RPG Writing and Design Needs a Paradigm Shift

[R_J_K75]

Separate the lore and a large portion of the player base will ignore it entirely.

Put it where it's needed. It's not necessarily needed in core books. Core books should teach me how to play a game, and a setting book should detail a place to play it in. As long as the core inferes enough that I need to use my imagination then it has done its job. As an example, I can play 2E AD&D with the core books. but I can't play Darksun without them, but Darksun can certainly be discarded. If it's not put where it's not needed, then it can't be ignored.

 

[Lanefan]

Let's us a simple example: fireball. Here's the SRD entry: Fireball – 5th Edition SRD

That is too wordy on its face. The lines giving range and stuff are fine, but why not an "Area: 20ft radius sphere" line and an "Effect: 8d6 fire damage" line? Then it is done.

Well, except for all the rulings (and some explanations!) that should be in there as well. Why doesn't it ignite flammables if they're being carried by someone e.g. (as an extreme example) a scroll being held in someone's hand? Do non-tended magic items in the area need to save, or do they burn up, or are they immune? How thick of a barrier does it take to block the fire? Etc., etc.

But, to be clear, I am not just talking about trimming prose. I am talking about using visual design elements like one look maps to increase utility.

One way to trim a lot of wasted space in modern adventures would be to have one detailed (and detachable!!!) map and then eschew reprinting a larger version of the map for every encouter area.

 

[Andvari]

Which RPG rulebooks do you consider the best written overall?

 

[kenada]

I have nothing against 4e, never played it, never cared. I returned to TTRPGs sometime during 5e after leaving during 2e. From all I have heard it is a good wargame, but no good D&D game (too different), I have no particular reaction to it however, at most it is some intellectual curiosity

If 4e ‘always’ triggers those kinds of responses with some people loving it and others loathing it, then it simply is divisive.

My reaction here was purely to the bland text presented and the claim that the 5e Fireball should be more like it, not all of 4e. I entirely disagree with what was said about the 5e Fireball, the rest just followed from that and is not about 4e but about what TTRPG text should be like. No need to try to make this about 4e

Thanks for the clarification. I posted a follow up in post #104 to try to shift the discussion because I don’t want it to be about 4e, but it seemed like it was at risk of going there. I picked magic missile for my example because it was common to most of the games I was trying to reference.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Put it where it's needed. It's not necessarily needed in core books. Core books should teach me how to play a game, and a setting book should detail a place to play it in. As long as the core inferes enough that I need to use my imagination then it has done its job. As an example, I can play 2E AD&D with the core books. but I can't play Darksun without them, but Darksun can certainly be discarded. If it's not put where it's not needed, then it can't be ignored.

Core books also need to introduce players to the game. A book about roleplaying in an imaginary world without lore is a poor introduction.

 

[Lanefan]

Put it where it's needed. It's not necessarily needed in core books. Core books should teach me how to play a game, and a setting book should detail a place to play it in.

And the inevitable result would be lots and lots of:

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Clerics

Clerics gain their powers from worship of a deity (deities are detailed in our book "Imalkis - A World for All") and can both cast spells and effectively take part in melee........
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No. Give me a few basic examples of deities right there, thanks, and how they relate to Clerics and to the world as a whole; either in the Clerics write-up or as an appendix in the same book. Otherwise it comes across as an advertisement for an annoyance, that annoyance being that I have to go and buy another book in order to get info I should already have, and that I need in order to play the game.

As long as the core inferes enough that I need to use my imagination then it has done its job.

Here, however, it doesn't - unless you're counting the setting guide as a core book, which I don't. Ideally, the core books give me enough basic examples that I can extrapolate from there and build my own setting/cosmology/pantheons/cultures/etc.

 

[kenada]

that is not the text from the spell block

Just to clarify, that’s the 4e Essentials version of magic missile. I was citing the PHB version. (One should think the PHB PDF from DM’s Guild would reflect all the errata, but it does not.)

It is too verbose, not very precise (it says nothing about line of sight, unlike the 5e one… was that not required in 4e?), and not very evocative.

I believe it’s implied by 4e’s rules for ranged attacks. It’s arguable whether that second part is properly part of the flavor or part of the mechanics in 5e, but I included it so no one could say I was omitting things in an attempt to paint 5e in an unfair light.

I grant you that basic spells have a hard time being evocative, my objection was against actively removing it from spell descriptions in a pursuit of a purely technical description, not a requirement to add it at all cost where it is not needed

Since the discussion was about fireball, it might be more fruitful to post what 4e and 4e Essentials has to say about them. Both have the same description.

I think the desired changes for the 5e block were to replace the mechanical stuff with this format, which has space for the description at the top (“A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a point you choose within range and then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame”). But maybe I misunderstood @AbdulAlhazred’s intent.

 

[kenada]

Maybe I’m weird, but the 4e Rules Compendium is one of my favorite RPG books. The book is physically a good size, and it’s a nice and quick read. I actually read it cover to cover. I’d put it in a similar class to OSE, but the RC is better. It’s not just a bunch of bulleted lists. There are even paragraphs.

(Yes, I know OSE has paragraphs occasionally. What it’s known for is its terse presentation, which typically uses lists.)

 

[MichaelSomething]

Yes. I've yet to see an example that greatly contradicts this. Why? Because the way to make rules concise is to remove any words or phrases that aren't part of the rule, making the end result both very functional and dry as dust.

The ultimate horror is the full rule-set for Magic: the Gathering. Every rule is presented as clearly and concisely as possible, and if you can get through three screens of it at one go without nodding off to sleep you've had too much coffee.

True, but magic players don't read the rules for the sake of reading. It's usually when a player needs to find a specific rule on how certain cards interact. They go straight to the rules they need, figure out the game state, then get back to playing.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't want to overstate the brevity in spell description element. I think it is important, but it isn't the only way the prose needs to change. The worst offenders in mainstream RPGs are adventures. Both Paizo and WotC, and most other companies, frankly, bury all the important information in walls of text in adventures. Shadowdark has shown that you don't need all of that and you can use a combination of layout design, concise text, standardized rules and annotated maps to fit what would otherwise be a 32 page adventure on a single sheet of paper.

I’d love to see some play reports from new GMs running Shadowdark adventures. I know the new DMs I’ve known have had little to no issues running 5e D&D adventures. Oddly I mostly see veteran DMs struggle with 5e adventures. Cant say why, as I don’t run adventures I just mine them for bits.

the ‘you launch a silvery bolt of force at the enemy’ part?

We know the caster launches it at the enemy and that it uses force from the stat block already, so the only ‘flavor’ is ‘silvery’… Sorry, that too is sterile, it adds no flavor whatsoever, to me that is not just poor, it is nonexistent

You are incorrect. Objectively. Like…observably. It isn’t a matter of opinion whether it exists or not.

compare the 4e and 5e spell descriptions posted in this thread and let me know which one has more flavor. 4e is positively sterile based on these.

I am not saying all of 4e is, but the examples in here do not make a good case for it containing any, and I definitely prefer the 5e description over the 4e one.

As far as I am concerned they could have saved themselves the 4e line, it added no flavor and was redundant.

The 5e Magic missile is the same amount of flavor text as the 4e power.

That it doesn’t suit your tastes is a you thing, nothing more. It objectively contains fictionally descriptive text in the same amount as its 5e equivalent.