[KaVir]

I'd personally leave off the last sentence, unless it was a dynamic description with some means of tracking compassion (eg a "soft hearted" hindrance, or a high "humanity" attribute, etc).

You'll need them for at least some things (combat messages, socials, etc), the only question is how extensively you want to use them. Rooms? Objects? Mobs? Players? Help files?

If you support two-character colour codes like "^r" for red, "^b" for blue, "^o" for orange, etc (as many muds do) then you've already got the basic infrastructure for a generic dynamic description system that can be used throughout the mud.

If your players really want in-game maps, they can always use a mud client with a graphical automapper, that's not something you can feasibly prevent. It's mostly the newbies who will suffer, as they're the least likely to have a decent client (or know how to configure it), and the most likely to get lost, confused and frustrated. Retaining newbies is hard work, particularly when the playerbase hasn't yet reached critical mass, and it's a subject that's been discussed quite extensively.