Description & nakeds are for facts
Don't tell the player how to think or feel

I wanted to stay off the forums going forward, but as I am the one that prompted the post, it seems only right I respond to it.

I don't necessarily disagree about not writing dictational prose about how a player feels (although all descriptive prose is by definition so on some level so there is no meaningful hard line to point at), but I don't agree that description should be for facts alone or that facts even constitute description in any meaningful storytelling sense.

Narrative prose is a storytelling mechanism designed to create relational structures in the reader's mind. Between actions and emotions, between details and meaning, between design and purpose. Details without meaning have no meaning except as a way to reduce all characters to a checklist of traits -- something that is already done with shortdesc and glance.

I would argue that merely restating the content of a character's @stats in their description does not convey anything about that character beyond the most functional aspects of disguise and detection, and whenever gameplay and roleplay have come to conflict Sindome has always stressed it was a roleplaying game foremost (I know that's why I am here) and to me that means storytelling, and the primary tool of storytelling is narrative prose.

I seem to remember starting some thread a while ago suggesting all factual details be placed on glance to sidestep this entirely, but I think depreciating character description (arguably the only thing in the game a player is in control of) to mere facts with adverbs would be a huge step in the wrong direction as far as roleplaying is concerned, just as having pose being limited only to literal direct action would be.

It's your prerogative to enforce whatever storytelling styles you want amongst other players, but I would urge you to consider the validity of other approaches to this.

However I still don't support this change.

Description should be allowed to be prosaic within reason. Distinctiveness is important. And what you are asking us to do here is to violate a central tenant of cyberpunk writing, and to put SUBSTANCE before STYLE. And I'm not too sure I like that.

I could see restricting outright god modeing or making characters with descriptions out side their stats.

But I don't see restricting things like.

"JaneBaka is a slow shadowy, lissome figure, her relatively androgenous form moving with feline grace that reminds of large jungle cats stalking their prey."

Or

"Her arms are sinewy, long days of labour went into these arms, practically aged like trees with rings of freckling and moles, you can almost see the story they tell of arms being lifted with a heavy tool in hand and falling under the hot sun."

Because that's prosaic that tells a story about the character. That's their style. That's their motif.

A little bit of prose can add a nice flair to a description, the problem is that this can be a slippery slope if you do it too much as a narrative resource or if you do it wrong.

For example, you could compare a physical trait to something else that resembles it physically. JoeBaka's hair looks like fresh blades of grass after the morning dew on a winter day. Instead of just saying: JoeBaka has light green spiky hair that has been combed and styled with hair gel. One is more of a pretty metaphor and the other is more bland and literal. Ideally you would want to stick to the second one (closer to facts), even if the first one reads more like a cyberpunk novel would.

The problem with using metaphors is that we can very easily step into 'powergaming' territory. By powergaming in his case, we are talking about telling other players what to feel and think about your character (taking agency away from them and forcing your own) and also describing them in ways that overly embellishes them misrepresenting their actual game stats and creating a false perception of them.

For example: JoeBaka has powerful arms that look big and strong like oaks trees and he moves around with the ferocious dexterity of a wild tiger. His eyes are beautiful and mesmerizing, sending anyone who gazes upon them into a enamored trance.

Now imagine that JoeBaka is an immigrant or a character with not so amazing stats or appearance descriptors. With that description I am powergaming, I am misrepresenting how strong and agile JoeBaka is and I am telling you that you have to think and feel they are imposing and at the same time I am embellishing his attractiveness ridiculously (Got to look good for that ERP right?) and forcing you to believe all of this is true, when in fact its not only an utter lie, its also pretty much cheating.

So you can do the prose thing right, but you are most likely going to do it wrong by accident or on purpose if you are doing it too much in your description.

It doesn't matter how many awards of pretty descriptions you won, if the staff tells you to tone down and change your description, you should do it or otherwise you might be breaking rule 4A.

Overly embellished powergaming descriptions are one of my biggest SD pet peeves and are the reason I quit one of my favorite archetypes forever, because I'd wager that regretfully at least half of the player-base has these types of descriptions to one degree or another, and sadly the staff doesn't have the time to go through each character one by one telling them how to correct them or tone them down appropriately.

