Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

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Amateur Hour
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Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Amateur Hour » Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:06 pm

I've seen this a lot, and I'm genuinely baffled at this point: why do people set their descriptions to read
WIP
It doesn't give people who Examine you any more information than if you'd never touched your description, so it seems like wasted effort. But a lot of people do it, so I feel like I'm missing some rationale or mechanic behind it.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by The Rambling Midget » Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:13 pm

To suggest that they're going to have one there eventually, and they're not just ignoring it.

On the other hand, ignoring it is exactly what I suggest you do.
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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:02 pm

TRM has a bit more faith in people's good natures than I do.

I didn't frequently see a description that says WIP. Much, MUCH more often, I saw blank descriptions, or snarky ones that said "RP to find out more." As to why people do it, I tend to believe about half or more do it for the sole advantage of not giving you anything concrete to work with when they're disguising, even when they aren't disguised or covered in any way.

To me, it's the mechanical equivalent of saying, "You see an elf/human/horc. What color are their eyes? How tall are they? Are they cross-eyed? You don't know, even though you're standing less than ten feet from them and that's exactly what you're trying to figure out!"

It's about as nice as telling everyone you play with their character suffers selective blindness with no saving throw when they look at yours. I think it should be viewed at as a cheesy form of god-moding/denying other players information they're entitled to, but I'm sure you'll shortly get a deluge of responses after this one telling me why I'm too demanding of my fellow players (despite the great lengths the devs have gone to to make it easy to work on your descriptions, multiple, and save/switch them with a few key presses).

Still, that's how I feel about it, and I tend to give a hard roll of my eyes and completely disengage from RP'ing with anyone who does this while disguising - why would I want to ROLE-PLAY with someone who's so interested in winning they can't even bother with a height, weight, or other general details for their character, and will insist (amongst other things) that since you can't see the eye color of anyone without glowing eyes that you don't know what color eyes they have for a description?

No thanks.
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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by ltlukoziuz » Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:17 pm

At least blank descriptions are better than crap like "When you are reading this description, this person has already been staring at you, examining each detail".


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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Echohawk » Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:30 pm

I suspect people were going to do something, and just forgot to get around to it.
I wouldn't get all that weird about it.
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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Morgy » Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:31 pm

Use descriptions people! It generates role play and engagement.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by magistrasa » Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:01 pm

Not having a description doesn't make you a bad roleplayer. Having a 10-paragraph description doesn't make you a good roleplayer.

Speaking personally, I usually don't give my characters a description until I've played them for a while and have a good sense of their personality and style. I don't go into every persona fully visualizing their appearance and mannerisms and I think it's fine and understandable if people have blank descriptions while they consider these things. Because once you put down, "This person has X eye color and Y fidget habit and Z passive expression," and they're interacting with people who are under that assumption, and then the player realizes these things don't really fit how they visualize the character, it's going to be weird to the people who have gotten used to them if they decide to change it.

We can all stand to be a little less judgmental, and a lot more understanding.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Curve » Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:25 pm

Aelryn Bloodmoon wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:02 pm
No thanks.
Gee golly Batman, that is an intense take.

I make a description when I have a grasp on the character. I never ever put banal things like eye/hair color, height weight in cause I’m trying to be short and concise and create an atmosphere. I also don’t really care if someone writes a long one, short one, leaves it blank.

Not caring is it’s own reward.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Irongron » Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:28 pm

magistrasa wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:01 pm
Not having a description doesn't make you a bad roleplayer. Having a 10-paragraph description doesn't make you a good roleplayer.

Speaking personally, I usually don't give my characters a description until I've played them for a while and have a good sense of their personality and style. I don't go into every persona fully visualizing their appearance and mannerisms and I think it's fine and understandable if people have blank descriptions while they consider these things. Because once you put down, "This person has X eye color and Y fidget habit and Z passive expression," and they're interacting with people who are under that assumption, and then the player realizes these things don't really fit how they visualize the character, it's going to be weird to the people who have gotten used to them if they decide to change it.

We can all stand to be a little less judgmental, and a lot more understanding.

I take exactly the same approach, and absolutely agree with the sentiment expressed here. Fantastic post.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Morgy » Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:29 pm

Curve wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:25 pm
Aelryn Bloodmoon wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:02 pm
No thanks.
Gee golly Batman, that is an intense take.

I make a description when I have a grasp on the character. I never ever put banal things like eye/hair color, height weight in cause I’m trying to be short and concise and create an atmosphere. I also don’t really care if someone writes a long one, short one, leaves it blank.

Not caring is it’s own reward.
FYI, these 'banal' things actually help when you're doing things like describing other PCs.

