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[kuactet]

So there was a lot of good stuff going on in the FotF and probably some of it will be lost/forgotten by the time Toady gets back to this. So, to summarize what other people have already said...

Separate static from changing, e.g. large frame vs. simply fat. (ikkonoisi)

Less infodump, filter by how much it deviates from the average. This is already done to order the descriptions, but it should simply not display any of the 'somewhat' traits. (Fishersalwaysdie, Timst, Granite26, Dante, probably others)

The above should only apply to facial and body features, and not things like hair/skin/eye color, for which there is no average, and body size/build, which is actually important to know. (Exponent, smjjames)

Filter by body part it describes, e.g. all facial features in one paragraph, hair features in another, body features in another, etc. (Warlord255)

Or model it after dating website profiles: height, weight, eye color, hair color, hair length, skin color, and basic body type, and then other weird specific features. (jpwrunyan)

Add a 'capstone' description: ugly, beautiful, deformed, handsome, ill-bred, cute, etc. (Warlord255)

An overall description of the entire fort (overall short/tall, thin/stocky, frail/robust, etc.). (Bunny)

Switch up the sentence structure: "His X is Y,", "His A is X and Y,", "He has Ying X," "His X Ys" (ManaUser)




My own suggestions:

Add temporal descriptors. "Since last fall, he has been fat." "He hit a growth spurt at age 22 and is now somewhat tall." "Since his marriage to Urist, his very long beard is neatly combed." "He keeps his head shaved since the death of his son." It would be cool if these were eventually tied to real events, but for now they'd keep descriptions from being so dry.

Add relational descriptors. "His beard is braided, in the style of the King." "Like his brother, his long hair is tied back in a ponytail." "He has his grandmother's square chin." "His round ochre eyes protrude like a toad's." Again, it'd be only the most neurotic of players that would notice if these descriptions weren't really accurate and for the rest of us, it'd make reading them more fun.

Add cause descriptors. "His earlobes dangle because of a fight he was involved in." "His nose is upturned from having walked into a wall." "His skin is rough from burns he suffered." Again, these would only be flavor for now.

More interesting adjectives for extreme traits: extremely concave/convex -> collapsed/hooked, extremely thin/fat -> stick-like/bloated, etc.

Make adjectives more 'natural'. "can take a punch" instead of "rugged", "can bend steel with his hands" instead of "strong", "a stiff breeze could knock him over" instead of "frail", "shrugs off most injuries" instead of "mighty". Toady already touched on this in response to some of the seeming contradictions in descriptive text and I thought it'd be a neat thing to do on its own.



Discuss. Elaborate. Criticize. Go!

[Granite26]

I'd actually like to see a list of synonyms for most descriptors.  Your convex = hooked example...  Switch it to concavity of nose (necessary to prevent duplicates) from 1 to 5, and then list
1:Extremely Convex, Very hooked, whatever in a list, so there's more than one way to say any given thing.

Possibly (this is getting left field) increase the detail and artistry of the descriptions as you go left.  A peasant might have large teeth, a noble might have buck teeth, while a legendary weaponsmith might have teeth like a donkey.  They all describe the same state, but get more interesting as you level the character up.

[Pilsu]

What contradictions in descriptive text?

[Granite26]

What contradictions in descriptive text?

High strength but tires easily was the ur-example, but any of the strange mix of alpha and beta traits.

Anything that confounds Meyer-Briggs, basically

[kuactet]

What contradictions in descriptive text?

This guy is frail and rugged. She is frail and tough. He is mighty and flimsy. The problem is these describe unrelated stats, but they don't sound like they do, whereas "He can bend steel with his hands, but has a glass jaw" isn't quite as obviously wrong.