Worst Descriptions Ever 2: Golden Dragon Milk Strikes Again

Alice

....Flag for abuse also.

Rou

Areka said:

He is a blah blah

Three feet taller than both of the races that spawned it and with endgame eyes: as I am told is a current meme - such wow. 

Yao Ming is three feet taller than his average race that 'spawned' him. As for the eye color, being a polygenic phenotypic character.. you should see his father. No so wow when considered. Just my 2 cents.

Beyond opinions, grammar and syntax looked fine

Zaephlyn

Rou said:

Yao Ming is three feet taller than his average race that 'spawned' him.

I see what you did thurr... 

Trolls gon' Troll. *dance*

Jensen

*quit syssin

Seir

My rule of thumb when it comes to character descriptions:

If you are non-endgame, you should generally try to conform to that which is typical of your race. A Xoran, for example, would not dominantly look like an Atavian, recessive genes or no.

If your character cannot fly, they should not have wings. I'd make exceptions if they had wings, but were mutilated or useless. Generally, wings are reserved for the Grecht, Atavian, and endgame races (assuming they pick up flight as an endgame skill)

If your character is female, please for the love of all that is Haern's hairy back, do not go overly verbose in describing the "backside", chest, or hips. Your character being feminine is generally a given and your chest size is not relevant at all to what your description should convey. Yes, I realize that most people who are describing those areas are pretty much looking for mudsex. Even so, do try to have some standards, yes? 

Stop using the adjective "hourglass" in describing your character's frame/physique. That word is used more than "HROAGH!" on Spinesreach's citytells.

Your eyes do not have depths. They do not shine, glimmer, radiate, <insert synonym for the word glow here> with anything like wisdom or what I ate for dinner last night. They are just eyes. On the subject of eyes, usually endgamers only have the creative lease to make those whatever they want. My character, for example, has green eyes and black sclera. Consider one of endgame's unofficial rewards to generally be unlimited creative potential with what your character can be at that point.

Your character, if they are young or "green", should not be covered in scars. There are exceptions to this, however. If your character was horribly beaten as a child or perhaps was unfortunate enough to cross Iosyne on a bad hair day, scars or something like that become acceptable. Just have backstory to back up whatever minor bodily traits you have.

I list these things not to come off as some "elitist" who knows everything. Rather, I'm mostly trying to remind folks that, like in real life, people will judge you based on your appearance. Your character's appearance is generally what MOST prospective roleplayers will see first and I guarantee that if people see you having a desc like some of these on the thread, they will be wary of interacting you at best or outright ignore you at worst. Just keep that in mind.

Zaephlyn

This is a fantasy game. There are many fantasy races here, if not with the same name then easily identifiable as something as such e.g. Tsol'aa and elves. With existing well known fantasy conventions surrounding these races it would not be a stretch to pick and choose from those conventions and apply them here upon entering the game along with some personal touches or ideas of what the player might -like- in their character.

The only guideline Admin have established is HELP NAMES - and before creating a character they ask you to think about an appropriate 'fantasy-based' name. It is encouraged to put some thought into your name. A player may put thought into their character and have some -creative license.- 

So the triple-ring eye bothers you? Tough luck, it would not be the first time a person's choices lore and RP wise have met criticism. 

Ivoln

It may be more the fact that the character claims heritage from a race that is non-playable.

Alice

Seir said:

If your character cannot fly, they should not have wings. I'd make exceptions if they had wings, but were mutilated or useless. Generally, wings are reserved for the Grecht, Atavian, and endgame races (assuming they pick up flight as an endgame skill)

Or Corpus BatForm :>

Your character, if they are young or "green", should not be covered in scars. There are exceptions to this, however. If your character was horribly beaten as a child or perhaps was unfortunate enough to cross Iosyne on a bad hair day, scars or something like that become acceptable. Just have backstory to back up whatever minor bodily traits you have.

Alice:

Except not always. Some people prefer their characters not to come out looking like "mary sue" Even this applies in real life. People fall down. I hope it is not so narrow as this statement seems to be : / I know at least my char and a few other newbies I played with at my start a few weeks ago had scars. They give something to build & converse about. It's the "YOU CAN TELL HE IS A WARRIOR BY THE 10 SCARS ON HIS FACENECK" that makes me irate about scars in descs, or any other forced information implementing to characters via Descs.

(Blue because I broke Quoting box somehow)

On-Topic: No desc = worse than bad descs :S

Jensen

I always laugh at how attractive descriptions can be when the character is around 100+ yet not endgame to be timeless.

