Modules: Made to Read vs Made to Run?

[EpicureanDM]

Folks might have a better idea of what’s possible if they looked for examples beyond the two-columns of narrative text model popularized back in the AD&D days and the two-columns-but-with-bullet-points-and-spot-map-inserts style of OSR scenarios.

Sometimes the answer seems to lie in graphic design and sometimes there’s glimmers of something new there. When people aren’t reinventing the paroxysms of White Wolf’s Inphobia magazine, good ideas can be found. Clever approaches are sometimes buried in Mothership adventures, for example.

This debate between whether adventures should be written to be read or written for use at the table obscures the middle option: write for both. Look at The Last Barrow by Aegis & Gorgon. The front section of the scenario is written mostly to be read. It presents tons of lore and dungeon room descriptions alongside incredible art. The back section contains stats for three different RPGs. I don’t think the execution of the idea succeeds. There’s not enough information repeated in the stats section. Far too much setting fluff burdens the descriptive section. But you can see the glimmers of something new and good. GMs can read the front section between sessions to get inspired and internalize the vibe. During the session, they can have the rules-specific section in front of them to actually manage the game. Aegis & Gorgon also provide separate art PDFs that GMs can use to show the excellent illustrations to players.

That’s really the problem that needs to be untangled by ambitious adventure designers: what pages of your text do you think a GM should have in front of them when actually running your adventure? Do those pages need to look the same as the pages the GM reads between sessions? Everyone complains about having to make notes to run published adventures. If you were going to do that work for them, what would it look like? Figure it out and give it to the GMs. Even if they don’t use it verbatim, you’ve given them a massive headstart on actually playing your adventure.

The House Under The Moondial by Hexagnome points the way here. It includes an entire Referee’s Toolkit intended to serve as GMing notes. This toolkit contains a single, landscape-formatted page that GMs can use to track an entire faction, including enough information to run battles. The scenario contains a detailed timeline of events. The toolkit provides a four-page, day-by-day tracking sheet for the GM. Not only does the timeline tracking sheet duplicate the information in the main scenario PDF (so that the GM doesn’t have to refer back to the main PDF), it contains spaces so that the GM can make notes about what occurred in play during each phase of the day. This toolkit literally wants to be the scratch paper that a GM can use to keep track of stuff during play. Print this out and write on it; that’s a novel idea.

Information and tables presented in the main PDF that will see repeated use are duplicated in the toolkit, stuff like the hex crawl map and the random encounter tables. Part of the scenario envisages the PCs needing to convince the townsfolk to join together against the evil religious faction that is preying on the town. The toolkit contains a landscape-oriented page for tracking every NPC and the events that might have happened to them that could influence their votes. It includes space at the end for a GM’s notes next to each NPC.

The ability to produce something like Moondial’s toolkit demonstrates to prospective GMs that the designer knows what’s important to running their scenario, knows where the GM might need help keeping things moving, and wants to help the GM succeed.

D&D and now the OSR have cast long, deep shadows over how people think scenarios should be designed and presented. There are a few folks out there holding lanterns, but we’ve got to look closely to find them.

 

[Bill Zebub]

That small amount of time, doing an activity you enjoy? Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but for me the time is worth it.

I enjoy playing the games, not reading what I find to be overly verbose prose.

Sort of like when a hot new book about business comes out, it's more efficient to look up what Harvard Business Review article it was based on, and go read that instead. You get all the same important information, without a lot of filler. And most business books are written about as well as most RPGs. Perfectly competent, grammatically correct writing, but not good enough that the reading itself is a pleasure. (Not that I can write at that level, either, but if I found a ring of three wishes I would undoubtedly use one to become so.)

If I have X hours of week to play, I'd rather use more of those hours to play, and fewer of those hours to prep. Apparently that means I should stop DMing and let my players go play video games instead.

I thought this was about preference, not "the industry". Neither of us can speak for anyone but ourselves, and that includes whether or not we like reading more long-form material, and our opinion of how well or poorly-written it is.

I was responding to somebody who pretty explicitly said that somebody who isn't willing to invest the necessary time into preparing maybe shouldn't be DMing.

 

[Bill Zebub]

But let me be clear... I have nothing against bullet-pointed modules in and of themselves... I just don't think they are the bees knees and head and shoulders above other methods for distributing adventure information compared to how a lot of other people feel. Especially when it seems that some of the people who love those types of modules are the ones who say they love them because they require "little to no prep"... which to me, as I've said, is not a feature by any stretch. If (general) you do little prep because you just don't have the time in your life to really prepare for the game you run, but you still want to try and run a game for folks who wouldn't be able to game otherwise... well, good on you. I'm glad (general) your players appreciate it. But if you are DM who just can't be bothered to do any prep before a game (especially if you have like a week or heaven forbid two weeks or a full month between sessions)... I don't think that... unconcernedness... of your player's time or enjoyment is something to be proud of. But that's just me. Hopefully it works for (general) you.

So this thread is "express your personal preference, and then denigrate those who disagree with you." Got it.

 

[zakael19]

Are you reading it, or are you scanning it? To me they are two different things and it is obvious to me while playing when the DM is doing one versus the other.

