Modules: Made to Read vs Made to Run?

I’ve been looking at a lot of modules lately and something quickly became glaringly obvious.

There are two broad categories of modules: those meant to be read and those meant to be run.

Now, of course, those meant to be read are also eventually meant to be run by some fraction of buyers, but the priority is making the module a pleasure to read first and foremost. Large walls of text that flow well together. But, the amount of reading, highlighting, note taking, re-reading, rewriting, etc you’d need to do to make those modules even barely functional to run at the table is astronomical. At a guess, most referees complaining about vast amounts of prep are running modules and having to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy beating these kinds of modules into shape.

Then there are those meant to be run. Modules that do everything they can to make running them at the table as easy as possible. Page layout and design, information packaging, information structure, information design, lots of bullet points, succinct writing, effective use two-page spreads, repeating maps or fragments, bold important bits, etc. These are the kinds of modules you can run right from the book without having to pour hours of work into beforehand. At present, these kinds of easy-to-run modules are mostly restricted to the OSR/NSR scenes.

Why most modules still use page after page of giant walls of text you have to repeatedly pick through to actually find information is beyond me. Apparently there's a large enough audience of people who buy modules just to read that most publishers just cater to that crowd instead of the referees actually running them. Surely the people actually running the things are doing far more to promote these games than the people who're just buying and reading them.

I'm curious as to why? Why are these easy-to-run modules effectively absent from the broader hobby?

I also want to dig into the details of the easy-to-run modules, specifically the presentation. Making important information easier to find on the page. Making the module easier to use at the table.

All that jazz. What do you got?

I don't even bother with the wall-of-text modules anymore. Just not interested.

EDIT: Here's the thing...even if I never actually run a module (or a setting) I get just as much, if not more, pleasure from reading the ones that are designed to be easy-to-run, without the walls of text. When I read bullet-point summaries of backstories, NPCs, map locations, etc., the thing that I envision is just as detailed and rich as the wall-of-text version. But I read it faster, and I get more content in fewer pages. And I have a clearer understanding of because I'm not trying to pick important details out of a lot of extraneous prose.

Well the market leader is WotC, who seemingly have a suitable marketing budget to promote about three "big dumb campaign" type books a year, which then quickly get read and reviewed by influencer types who haven't actually tried to run them, make most their sales before many people have actually gotten far into them, and are probably profitable more as a driver of interest in the core books and other goods and services then as products in and of themselves.

Also module presentation is based on what the people creating it themselves have read and are used to. Tradition runs strong.

And of course even if the presentation of a module to the gamemaster is needlessly bizarre, belabored, and byzantine, the end user experience for the players can be awesome, which often leaves the gamemaster also feeling good about the experience of the module which so carelessly abused their time and attention.

But I personally have never really experienced modules that weren't a pain to run. The idea intrigues me...

I feel like sometimes the author had an interesting idea for a story and they got so wrapped up in the telling of it that they almost forgot they were making a game, that or their story just didn’t translate well into a game.

The big pet peeve I have is when the module doesn’t have a succinct adventure summary at the start. I don’t want to have to read the whole body of work to learn what it’s about.

I hate, hate, hate reviews of scenarios made by those who haven't actually run through them as either a GM or a player.

overgeeked said:

Now, of course, those meant to be read are also eventually meant to be run by some fraction of buyers, but the priority is making the module a pleasure to read first and foremost. Large walls of text that flow well together. But, the amount of reading, highlighting, note taking, re-reading, rewriting, etc you’d need to do to make those modules even barely functional to run at the table is astronomical.

Click to expand...

What comes to immediate mind are scenarios with a lot of background information the GM gets to read about but there's no suggestions for how the PCs are expected to learn it.

overgeeked said:

Why most modules still use page after page of giant walls of text you have to repeatedly pick through to actually find information is beyond me. Apparently there's a large enough audience of people who buy modules just to read that most publishers just cater to that crowd instead of the referees actually running them.

Click to expand...

In truth, whether I'm running a published scenario or something of my own devising, I make a spreadsheet with important locations and NPCs I expect the PCs to run into. I'll have little notes next to the NPC name reminding me of why they're relevant and it helps me keep track of everything.

As an aside, the “meant to be read” phenomena isn’t restricted to modern trends. Was reading D&D, Runequest and WFRP modules in a 1982 issue of White Dwarf and, you guessed it: walls of dense paragraph text. Sure it wasn’t really purple prose all of the time, but it definitely was not easy to use at the table.

Bae'zel said:

As an aside, the “meant to be read” phenomena isn’t restricted to modern trends. Was reading D&D, Runequest and WFRP modules in a 1982 issue of White Dwarf and, you guessed it: walls of dense paragraph text. Sure it wasn’t really purple prose all of the time, but it definitely was not easy to use at the table.

Click to expand...

I think there's a difference between "meant to be read" and "not well-designed for use". I don't think anybody deliberately makes an adventure which is hard to run, and nobody writes one thinking "I want people to read this, not run it". Just like nobody deliberately makes a bad movie.

It takes an awful lot more time to run and adventure than to read it. Therefore, the market for easy-to-read adventures is larger than that for easy-to-run ones. (And Paizo, at least, reported for years that far more people bought their adventure paths to be read than ever actually ran them.)

Also, pretty much any adventure has to be read first. So if it's not easy-to-read, it's liable to end up on the unused pile - where it's not really of any use to anyone.

I'm not sure N2 The Forest Oracle falls into those two categories.

There's probably a third "chuck it in a bin" category.

Bae'zel said:

As an aside, the “meant to be read” phenomena isn’t restricted to modern trends.

Click to expand...

I must have missed the part where this claim was made.

Yes, I agree. In fact, it feels more dated to me rather than modern. If I open a wall-of-text supplement it feels very 80s to me. Then I close it.