You're right, people can put what they want and they should.. But it's not boring to include physical details, it's useful.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Duchess Says » Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:30 pm

I'll rarely commit to a real description until I know the character better and know I'm sticking with it. I'm sure it bugs people if it's short or blank but +shrugs+

I'd suggest not creating rules in your head you expect other players to follow, it's a much better game if you can accept that some players have different standards and priorities. It's entirely possible for a rewarding RP interaction to happen with someone with a blank description.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Ork » Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:32 pm

Haha. god. I'm never writing a description for my characters anymore. Y'all are a bit too much.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Nitro » Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:39 pm

Aelryn Bloodmoon wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:02 pm
Still, that's how I feel about it, and I tend to give a hard roll of my eyes and completely disengage from RP'ing with anyone who does this while disguising - why would I want to ROLE-PLAY with someone who's so interested in winning they can't even bother with a height, weight, or other general details for their character, and will insist (amongst other things) that since you can't see the eye color of anyone without glowing eyes that you don't know what color eyes they have for a description?

No thanks.
The bolded and underlined part is so hypocritical that it loops around to hilarity in an otherwise elitist statement.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Eira » Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:49 pm

I write descriptions to give others a cookie to observe more about my PC if they want to take it. It's a joy for me when they reference a detail, and for me, when someone has a description, I make sure to take note of things in it to reference at times for them like a little finger gun of "hey this was cool and I read it"

Definitely not required, but nice when it's there.

The only time I'd say it kind of hurts is when you are trying to describe another character and you don't know their name, and shouldn't cheese it with *describes X*. But there is so much more diversity with outfits and such, and the tentative majority of people do have a description, that problem is rarer.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Curve » Sun Oct 31, 2021 8:04 pm

I’ve never had a problem describing characters without a description. For me there is plenty to glean from the character model and from the way folks emote or even talk to get the point across.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by ZombieDuck » Sun Oct 31, 2021 8:25 pm

I usually write a very short description when I make my character and then later rewrite/continue it as I get to know my character more and his armor/equipment stops changing every day, but even then I tend to prefer short descriptions in the feel of 'This is the info you get while you look this character over'.

I don't want to judge people for not writing anything on their description/just writing a word becouse there can be multiple reasons for that.

Maybe the ideal description for me would be the description you get of the character in a glance and in the next paragraph a more detailed description on them, if the player feels like that's needed.
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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Sun Oct 31, 2021 8:57 pm

Nitro wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:39 pm
Aelryn Bloodmoon wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:02 pm
Still, that's how I feel about it, and I tend to give a hard roll of my eyes and completely disengage from RP'ing with anyone who does this while disguising - why would I want to ROLE-PLAY with someone who's so interested in winning they can't even bother with a height, weight, or other general details for their character, and will insist (amongst other things) that since you can't see the eye color of anyone without glowing eyes that you don't know what color eyes they have for a description?

No thanks.
The bolded and underlined part is so hypocritical that it loops around to hilarity in an otherwise elitist statement.
🤣 You're right, it's totally elitist to want to know that Gandalf the white has sparkling Grey eyes, and a long flowing white beard with long hair that reaches his shoulders. Lord of the rings would've been just as interesting if Gandalf had only ever been described as some human with a big stick in every scene, or legolas had only ever been described as an elf with a bow, and the extra details had zero narrative impact worth appreciating.

Taking time to learn your character is one thing- it's also CLEARLY not the thing or instance I was referencing, and I'd be willing to bet it doesn't apply to most of op's experiences either.

If you can't see the difference between learning a character and intentionally denying details to others forever because you can, I don't know what to tell you.
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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by chris a gogo » Sun Oct 31, 2021 9:31 pm

I just find it weird.

When I make a character I have a general idea of what it's going to look like and it's planned personality.

So all my descriptions are of what it looks like and some defining character trait generally linked into it's mental stats/personality.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Blood on my Lips » Sun Oct 31, 2021 10:00 pm

WIP means work in progress. So I like to assume that the player is trying to come up with a description.

It's much nicer for everyone if a character has a description. You can describe someone to another person. Are you hideously ugly? That's something might character might need to know in order to know how to respond to you. Are you tall, do I need to look up at you when we are speaking? I don't expect people to have super detailed descriptions. That's not easy for everyone to come up with, and some descriptions just get far too long to stay interested in. At the same time, I don't think it's asking too much of someone to write a short basic description.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by ltlukoziuz » Sun Oct 31, 2021 10:26 pm

I'll echo most folk I think. I dont give a rats arse about what someone's height and eye color is (unless its something hella unusual) , and for clothing and hair, you have WYSIWYG. What I care only for in description is stuff not immediately seen on models - distinguishing marks, holstered items and symbols, their gait/stride. And so when I see descriptions starting with height, weight and so on, I groan heavily, for that is simply noise that I can already see on the model.


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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Duchess Says » Sun Oct 31, 2021 11:43 pm

ltlukoziuz wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 10:26 pm
And so when I see descriptions starting with height, weight and so on, I groan heavily, for that is simply noise that I can already see on the model.
Why do you have to "groan heavily"? Maybe that's info the model doesn't accurately represent or the player otherwise felt it needed to be included. There's no reason that has to be a bad thing.

