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Someone earlier in this thread mentioned my "manifesto." I'll go ahead and post it on this thread for curiosity's sake.
What this is is basically the set form I send to each person who wants to help me with building an area. The first part is my rules for building, the second part the format for sending me submissions.
I'll emphasize what I state in the beginning: There are many fine areas on SK that violate all sorts of these rules. There are areas built by Sargas/Tatali0n that would not fit in my rules, yet are among the best areas SK has. These were simply rules that worked well when taking submissions from builders who didn't know what their fellow builders were doing, and that matched my own building style.
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These are my own persnickety rules. There are many fine areas on SK that violate all sorts of these rules. All well and good. These are simply the rules that I’m going to insist upon for any area whose construction I oversee.
PART 1: THE MANIFESTO
OVERALL RULES
1. Be imaginative! You can follow all the rest of these rules to the letter and still make a sucky desc. Be creative, be interesting. Write each description as if THIS description will be the one you will be judged on, the one which the entire area will be judged on. Write quality descriptions!
2. Every desc should be at least five lines long and no more than seven. Any less it makes the builder look lazy or hurried; any more makes the builder look pretentious or long-winded. (Generally, it should be five to seven lines on a Word document, not just on an SK screen. Five to seven sentences/clauses of description is a good rule of thumb.)
3. An old cliché for good writing that is still great advice: Show, don’t tell. Don’t say “this is a dead place”—state something like “a black pall hangs over the dead-brown grass, and even the lichen has died and is flaking off the tombstones.” Show me how it is a dead place rather than tell me it is a dead place.
4. Using the five senses makes for good descriptions: smell, touch, taste, sight, sound. Even when describing a NPC or an object.
5. No color codes ($). I’ll add these myself later. If you have suggestions for colors within the desc, I’ll make a note of it.
6. Don’t worry about adding in hard returns ($*) or formatting. Just write out the descs and I’ll do the formatting.
7. Send your docs to me as either rich text file attachments, MSWord attachments, or within the body of your e-mail.
8. Don’t use “you,” the second person. If you have to refer to the reader of the text, use “one,” the third person, and a qualifier. So, rather than: “You look down into the city and see…” you’d state “Looking down into the city, one can see…”
9. Avoid assumptive knowledge! Describe just what the player can see.
10. Don’t assume the player reading the desc is a humanoid (“You walk up to the gate…” What about those, like griffons, who fly?). Make a description that does not assume a set racial background (or gender) from its readers.
11. No spelling errors. Run spellcheck on everything you do. A spelling error = sloppy attitude = no acceptance of work.
ROOM DESCS
1. Every physical object mentioned or implied in the room descs should have an extended desc. (What I mean by an extended desc is when you can type “look wall” and see an additional description about the wall.) If it is important enough to mention in the room desc, it is important enough to have an extended desc!
Here is an example of what I mean from Craeftilin.
Constant Companions and Faithful Friends
This shop is filled with steel cages and the smell of wet furry
creatures. There are scratch marks everywhere. Loose bits of fur
glow in the air as the light catches them.
A polished wooden counter figures prominently in the middle of the
room. Above the counter is a sign.
In this example, we have extended descs for: light bits fur glow air scratch marks cages steel sign above counter
Light, bits, air, fur, glow--
Hm, almost as if small water-loving mammals were getting into fights with each other.
Scratch, Marks--
The kind of scratch marks left by a small water-loving mammal.
Cages, steel--
The cages look well-kept and humane.
Sign, Above--
A picture of a stubby gnome wagging his finger at a human woman with a
ferret in her arms. The sign glimmers, and the figures move! The woman
is crying hysterically while the gnome's lips move to form the phrase,
"Absolutely no returns!"
counter--
It is just the right size for a gnome merchant to sell from.
Notice that these extra descs do not need to be 5-7 lines long—just a line or two is fine. And many of them can repeat. This stuff is the gravy, not the meat, of the description.
