MU Peeves Thread
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I will never understand people acting like descs don’t matter, or that no one reads them. If you don’t read the desc of your scene partner, that is fkin rude. It’s a verbal medium. If you don’t want to read a paragraph to get your mental image right, that is a you issue. Not a game design issue.
Are they difficult to write sometimes? Sure. Drudgery?? What?? You absolutely cannot replace them with LLM slop without it being painfully, repulsively obvious, and I have literally never in all my years in this hobby seen someone disparaging a desc for not having a paragraph to describe clothes. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t ever happen, but it’s not some widespread standard.
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@hellfrog I think to me, the best amount of description/background/whatever is however much it takes to get the point across and not a word more. Sometimes you have people writing to a minimum word count because that’s the culture or they’re self-conscious and that’s when it can become a slog to read. All this could be avoided if they’d written “it’s a white t-shirt” instead of turning to chatgpt to fluff it up.
I play games where the RP is time sensitive. If someone flounces up to me with a description taller than my vertical monitor full of chatgpt-isms, I ain’t reading that shit. Got halfway through the scene once before we both realised she was buck naked.
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@Juniper That’s fair, I also roll my eyes and backflip out of characters when I see the chatGPT signifiers in the desc. Any time a physical quality “embodies the nature of” or “speaks to” a vague and unrelated personality trait? Bam.
I like a little fluff in descs. I like it in poses, too, even though I know it isn’t good writing, strictly speaking. I also prefer not to have clothes in a desc and just pose them where appropriate in scenes. To me, these are preferences. Something doesn’t have to be for me, but that doesn’t mean I think it should be designed out of the hobby. Except the LLM stuff. That should be.
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@hellfrog I actually don’t read character descriptions. Not to be insulting but more that it doesn’t actually do anything to help me when I try to get a mental image of someone, I need an actual image. And for whatever reason, it only seems to apply to people’s faces. It might be some kind of internal blindness on my part, I know @imstillhere and I have spoken about this that has an actual word associated with it.
I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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@Testament Prosopagnosia! I have it as well and it can definitely be an embarrassing factor in my real life. It’s also one reason I hate AI portraits, as I find them extremely hard to distinguish.
In terms of descs though (and I know, we’ve talked about this) I don’t think you need to know exactly what their face looks like. It doesn’t matter. You need a vibe, some physical basics, and anything major unusual, and that’s it, that will inform the impression of the character in the written form.
Tastes vary, but for me, I never need to know details like a roman nose or cupid’s bow lips.
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@hellfrog Generally, my first pose into a scene is what my character is wearing, because I am not going to update the @desc every time they change clothes.
Hyperbolic counter example is hyperbolic for comedy: if someone in the scene mention that its raining outside, do I need to update the @desc to reflect that the clothes are wet before I even pose in?
Edit for more comedy: if a @desc does not include clothes, can we assume they are running around naked? Can we return to the cursed era where you have to +wear clothes ro cover up specific body parts and it all jumped into a big weird nightmare of layered clothes concealing other clothes concealing your naked desc?
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I am with Hellfrog on this one that I enjoy descriptions and even fluffy ones! I’ve also made my opinion on this known before, lol. It’s kind of crazy to me to hear someone suggest nixing descs as a whole. To put it plainly, I love writing descriptions, I love writing them in detail, and I love describing clothes because it makes me feel like I am playing with Barbie dolls. If you don’t want to read that, then don’t. I often include enough detail about my character’s physical traits and attire when I pose/emote anyway.
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@Testament You do you, but I for one have, on numerous occasions, been rping with someone who clearly has no concept of my character and poses them as though they are entirely different? Short instead of tall, old instead of young, bald instead of brunette, etc.
That’s inconsiderate and disrespectful, and at that point why am I even there? Clearly what I bring to the scene does not matter.
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I’m afraid I also don’t read descs. I rely on systems that give me an overview, like +finger. I don’t know what “shorter than average” means to you, but I know what 5’3" means!
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@Narrator said in MU Peeves Thread:
But that was discarded in favor of World of Darkness MUSHes where most of the game is in the character application process and in making sure you never offend the right clique in the OOC foyer, and not in the scenes your character is in.
