Time to bring back the prose?

[pemerton]

I thought the OP was about Gygaxian prose style. We need to edit that

I can't XP you at the moment, but the correction is duly noted and accepted!

 

[dagger]

I will take whatever is the opposite of 4e...after a year and a half I had enough.

 

[herrozerro]

I will take whatever is the opposite of 4e...after a year and a half I had enough.

What is the opposite though?

I know its a bit snarky, but its not like 4e is at the end of any kind of spectrum.

Sent from my DROID4 using Tapatalk 2

 

[DMBrendon]

Even by the time my 4E players got their characters to 6th level, they were still unable to describe what their powers looked like. Ridiculous.

 

[Mattachine]

When we have new characters, I specifically ask each player to create their own flavor text to go with their powers.

For instance, a new PC in my 4e game has a couple teleport powers. I asked, "What sort of teleporting are we talking?"

* Quick blink out and in
* Flash of light
* Puff of smoke, "bamf"
* Shimmer in the air
* Something else?

(The player went with fade out at start location while simultaneously fading in at the destination.)

Other examples:

* What do your magic missiles look like?
* What sort of display accompanies your psionic powers?
* What do your animal/beast shapes look like?
* What is your character's fighting style?
* Are you quick and agile, or simply lucky?

And so on. That sort of thing can be done in any edition, but 4e specifically mentioned doing so in the rules (starting with the PHB2).

Again, I would like the new edition to specifically call out that players should feel free to provide their own flavor text.

 

[Mallus]

Even by the time my 4E players got their characters to 6th level, they were still unable to describe what their powers looked like. Ridiculous.

My group didn't suffer from that problem. At all. Then again, generally-speaking, we like to make shi stuff up ourselves.

Personally speaking, I've come semi-full circle on Gygaxian prose. When I was first introduced to AD&D in high school, I didn't feel I needed EGG's prose style for inspiration -- that's what Tolkien, Moorcock, Gene Wolfe, hell, even Ray Feist were for. Though in retrospect, D&D's overall tone, it's gleeful smashing together of genre influences was inspirational, thought I probably wouldn't have admitted it at the time (back them I was more hung up on strict(er) genre emulation, which blinded me to some of D&D's more ludicrous charms).

But now, reading through the AD&D core books --since I'm running the game for the first time since the late 80s-- I've come to a new appreciation for EGG's prose stylings. I can see the wit, the humor, the intentional-seeming self-parody that studs the verbosity, obscurantism, and over-elaborate, stilted diction like gems in the pommel of a +1 bastard sword.

I hope there's place for such strong, idiosyncratic voices in 5e -- just not in, for example, the section on combat initiative.

 

[Incenjucar]

Even by the time my 4E players got their characters to 6th level, they were still unable to describe what their powers looked like. Ridiculous.

My invoker's powers not only all have descriptions, some of them have miniatures and are characters with their own personalities. And not just his summoning prayers.

 

[Sunseeker]

Even by the time my 4E players got their characters to 6th level, they were still unable to describe what their powers looked like. Ridiculous.

1: The idea that powers should have a "standard" look is pretty silly. "fire" "ball" pretty much sums it up. Any more fluff than that should be up to the player.
2: This is a player issue, not a game issue.

Robust flavor text replaces imagination, it does not enhance it. It's like the difference between reading a book and watching a TV. Flavor text needs to be vague enough to allow the player room for creativity.

To that end, there's really no need at all for flavor text as long as the spell/power/exploit name is explicit. "fireball", "trip", "charge", yeah, don't need a whole lot more there. Anything extra, if necessary at all, can be made up by the player. I'm not saying there should be no flavor text, but that's ALL it is, flavor.

If my players want their powers to have a specific look to their powers, they'll create one, if they don't, they wont. Imagination is the prerogative of the player, not the books.

 

[KidSnide]

Robust flavor text replaces imagination, it does not enhance it. It's like the difference between reading a book and watching a TV.

I do not agree with this statement.

Robust flavor text absolutely enhances imagination. That's the point of it. It's not the difference between reading a book and watching TV. Flavor text is the book. It's like the difference between reading a novel and reading the phone book. D&D rule books need flavorful, evocative descriptions to -- well -- evoke the imaginations of the readers. The idea that D&D books should strip out the flavor text to a bare minimal description in order to prevent getting in the way of imagination is, IMO, deeply misguided.

-KS

P.S. One could argue that much of the 4e flavor text wasn't very good, and didn't perform its task of inspiring imagination. But that's an argument for better flavor text, not less of it.

 

[Sunseeker]

The idea that D&D books should strip out the flavor text to a bare minimal description in order to prevent getting in the way of imagination is, IMO, deeply misguided.

Considering that wasn't what I wrote...