RPG Writing and Design Needs a Paradigm Shift

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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).

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.

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.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

See, that's just it: if it gets too standardized, it also gets boring.

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.

IMO it should be restated each time, particularly if there are spells (which IMO there should be) that don't follow this rule.

That said, restating it each time in this case is as simple as adding a 4th component letter 'L' to the usual VSM, with L meaning line of sight/effect is required and no L meaning it is not. I did this with all my spells when I rewrote them to put them online, and it saved me a boatload of word count.

 

[Neonchameleon]

See, that's just it: if it gets too standardized, it also gets boring.

The thing is that for many of us it's not the format being standardised that gets boring, it's if the effect is. And burying the effect under a mound of glurge doesn't actually change that it's just doing red or blue damage.

IMO it should be restated each time, particularly if there are spells (which IMO there should be) that don't follow this rule.

IMO it's the exceptions that need stating and the default case does not necessarily. I agree that there should be spells that don't need line of sight and line of effect - but if 90% of them do then restating that for all those spells is just a boring standard restatement.

That said, restating it each time in this case is as simple as adding a 4th component letter 'L' to the usual VSM, with L meaning line of sight/effect is required and no L meaning it is not. I did this with all my spells when I rewrote them to put them online, and it saved me a boatload of word count.

And this is an improvement. It's standardisation - but a repetitive letter is (at least to me) a lot less boring than a repetitive sentence. The sheer quantity of repetition is part of the boredom.

 

[kenada]

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.

It’s also not great for lengthy effect blocks. Look at spells like disguise self or powers like Divine Challenge. They have a couple of keywords followed by a wall of text.

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!

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).

In spite of its origin in OSR systems, 4e and (and PF2 to a lesser extent) are influences on my homebrew system. Carefully defining the rules, so you can invoke them in a systematic way helps reduce the game’s complexity and make it easier to understand.

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.

I’m not a fan of excessively flowery language or flavor for the sake of flavor. What are the game effects of all the extra stuff in AD&D? If I were converting that stuff, it’d just end up left as flavor. One could say it should be left to DM adjudication, but since it makes no physical sense, you risk getting different results depending on how the DM (mis)understood the physics, which is potentially bad for verisimilitude and sim priorities.

I’d want to write up things like I were describing them in the game world with the mechanics highlighted for easy scanning. You can use evocative language as long as it is kept short (like Shadowdark) and doesn’t impede understanding. One musn’t forget that those playing the game may need to invoke the effect many times in play, so it should be both memorable and easy to scan and use.

 

[Wolfpack48]

All of this is reminding me of the old Rolemaster/MERP critical hit tables. Each rolled effect would notoriously describe in gory detail, exactly what happened in combat ("limb severed" etc.). After awhile, we found that the referee could simply imaginatively describe these effects without referring to a table or text, giving life to the boring numbers. We learned to interpret the bland math in a way that enlivened the roleplaying scene ("you take 8 hp damage" vs . "The creature snarls but only nicks you in the arm, raking down blood your shoulder"). That said, I'm not advocating overly dry descriptions in rulebooks either. We have a boardgame player who never reads the flavor text paired with a card's math effect, and it really bums everyone out.

 

[Micah Sweet]

All of this is reminding me of the old Rolemaster/MERP critical hit tables. Each rolled effect would notoriously describe in gory detail, exactly what happened in combat. After awhile, we found that the referee could simply imaginatively describe these effects without referring to a table or text giving life to the boring numbers. We learned to interpret the bland math in a way that enlivened the roleplaying scene ("you take 8 hp damage" vs . "The creature snarls but only nicks you in the arm, raking down blood your shoulder"). That said, I'm not advocating overly dry descriptions in rulebooks either. We have a boardgame player who never reads the flavor text paired with a card's math effect, and it really bums everyone out.

Those crit tables were formative for me.

 

[kenada]

See, that's just it: if it gets too standardized, it also gets boring.

