth and flavor. It allows the player to describe the character more vividly and enriches your perception of the character. It's a slippery slope though and there should be a line between acceptable and unacceptable, even if it's blurred. All that to say I am fine with it being slightly subjective and at the discretion of Immortals.

[Davairus]

Cool so we have actual examples to dig into now.

There are a couple in that list there that seem a bit of a stretch to have in the desc, e.g. "looking around you notice a gnome", "looking over blah's face you blah blah", and the breaking eye contact thing . I actually recognized that desc, it is Wylsin

https://abandonedrealms.com/players/display.php?name=Wylsin

Here is the full thing:

[ivindel]

"why so serious?", but really, why so serious?

For me, I would very much prefer to read a description that is rich in describing the character's features (with flair), just as if I am reading a paragraph from a good fantasy novel introducing a new character for the first time, than to read some monotoned and boring description which I will probably just stop reading halfway.
Honestly, when I am examining the armor that a character wears, I am normally just counting in my head how much hit/dam or hp/saves this guy has. Personally, I want to see within the description itself words that describe to me how magnificent the armor (light bouncing off the armor and piercing my eyes or whatnot) looks, because the bloody titanium fullplate that I see him wearing is simply just a 'titanium fullplate'.

[Davairus]

Umm.... so anyway. I attempted gemini desc screening tonight and results were thoroughly terrible (they are both wildly inaccurate and the API takes way too long to respond) which means we are definitely stuck with this situation for a while.

[lionSpyre]

For my part, I’ll also try to be more specific here. My beef is with two things specifically in a description: telling me where I’m looking and telling me how I feel.

1) telling me where I’m looking - I should have been more specific here earlier. I dont mind a description telling me, “you notice blah blah blah…” because likely, if I’m reading your description, I’m taking the time to notice things about your character. What I mean here is if someone is telling me that I’m looking “up at you”, “down at you”, watching you “emerge from the shadows”, etc. this, in my opinion, is a description that’s written with a lack of regard for someone else’s RP. There are pretty simple ways to write if someone is tall, short, or stealthy without indicating where or how you have to look to see them.

2) telling me how I feel - this one bothers me far more. Don’t tell me that I’m awestruck by you. Don’t tell me I’m shaking in terror at the sight of you. Again - you’re violating my RP by putting feelings into my character that likely aren’t there. You can invoke feelings of awe or fear without putting those words or feelings directly into the observers brain.

I don’t mind if someone is invoking actions like laughter, casting spells, etc. in a description - I think this just provides more context and flavor for how someone might observe this character, and as mentioned in this thread, it shows someone clearly had fun writing it. You could say someone “emerging from the shadows” is also an action… but the subtle difference here is that you’re telling me that I was looking at the shadows, not your character.

Regarding asking Imms to screen for this, it sounds like that’s a huge ask given the number of descriptions that are created in this game. I like the note that this is a cultural things that veterans can push, but other than being a member of the Consortium, how does a veteran enforce this other than leading by example? Are you expecting reports on people? Because I feel that might create more unwanted work for you. Only Consortium members (as mortals) to my knowledge can directly interact with a player to discuss their description. Otherwise people have to be clever about directly referring to a description that they read without breaking RP.

[Davairus]

Yes report them. At the least we will have a history built up of what is bothering players about descs, and identify if it is worth treating with a higher priority. We have reporting for rules and we can have reports for descs too. the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

there are only 2 active player descriptions that contain the word "feel", and one of those characters is on life support, so this doesnt seem like actually been a huge problem. Its seems like a big fat nothingburger. So I will say it again, provide specific examples please. Thanks

[Kornhole]

Dav, I think you are getting a little triggered. It is not as though the OP said IMMS Suck, AR sucks, wah! It seemed to me as a justified question. Can we get rid of desc approvals, or can we make sure all the people who are approving do so on an even keel. I don't think this was intended as a criticism.

[Stiehl26]

Thank you @kornhole. You summed ALL of that nicely.

[lionSpyre]

I don't know if Dav is getting triggered as much as he is coming to the forums with a mission: identify the problem and produce a solution.

To be clear, this isn't something that's rampant and out of hand (apologies for my early jest... sarcasm can be hard to convey through a forum post). It's something that occasionally crops up that makes me wince and breaks my immersion. It's a minor problem, but a problem nonetheless.

I'm completely satisfied with calling on (veteran) players to report when they see these things in descriptions. No action needed from the Imms, just a call to players to report it when they see it.