2. Thou shalt not make thy desc take up more space than a vt100 screen.
Commentary: Routinely violated by people who apparently think this is meant
to limit them. The reason for this commandment has nothing to do with trying
to cut down on the number of details included in a desc (though that can be a
nice side effect). The reason you should always keep your descs to a
reasonable length is because people won't read them if you
don't. Seriously. They'll skim it for the important parts and
ignore the rest. So why not just cut out the stuff that'll get skimmed anyway
and make sure that what's actually read reflects the way you want your
character to be viewed?
Really, even this restriction is too generous; you can write a perfectly good and evocative desc in half of a vt100 screen, and, where possible, you should. But this is about the readability limit, at least for people using 80x24 terminals.
3. Thou shalt make thy desc a description of thyself and not a life history;
thy fellow characters are not telepaths (usually).
Commentary: This was never a very common problem, and is still less so
today.
4. Thou shalt not use the word 'pert', except in reference to a nose, nor use
any other words that suggest drooling male fanboyism.
Commentary: How often you encounter violations of this commandment depends
entirely on what kind of games you hang out on. So, in that sense, it's its
own punishment. Or reward, I suppose, depending on how you look at it.
5. Thou shalt not dictate in thy desc how those viewing it will react.
Commentary: On certain games where stats are really carefully
tracked, minor violations of this commandment are ... not exactly acceptable,
but ignorable. Even in these cases, though, one should strive to make the
rest of the desc produce the desired reaction, rather than just telling
people how their characters feel. Or as any high-school English teacher will
say, "Show -- don't tell."
6. Thou shalt use semicolons when appropriate, for they are blessed in the
sight of the LORD.
Commentary: And they are.
7. Thou shalt not feel the need to constantly redescribe thyself for every
little change; thy game is about imagination, after all.
Commentary: Multidescers are now so common across the MUD world that it's
much more practical to write desc elements for every occasion. If that sort
of thing grabs you, go nuts. If it doesn't, you can still feel virtuous.
8. Thou shalt not use tabs, indenting or other weird formatting in thy desc.
Commentary: Constantly violated by everyone at this point, including me.
Should probably be modified to read something to the effect of 'You should use
embedded formatting codes only to improve your desc's readability, rather than
because you think it looks keen'. Because, really, a vt100 screen full of
text that's all one line with no indenting is a pain in the ass to read, and
the whole point of this exercise is to reduce the incidence of ass-pain.
9. Thou shalt not use obnoxious loud odescs or adescs.
Commentary: Almost nobody does this anymore, and the people who do are
usually new players. Part of this is because everyone now knows it's rude,
and another part of it is that a shockingly large number of people have no
idea what an odesc or adesc is or how to write one.
10. Thou shalt not suck.
Commentary: Most people still do, anyway. But if you don't have the
not-suck nature already, spending 60 seconds reading a page of commandments
isn't going to help a whole lot.