rp-descriptions
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All the World's a Stage: Descriptions done right
All the World's a Stage is a source for roleplaying ideas, commentary, and discussions. It is published every Sunday evening. Except for this week, when it is more like the early afternoon.Your usual AtWaS columnist, David Bowers, has found himself a tad busy this weekend. Due to this, I'll be nosing in on his territory for a day. Don't worry ladies and gentlemen, I'll take good care of you. Just yesterday we discussed a little about RP descriptions. That is, the physical descriptions you can give your character via addons such as FlagRSP2 or MyRoleplay. David seemed to think this was a pretty good topic, so we're going to go a little more in depth into the right and wrong way of writing these.Right and wrong in this case is naturally up to the individual, but in general there are some pretty solid guidelines you should keep in mind. The first and most obvious is that you should always proofread your writing. In general, roleplayers gravitate towards people with at least some grasp of the English language. A sloppily written description is the first thing someone will see, and it's going to set off alarms in the heads of other people.
RP descriptions and you
We've discussed RP descriptions in the past, both their usefulness as well as their potential hilarity. Our David Bowers has given an overview of two of the big description mods, so you have all you need to get started.Personally, I like to keep my descriptions short and sweet. Lengthy ones certainly have their place, I just prefer being brief. A short physical overview- height, build, hair, that sort of thing. Then I plug in a few baubles or unique pieces of clothing people may notice. A tabard, medals, jewelry, something that could spark a conversation. Things that someone might walk up and ask, "Where did you get that?"On my main, my human priestess, most of those things are pins on the collar of her robes that signify organizations she's involved with or support. For example: Her guild, the Argent Dawn, and the Aldor. All in all, her description is about a paragraph long to paint a picture of her and give some conversation inspiration.Now, here's my request for all of you. Show me your descriptions! Copy-paste them straight from FlagRSP or make one from scratch, it's up to you. Long or short, tame or ridiculous, I'm interested in them all. We might even learn a thing or two from those posted. A little style goes a long way.
Loving to hate RP descriptions
One of the things I sort of miss from my City of Heroes days is the ability to add a description to my character for everyone to see, and having the ability to read their origin stories, too. RP mods such as FlagRSP(now out-of-date) and ImmersionRP work to fill this void, but it isn't quite the same.Though most players have horrible, awful descriptions detailing nothing but their vampire fangs and heaving bosoms(even the men), they still supply entertainment when I have nothing better to do but stand around Stormwind using guild chat as glorified IRC. The addons that allow you to do this are nice, but they just aren't used by many people, even within the RP community. That's understandable, they don't really 'do' a lot. I don't see something like this ever being implemented in WoW's lifetime, but it would be nice to see, simply for the entertainment factor.Am I alone in this? Is it so wrong to want to read these things when I have nothing better to do, no matter how horrible most of them are? Does that Night Elf over there really have eight black feathered wings? Does she really?
