| name | item-description |
| description | Write item, object, equipment, artifact, or collectible descriptions that communicate function, world identity, ownership or history, tone, and discovery context within strict UI or inventory constraints. |
Item Description
Use when a game or fictional product needs concise text for objects encountered by the player or reader.
Procedure
- Identify the item's actual gameplay or narrative function, rarity or importance, creator or origin, current ownership, and what the player is allowed to know at discovery time.
- Choose the description's job: functional clarity, flavor, lore clue, character voice, mystery, collection identity, or a deliberate combination.
- Lead with the most useful or evocative information at the length the interface can reliably display.
- Use concrete material, wear, maker marks, provenance, ritual use, or historical detail that connects the object to the world instead of generic adjectives.
- Keep gameplay facts accurate and separate flavor from mechanics where ambiguity could mislead the player.
- Respect knowledge boundaries and avoid revealing plot, faction, or artifact truths before the intended discovery.
- Maintain terminology, naming, capitalization, measurements, and rarity language consistently across the item set.
- Test descriptions in the real UI for truncation, localization expansion, readability, and repetition across many neighboring items.
Decision rules
- Small objects can imply world history without becoming miniature encyclopedia entries.
- Flavor should not contradict gameplay function.
- Mystery is not an excuse for meaningless vagueness.
- Repeated sentence templates make a large item set feel synthetic.
Quality gate
The description is ready when function and tone fit the item's role, world detail is specific and canon-safe, player knowledge is respected, terminology is consistent, and the text remains readable and distinctive in the actual interface.
