Just a few months old, it's a 2007 mileage... A good thread necromancy would go at least back a few years!
To make box-text descriptions, usually the best is to start with sound, then smell, then sight. Other perceptions like very high or low temperature, rain, slippery or uncomfortable terrain, etc. should come first if it's important enough to affect gameplay.
Avoiding using "you" is a very good guideline, too, except maybe for the first sentence of the text, as it avoids ascribing actions to the PCs. That is to say, this is correct:
"As you walk along the corridor, you perceive more clearly the room ahead. A soft music plays and the air carries the scent of incense. A large table and several bookshelves can be seen through the opening."
This doesn't ascribe actions to the PCs because if they don't walk along the corridor, then you don't read this boxed text anyway! However, this is bad:
"In addition to the furniture you saw from the corridor, there is a desk, and a fireplace in which burn odd-looking wood. The music comes from the desk, and you can see the music box when you look behind it."
For example:
Oryan77 said:
***A slight breeze blows in the air & you catch a foul stench crossing your path. Glancing around, you find the source of the odor. On the edge of the town square, you see a limp dead body dangling from a 20 ft wooden post.***
If you replace the underlined passage by something such as "The source is obvious:" and that way one avoids that deprotagonisation Henrix talked of, yet retain the researched dynamic of conveying mandatory plot information (the satyr's fate) without first making the players waste time enquiring about the smell.