Scanning a module to remind yourself of information you already have a familiarity with takes a lot less time and usually can be done while the players are thinking and acting so that one is ready to respond when it is the DMs turn to act and react. But when a DM does not know the information at all... their turn is spent with their nose buried in the papers and you can see the figurative hamster wheel spinning as they are not only reading aloud the parts the players have to know, but also are trying to absorb the secretive stuff around all that info that they need to know which they aren't supposed to tell the players about. They have to spend all this time figuring out in the moment "Wait, do I tell the players this? No? Okay, what do the players have to do for me to then reveal this information? Wait, what did the players already do? Have they done it already? No. Okay." Etc. etc. etc. And this doesn't even include the very different narration style that occurs between a DM who has an idea of what the scene is about and can give the description and NPCs a bit of life... and the DM who falls back into an almost robotic tone as they talk because they are merely reading something out loud for the first time and thus have no idea what the proper tone and characterization is supposed to be.

Maybe that kind of stuff doesn't matter to some players, but it does to me. I enjoy D&D as a player when I can feel I'm in the hands of a DM who actually knows what the heck is going on.

I run a large number of games where there's basically no prep required for deeply engaging and exciting gameplay.

I get that some people really enjoy reading long-form RPG supplements. I do. I used to be like that. And I'm sorry if there is high-quality content you don't enjoy because it's presented in a more terse, powerpoint-like format. But it's what makes some of us willing to, for example, say "yes" when our kid's D&D group at school asks if you'll start DMing for them.

One thing I really like about a lot of the better OSR stuff is you can skim through the rooms / NPCs / tables and go "whoa" and immediately start getting excited about seeing how the players approach these interesting situations. Like I was looking at the module Hideous Daylight by the same author as the set @Arilyn mentioned, and the preview has a random encounter table that I had to start reading aloud excitedly to my wife.

 

[DEFCON 1]

So this thread is "express your personal preference, and then denigrate those who disagree with you." Got it.

You proved that when you insinuated I was a trust fund baby.

If you are going to dish it out, make sure you can also take it.

 

[Morrus]

If you don't have 6 extra minutes in your entire week to read a couple paragraphs for preparation rather than a handful of bullet points... you have more things to deal with in your life that you probably shouldn't be wasting a bunch of it Dungeon Mastering.

If you are going to DM... make sure you have the time to actually do it.

Let's stop telling people who and who is not allowed to DM, shall we?

 

[Bill Zebub]

You proved that when you insinuated I was a trust fund baby.

If you are going to dish it out, make sure you can also take it.

Even if the humor/hyperbole was missed, didn't think it would be taken as an insult.

I wish I were a trust fund baby.

(That's two of three wishes used: great writer, trust fund.)

 

[Bill Zebub]

More thoughts on "great writing":

I can't remember why I started reading a review of a book about gardening...I have no interest in gardening...but for some reason I did, and it was a great review. Loved reading it. I didn't recognize the reviewer's name, but I looked her up and started reading her books. The first one wasn't a topic I was interested in, but I read it anyway, loved it, and it became a topic I was interested in. (It was a biography of St. Exupery.)

I've yet to read an RPG supplement that I would give to a non-gamer and suggest they read it just for pleasure.

 

[Celebrim]

So looking at different examples of what is easy to use, I can't help but wonder if the fundamental problem is simply different parts of the process are unequally difficult for different people based on a combination of natural talents and desired aesthetics.

The people who like the bullet points seem to be saying the hard parts are absorbing information not producing information, where as the people who like the more traditional formats are saying absorbing and remembering information is comparatively easy but producing information is hard. This could be because people have different talents (general intelligence does not exist) or it could be because the thing people want to produce that they don't feel embarrassed by and are content to give to others differs in style.

Different formats require different pauses for thought in different places, different "blink effects" when you have to shift between different cognitive tasks.

We're disagreeing entirely over what makes a module "easy to run". We've each applied different standards to that. I haven't at all really raised the issue of "how condensed is the information" even if I can understand the issue of "how well organized is the information". I instead focused on "how complete is the information", which is something other people in the thread don't seem to care about at all.

I just don't think that this is something that is objectively true. I love that people are experimenting with different formats and learning what works for different people, but I'm not sure we are this point actually learning much by just insisting this or that is the thing written for play.

I had previously thought this was a more objective thing than it appears to be, in part because when I watch someone like Seth Skorkowsky and he talks about prep work, the sort of things he says he does are the sort of things I would do and which I would consider worthwhile prep work. But that may just be a case of I admire his work because he's doing things that remind me of myself and my own aesthetics. Without having played at the tables of all these other GMs I really don't know whether what they are saying would appeal to me or not if I experienced it as a player.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I enjoy playing the games, not reading what I find to be overly verbose prose.

I like reading more (but still enjoy playing to a lesser degree), and find the verbosity to generally be at a level with which I am comfortable. I suspect the presentation you prefer would not be worth the squeeze to me. People are different and want different things.

Sort of like when a hot new book about business comes out, it's more efficient to look up what Harvard Business Review article it was based on, and go read that instead. You get all the same important information, without a lot of filler. And most business books are written about as well as most RPGs. Perfectly competent, grammatically correct writing, but not good enough that the reading itself is a pleasure. (Not that I can write at that level, either, but if I found a ring of three wishes I would undoubtedly use one to become so.)

To me this seems disrespectful to the author(s) of said book, making a point of avoiding reading it but nonetheless trying to get the information another way, but that's just my opinion.

If I have X hours of week to play, I'd rather use more of those hours to play, and fewer of those hours to prep. Apparently that means I should stop DMing and let my players go play video games instead.

I'd rather read and play both, with an emphasis on reading in my case. Doesn't make either of us objectively correct or give either of us any right to say "the industry" should cater to us and not to them.

I was responding to somebody who pretty explicitly said that somebody who isn't willing to invest the necessary time into preparing maybe shouldn't be DMing.

I feel similarly (but obviously subjectively) for my part. Prep is to me is a vital part of running a game, and personally I feel games that try to minimize that time often suffer for it.