Height - code vs. desc

[Andreas]

For the record, Andreas's height was rolled at 6' 8" and thus the reason I chose "near 7-foot tall" as his adjective.

The only thing I wish could be mutable is character weight. Just like everyone in real life, I see characters gaining or losing weight through time.

[Daediana]

Personally I think we need to pay attention more to the score sheet in general with our RP... The stats are there for a reason... so that you don't have an extremely intelligent and extremely strong warrior and such starting off... You need to slowly develop your character and not have all these skills and perfections at first... You get stat points over the course of leveling for a reason. If you want a very strong and intelligent warrior... perhaps you should rp going off for a few years and coming back after a long study or something... not twinking and running off and leveling really fast, but taking time to rp with some characters but not sitting in the square 24/7 so that everyone gets to know you... or rp sitting down with someone and learning from them or something... but the other thing that gets me... is you tend to see all these magnificently beautiful characters all the time, and I'm wondering what their charisma is really at? Do people actually train this stat or just rp being drop dead gorgeous without the Cha? If I play a pretty character or something I always start my stats at at least friendly with Cha... and my more average looking characters I keep it at average... if they are gangly like Aliaga... which she is young and I plan on making her a pretty character... I have started a whole rp where she is going off to finishing school to learn to be like a lady... sure I have to sacrifice playing her for awhile... but its worth the rp in the long run... so with her I have it at a very low friendly and plan on training it up higher for when she returns. So I think instead of attacking height too... I think we really need to pay attention to the score sheet in general... I believe Gwain brought this up as well, but it seems like it needs to be talked about a bit more.

[Saradin]

Well, honestly, I think that's self defeating. I don't see how removing a character from RP for an extended period of time actually contributes to Roleplay. I'd much rather continually be interacting with a character, forming relationships, learning things about them and seeing them change, even if fairly rapidly, according to their stats, then to have someone disappear for an extended period then come back and say "Look! I am beautiful/smart/athletic/dexterous now!".

Time is after all fairly fluid in MUD terms, if it were a strict guideline, there would probably some non-elven long term character who should be hobbling around with a walking stick and bad eyesight by this point. Also, IIRC when you train stats there is a brief fluff explanation given about what you're doing to raise it. So training intelligence is in effect going off and studying....just using the Cliff's Notes

Now, roleplaying stats you don't have is another issue, and Charisma being the most obvious one I believe it is all ready policy that you cannot describe your character as being beautiful/handsome whatever without have your Cha raised to at least Friendly. The other stats are not so obvious, and I'm not sure what exactly the policies are on those.

[Hrosskell]

I don't like the idea of a random number applied to a character. When I built Hrosskell, or Graham, or any of my characters, I certainly had numbers in mind. Graham, being an average person, stands at 5'11, and weighs around 150 - ten pounds away from desired 160; not bad at all. Hrosskell, on the other hand, I wanted to be tall, and heavy. He has the build of a professional weightlifter, or the age old swordsman he is. I had always imagined 7' as the typical number, but having rolled a few times, I realized that it maxed out at 6'8. In retrospect, it probably would have helped to have applied, but I imagined four inches would be a rather trivial pursuit; as with the unreachable two hundred and eighty-seven pounds I wanted him to weigh. Give a man a few years from age sixteen, and I'd say he has a few inches left in him. Slap on twenty years of tireless boozing and training, and I'm sure he would have the muscle to weigh my desired weight. So, I roleplayed it. Over the years, his description has described him getting taller, heavier, older. The only question left would be the intimidation factor. Is he scary? I imagine anyone that large would be, at first sight, in polished and horned armor with a weapon drawn. But that is part of the roleplay with him - a gentle, for the most part, and somewhat misunderstood person.

I don't think I answered any of the questions posed here in a direct manner, but I promise, I'm bringing it to a close. Maybe people have a certain image in mind, and when they make that character that is what they want it to be. They get the equipment (whether it is good or not) that suits the character, they get the accent or the language down, they get the whole motion of the character down, and they don't like that effort being destroyed by someone saying, "Yes, this is a fantasy game, but you can't be fantas-tic."

[Tortus]

A possibility could be to set a maximum and a minimum value for each race and sex, and let the players choose between.

This is pretty much how it works already.

Each race has a max and min and the player chooses short medium or tall to reflect their own desire. Build may influence this, in that tall and skinny gets the greatest height where tall and plump does not

I may be recalling wrongly, but I do not believe that height impacts upon combat, it is the size of the PC or NPC which does this and size is set by race and can not be changed.

I'm pretty sure it's the size class (medium/large/small) and not the actual height that matters codewise. That's why I suggest letting people choose their height and weight freely, instead of answering the questions. I often plan my characters physical properties ahead of entering chargen, and bullheaded as I am, I'll keep rolling until I get my 5'10" etc.

Just an interface like "Your char is how tall, in feet and inches separetely? Answer: 5, Answer: 10" would be heaven for me.[/code]