Haven

Wasn't there an official ruling that races couldn't mix? You either adopted one parents race or the other It should be in a help file somewhere if it isn't already. (Or maybe listed at the end of each respective race help file.)

Xavin

I have more of a problem with the half-race thing than anything, Shared racial traits are fine, I think, as long as it's not huge things like a...I dunno....atavian that has a xorani tail, horns and scales. I also don't think gretch are really supposed to have wings, since they can't fly by traditional standards. I'm pretty sure they have sort of skin-flaps that span their arms and sides letting them glide more then fly.

Seir

Alice said:

Seir said:

If your character cannot fly, they should not have wings. I'd make exceptions if they had wings, but were mutilated or useless. Generally, wings are reserved for the Grecht, Atavian, and endgame races (assuming they pick up flight as an endgame skill)

Or Corpus BatForm :>

Your character, if they are young or "green", should not be covered in scars. There are exceptions to this, however. If your character was horribly beaten as a child or perhaps was unfortunate enough to cross Iosyne on a bad hair day, scars or something like that become acceptable. Just have backstory to back up whatever minor bodily traits you have.

Alice:

Except not always. Some people prefer their characters not to come out looking like "mary sue" Even this applies in real life. People fall down. I hope it is not so narrow as this statement seems to be : / I know at least my char and a few other newbies I played with at my start a few weeks ago had scars. They give something to build & converse about. It's the "YOU CAN TELL HE IS A WARRIOR BY THE 10 SCARS ON HIS FACENECK" that makes me irate about scars in descs, or any other forced information implementing to characters via Descs.

(Blue because I broke Quoting box somehow)

On-Topic: No desc = worse than bad descs :S

You're misunderstanding me in regards to scars.

A few scratches here and there are fine, but if you're some 18-year old who is scarred to the point where they look like they rolled in a pile of battleaxes, that to me is more "mary sue" than someone who is... you know... just a normal looking 18-year old.

Jensen

Seir said:

Alice said:

Seir said:

If your character cannot fly, they should not have wings. I'd make exceptions if they had wings, but were mutilated or useless. Generally, wings are reserved for the Grecht, Atavian, and endgame races (assuming they pick up flight as an endgame skill)

Or Corpus BatForm :>

Your character, if they are young or "green", should not be covered in scars. There are exceptions to this, however. If your character was horribly beaten as a child or perhaps was unfortunate enough to cross Iosyne on a bad hair day, scars or something like that become acceptable. Just have backstory to back up whatever minor bodily traits you have.

Alice:

Except not always. Some people prefer their characters not to come out looking like "mary sue" Even this applies in real life. People fall down. I hope it is not so narrow as this statement seems to be : / I know at least my char and a few other newbies I played with at my start a few weeks ago had scars. They give something to build & converse about. It's the "YOU CAN TELL HE IS A WARRIOR BY THE 10 SCARS ON HIS FACENECK" that makes me irate about scars in descs, or any other forced information implementing to characters via Descs.

(Blue because I broke Quoting box somehow)

On-Topic: No desc = worse than bad descs :S

You're misunderstanding me in regards to scars.

A few scratches here and there are fine, but if you're some 18-year old who is scarred to the point where they look like they rolled in a pile of battleaxes, that to me is more "mary sue" than someone who is... you know... just a normal looking 18-year old.

I've given an alt of mine some pretty fearce scarring to add a sort of tribal agoge rp to my troll. I see no problem with any description that someone can justify with RP and background. That holds true for cliches, body styles, and eyes. You can always choose to not interact with someone if you don't like their style

Teani

@Alice: Have a backstory for the scars, is what I think Seir meant, and if you want to use them for a conversation-starter it can just as likely be "Oh, I tried climbing a tree yesterday and learned that I suck at it. I'm in serious need of training." as "I've been a fighter all my life." and not be able to back it up.

As for this being a fantasy game, yes, it is! However, I don't think it's reasonable for anyone to be making a 7' tall imp only because you can claiming it's a fantasy game. That kind of -creative license- comes at Endgame, when you can choose through RP what you want your character to develop into and have a backstory to fit it.

I believe there was a ruling a long time ago on mixed races. If parents are of separate races, the child will become one or the other. There are no half-breeds. Smaller traits and characteristica, sure, but nothing more than that. 

Macian

It's totally possible for him to be taller than both parent races.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger

Duh.

