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Yeah. The fireball described in AD&D is more like an instantaneously expanding, transient magical fire cloud. That’s not bad per se, but it doesn’t align with what I have in mind when I think of fireball. The B/X version is much closer.

I’m only using “blandness” as a point of reference. Personally, I more of a fan of the B/X version (and those similar to it). The more I try to think about the AD&D version, the less sense it makes to me.

I really liked Halls of the Blood King, but there were a few times I had trouble finding information when I needed it. Running a room as it came up? Worked great. Needing to go back? Less so. In retrospect, I should have prepared supplement notes for the NPCs, so I could have keyed entries for...

I’ll let @Reynard share any particular examples he has in mind, but the Shadowdark quickstart is free and has a bunch of monsters in it.

I guess my point of confusion is you said you wanted the flavor text to remain and then cited the whole description with the mechanics. It seems like if one resolves the redundancy by removing the mechanics from the description, that compromises the flavor. Hmm, let me give this a try. A...

I think where we differ is I see everything after that as mechanics mixed in with the flavor text. It think it would be redundant to include both the abbreviated notation and the plain language restatement. One possible compromise is integrating the annotations into the plain language like...

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...

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.) I believe it’s implied by 4e’s rules for ranged attacks. It’s arguable whether that second part is...

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.

How “poor” is an aesthetic argument. There are obviously different preferences for what level of detail is needed. (Personally, I tend to favor brevity.)

(I’m traveling, so replies may be delayed until I’m stuck on the plane again with nothing better to do.) I’d like to separate the discussion of organization from 4e in particular. @TheSword posted an example in post #97 of a wonderfully evocative spell description. Instead of focusing on 4e or...

It seems like no matter what they do, it’s going to be wrong. 4e just triggers that kind of response in people. 🤷🏻‍♂️

All 5e says for magic missile is, “You create three glowing darts of magical force. Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range.” Is that also sterile? Is the description of eyes of the vestige in post #75 sterile? Being bland doesn’t make the descriptive element...

The evocative part is at the top, followed by the mechanics. One can complain that the magic missile fluff is poor, but it is there.

This touches on something I’ve been thinking about. Everyone needs to be taught how to play/run the game. Perhaps text books (and other learning material) could be a source of design ideas. Instead of approaching the game like a instruction book, write it as a guide to learning how to play...