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<blockquote data-quote="jeffh" data-source="post: 6564105" data-attributes="member: 2642">I was just thinking this morning about how Every. Single. Area description. in Every. Single. Paizo product buries the lede.(And I probably shouldn't single out Paizo, they're just the first to come to mind.)The stuff the GM needs most in order to run the encounter is never at the beginning of the description and only sometimes clearly called out in some other way. Boxed text goes into great detail about what the furniture looks like and who likely built it but never even mentions that &quot;Oh, by the way, there's also a frickin' glabrezu demon in the middle of the room and it's eating your face as we speak&quot;. That's always like three paragraphs into the GM notes, after a bunch of at best moderately interesting background stuff that the players are almost certain to never interact with.So, in at least partial agreement with Zak, as usual. (And yet I can't stop acquiring the things, even when I know the only part I'll ever even consider using is the maps.)I think Zak underestimates how much more creative he is than the typical gamer and therefore also underestimates the audience that modules could/should be useful to. But one thing he is spot-on about is that the people designing them and laying them out seem to give surprisingly little thought to practical usability at the table. I don't know what else you'd ever consider if that was your job, but apparently they've thought of something. There's got to be a better way to package them than the ones 90% of the industry is using. And most of the innovation there seems to be coming from, of all places, the OSR.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="jeffh, post: 6564105, member: 2642"] I was just thinking this morning about how Every. Single. Area description. in Every. Single. Paizo product buries the lede. (And I probably shouldn't single out Paizo, they're just the first to come to mind.) The stuff the GM needs most in order to run the encounter is never at the beginning of the description and only sometimes clearly called out in some other way. Boxed text goes into great detail about what the furniture looks like and who likely built it but never even [B]mentions[/B] that "Oh, by the way, there's also a frickin' glabrezu demon in the middle of the room and it's eating your face as we speak". That's always like three paragraphs into the GM notes, after a bunch of at best moderately interesting background stuff that the players are almost certain to never interact with. So, in at least partial agreement with Zak, as usual. (And yet I can't stop acquiring the things, even when I [I]know [/I]the only part I'll ever even consider using is the maps.) I think Zak underestimates how much more creative he is than the typical gamer and therefore also underestimates the audience that modules could/should be useful to. But one thing he is spot-on about is that the people designing them and laying them out seem to give surprisingly little thought to practical usability at the table. I don't know what [I][B]else[/B][/I] you'd ever consider if that was your job, but apparently they've thought of something. There's got to be a better way to package them than the ones 90% of the industry is using. And most of the innovation there seems to be coming from, of all places, the OSR. [/QUOTE]

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