Custom Descriptions

[Piscator]

Well, technically the content of the description is OOC. If you write "tanned from years out on the sea" it's not exactly a breach of the rules, it's just a piece of information that the reader can't use at all. It's a waste of words and puts the reader at risk to accidentally use information he is supposed to ignore.

The part about weighing 150 pounds is something I wouldn't consider a problem at all though. You can't expect people to write "has the build of a human that would weigh about 150 pounds on earth" with a 500 character limit. The main thing is to explain the reader (who is a real human) what you have in mind.
Hell, I could even accept "looks like Captain Picard". It's a bit unimaginative, but it definitely brings the point across.

[SekoETC]

People might want to bear in mind that probably half if not more players in Cantr use the metric system, so pounds won't say much. It's better to use adjectives like lean, skinny, fat, pudgy, obese and if they're notably thin or heavy, describe details of their body. Feet, well, I know 5 foot is short, 6 foot is tall, and I can use online conversion tools but all the inches don't really matter all that much, unless you want to define if you're shorter or taller than your friends.

I felt tempted to write "She is apparently a head taller than (insert friend's name here)" for one of my characters since it was apparent from rp that the friend assumes my character to be taller, while I have no idea how tall they are in feet and inches. But then I came to think that someone who didn't know that friend might raise a fuss about a name appearing in a description, and it wouldn't be very informative in that case. Also I looked up online how tall a person's head is in average, and it said 9 inches. So unless the friend was very short, that would make my girl about 6 feet tall and I don't imagine her that tall. But I guess 5-foot 10 or 11 might still be within reason. As long as I don't write down exact numbers, it leaves me some room to adjust it in the future.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

Yea, I don't consider the 150lb as a bad thing to use, but I do think it's better to use descriptors that don't use a number. If I see, "He's 6 ft tall, 150lb.", I'm not really going to get in my mind that it's a tall, skinny guy as well as if someone writes in "He's a tall, lanky man." I just don't look at people and think, "Oh he must be about 6 feet tall and 140-150lb because he's skinny." You don't really need numbers to get the image across.

[Sabsi]

It would be really great if the limit could be raised.

The description where I got the error message although nothing got truncated includes two line breaks and I'm aware that these count as 6 characters each. I didn't count the characters anyway, but the first time when I tried to save the description, only my last full stop got truncated, so I thought that this means the description probably had 501 characters in the database and 500 without the full stop. So I left the full stop out and afterwards changed a single letter in the description (without adding a new character), so there should have been exactly as many characters as before, assumingly 500, but the error message kept showing up although no letter was missing at the end. Maybe it has something to do with the line breaks, so it doesn't recognize when the description has exactly 500 characters including line breaks.

[Piscator]

People might want to bear in mind that probably half if not more players in Cantr use the metric system, so pounds won't say much.

Is it really a problem to convert pound into kilograms and feet into metres in your head? I'm just asking, because I never thought that would be a problem. Definitely easier than Fahrenheit into Celsius.

[SekoETC]

I'm not good at converting in my head, but then again I wouldn't even know how much a 6 foot man was supposed to weigh in average, even in kilograms.

[Sabsi]

I can't even really imagine how big a person is if the metric unit I'm used to would be used in a description, not to mention if another one was used. I've never been good in estimating heights or lengths... no idea if this is typically female or something.

[Rob Maule]

I don't see what the big deal is with a couple of common sense rules:

1. Show, don't tell.
You're writing a description, not a biography. Include things only someone else can sense. If you want someone to know you've lived you whole life by the sea, describe yourself as tan and say that you smell like salt.

2. Present to a global audience.
Don't use pounds or kilograms, feet or meters. Use a generalization or comparison instead, such as towering above the average person or as wide as he is tall. Also, don't compare to something only found in your region.

3. Stay within reason.
Don't have light-emitting skin, ten arms, or a head with no body. Essentially, you're playing a person. If you have to be strange, just go with something in a medical oddity book. And make it just one thing. A two-headed albino hermaphrodite with Elephantiasis is a bit of a stretch.

Call me hardcore, but I don't see why we can't all think about what we write and stick within normal confines. I'm certainly not going to report someone for describing themselves or emoting something beyond the limits, but it's distracting and they'll definitely be getting a frown from me.

[Rebma]

the_antisocial_hermit and Rob Maule have summed up my views pretty much exactly.

[Dudel]

Call me hardcore, but I don't see why we can't all think about what we write and stick within normal confines. I'm certainly not going to report someone for describing themselves or emoting something beyond the limits, but it's distracting and they'll definitely be getting a frown from me.

To be honest, I hope that person doesn't care.

Really, you guys hold Cantr WAY beyond what it is. Cantr is NOT a story, nor is it some epic poem or even a small prose. Cantr is very loosely a game that allows you to RP within it. Not to mention that you guys are now acting adversely compared to the norm of Cantr.

Normal Cantr emoting is straight, to the point, and not flourished. You seem to wish the EXACT opposite of the descriptions, which is ludicrous to say the least.

This all means that everyone using feet, inches, pounds, ounces, whatever not metric is very obviously American and thus an easy target for predijuce... which is no different than someone responding to the whole "language issue" in a very abrupt manner and I do believe we thought this negligible.

I mean, in "the spirit of Cantr" you'll get people ripping the word "neon" out of there as its something that doesn't fit their Cantr world view of what's "okay". "People can't have neon eyes! I'ma report that!" etc.

