[MUD-Dev] Re: Introductions and descriptions

[Sauron]

> > > > A tall, ugly fat man with a bushy black beard, bald head, piercing
> > > > blue eyes, heavily tanned skin dressed in expensive clothes
> > > > says 'hello'.
> 
> Keep the description about the same size of the message. If the message is
> only "says hello" you probably want to stick to the most important part of
> his description, in this case likely the expensive clothing. And maybe his
> most striking feature, either tall or bearded.  So you would get something
> like "A rich bearded man says 'hello'.
> However if the message is much longer  you could get away with adding more
> detail to the description  though I would still recommend avoiding all the
> commas. 

[snip] 

IMHO this point is really moot because actions don't really have much
place in descriptions.  Would a char honestly react the same if the King
of Whatever walks up to him as if the Evil Dragon walked up to him? In
most mushes, you can set @adescs (list of actions triggered when someone
looks at you) so you actually DO the actions and are aware that you do
them rather than they appear to happen when someone looks at you. ie You
could set different reactions based on whether a npc with @race = Dragon
or @race = fairy looked at you. I have not seen anything beyone client
triggers used for this sort of thing in most muds, however I think even
that is better than having actions in the desc. 

Also, I believe there should be different types of descs compared to the
type of look you do. If you are just glancing at him, as in while you
are talking (in RL) you get a short one line desc. If you are giving him
a good look over, probably a three or four sentence desc would be
sufficient. If you are evaluating his abilities, a desc based on his
physical attributes and how they compare to yours would be appropriate.
However, it may not be possible to code something like this in your
situation.

-Sauron