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Molly · 10-03-2003, 05:11 PM

I am no big fan of repetitive descs myself – I suppose most serious Builders aren’t. True, they do have their use in mazes and large gridzones that are monotonous by nature, (for instance large deserts, open sea, vast grasslands). But even in these gridzones I prefer individual descs, as far as possible - with one significant exception. We have a 3000 room large grid called Open Space, and in this all descs are similar, unless you are very close to a planet or space station. The only thing that varies is the room co-ordinate, which we put in to facilitate navigation in the grid. That makes sense to me – there’s not much to see in open space and it adds to the sense of vastness.

Most Muds that try to create a consistent and at least partly ‘realistic’ world have to use quite a lot of ‘filling zones’. It looks stupid if two large cities are placed 3 rooms from each other, or if an Elven settlement lies next to a Goblin village. So we put the ‘travelling’ areas in between, forests, mountain ridges, roads. The ‘distance’ problem can be handled in two ways; either by separating the ‘real’ zones with a grid, or with a linear road. Personally I prefer the grid, but of course a linear road needs a loss less rooms to achieve the same distance. But whatever your choice is, all these road rooms need descs.

The first advice for those descs is obvious, and has already been suggested. Describe what you see along the road, not the road itself. The character of the landscape, buildings you pass, landmarks, villages, solitary trees. There are only a limited number of things to describe in the road itself, but the landscape it passes through varies continuously, and can paint a nice total image of the topography of the zone.

My second advice would be to keep the road descs pretty short and pretty even in length. Two 4-line rooms are better than one 8-line, if you have problems thinking about things to describe. I even prefer two 2-line rooms to one 4-line desc that gets repeated. Short and to the point is never really wrong. And equal length gives a nice rhythm as you move along the road.

I used to admire Builders who could produce loads of 15-line descs, but over the years I’ve come to regard this as bad building instead – as a way for the Builder to boost their ego. The room desc is just one part of the zone and a Mud is not static. It’s meant to move about in, and things are meant to happen continuously. People talk, there are objects and mobs in the rooms, some of the mobs roam about, some even attack you. So if the room decs are too longwinded, they may spam you out of the screen, and it’s especially irritating if you move around a lot.

Too long descs, especially in a ‘Travel area’, usually only achieve one thing – they make players put ‘Brief mode’ on, and that is something most Buiders hate to see. If you have a lot to say about a certain room, it’s a lot better to use extra descs for this. This way the players have a choice, the interested and/or ambitious ones look for the extras and get valuable info from them, the lazy ones ignore them and miss out on some goodies until they learn better. In a travel zone I usually go for 4 liners, while a zone like a castle, where there is more to look out for, I might make the descs 7-10 lines long, with lots of extra descs.

I am no big fan of the trick of swapping one sentence in an otherwise identical desc either; it quickly gets as boring as the identical descs. And the main object of a desc isn’t to fill so-and-so many lines of text (the number depending on the Builder policy on the Mud). If all you use the desc for is to fill out the space; then I’d say it’s better to stick to repeated decs. Or to leave the generic part of the desc out altogether and just use the part that changes. Again – a 2 line original desc is preferable to a 6 line repeated one.

But the main object is for the desc to be INTERESTING, ENTERTAINING and/or AMUSING – and to provide some useful info about the zone. Each good zone should have a consistent topography, climate, vegetation, wildlife and population. It should also have a plot or background story.

So my third advice would be to use this info in the room descs. I know this is somewhat controversial, since some fundamentalistic Builders claim that a room desc should only describe what you see in the room. But I don’t care. I’d rather read some useful background info about the nature of the country you are travelling in, or some entertaining gossip about the social and political intrigues in it. So this is what I usually do with my own entrance roads. I write down the topographic characteristics of the zone, and the background story and plots that are the foundation for the Quests in it. Then I chop this info up in nice 4-line pieces and use them as descs.

This isn’t quite as easy as it sounds, because creating a zone is not exactly like writing a novel or a short story. Sice you move around in a zone, you cannot use a continuous story line. Each desc must be able to stand for itself, regardless of what direction the room is entered from. So it needs a bit of extra work, after you’ve written down the story. Still, if used right, this could be the foundation of a really good zone. And if nothing else, descs like this are a darned sight more interesting for the player to read, than just describing the ruts in the road and the nature of the grass on the roadsides.

