22.2 Style Guidelines
The time may come when you have need of describing a room (e.g. a subdivision
house), a denizen (e.g. an artefact pet), or an item (e.g. a customisation) in
the world. Achaea maintains a high standard of writing, so in order to assist
you in developing a flawless description, below are some of the conventions and
guidelines to which we adhere.
General Rules
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- Use UK English. Colour, centre, recognise, etc. Not color or center or
recognize. See HELP 4.13.7 and HELP 4.13.8 for misspellings and other
common lexical errors.
- Use proper punctuation. See HELP PUNCTUATION.
Room Descriptions
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When writing room descriptions, keep in mind the following:
a) Do not describe actions in descriptions. Especially do not force actions, or
interpretations, on the viewer. It makes no sense to say "You cower in fear
before the bloody altar" in a description. It's not reasonable that every
person is always going to cower in fear every time he visits the location.
b) Do not describe exits, as in: "You see exits to the north, east, and south."
Achaea will take care of that. You can, of course, describe what an adventurer
can see in those directions, but the actual line listing the exits shouldn't be
included. Also, do not include descriptions for items or denizens that will be
in the room.
c) Exclude the 2nd person pronoun (you/your) from descriptions as much as
possible.
d) Describe only what someone could reasonably sense in the room. Do not
describe the history of the room, or items in the room, if there's no reason
that someone walking in could easily know what you are describing. An example
of what not to do: "The inhabitants of this castle have been cursed by an evil
witch." How would you know just by looking at the castle?
e) Length should be a minimum of 6 to 8 lines when viewed in Achaea's default
screenwidth (80 characters). More than that is perfectly fine, though extremely
lengthy descriptions (15+ lines) are probably overdoing it.
