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CTB_STYLE

Literal Style Building Rules:

All clantowns need to use the literal style of writing. "Literal"
basically means that all of your descriptions and clues are based on what
players can see and figure out for themselves.

Room descriptions should convey what the player sees, along with minor
sounds and physical feelings. Players can see their surroundings, but
cannot see the definition of or history behind their surroundings.

For example, you could describe a gray stone lying on the ground, because
the player can see that when they walk into the room. You would not say
"the stone is made of hardened minerals" or "earlier today this stone was
thrown onto the path by a large ogre"-because the player cannot see that
information.

An example of minor sound would be a bird chirping or a body of water
bubbling.

Minor physical feelings could be described as a cool breeze or the warmth
radiating from a fire. You would not say in a room description that a
player hears roaring water as a tidal wave comes to sweep them away, or
that a rampant fire burns their skin.

There are many ways to get clues across to a player just by sight and
minor sounds. If you wanted the player to know that an ogre had been
throwing rocks in that area, you could say the following:

     Muddied ogre footprints overlap themselves next to a stately,
     wide-trunked oak tree. A sack of small boulders rests at the foot of
     the tree, and similar rocks have been scattered haphazardly around
     the area. Freshly scraped depressions mark the location of these
     large stones.

So instead of "A-bunch of rocks that were thrown by an ogre lie
everywhere."-you have now provided the player with enough clues to figure
this event out themselves. If you have any questions about how to use this
guideline, feel free to ask a Zone Editor for assistance.

Make sure you have read help CTB_YOU. Although in the past clantowns were
forbidden to use the word "YOU" due to major grammatical problems, they
are now allowed. Be very careful in the usage and how often it is
used. Rarely should it be mentioned more than once or twice within a
description.

Do not use roomcopies. A roomcopy is duplicating the room to be used in
another part of the zone. This could be the room next to it, or 30 rooms
away. We no longer allow descriptions that are the same except for a few
changed details. Builders may reuse one sentence in a description as long
as each description is different other than that one sentence and has at
least 4 lines and/or sentences. See Also: SYNONYM

Mobs follow the same guidelines as rooms for writing what the player sees
along with minor sounds. Do not use minor physical feelings for mobs.
Most of the time you should just be describing physical features about
mobs that the player can see. There is an excellent example in the
following help file on mob descriptions. See Also: CTB_MOB

Any questions on how to write something should be directed to a Zone
Editor.