Seir said:

Your character, if they are young or "green", should not be covered in scars. There are exceptions to this, however. If your character was horribly beaten as a child or perhaps was unfortunate enough to cross Iosyne on a bad hair day, scars or something like that become acceptable. Just have backstory to back up whatever minor bodily traits you have.

Captured by slavers and made a mad-ass escape attempt with a demented Imp?

@jensen I always thought it was pretty well established  that your character aging was the player's call, and didn't have anything to do with being endgame. It's hard to justify end-game only when there are 250+ year old chars who are still trolls, or NPC's like Pericles who are human and look exactly the same century after century.

@alice please, kill your sig. Makes me feel like crap whenever I scroll past it.

Irruel

The scars thing is one of those choices which is easy to deal with in character.

"...covered in so many scars so must be a powerful warrior..."

em (Looking scornfully at $scarred_dude,) sniggers and asks, "So er, you must be a pretty good fighter to get all cut up like that. Care to go a round?"

Problem solved.

Jensen

Irruel said:

The scars thing is one of those choices which is easy to deal with in character.

"...covered in so many scars so must be a powerful warrior..."

em (Looking scornfully at $scarred_dude,) sniggers and asks, "So er, you must be a pretty good fighter to get all cut up like that. Care to go a round?"

Problem solved.

people reach endgame at 19 now, credit purchases, and a system... not always that easy anymore

Teani

Reaching endgame at 19 and having a system does not mean you can skip over the part where you add depth to your character.

I'd say it's rather the opposite. Everyone's something of a prodigy nowadays. 19 years old, having done little more than hunt since joining the guild. Learning all the skills of the class without really spending much time with the tutor and still mastering them because the system does all the work for them. It's kind of boring. Much more interesting if people RP out failure in the beginning.

Hadoryu

This is a thing now? People defend 8 foot mhun-orcs with naruto eyes on the forums with a straight face?

Wat

Jensen

Hadoryu said:

This is a thing now? People defend 8 foot mhun-orcs with naruto eyes on the forums with a straight face?

Wat

Wasn't defending it, just the standpoint that anything that can be justified by a players RP shouldn't be banned. It's up to the player community if something is acceptable and if it isn't then the community should try to show why that isn't cool. I don't like having long lists of gameplay rules to determine how we play our characters.

Irruel

One person did defend it though.

Xenia

Honestly guys, I think this entire thread makes me cringe, and it's not because of the descriptions I'm reading. So what if someone's idea of their character defies the 'norms' predefined by the lore. I mean it complies closely enough; they're claiming to be a mix of races that are real within the game's lore, etc. They have some leeway with RP. Not like this person is all of a sudden claiming to be something that doesn't exist within the game, or would have any prospect of existing. I would understand issues with a character that described themselves as a cyborg or some alien race, but not something like this. 

Ultimately my point is that I think drawing attention to the attempts of creativity of other people, for the purpose of criticizing it, is in general bad form. It's essentially a form of RP bullying/policing. Had to put my two cents in there. 

Angwe

I have decided that my next character is going to be a human/fire elemental hybrid girl. She will never leave novicehood and reside in the Duiran Academy, which she will refer to as 'the Court'. All existing things, right?

Ooh! Or, what if I assembled a team... a black Ascendril who's part Divine. A genius blue Bakhatu. A Yeleni with eye lazors. A surly, chain smoking Atabahi. A womanizing Indorani from the Mannaseh swamps and the crippled Sentaari monk who leads them.

My point, aside from attempting to draw a few chuckles from y'all is that, though we shouldn't attempt to stifle the creativity of others, we are interacting in a medium with a determined theme and setting. Not every concept that we could come up with really fits IN this setting, even if its compiled from existing parts, and I think that's what the people here are objecting to in this particular example (i.e. the 8 foot mhun-orcs with naruto eyes).

Moirean

I think a huge problematic issue with this thread is that the descriptions being laughed at here belongs to an actual player in Aetolia - how is that player going to feel when he or she visits forums and sees people ridiculing his or her description?

I, personally, would feel mortified and probably would not come back.

Xavin

I think the problem with the description is that it takes too much freedom with established concepts. There aren't really half-breeds in Aetolia. The offspring of mixed parents either takes the race of one parent or the race of another, or that is how I understood the norms. You don't get to have super weird end-game eyes or features or physical traits until you ascend to an endgame form. And you generally don't get to describe your character as being -that- much taller than your parent races, let alone being the offspring of an npc-only race.

Macian

Moirean said:

I think a huge problematic issue with this thread is that the description being laughed at here belongs to an actual player in Aetolia - how is that player going to feel when he or she visits forums and sees people ridiculing his or her description?