This also means you should be more sparing in your room descs. What I mean is, rather than saying, “a gold chandelier of a dwarven design, bedecked with small semi-precious jewels, hangs from the ceiling” in your room desc, you’d state, “a chandelier hangs from the ceiling” and then when a player would type “look chandelier,” you could then state: “This gold chandelier is of a dwarven design, bedecked with small semi-precious jewels.”
You can even take it a step further, if you’d like, adding something for “look jewels.” Naturally, you could take this too far, but at least every physical object in a room desc should have additional description in the extended desc.
2. Do NOT mention NPCs or perpetual activity within the room desc. Do not mention in the room desc spiders crawling about, gulls cawing, or birds chirping. If we want those things, we can add them as NPCs or script echoes. As well, do not assume a time of day. “The market is noisy with shouting and gesticulating shopkeepers” is poor not only because it mentions NPCs (shopkeepers) but because it also assumes that the market is always open and always crowded and the shopkeepers are always shouting. If we want shouting and gesticulating shopkeepers, we can make them scripted NPCs.
3. No two rooms should be exactly alike. Even roads. While the first half of a room desc may be the same as another room’s, the second half should have some variety.
Notice these two rooms:
Laeranedor Avenue
A wide, stately avenue of polished marble-and-obsidian S-shaped tiles
moves north and south. The air holds the faint scent of burning wax
candles and moisture. High above, lower Craeftilin's bowl-like ceiling
slopes up from the north to an apex over the square to the south.
A colossal boulder of green limestone nearly blocks off the avenue. A
black pyramid rises up from the west.
Laeranedor Avenue
A wide, stately avenue of polished marble-and-obsidian S-shaped tiles
moves north and south. The air holds the faint scent of burning wax
candles and moisture. High above, lower Craeftilin's bowl-like ceiling
slopes up from the north to an apex over the square to the south.
There is a door to the east to a squat building of green limestone. A
black pyramid rises up from the west.
While the first half is identical, there is a difference in the second part—a slight difference, but a difference. There should always be at least something different. If there isn’t, then there isn’t a purpose for the room. Even houses built the exact same way by the exact same persons will have something different—a different odor, perhaps, or more/less clutter.
4. Create each room as if it is the first room in the area a player has ever seen. Use the “teleport” principle: describe each room as if someone just popped in there by a random teleport (or at least the way tp used to work). That is, don’t say “these walls are wider than elsewhere in the cave” or that “The ground is no longer muddy here.” Why not? Because you assume that the player has gone through the area in a certain way or you assume that the player is already familiar with other parts of the area—assumptions you can’t and shouldn’t make.
NPC DESC
1. Using qualifiers for describing things like the way a NPC moves, talks, or what its eyes look like. That is, use if/when modifiers. “If your gaze meets his…” “When she speaks, it is with…” In other words, use if/when to describe all things that assume activity.
2. Don’t describe temporary conditions (wounded, dirty, wet) in either the long description (the “adjective” part) or the description. No clothing or armor within the description itself. You can mention hairstyles/feather-styles and on occasion a scar or tattoo, but nothing that could change overnight.
3. Again, don’t create assumptive knowledge. I don’t want people to look at the NPC and somehow know that “Jack is the devious uncle to the king, working to overthrow the rightful monarch.” How would you know that just by looking at him? Keep descriptions purely physical—as if describing someone completely unfamiliar to you after observing them for only a few moments. Cultural histories and intrigue can be created through scripted NPCs and through books.
4. No two NPCs should look exactly alike. There may be multiples of the same NPC, of course, but no two sets of the same type of NPC should look alike. Two elderly griffons can look radically different.
5. While you may suggest them, don’t baldly state personality or other abstractions. “He is a paranoid man” is no good. “When he thinks no one is watching, he constantly looks over his shoulder” is fine.
