I cannot stand played-bys.
Hear me out. I’m a blind player of text games and have been for a long time, but was only introduced to the idea of a PB when I got into mushing. Where I play currently, it’s a common thing on wikis and the like for the people who want to put them, which is obvi fine. When I started to app on Ares games, though, the played-by as a literal component of character creation kind of grated on me, especially since it shows up at the end of character descs and the name of the actor is in the profile. I have to go to staff every time like yeah hey sorry im leaving this out because i can’t see. But this isn’t a dig at Ares, just the prevalence of pictures to convey imagery in what’s supposed to be a text medium.
I know this is like probably super unpopular and obviously a very personal bias. I’ve spent years honing my knack for physical description, and one of the main draws of a mush for me, other than them being one of the only types of games I can play, is the niche art of making pretty stuff with words. I don’t think PBs negate this or anything, but it’ll always be a peeve for me when I can’t get a good visual from a desc because the person is relying more on a picture. I have the same philosophy about ascii but that’s a whole other rant.