I, personally, would feel mortified and probably would not come back.

This. Even though I posted (bad me) I have to agree. Why not provide constructive criticism, or try and help them? Remembering back over the past, 10+ years (?) I've played, I remember doing some utterly cringe-worthy things (I'm sure I'll do more). People put up with it and pointed me in the right direction. 

Eleanor

Back in the day, I got mocked, hard for my description. I was like 14 and completely new to roleplay. I had actions in my description and that was lame. I decided that the people calling me out were mean, and kept playing anyway. Y'know what though? Now looking back, yeah, my description was awful and very, very mockable. So fair cop I guess.

That said, this thread pretty much is flame bait because even if people's descriptions are ludicrous (yes creativity is wonderful and you're a lovely snowflake, but us elitist RP jerks like you to contribute to the sandbox by building things which are supported by lore and work within the setting, not go 'well eff you I want sharingan I can have sharingan if I want to have them you're not the boss of me') all they're gonna do is come in here and make a fuss about it.

Moirean

Well. The breasts oozing dragon milk stuff I'm more ok with mocking. I just was thinking about some of the stuff that were in the old version of this thread - stuff like poor phrasing or typos, stuff that clearly shows the person is a truenewb - and I realized I don't want that sort of thing being teased, because that can really be crushing and hurtful to mock.

I was reminded of one of my favorite people in Aetolia ever, Kinder. This guy started Aetolia as his first ever text game and was excited as all hell to play. In what was probably the most d'aww moment ever, he gave me this background he had written for his character - it was AT LEAST 4-5 pages of wall of text and run-on sentences and it was clear that he was new to creative writing. He was insanely proud and EXCITED about having written it, same with his description - the very concept of creating this story and image of a character was so new and shiny to him that he was practically telegraphing his enthusiasm - I felt kinda special and excited in turn that he was bringing these to me for my feedback. He eventually learned more about Aetolia and how the game works and rolled a new character to try again with a bit more experience under his belt...kinda adorably, in the exact same guild and everything, just with a more experienced eye.

He still logs in on the original character every now and then, and I smile whenever I see him online. 

Anyways, it's someone like that most of all who I don't want coming to this thread and feeling absolutely crushed. The Mary Sue/inappropriate/etc stuff is a bit more grey territory, but I worry that poking fun at that will slip easily into just making fun of people for being new/learning (the last thread did), and I really want that avoided.

/2 cents

Teani

Whenever I see some glaring mistakes in someone's description, my first thought is never "OMG, let's post on forums to mock". I've always found that approaching people about it is far better. So instead I try to send an OOC tell pointing out the more general issues, like typos or grammatical errors before asking if they want a few pointers (like not adding actions or outside elements and consider light issues). I've also sent OOC tells to characters with descriptions that scream "I'm a mudsex-alt" saying they might want to reconsider if they don't want that kind of attention only.

People tend to be quite alright when you approach them, as long as you keep your tone helpful. After all, you can't be expected to know the norms of the game when you first start playing, especially if you've never played a game like this before. In general, people shouldn't be offended if others come to them and say "Hey, sorry, but halfbreeds don't really exist in this game due to some old ruling. You might want to reconsider your description and stick to one race. At least until you reach endgame and can bring out the other heritage, unless your RP has taken you elsewhere by then." It's most likely well meant, so the least one can do is listen.

Xenia

Eleanor said:

That said, this thread pretty much is flame bait because even if people's descriptions are ludicrous (yes creativity is wonderful and you're a lovely snowflake, but us elitist RP jerks like you to contribute to the sandbox by building things which are supported by lore and work within the setting, not go 'well eff you I want sharingan I can have sharingan if I want to have them you're not the boss of me') all they're gonna do is come in here and make a fuss about it.

To be honest, the 'elitist' RPers, in my experience, do more to snuff out RP growth (OOCLY) in other people, than to actually enhance their ability. It's like come on *insert jackoff motion here* I get it, you've been playing the game for years and know the lore like the back of your hands, yet instead of saying something constructive, you're just going to make snide remarks when the person isn't (or sometimes IS) around. This hasn't happened so much with me (that I'm aware of ), but it's definitely something that I've seen happen, through OOC Clans in game, about other people who get a bit zealous with their RP. To be honest, it just made me avoid as much interaction as possible, initially, with the ones I labeled as '1337', cus I didn't want to accidentally find myself the subject of their mockery.