I'd like to start this by saying ultimately, your description is entirely up to you. This guide is strictly MY method on how I come up with a description, and also how I often help people through a description in the description room.

Also, please keep in mind that these are ideas and suggestions. If you're truly lost, be certain to read HELP DESCRIPTION and HELP DESCRIPTION EXTRA to begin, and that any final assessment of a particular description is in the hands of the Immortal looking at it.

My theory is that I try to think about how I would describe a person I might look at on the street. Then I write a sentence or two describing how I might define my character for each trait. Typically by the time this is done, you've easily gotten 6-8 lines, which is often a reasonable description.

1) Typically, I start out with quick glance information. Things you could notice easily. Size, race, height, weight, sex, possibly a comment towards a general stance.

2) Face. There's a LOT of information and detail you can give about a character's face. Eye color, hair color, hair style, nose. Ears, teeth are more noticeable for some races as well.

3) Major body parts. Torso, arms, legs. Stocky? Muscular? Thin? Athletic? Tanned? I don't always make a comment towards arms & legs, but there's often something that can be said.

4) Hands. There's almost ALWAYS something that can be said about a character's hands. It's how you interact with the world. A warrior could be calloused with a firm grip. A thief's could be slender and dextrous. A scholar ink-stained, etc.

5) Unique features & personal items. These are all things that can give your character a bit of unique flair. Do they have any visible tattoos? Scars? Personal items which might be visible on the character. Often this is a point where one could mention an item that could be commonly on your person or in use. Style of weapon, shield, spellbook, thief tools.


Once again, this is totally just the process *I* use to come up with descriptions for my characters, and is shared to help give ideas to others. I will deny any knowledge, or use of this post as defense of a player's actions. Offer not valid in CA, NY, and void where prohibited by law.

Because obviously

I always add general look in the eyes, like how does the person look around - warily, happily, grimly, that sort of things. Gives a great way to link description to the role, and adds immediate insight into the character.

I do this too, but a pet peeve of mine are descriptions that have the character "doing" something without qualifying it.

Something like: "So and so winks at you and flashes a friendly smile."

So are they winking and smiling if you look at them right after putting them to sleep? Probably not.

You can fix this by qualifying the sentence like, "If they notice you glancing at them, they return your gaze with a wink and a friendly smile."

Even that's a little questionable because there are probably some folks who are going to look at your character that you're not "friendly" with. So your character would not, in fact, return their gaze with a wink and a friendly smile.

Something like this would work: "Should he notice your gaze, {Character} returns it with an enigmatic smile."

Maybe you're smiling because you're friendly. Maybe you're smiling because you're planning to murder the person who's looking at you. Nobody knows! It's enigmatic!

Almost every description starts with "XXX stands before you. Making description conditional might make it less readable (and hardly anyone reads descriptions anyway, I sometimes have to force ppl read my description when they make RP mistakes assuming things about my character that totally contradict his looks).

Another pet peeve: descriptions that have tons of detail about a character's clothing when, in fact, he or she is wearing random bits of mis-matched armor.

So I tend to say stuff like, "From what little you can see beneath the armor he wears, Character's clothing seems to be expensive and well-made."

Or I don't mention it at all.

That's because both excessive actions and armor descriptions are indeed stupid :)

There's definitely things that can be done to mitigate some of the ones that aren't feasible. As an example, I typically just say "A large frost giant is here", or "You see a frost giant here." You're definitely there, without specifying position.

However, for the sake of people's writing sanity, it's probably not too likely the description police are going to come down on you because you said you're standing when you're knocked unconscious, or were overly specific about wearing platemail for the warrior, when in fact you just got PK'd and are in outfit gear.

There's a lot of little situations that could be brought up or tweaked, so it's hard to really detail all of them. However, I should mention that if someone honestly wants improvement or help with a description, I've actually come to enjoy working with people. Given the difficulty of my hours, I probably wouldn't advise praying for me for help, but I'm going to tentatively say if a player wanted help, they're welcome to write me a note and I'll try to track them down to work on improving a description, if they wanted.

(This will totally be a trial basis, and I'd like to remind people I play WEIRD hours. If I don't drop in, it's quite likely I just haven't met up. If it goes poorly, I totally reserve the right to cancel this offer at any time!)

Depending on your positional status.

Not compulsory. Just optional.

So if I am asleep or ko'd I don't look like I'm not etc. it would enable more freedom with each show you describe yourself in each state.

My desc for sleeping:

"Char Name" is sleeping here, and he's going to kick your ass when he wakes up.

Or "The person before you..." it avoids the standing before you. Also, if I put something specific in my description, I'm ready to answer what it is/why it's important to me if you ask.

What you see in the mirror in the academy in the room with the statue to the description help file. I always think that is a good template, but sometimes I am out of the academy when I write my description. I used to have it saved to a text file but that laptop is kaput.

Everyone is invited to contribute, but if your answer is anything other than Lirad you're wrong.

I realize this is a necro on this thread but I just read Lirad's PBF 6000 imm xp for finding some pumpkins?

Looks like I know what I'm doing this Halloween.