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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EpicureanDM" data-source="post: 9802789" data-attributes="member: 6996003">All the stuff I mentioned would make scenarios easier to run. Most of what's been discussed in this thread is low-hanging fruit that's been discussed for decades. The OP asked for "any ideas" in their first post. So I provided some ideas.I agree that keyed locations should be presented in numerical order.I don't think I said that everything in the scenario should be organized in random order. Why should a scenario's text assume the order in which physical locations will be encountered? I'm not saying a scenario can't point PCs in one direction or another, but why not just list them alphabetically in their own section called "Locations"? Same for the NPCs. Just have a section called "NPCs" and list them alphabetically. (I would also encourage lots of graphical elements like icons and symbols to tag locations and NPCs to make connections between them easier to remember.) GMs can just print or photocopy the pages they need for a given session. We should move past the era when "easy to run" means "don't need to flip back and forth in a book." As [USER=6988941]@Benjamin Olson[/USER] said:Many opinions about scenario presentation suffer unconsciously from this point of view. This isn't 1982 and people aren't publishing Champions II using typewriters and mimeographs. Why should we cling to the idea that a GM needs to have an entire physical book in front of them during a session? Design your product's pages so that sections can be printed and used without the book at the table. Tell GMs that's why your book is presented the way it is and encourage them to do that.I don't think this playtest information needs to be next to the scenario information it's describing. You could just have a separate section of the scenario called "What Usually Happened In Playtests."The point of repetition is to reinforce to GMs how different parts of your design connect to each other. GMs need to know this so that they can make sure these intentional connections emerge during play. But I don't mean that entire blocks of text should be copied and pasted. We agree that things like links or references should be the primary tools. But things like Revelation Lists benefit from repetition in the text.This is another unexamined bias that I wish we could move past. It's not explaining that books have maces instead of swords because of a fear of blood. It's explaining that the mooks have maces instead of swords because some PCs might have armor that's worse against maces. That's a bad example because I'm trying to use the one you gave me. It doesn't make sense in modern D&D/OSR even if it might have made sense in the AD&D days with Armor Class Adjustments for weapons.GMs would find scenarios easier to run if the designers spoke about the game design reasons behind why they wrote what they wrote, assuming they had them when creating the scenario. I suspect this level of intentionality and reflection is absent in most scenario design. I'd find it easier to run a scenario if a designer told me, for example, what function an NPC is meant to serve in the scenario assuming there is one.I don't think every element of every scenario requires this approach. But the GM should be behind the curtain with the designer. That's why I think the tone of scenario writing has to change altogether. Scenarios should be written as though the designer's explaining it to folks in a forum thread who have questions about how to run it. The need for discussions about "information design" would be greatly reduced if designers spoke directly to GMs about what different parts of the design are trying to achieve at the table.</blockquote>

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