6. Finish all long descs with “is here.” Like, “A black-winged griffon is here,” or “A sharp-beaked griffon is here.” Yes, I know that many areas in SK have fun or descriptive long descs—“A unicorn grazes in the grass,” or “A waitress hurriedly serves pitchers of beer to customers”—but I don’t want those kinds of long descs. NPCs can always move out or be moved out of their pre-planned place, and once again, it is an assumption to think that the NPC will be continually doing something or be continually in one place. So, just stick to “is here.”
OBJECT DESCs
1. Use lower case for the beginning of short descs, capitalized first letters for long descs.
2. Long and short descs should not be identical. The short—“a gold griffon crossbow marked with runes”—should not also be, in its long form, “A golden griffon crossbow marked with runes lies here.” It should be something markedly different: “A curious contraption lies here.”
3. All long descs should end with “lies here.” See my notes on “is here” for NPCs for an explanation.
4. All objects should have descriptions. This may sound obvious, but many areas have objects without descriptions. For this area, we want all objects to have descriptions.
5. All objects over level 20 or so (limited items) should also have a lore description.
PART 2: FORMAT FOR SUBMITTING DESCRIPTIONS
There are, basically, three kinds of things I’ll be asking you to work on: rooms, NPCs, or objects. You’ll notice in the second part of this document formats for submitting these three things. Copy/paste the format for whatever you’re working on into a new doc and fill them in.
Note especially when I use CAPITAL letters at the beginning of a line and when I use lower-case letters at the beginning. Notes in brackets [] are for your information only and not essential for the submission format.
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1. [Rooms—use this pattern.]
Room 1 [Assign each room you make a number or letter]
Constant Companions and Faithful Friends
This shop is filled with steel cages and the smell of wet furry
creatures. There are scratch marks everywhere. Loose bits of fur
glow in the air as the light catches them.
A polished wooden counter figures prominently in the middle of the
room. Above the counter is a sign.
Extended Descs: [Every physical object described or suggested in the room desc]
ed add Light bits air fur glow
Hm, almost as if small water-loving mammals were getting into fights with each other.
ed add scratch marks
The kind of scratch marks left by a small water-loving mammal.
ed add cages steel
The cages look well-kept and humane.
ed add signs above
A picture of a stubby gnome wagging his finger at a human woman with a
ferret in her arms. The sign glimmers, and the figures move! The woman
is crying hysterically while the gnome's lips move to form the phrase,
"Absolutely no returns!"
ed add counter
It is just the right size for a gnome merchant to sell from.
Connections: Room 1 connects to the north to Room 2 and to the southwest to Room 3. There is a secret entrance down to Room 7. [Tell me how this room connects to other rooms. If you are not certain, just say so--no problem.]
Additional notes [optional]: I think this room should be no-magic and accessible only to those who can fly.
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2. [NPCs—use this pattern]
a black-winged male griffon
A black-winged male griffon is here.
A young griffon of some 10 years. When he moves, this male
with hawk-like eyes flicks his tail often in a testy and
tense matter, scanning his surrounding carefully. His pelt
is glossy and healthy, and his blue-black feathers shine in light.
Additional notes [optional]: I see this fellow as a guard with haste, perhaps holding a polearm of some kind.
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3. [Objects—use this pattern]
a gold griffon mace marked with runes
A wicked-looking weapon lies here.
This griffon-designed mace looks like it could cleave a grown human in two. Heavy and ponderous…[fill in the rest of the description]
gold griffon flail marked runes wicked-looking weapon [enter every keyword for the object here]
Additional notes [optional]: Griffon-only. Also, if you look at the runes, it says: “These runes can only be deciphered by one learned in lore.”
Lore [all objects that you expect to be over level 20 (that is, limited) should have lore]: “The runes, an ancient variety of the Imperial language, read: ‘For Freewing Deltin, Hunter of the Year, 612 TA’.”
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I didnt know it was Mplaying! Who read helpfiles!
