Description
The Basics
Characters are your point of view in the world of Redwall MUCK. In order for others to interact with you, they need to have an idea of what they see, hear, smell, etc., when near you. In short, the all-important "first impression" is based on how you describe your character.
The most obvious issue to address is what people see. What are you wearing? What color is your fur? Are you short or tall? It's better not to give precise indicators, like "six feet tall" but rather, "much larger than a normal fox."
Next, consider the other senses. Does your character have a raspy sound when she breathes? Is his cloak musty, and smells of sawdust? Does your tailor's elaborate hat have bells that jingle as he walks?
A final note to consider: sloppy descriptions without decent grammar and spelling reflect badly on you. Yes, people have spelling errors and this isn't a classroom, but being totally careless simply implies that you don't care enough about the other people to bother trying.
Setting Your Description
To actually enter the description into the game, the +set command or @desc command can be used.
Say that I have a mouse character named Bill that I want to describe. What does he look like? I might set his description as this:
+set desc=Bill is a young adult field mouse, of approximately eight seasons. He is rather small for his age, both short and slight of build. He looks very typical for a field mouse, with mostly brown fur save for the white of his underbelly. The tufts of fur at the tips of his ears are also white. He wears a simple outfit - a wool shirt and pants, both rather threadbare. He carries no weapons.
After that, you can look at yourself to see how it looks by typing look me.
You can re-set the description as often as you like.
Some Common Mistakes
What you don't want to do is expose more of your character than can be discovered through observation.
For instance, there's no way to know that your character's parents were captured by sea-rats and that you've escaped and are now seeking a mercenary party to overthrow and rescue your parents.
There's no way we can tell by looking that you are a good friend, a fierce enemy, or that in battle you are invincible.
These sorts of details are useful, because they allow you to expose them through interaction. But you don't hand them out in a description where there's simply no way to explain how we could tell these things.
Thus, descriptions don't include alignment information, history, goals, or anything else that you would expect to explain around a camp-fire. They aren't "information sheets" about your characters.
To provide background information if you wish, join the website and setup a home-page for yourself.
If You Want a Large or Dynamic Description
Once you gain some experience, you'll find that you'd like to be able to change clothes, or have your fur color change from brown to white in the winter, etc. Or that you'd like different descriptions when you sleep.
To learn how to do these things, see the clothing how-to page.