You can't win, and as the description is all OOC for OOC reasons and to benefit OOC it REALLY doesn't matter.

Yeah... you can't win, really.

In theory I could rip EVERYONE's descriptions to all hell and/or find things "wrong" with it on some level. So until writing in lbs or using historical adjectives and/or adverbs is OUTRIGHT BANNED and classified as a CRB, I'd move on.

PD is going to get retarded reports of people who think a certain way regardless. I can only IMAGINE the noise they get with somethings that have been shouted OOC just within the game itself [and on the forum]. People like to distort and twist the CR to their will and whim in order to formulate the game they THINK Cantr SHOULD BE rather than IS. [snippet]

"She has blue eyes, from her spawnmother, and brown hair - short, from when she cut it in 1800. She has a small scar on her arm, from a battle many years ago that she fought in (roughly 2010). She has a peculiar personality, she can be lovely at times but sometimes she becomes very sad and cries for days on end. This is because she was abused when she spawned by a person called Bob"

Check this out...

She has blue eyes, matching the older woman she sits with [this should be okay if the characters stay together], and brown hair - short, it appears to have been cut ages ago (Aprox Cantr day 1824) [Anything in parenthesis is OOC notes to the player, anyway]. She has a small scar on her arm, which is the mark made from a great axe. The scar appears rather old (Roughly obtained in 2010) [Again, parenthesis are OOC notes to the player for clarification, and ruins nothing if added.]. [Personality and extra history is the only thing here which needs removal.]

So we get...

She has blue eyes, matching the older woman she sits with, and brown hair -short, it appears to have been cut ages ago (Arpox Cantr day 1824). She has a small scar on her arm, which is the mark made from a great axe. The scar appears rather old (Rough obtained Cantr day 2010).

If you wanna add the personality, you just gotta be clever about it.

....... She tends to smile but, on occasion, her face grows sad and stays there for days.

And we could even add a little to the end but even I think its reaching at this point.

..... When sad, its clear she's had a troubled past.

Wrap it all together (though I think it breaks the character limit and could be done MUCH cleaner if tried) here we go...

She has blue eyes, matching the older woman she sits with, and brown hair -short, it appears to have been cut ages ago (Arpox Cantr day 1824). She has a small scar on her arm, which is the mark made from a great axe. The scar appears rather old (Roughly obtained Cantr day 2010). She tends to smile but, on occasion, her face grows sad and stays there for days. When in this sadness, its clear she's had a troubled past.

SO AGAIN...

I mean, in "the spirit of Cantr" you'll get people ripping the word "neon" out of there as its something that doesn't fit their Cantr world view of what's "okay". "People can't have neon eyes! I'ma report that!" etc.

You can't win, and as the description is all OOC for OOC reasons and to benefit OOC it REALLY doesn't matter.

I'd also like to note that due to there being no SEEN viewpoint on color (and Cantrinians may, in fact, be colorblind) that adding any type of color description to ANYTHING, your character or their ride, is technically against the "spirit of Cantr".

Anyone making note of tumbleweeds in the desert is breaking said "spirit". People talking about insects smaller than the uber scarabs and others are, INDEED, breaking the "spirit of Cantr"... though none of these are ever once described as a CRB. At least to my knowledge they have not been.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

I kind of think you're making more of a deal out of what everyone's saying than is there, Dudel.

[theguy]

I have to completely agree with Dudel though (That's not an excuse to inflate your ego umkay!)

He makes a good point, there is nothing to stop anyone out of character explaining their past to another player, I have been known to talk to people about my characters on msn, pm's and stuff because it just helps the roleplay flow if you have more understanding, it's also fun and interesting and you can get help to learn better roleplay so why shouldn't you be able to give little snippets of ooc info in your charrie description?

Overall, Thanks Dudel you normally speak sense and im probs gonna try to write my charrie descriptions in that style

[Doug R.]

I kind of think you're making more of a deal out of what everyone's saying than is there, Dudel.

I'm pretty sure that he thinks he'll be the subject of player attacks against his descriptions, possibly brought about by the description that I cited that was apparently his (even though I saw nothing wrong with it, just that it was repetitive between characters). He's being prematurely defensive, possibly to sway the PDs opinion before implementation so that if the attacks he's expecting do come, he'll have a body of literature to cite when he gets contacted. Seeing that people telling other people how to play seems to be a pet peeve of his, the fact that anyone has an opinion as to how a "proper" description should be written really has him steamed.

Let me know how close to the mark I am.

Personally, I haven't really been reading most of this thread, as it's all a tad bit ridiculous (to me) how people seem to be psychoanalyzing this. As I said, common sense people, common sense.

[Dudel]

That was not my character description and, Doug, as PD you easily PM me and ask my ID to verify this if you don't believe me. (I'm not one to change something because someone else complains.)

Actually my character descriptions are only similar to any of the examples given in that I use feet and inches, otherwise I simply dislike "Play my way" behavior and can EASILY destroy it so thus do so.

The funny thing about Rob and Hermi's posts in the description thread is I don't nessicarily dissagree. XD

However unless there is a GAC ruling it's player biased and should be dropped because of this. I was the same with the 10 armed guy and the dog people and Wiro's noise and the cat meow-er. While I don't 100% "like" the behavior (and usually sit on the side of "Well that's just plain retarded/stupid/dumb/whatever') its nothing that should be discriminated against, especially as anything new/original/different to Cantr couldn't hurt it.

[notsure]

Are people doing this yet? I haven't seen any in-game.

notsure