This is just my personal preference, but if you have an embellished description that I feel is disingenuous I am going to avoid you like the plague and if your description is longer than three paragraphs I am going to skim it and never remember what you look like for the most part. Because if I get too distracted reading your wall of text, I might not notice JoeBaka who has been talking to me or attacking my character for the past 30 seconds. SD unlike other text games, is a lot more fast paced and nobody has the time to read how in love you are with your own character or at least I don't.

Even if that were a 1v1 interaction it would have been too much to delve into just to get an idea of their appearance, never mind in an active setting where people are talking/posing. Similar to the rules regarding tailoring, we should be trying to be expressive without creating so much bloat in a text based game that can already be difficult to keep up with.

I think making moves to limit creativity and writing will just drive away players like me who enjoy that. There's also a massive different between powergaming ("his eyes entrance you") and poetic license. What Slither is saying is, this isn't a novel, we want clear description, not to see your poetic rhapsodizing. I disagree with that.

I agree that players with powergaming descriptions should be asked to change them. I used to point out characters whose descriptions make them sound breathtaking when they're average but in practice no one seems to care, I've even been told by GMs before that it was okay for a player to describe themselves as attractive even though their shortdesc didn't support it. A future GM's character who was described as a giant, heavily muscled brute couldn't pick up a feral cat's body when I needed him to (to be fair, this was early in his playing career). I'm just saying a lot of people do that and they should be corrected.

Limiting my ability to express myself based on my stats, I fully support. Limiting my ability to express myself because you don't like looking at my character, it's too much for you--sorry, but like, don't look at my character then.

A glance message could be a good solution, but I assume that's something that would have to be newly coded in and I'm not sure how that would work with sunglasses/helmets/etc that cover up specific areas of the body. It's why we don't put those kinds of details in our @describe me.

Yes, in the real world beauty is subjective. It's in the eye of the beholder. In Sindome it is objective. Characters are objectively beautiful or ugly, appealing or off-putting. If a character has invested in charisma they have invested in looking good (appearance) and being charismatic (charm).

They ARE beautiful to some degree weather you like it or not. Just like choosing to tank your CHA are ugly and unpersonable weather you want them to be or not. I can see someone saying, "Yeah, they are good looking but not in a way that catches me." Or, "I know they are repulsive and have a personality like rough grit sand paper but I still like to hang with them. They are good people in other ways."

But suggesting that someone who has invested into their stats until they get tags like 'good looking' or 'attractive' or 'gorgeous' can't state that their character are such things feels wrong to me. They should be able to declare themselves attractive in some way because, in this game, they ARE. that is a fact.

You should for sure respect your stats when using words like 'pretty' or 'beautiful' or 'engaging' but I see no reason why a player can not express this objective fact about their character int heir description and nakeds within reason.

I would also suggest you scale your adjectives based on your stats. A repulsive character might be 'an unhealthy skinny sack of skin and bones.' An average character might be 'thin'. As you start looking more and more beautiful you might become 'trim' or 'slim' or 'slender' or 'slight'. They can all be ways to say your character is thin but some come with more positive connotations that others.

I don't feel that anyone was saying you can't try and make your description and nakeds read well. Just that you shouldn't go overboard and that you need to stick to expressing what people see and not what they think and feel. The facts as Feng very nicely put it. I just disagree with some here in that beauty in Sindome is not an opinion. It is one of the facts that a player can express. in their nakeds and description IF they have the stats to support it.

I'm going to touch on a few things.

Bringing the topic back around to my original intent:

1. Don't steal agency from the reader.

2. Don't write a book style introduction to your character in your @describe and @nakeds.

I haven't heard anyone debating the player agency so, good, we are all agreed!

I am not asking folx not to write their character description in their own style. Style is super important. And we have some wonderful writers on here! I love reading masterfully written descriptions.

I do see a difference in showing & not just telling, and writing 3 paragraphs about how dreamy the characters eyes are. My rule of thumb is to consider how this description will read the 3rd or 4th or 15th time someone checks it out.

@Leech 100% I hate those descriptions too! If you see a description that is TELLING you what you feel or think, @typo (for lack of a better system) and we will add it to the queue. I've spent a lot of time over the years updating descriptions like that as I've come across them but I spend less time walking around the IC world these days so fresh eyes is always a plus. There are descriptions around that are like 25 years old and our content standards have definitely improved in that time.