10-03-2003, 05:11 PM	#9
Molly Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Sweden Home MUD: 4 Dimensions Posts: 574	I am no big fan of repetitive descs myself – I suppose most serious Builders aren’t. True, they do have their use in mazes and large gridzones that are monotonous by nature, (for instance large deserts, open sea, vast grasslands). But even in these gridzones I prefer individual descs, as far as possible - with one significant exception. We have a 3000 room large grid called Open Space, and in this all descs are similar, unless you are very close to a planet or space station. The only thing that varies is the room co-ordinate, which we put in to facilitate navigation in the grid. That makes sense to me – there’s not much to see in open space and it adds to the sense of vastness. Most Muds that try to create a consistent and at least partly ‘realistic’ world have to use quite a lot of ‘filling zones’. It looks stupid if two large cities are placed 3 rooms from each other, or if an Elven settlement lies next to a Goblin village. So we put the ‘travelling’ areas in between, forests, mountain ridges, roads. The ‘distance’ problem can be handled in two ways; either by separating the ‘real’ zones with a grid, or with a linear road. Personally I prefer the grid, but of course a linear road needs a loss less rooms to achieve the same distance. But whatever your choice is, all these road rooms need descs. The first advice for those descs is obvious, and has already been suggested. Describe what you see along the road, not the road itself. The character of the landscape, buildings you pass, landmarks, villages, solitary trees. There are only a limited number of things to describe in the road itself, but the landscape it passes through varies continuously, and can paint a nice total image of the topography of the zone. My second advice would be to keep the road descs pretty short and pretty even in length. Two 4-line rooms are better than one 8-line, if you have problems thinking about things to describe. I even prefer two 2-line rooms to one 4-line desc that gets repeated. Short and to the point is never really wrong. And equal length gives a nice rhythm as you move along the road. I used to admire Builders who could produce loads of 15-line descs, but over the years I’ve come to regard this as bad building instead – as a way for the Builder to boost their ego. The room desc is just one part of the zone and a Mud is not static. It’s meant to move about in, and things are meant to happen continuously. People talk, there are objects and mobs in the rooms, some of the mobs roam about, some even attack you. So if the room decs are too longwinded, they may spam you out of the screen, and it’s especially irritating if you move around a lot. Too long descs, especially in a ‘Travel area’, usually only achieve one thing – they make players put ‘Brief mode’ on, and that is something most Buiders hate to see. If you have a lot to say about a certain room, it’s a lot better to use extra descs for this. This way the players have a choice, the interested and/or ambitious ones look for the extras and get valuable info from them, the lazy ones ignore them and miss out on some goodies until they learn better. In a travel zone I usually go for 4 liners, while a zone like a castle, where there is more to look out for, I might make the descs 7-10 lines long, with lots of extra descs. I am no big fan of the trick of swapping one sentence in an otherwise identical desc either; it quickly gets as boring as the identical descs. And the main object of a desc isn’t to fill so-and-so many lines of text (the number depending on the Builder policy on the Mud). If all you use the desc for is to fill out the space; then I’d say it’s better to stick to repeated decs. Or to leave the generic part of the desc out altogether and just use the part that changes. Again – a 2 line original desc is preferable to a 6 line repeated one. But the main object is for the desc to be INTERESTING, ENTERTAINING and/or AMUSING – and to provide some useful info about the zone. Each good zone should have a consistent topography, climate, vegetation, wildlife and population. It should also have a plot or background story. So my third advice would be to use this info in the room descs. I know this is somewhat controversial, since some fundamentalistic Builders claim that a room desc should only describe what you see in the room. But I don’t care. I’d rather read some useful background info about the nature of the country you are travelling in, or some entertaining gossip about the social and political intrigues in it. So this is what I usually do with my own entrance roads. I write down the topographic characteristics of the zone, and the background story and plots that are the foundation for the Quests in it. Then I chop this info up in nice 4-line pieces and use them as descs. This isn’t quite as easy as it sounds, because creating a zone is not exactly like writing a novel or a short story. Sice you move around in a zone, you cannot use a continuous story line. Each desc must be able to stand for itself, regardless of what direction the room is entered from. So it needs a bit of extra work, after you’ve written down the story. Still, if used right, this could be the foundation of a really good zone. And if nothing else, descs like this are a darned sight more interesting for the player to read, than just describing the ruts in the road and the nature of the grass on the roadsides.