PHB may use a rule-oriented tone but Monster Manual needs to be evocative.
MM14E was a huge letdown for me. I love to flip over 1E, 2E and 3E monster manuals (in special 2E)... but first 4E's looked like some color TV manual. I think Wotc perceived it was a mistake and tone was largely improved on their second and third MM.
DMG must also be evocative and full of ideas and hooks (in that 4E DMG II was excellent).
Well, I'm suspect... in fact I could live wil all D&D books written like Planescape and rules to be written on some online D&D wiki
There is no "non-styled" writing style.Crazy Jerome said:
Off the top of my head I was thinking of the ones which won the Ennies last summer. But then Dresden Files comes from a popular comic, so it isn't necessarily the game authors who were doing the inspiring necessarily for every buyer. As far as contemporary measures of good creative writing though, both Evil Hat and Cubicle 7 have quality writers and editors. Legends of Anglerre is another example for you.
There are hard and fast rules in there which would probably be codified at the end of the text in a contemporary work. Of course, in my own play this often means the previous text is ignored. But all of the text is setting defining without determining every last detail for the DM. Canon is slight in this case, but tempts the well read player every time they find an agate in game. Plus, almost all of it could be taken as a rumor further defining the world in play.
This is almost entirely rules text and it is less evocative IMO than the previous. However, the text is almost entirely descriptive. Better yet the item's design promotes a particular situation for those who pick up the jewel. What happens if I use the jewel to pay for goods? Maybe this isn't so bad after all? How long does it take for the players to tie the increase in encounters and pursuit to the gem though? How can they do this anyways? To me this means the item needs a little more design. Perhaps it radiates a sympathy effect that draws nearby wanderers? Perhaps this leads into how it is initially found? What are the effects on fellow PCs in the party? What about walking down a city street? How does it bond with the cursed character to know whom to return to, and how does it do that? These are question I see the DM needing to answer before implementing it in play, but also answers needing to be separate from player knowledge before play too. Does this mean the item is poorly defined or is it enabling the DM by putting him or her in the designer's chair? How does that answer relate to the power slots for the Eye above?
Wow! Of course. This quote is to illustrate a few ways where conversational writing may cause problems. First, it does contain an example in the text. That's good, but it is also lacking in more defined game rules. The rules for "friendly gestures" aren't nearly as complete as one would want for game play purposes. The quote does suggest the expectation of new players not to parley, but this may also bias a DM in not preparing for it. I think the last sentence would be better if advice were given on how to "penalize" players not parleying, but perhaps that way of thinking won't appeal to every reader? What if we used carrots instead sticks to highlight parleying as an option? For as much as conversation with an intelligent creature occurs in RPGs too, there is little on how to run such a sequence or reference to another place in the rules on to do so. Lastly it suggests a style of play predominantly parley-based be routinely unproductive. That's typically synonymous with unsatisfying, but the reasoning for it isn't explained. This last may be the biggest difficulty when in a conversational tone. It becomes harder to discern between the structure of the game to be engaged and preferences for how players should do so.
