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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6977053" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I don't know how much weight your qualifiers are meant to carry (I mean, there's an argument that if it causes harm then, ipso facto, it was not done well or used appropriately).</p><p></p><p>But putting that to one side: boxed text can do harm by suggesting that there is one canonical way in which the game should proceed, and in which the story element in question should be brought into the game.</p><p></p><p>It assumes a fixedness to the trajectory and content of the shared fiction that is (in my view) at odds with the things I value in RPGing.</p><p></p><p>One of my favourite published adventures I've run in the past few years is Robin Laws's The Demon of the Red Grove (in his Hero Wars Narrator's Book - I adapted it to epic tier 4e, set in the Feywild, and making the nobility Eladrin). Here is a sample couple of sentences from that adventure: "The heroes find a demon: weakened, near insane, and bound to the Red Grove by powerful magic . . . When any hero reaches the tree a voice cries out, 'Go away!'"</p><p></p><p>When I ran this adventure, and the PCs entered the grove and came near to the tree, I told them that a voice cries out "Go away!" and then we proceeded to the mechanical resolution of the situation. It wasn't hard.</p><p></p><p>For those who like boxed text, and finds it helps them, not having it is probably not a help. But that doesn't mean that it is (as you posted) REQUIRED. Because those are not the only GMs out there.</p><p></p><p>The way you describe things is to describe them. If you want examples, therre are bucketloads of books, plays, written accounts of films, etc, out there.</p><p></p><p>In the session of AD&D that I ran on the weekend, I was rolling a dungeon using Appendix A of Gygax's DMG. When the PCs came to an octagonal room, I describe it to them - "You come to an octagonal room." Because that is a rather oddly shaped room, I also ad-libbed something in - "It has runes and sigils inscribed on its wall." When the cleric cast Know History, I ad-libbed some more - "They are symbols of Chaos", and I went on to download some backstory that I made up (loosely drawing on the idea that 8 crossed arrows is a symbol of Chaos in Elric stories - or at least that's how I remember it, and the player of the cleric seemd to get the allusion).</p><p></p><p>Boxed text isn't needed to learn these skills.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6977053, member: 42582"] I don't know how much weight your qualifiers are meant to carry (I mean, there's an argument that if it causes harm then, ipso facto, it was not done well or used appropriately). But putting that to one side: boxed text can do harm by suggesting that there is one canonical way in which the game should proceed, and in which the story element in question should be brought into the game. It assumes a fixedness to the trajectory and content of the shared fiction that is (in my view) at odds with the things I value in RPGing. One of my favourite published adventures I've run in the past few years is Robin Laws's The Demon of the Red Grove (in his Hero Wars Narrator's Book - I adapted it to epic tier 4e, set in the Feywild, and making the nobility Eladrin). Here is a sample couple of sentences from that adventure: "The heroes find a demon: weakened, near insane, and bound to the Red Grove by powerful magic . . . When any hero reaches the tree a voice cries out, 'Go away!'" When I ran this adventure, and the PCs entered the grove and came near to the tree, I told them that a voice cries out "Go away!" and then we proceeded to the mechanical resolution of the situation. It wasn't hard. For those who like boxed text, and finds it helps them, not having it is probably not a help. But that doesn't mean that it is (as you posted) REQUIRED. Because those are not the only GMs out there. The way you describe things is to describe them. If you want examples, therre are bucketloads of books, plays, written accounts of films, etc, out there. In the session of AD&D that I ran on the weekend, I was rolling a dungeon using Appendix A of Gygax's DMG. When the PCs came to an octagonal room, I describe it to them - "You come to an octagonal room." Because that is a rather oddly shaped room, I also ad-libbed something in - "It has runes and sigils inscribed on its wall." When the cleric cast Know History, I ad-libbed some more - "They are symbols of Chaos", and I went on to download some backstory that I made up (loosely drawing on the idea that 8 crossed arrows is a symbol of Chaos in Elric stories - or at least that's how I remember it, and the player of the cleric seemd to get the allusion). Boxed text isn't needed to learn these skills. [/QUOTE]
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