Honestly. The biggest problem here is setting standards in your head for how other players ought to behave and chastising them for failing to live up to it. It's clear from this thread those standards are different with every player and often in arbitrary ways. There aren't rules around how a description needs to be written so maybe we just need to learn to accept others have different ways of doing things.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Skibbles » Mon Nov 01, 2021 1:47 am

I have valued character descriptions less and less over the years. I'm not sure why, exactly, but expedience is one reason. Oftentimes I find myself RPing with 3 or more characters at any given time and it quickly becomes impossible to ever be able to keep up with the game and read everyone's description while moving/fighting/talking/etc all at the same time.

Pertinent character details are better suited to descriptive emotes so they can be reacted to when they are relevant, and in my opinion provide a much more consistent experience when it comes to other people reacting to and remembering another character. Yes this is a lot of work, but it really pays off. People absolutely, without a doubt, react far more to passive emotes than descriptions. Most people read an emote, for how could one not, but very clearly are descriptions read and remembered remarkably less often.

Lately the only value I've usually found in descriptions has been in scrolling straight to the bottom to see if there's any easy-to-read faction affiliations and roleplay accordingly as it is an easy ice-breaker in places like the UD where faction 'pins' are very common. On the other hand, however, I absolutely find immense value in writing my own descriptions just so I can better understand the character - however I have long since learned to play with the expectation that nobody has read it. See above.

The most easily visualize-able RP I've had is with players that continually emote basic descriptions, quirks, and behaviors with persistent repetition (anyone with a job on the phone a lot knows that this is the only way to get people to engage with you) versus sifting through descriptions of various quality and/or relevance.

I must agree with Ork though. Do people really care about this that much? I've seen innumerable amateur "Standing before you is a..." and " X hair frames a face of Y..." "...this booty be thicc..." but it's really just not something to get worked up about.

Arelith has people that have been RPing for 20+ years. It also has people that have been RPing for maybe 20 weeks. Cut people some slack. If there's room for slack it's definitely here.
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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Kenji » Mon Nov 01, 2021 2:27 am

We should make a poll and ask which one would people like to see more on the examine description: "WIP" or "WYSIWYG"

Edit: And no, there will be no 3rd option: neither.

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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Mon Nov 01, 2021 2:59 am

Skibbles wrote:
Mon Nov 01, 2021 1:47 am

I must agree with Ork though. Do people really care about this that much?
I care much less when it's not involving someone who is in the middle of or frequently disguises. I mentioned that detail in my apparently hot take, because it seems to me to go without saying that if you want to play a master of disguise and have other people engage you in good faith, that you should actually have a base appearance ready for others in the event that they break your disguise.

Learning your character makes sense- but if you have five different disguises (or even one) and no descriptions for any of them, it seems cheap to me, less like you're learning your character and more like you're intentionally removing any RP avenue to recognize you while utilizing the disguise mechanic. At worst it's intentional, and at best it seems thoughtless to other people who have a reason to care about your appearance.

I'm glad people don't all write entire novels for their descriptions, but is it really fair to others you interact with to have none while playing a heavy disguise character? Given that a disguise is literally an alternate appearance, shouldn't some basic details be required to even say you're using one in the first place?
Kenji wrote:
Mon Nov 01, 2021 2:27 am
We should make a poll and ask which one would people like to see more on the examine description: "WIP" or "WYSIWYG"

Edit: And no, there will be no 3rd option: neither.


Plenty of people use default character models, and wysiwyg doesn't really handle this well- two characters can look exactly the same on your screen, but one is a 6'5 brick house and the other is a 5'4 shrimp that weighs 130 soaking wet. All you can give though, is "average human," to describe both. This seems like an absurd example of "you all look alike to me!"

I can accept that it's not always done with poor intentions, but neither do quarter breakers- it doesn't mean it doesn't happen, and a few words of effort would go a long way in both cases to engender good faith on both sides. I find it just as ridiculous that people would argue against these details as people find me arguing in favor of them, so I'm not really sure where else to go with this.
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Re: Descriptions consisting entirely of "WIP"

Post by ltlukoziuz » Mon Nov 01, 2021 7:38 am

Maybe that's info the model doesn't accurately represent or the player otherwise felt it needed to be included. There's no reason that has to be a bad thing.
No, as I wrote in post fully, if the height IS distinguishing mark, then yeah, it's nice to get noted in description. Problem is, I've yet to see that. Most go completely average for the model like 5'5" or 6'2" (and yeah, such difference is average to me irl. Remember you can shift model 5% taller or smaller too) or 3'3" or 2'2" (if smallfolk). I don't keep in mind every races height tables as prescribed in 3.5 PHB, nor should folk expect them. It'such nicer and easier to work if people write the descriptive than just plain numbers.

Speaking of "keeping in mind" about descriptions - racial terms. To veterans and long term players, stuff like x-tel-Quessir or Dethek are easy to understand. But to someone newer, or less ingrained to FR setting, these are just senseless. I remember when I first started out, choosing a halfelf and soon getting in with other elves of Myon, I was constantly spun around by terms used in descriptions, town writings and even speech, often feeling uncomfortable and having to either google or ask in tells, slowly building a tiny dictionary to keep in mind. Now sure, I can understand what people have written up. But it feels a bit insensitive to new folk. Writting "Alu'Tel'Quessir (aquatic elf in elven)" would go miles beyond


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