Methinks Narrator was an asshole in the OOC room one too many times and, as such, has decided to complain about it obliquely on here. Thankfully they’re banned, so …
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I think it’s great that we have mediums that give us the option to use our imaginations and to look at a picture if it’s available. I read descriptions every so often, but when I write them, they’re one line or less, giving the very basics, because I hate writing them too.
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@junipersky This is basically what I do as well. Or I look at their profile page for their specifics. Can I imagine height, build, hair and eye color? Yes. But the facial features?
It’s just a blank space in my mind’s eye. It is the most frustrating thing. And believe me, I wish I didn’t have to deal with it.
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I really like reading descs, but prefer it to be on a wiki too. Just because I got trained out of the habit of look <name> after being on a few places where someone looking at someone else was broadcast not just to those people but the ENTIRE ROOM.
As someone with cognitive deficits that pretty much require I’m going to have to reference back frequently that was extremely stressful. I feel ashamed sometimes of how many times I have to backreference things by relooking them up even between poses, and having it broadcast was…meh. And spammy and annoying to everyone else. So I love that many places now integrate both image and desc into their wiki, it’s a godsend for someone like me, as are people who note any unusual stuff in their page (yes my bit name is X but I only introduce myself as Y, here is my rank on places where rank/titles are important, ect)
I also really like it when people incorporate their desc or change of clothing in poses. I know that irritates a lot of people but for me it helps with visualization. I’ve got the opposite problem in that while I enjoy visual images it’s almost always more about the mood, and I actually tend to think of that with others too–I don’t visualize them exactly like their images on their pages either. I think that’s why the AI images don’t jar me terribly unless they’re unintentionally funny, because to me, PB/art/AI to my brain has always been a suggestion.
In the same way the written desc on the character object is a suggestion too. People can look so different with change of expression, and they’re dynamic, not static. This is why people incorporating aspects of their descs or whatever is really enjoyable to me in RP because it is really cool (to me) and helps create that mental picture for me when I’m RPing with someone.
I tend to get a little down when it seems like nobody is paying attention to that, but I know that’s a me thing.
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I like reading descs if they’re not horrible but I also get that they can feel like an unfun chore and hurdle in the character app process.
Also. some people just don’t feel inspired to write them in the traditional “here is a paragraph or two” manner and just want to fill in the bare essentials and necessary info. I think that’s just fine, someone’s physical presence can be conveyed in a bunch of different ways.
Like Mietze mentioned above, I’ve gotten into the habit of just posing the clothing someone is wearing in-scene which I find less maddening than screwing around with outfit code, etc.
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I also enjoy reading descs, but I’m NGL - I will start scanning and glossing over bits if they get too long. No, I don’t have an objective standard that I consider ‘too long’, so much as there being a vibe of realizing that someone’s character is the most beautiful and magnificent creature to have ever existed, and also they are stunning, and also they are the tallest (or shortest!), and also their swanlike neck and arabesque limbs and also their bulging muscles of bulgingness and…
Yeah, bro. I get the gist and none of this is interesting, thanks.
That said, while I will never stop laughing at ‘luminescent lavender orbs’, which you can pry from my dead, bitchy, 90s WoD-playing hands? I’ll forever take a florid description over an automatically generated one that hasn’t even been edited, because the process and craft of writing matters to me. It is literally how I make my living and I have very strong opinions on the subject. Give me a bad writer who is trying to be better over someone who doesn’t think writing matters every time.
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Ya’ll need descs for folks using screen readers.
As with the entire char app process, it can also be a great early warning that someone is fucking crazy.
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@Aria Anyone that uses ‘luminescent lavender orbs’ as a descriptor for eyes has Main Character Syndrome and you can’t tell me otherwise.
I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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@helvetica Thank you. I checked out one game where characters were not required/encouraged to have descs, just pbs, and I was like …um I guess I’ll see myself out.
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@Testament One day I will create an alt that has moldy blue cheese ball eyes. ONE DAY.
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@Artemis said in MU Peeves Thread:
@helvetica Thank you. I checked out one game where characters were not required/encouraged to have descs, just pbs, and I was like …um I guess I’ll see myself out.
Yeah, I started in the pre-PB days and frankly, I have an easier time cranking out descs than I do finding PBs and collecting/tweaking pics, etc. No disrespect to people who feel the opposite.
