Modules: Made to Read vs Made to Run?

[overgeeked]

So many Call of Cthulhu modules suffer from this.

Yeah. That's what set me off initially. I'm generally more familiar with OSR-style easy-to-run modules and in a fit of nostalgia started looking over some of my Call of Cthulhu and Trail of Cthulhu modules. They are the epitome of walls of text you have to dig and dig and dig through to get anything useful.

When many of them could just as easily be presented as:

[X] dabbled in something they should not have and unleashed [Y] into the world. You have to follow the clues to piece together what happened and prevent [Y] from destroying [Z].

Now here's a list of far too many NPCs, a few locations with bad maps, and the most convoluted and largely irrelevant backstory we could come up with.

Good luck.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There's nothing preventing a web page from being hosted locally, though I'll admit it's not a common thing these days.

But the thing is that a PDF is designed to do one thing, and that is to preserve the formatting on a piece of paper for electronic presentation and usually printing. That makes it great if that formatting is important to you. For example, I'd rather have a blank character sheet as a PDF than an HTML file. But if you have a PDF designed to mimic a letter/A4 page and try to read it on a tablet or, God forbid, a phone, it is horrible. Heck, even reading it on a laptop is a nightmare, because it'll likely be zoomed to 70% or less and you'll have to either continually scroll up and down or try to read teeny tiny text.

Of course, PDFs aren't locked to letter/A4 format. You could make one that's designed to be read on a tablet, which would probably look a lot like the D&D Essentials books if it was printed. But then you run into the issue of: what tablet? They come in many different sizes. A PDF designed for an 8" screen would look huge on a 10" one, and ridonculous on a desktop monitor. HTML + CSS solves all that.

Pdfs do more than preserve a print configuration. They also provide an electronic version of a document independent of a larger network, one that can't easily be sealed behind a paywall or removed altogether at the whim of the network owner. That's what matters the most to me (although I appreciate the format preservation as well). Pdfs do exactly what I want: allow for a personally owned electronic library as close as possible to my physical one while providing the huge advantage of digital storage.

I also use a Kindle to read my pdf files on the go, and it works out just fine for me. Sorry it causes you problems, but I will die on PDF Hill over any other digital format.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah. That's what set me off initially. I'm generally more familiar with OSR-style easy-to-run modules and in a fit of nostalgia started looking over some of my Call of Cthulhu and Trail of Cthulhu modules. They are the epitome of walls of text you have to dig and dig and dig through to get anything useful.

When many of them could just as easily be presented as:

[X] dabbled in something they should not have and unleashed [Y] into the world. You have to follow the clues to piece together what happened and prevent [Y] from destroying [Z].

Now here's a list of far too many NPCs, a few locations with bad maps, and the most convoluted and largely irrelevant backstory we could come up with.

Good luck.

Presenting those products the way you prefer would result in a significant loss of detail and general lore, information I value greatly. Your way actively removes material I want, and how valuable the format change would be is just as subjective as how valuable the lost lore would be.

 

[Vael]

There's a skill to reading. That recipe for engineers scrambled my brain, and while I got it after a moment, I'm used to reading more conventional recipes, and that grid was not noticeably easier for me to understand. I used to navigate via those map books, but I also once nearly gave a friend a panic attack when I asked them to look at one and check for an alternate route when we got bogged down in traffic. This is all to say that I get why a more .... prosaic approach (as in a very prose and fiction first approach) can make for an easier initial read than just boiled down bare bones data.

Paizo was definitely my go to for an example of overwritten prosaic adventure paths, several times I'd read about intricate NPC backstories and prior history with no idea of how to deliver such information to the players, but I haven't read a Paizo AP since Kingmaker, so I don't know how or if they've changed after such a long time.

 

[Bill Zebub]

There's a skill to reading.

Conversely, there's a "skill" to reading graphical presentations.

But I don't prefer that language because it suggests people are unskilled, as opposed to thinking differently and preferring information that is already structured in the way they think.

 

[Bill Zebub]

After more thought: even if I have no intention of running an adventure, or using a setting, and am only reading it to enjoy imagining the alternate world, I still prefer terse/structured/graphical presentation.

Perfect example of this is Neverland by Andrew Kolb. Absolutely one of the most brilliant RPG supplements I've ever seen. I enjoy reading it, even though I will probably never run it, but if I ever did run it then it would be a breeze to do so because it is so well structured.

I loved that book so much I bought his subsequent Wonderland, even though I definitely know I will never run that. And I'll probably eventually get Oz and not run that, either.

 

[overgeeked]

Sigh. Because of course.

Here's a [+] thread for people who want to actually talk about good information design in modules.

Thread 'Best practices for easy-to-run modules [+]'

Yesterday at 9:25 PM

The [+] is to keep things positive and prevent the already tired arguments about preferences and this style of module. This thread is for people who like this style of information design and want to talk about it. There are plenty of other threads to hate on things you don’t like.

Branching off of this thread.

Several modules were talked about in the other thread, many OSR modules were mentioned. So it's worth reading some of the posts there for modules to check out.

But, moving ahead to talking about actual module design, what are some ways modules can use...

• overgeeked
• Replies: 22
• Forum: *TTRPGs General

• 

 

[Bill Zebub]

Sigh. Because of course.

Here's a [+] thread for people who want to actually talk about good information design in modules.

Thread 'Best practices for easy-to-run modules [+]'

Yesterday at 9:25 PM

The [+] is to keep things positive and prevent the already tired arguments about preferences and this style of module. This thread is for people who like this style of information design and want to talk about it. There are plenty of other threads to hate on things you don’t like.

Branching off of this thread.

Several modules were talked about in the other thread, many OSR modules were mentioned. So it's worth reading some of the posts there for modules to check out.

But, moving ahead to talking about actual module design, what are some ways modules can use...

• overgeeked
• Replies: 22
• Forum: *TTRPGs General

• 

Maybe somebody else could also start an "[+] Ode to Long Form Prose RPG Modules" thread.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sigh. Because of course.

Here's a [+] thread for people who want to actually talk about good information design in modules.

Thread 'Best practices for easy-to-run modules [+]'

Yesterday at 9:25 PM

The [+] is to keep things positive and prevent the already tired arguments about preferences and this style of module. This thread is for people who like this style of information design and want to talk about it. There are plenty of other threads to hate on things you don’t like.

Branching off of this thread.

Several modules were talked about in the other thread, many OSR modules were mentioned. So it's worth reading some of the posts there for modules to check out.

But, moving ahead to talking about actual module design, what are some ways modules can use...

• overgeeked
• Replies: 22
• Forum: *TTRPGs General

• 

Keep in mind this thread is not specifically about how great the kind of presentation of information you prefer is. It's a discussion of the two primary philosophies of adventure-writing. The topic invites differing points of view. Not really sigh-worthy IMO.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Keep in mind this thread is not specifically about how great the kind of presentation of information you prefer is. It's a discussion of the two primary philosophies of adventure-writing. The topic invites differing points of view. Not really sigh-worthy IMO.

No, but it has started to feel a little hostile, with a pretty explicit correlation between "not wanting to read a lot of text" and "lazy GM".