[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 07:07 PM 9/27/98 -0400, I personally witnessed Hal Black jumping up to say:
>
>Exactly, you are arguing my argument for me.  Compare the age of the vampire
>to the amount of sunlight, and tailor the description accordingly.

You're forgetting one of the things that I personally like so very much
about MUSHes: People can build their own rooms and write their own
descriptions. Such comparisons and programming of the description text are
just not accessible to the majority of players -- and, in addition, it
creates somewhat of a problem if there is a way for any arbitrary person
anywhere to programmatically determine whether someone is a vampire and how
old he is. (I realise the 'OOC Masquerade' is a foreign concept to most
MUDs, and indeed to many MUSHes, but WoD games are by nature political and
involve high levels of intrigue and espionage. Concealing the character's
true nature is severely important to just about everyone.)

On a MUD, where the people who build rooms tend to be technically capable
and familiar with programming, you can have much more complex rules of
descriptions. As a result, they tend to be badly written, badly
constructed, and sound very strained. I rarely see descriptions on MUDs
which inspire me or spark my emotions. In fact, most of them are so
universally bad, I go around with descriptions turned off, which means
those few descriptions which ARE inspiring and emotional probably never
even come across my screen.

>> Therefore, why would he ever walk around any place that could possibly
>> have sunlight in it? why wouldnt he stick to dungeons, mountain caves,
>> and other dark places? what is HE doing out of character tromping around
>> the nice warm forest amidst the sprites and humans? 

This was a bad description on several counts. It was three in the morning,
and there was absolutely zero chance of there being sunlight anywhere in
the same time zone. :P

>  Since you aren't seeing it, here is some code you can have in every room
and
>it will work perfectly:
>
>if (character.body.can_see()) character.render(VISION,room.desc);
>if (character.body.can_smell())  character.render(SMELL,room.scent);

This sort of construction would be an excellent way to build descriptions
that suck.

"You stand by the river, smelling the flowers nearby and feeling the soft
breeze as you gaze upon a large wrought iron gate. Somewhere behind it, a
churchbell rings."

A blind man walks in.

"You stand by the river, smelling the flowers nearby and feeling the soft
breeze. Somewhere behind it, a churchbell rings."

What? Behind the river, or behind the breeze? If I was blind *and* deaf, I
would get:

"You stand by the river, smelling the flowers nearby and feeling the soft
breeze."

How do I know there's a river there? If I were just blind, I could hear it.
Being blind and deaf, how do I know? Am I *in* the river? Or do I deduce
from the smell of the flowers that they are water lilies and therefore must
be near water, and since I do not smell the fermentation of rotting matter
or feel the ground sinking beneath my feet I deduce that this is not a
swamp and thus the lilies must grow by the bank of a river or a pond, so
since there is no pond nearby to my knowledge it must be the river?


If you build your descriptions like this, then every builder must build
their five sense descriptions independently and in a prescribed order, such
that any description stands on its own and all of them in any combination
are sensible. Christ, it's hard enough getting people to write ONE
description that makes sense, and you want *five* that work in all
thirty-two possible combinations?!
My rule: Assume your players create characters with five senses. Those who
do not have them should be few and far between, and should expect to
selectively edit the descriptions they receive. While the suspension of
disbelief is the first major concern, one should certainly not complicate
the living hell out of the game in order to achieve it.
>Since you're quoting Occam, it is interesting to note in the context of this
>debate that he applied his theory to psychological powers distinct for each
>mode of sense.  8')

The literal quote (translated from the Latin) is "One should not multiply
entities unnecessarily." I think it was originally something about birth
control.


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Caliban Tiresias Darklock     <caliban at darklock.com> | "Hell, you don't   
Darklock Communications   <http://www.darklock.com/> |  know me."         
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