The stuff in the chrome would be whatever is common to everything. For spells, using 5e for example, that might be level, school, and components (V, S, M). That leaves the body to focus on the unique effect instead of restating boilerplate properties every time.

IMO it should be restated each time, particularly if there are spells (which IMO there should be) that don't follow this rule.

That said, restating it each time in this case is as simple as adding a 4th component letter 'L' to the usual VSM, with L meaning line of sight/effect is required and no L meaning it is not. I did this with all my spells when I rewrote them to put them online, and it saved me a boatload of word count.

Restating it every time risks numbing people to the specifics, so when something is different, they miss it. I would use a different indicstor (like SIGHT X) that is very obviously different and evocative of what it does. You could even have WITHIN X for when even walls or obstructions don’t matter.

In a way, you’re doing something similar with your “L” annotation. You add it to indicate a rules element (or interpretation). The difference is I want to incorporate it in the text instead of adding it to a list effect properties. The latter is more like 4e and other traditional approaches, which is fine, but it’s not the only possible way, and it’s not the way I’m inclined to do things in my homebrew system.

 

[Wolfpack48]

Those crit tables were formative for me.

In the same way, we got away from reading verbatim the boxed text in adventure descriptions, though those were very helpful initially. It's sort of the difference between reading a prepared speech monotone, eyes down on the paper, and looking the audience in the eye, glancing occasionally at your notes, and varying your voice and tone.

 

[Lanefan]

The stuff in the chrome would be whatever is common to everything. For spells, using 5e for example, that might be level, school, and components (V, S, M). That leaves the body to focus on the unique effect instead of restating boilerplate properties every time.


Restating it every time risks numbing people to the specifics, so when something is different, they miss it. I would use a different indicstor (like SIGHT X) that is very obviously different and evocative of what it does. You could even have WITHIN X for when even walls or obstructions don’t matter.

You could, and that would allow for multiple options which - in this case anyway - exist:

You need line of vision AND line of effect
You need line of vision but NOT line of effect (if you can see the target point you're good, even if there's a transparent obstruction in the way)
You need line of effect but NOT line of vision (you can cast without seeing or even having a target point as long as there's nothing in the way)
You need NEITHER line of effect nor line of vision (you can cast into an unseen space, behind a wall, into the ground, etc.)

The third of these is what always causes confusion, in that using "line of sight" terminology incorrectly implies you can't cast most spells while in darkness, or while blinded.

In a way, you’re doing something similar with your “L” annotation. You add it to indicate a rules element (or interpretation). The difference is I want to incorporate it in the text instead of adding it to a list effect properties. The latter is more like 4e and other traditional approaches, which is fine, but it’s not the only possible way, and it’s not the way I’m inclined to do things in my homebrew system.

My spell write-ups are in most cases long enough already, as I try to incorporate rulings, interactions with other spells, precedents, and so forth established over decades of play. They don't need the extra word count I saved by adding the L component (which is defined once, along with V, S, and M, in a separate 'introduction to spells' page).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You could, and that would allow for multiple options which - in this case anyway - exist:

You need line of vision AND line of effect
You need line of vision but NOT line of effect (if you can see the target point you're good, even if there's a transparent obstruction in the way)
You need line of effect but NOT line of vision (you can cast without seeing or even having a target point as long as there's nothing in the way)
You need NEITHER line of effect nor line of vision (you can cast into an unseen space, behind a wall, into the ground, etc.)

The third of these is what always causes confusion, in that using "line of sight" terminology incorrectly implies you can't cast most spells while in darkness, or while blinded.

My spell write-ups are in most cases long enough already, as I try to incorporate rulings, interactions with other spells, precedents, and so forth established over decades of play. They don't need the extra word count I saved by adding the L component (which is defined once, along with V, S, and M, in a separate 'introduction to spells' page).

4e handles all of this in standard rules text. There's even a general class of powers which have a different rule (keyword teleport). A few exceptions may also be present, though I can't think of one. Such exceptions normally show up in specific blocks labeled 'special' or similar.