AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I agree that there is no single perfect presentation either. If your game is using one sentence presentation, maybe if it includes only a few of a type of element, perhaps there are other reasons, then something akin to 4e's presentation might not be the optimum. Despite what certain of my critics here might say, I am also aware that people vary. I mean, I was perfectly happy with AD&D's spell presentation in 1978! 15 year old eyes and brains are not 61 year old eyes and brains... I play very differently today too.You do have to scan it, but the formatting draws your eyes to the mechanics. I’m not sold on incorporating flavor text that way (especially once it’s more than a trivial example like fireball), but I wanted include it in the example.
Oh, I agree, though the 4e designers did state in a couple places where they discussed the design process (I think Wyatt talked about it once or twice) that they took most of their cues from Eurogame design in terms of presentation. What I like about 4e, it was very consciously put there, very deliberate. Yes, earlier editions contributed to that, and maybe they influenced Eurogames too!That doesn’t really challenge my contention that 4e’s format evolved from those older formats. The designers obviously iterated across editions until we got what we did in 4e.
Yeah, well, that's 4e for you, every term it uses in the attributes, every arrangement, the colors, the symbols, everything clearly draws from lessons learned from M:tG as well as many modern board games and such. Very standardized behavior, exception based design, keywords that tie things together and act as hooks to invoke specific things on (IE damage types invoke immunity/protection).I’m fine with common elements being put up top, preferably as part of the chrome (e.g., like how Magic puts mana costs at the top of the card). For everything else, I’d rather put it in the mechanical description with notation to identify the mechanical elements (such as bolded text or standard icons). Those elements should also have standard behavior. If something references RANGE X, it should be implied that you must have line of sight and effect to the target (per its definition in the rules). The description shouldn’t need to restate it every time.
I tend to feel like EVERYTHING contributes to 'flavor', not just some prose. I mean take 4e Fireball. Even if you never played D&D 'Fireball' is still a highly evocative name, everyone knows that signifies a kaboom! with flames, right? It is a Daily, so it must be a big deal, ranged, large burst AoE, targets everything in the burst, etc. We already basically KNOW what it is before we even read the flavor text! Not to knock that flavor text, it reinforces and provides a ready description we can use in play, confirming all the hints.Note that I’m not talking about flavor text. Like I noted above, I don’t know about incorporating it the way I did in the example. I think it’s more important the description be easy to parse than it is to be exceptionally flavorful.