Box Text

[arscott]

Take a look at the intro section - there's some stuff there to read to the players. But you're right, I misremembered. Still traumatised by Necropolis. Hmm, I think Queen of the Demonweb Pits had some ok boxed text.

I'm Pretty sure that Gary only wrote the G and D portions of GDQ. Queen of the Demonweb Pits was by someone else.

I had this at the weekend - I played an RPGA game where the DM read all the boxed text in a monotone.

Monotone? Hell, I'm four units away from earning a theatre degree and I still can't make RPGA boxed text interesting.

We've all been done a horrible disservice by our sixth-grade English teachers. With them, the mantra was always "Description and More Description".

But good writing isn't about description. It's about clarity. In a choice between adding information and improving word flow, go with the flow every time. Imagination can fill in the gaps in an incomplete description. But a garbled description, no matter how complete, will disrupt the narrative flow and thus disrupt the imagination.

I'll provide some examples based on the Jester's boxed text:

A large mound of earth and stone, stained with blood and scattered with bits of dried grass, straw and hay, looms out of the mist. The corpse of some kind of large beast is rotting atop it, festooned with arrows and showing the signs of stab and chop wounds. From the smell, it has been here for a month or more.

how about:
A bloodstained mound of earth and stone looms out of the mist. Atop it lies the rotting corpse of a large beast, festooned with arrows.

The big problem with Jester's passage was "Some kind of". It's just filler--it doesn't make the sentence sound better, and it doesn't provide any information.

Conversely, "looms" and "festooned" are excellent. They provide a lot of flavor, but don't take up any more space than boring alternatives would.

The path leads to a clearing, roughly 20’ in diameter, with three other paths leading from it. Throughout the place, rosebushes grow, scenting the area with their delicate fragrance. Two statues of men with daggers upraised are in the place; the moldering, headless corpse of what appears to be a human woman lies near the entrance of one of the paths.

The delicate fragrance of roses wafts from a small clearing ahead. Within the clearing, rosebushes entwine two statues of cloaked men with daggers upraised. The headless corpse of a human woman moulders near the clearing edge. Three other paths lead further into the forest.

The Jester uses scent in his descriptions, which is excellent. But the scent only embellishes the visual he's already established. In real life, we'll smell or hear something before we see it, and the description should reflect that.

If you've got more than one adjective in front of a noun, as the Jester does in "moldering, headless corpse", try to turn one into a verb instead. Using verbs helps make the description more active.

And as for the other paths, never talk about the exits until it's time to leave the room. If there was a combat here, I'd wait on the paths until it was resolved.

 

[CharlesRyan]

I love boxed text, and I even write it into my own adventure notes.

I never read it verbatim, because even if I wrote it myself, it never comes out with the right rhythm or cadence--despite the fact that I'm both a decent writer and a decent speaker, it's nearly impossible to avoid that monotone sound when you're reading a snippit of exposition. Plus, eye contact with players is key when building a scene--and it's hard to make eye contact when your nose is deep in your notes.

So why bother? Because:

A) When well written, it succinctly encapsulates the initial impression of the encounter/area--not just the key facts (size of room, number of doors) but also (perhaps more importantly) the atmosphere and mood of the scene.

B) It's a great quick-reference; as GM you can scan through the adventure and get a sense of what's to come without reading full entries.

C) It's a great memory-jogger--even if you've read (or written) the whole thing before, it helps to have a few evocative sentences of text called out to put your head back into the scene.

The key to making it work is to keep it short (seriously--one or two sentences), never assume a particular point of view (a trick to success here: never use the word "you" in the text), and restrict yourself to just the impression a person would get in their first second or two on the scene. Additional details can follow in the main text, or even be called out in a second box to be referenced when the PCs are studying the scene more deliberately.

Seriously, I bet the 50/50 love/hate split among gamers probably correlates closely to the 50/50 good/really awful split of boxed text out there. Probably most of the people who hate it have had some bad experiences with boxed text--and given how much crappy boxed text has been published over the past 30 years, that shouldn't be a surprise.

 

[Quasqueton]

Conversely, "looms" and "festooned" are excellent. They provide a lot of flavor, but don't take up any more space than boring alternatives would.

See, I find such "flavor" wording . . . [I can't find the word I want, here]. . .unnecessary? It has the sound (when read aloud) of a novelist writing, not a DM describing.

I would say:

Through the mist, you see a large mound of earth and stone, stained with blood and scattered with bits of dried grass, straw and hay. On the mound is the rotting corpse of some kind of large beast, with many arrows sticking out of it. From the smell, it has been here for a while.

What’s the difference between straw and hay? And unless the bits of dried grass and hay has a purpose or meaning, I wouldn’t include it.

Too much “flavor” and flowery words in boxed makes it sound like it’s being read. You can convey a mood and scene without elaborate prose.

Quasqueton

 

[EricNoah]

Someone should start a "write boxed text for this picture" thread and then post photos of castles or some fantasy artwork or something. That might be a fun exercise.

 

[Quasqueton]

Box text is for when there is no picture to convey a scene.

I tell you what I'll do, though. Tonight, when I get home, I'll open up a classic module. I'll post the information for one room in that adventure, and let folks write the box text for it.

This makes me think of a question to ask in another thread. . .

Quasqueton

 

[Korgoth]

I would prefer bulleted points that present information in perceptive order... nothing is sillier than a paragraph that describes the hunting scene on the tapestry on the far wall and then mentions the giant ogre charging you from the middle of the room.

I'm thinking something like this:
Scent: A sickly sweet smell of rot combined with a pungent acidic odor emanate from entryways of this chamber.

Sound: A debased guttural mumbling can be heard.

Sight: In the center of this large, filthy, rag-strewn chamber sits a hulking humanoid with scabrous yellowed flesh and a feral visage of oily hair, beady eyes and large, dirty fangs (Ogre). It is mumbling to itself. Beside it sits a large club. A great decaying tapestry hangs on the far wall. The room is over 40' across.

That gives you the information you need in roughly the order you need it. Then, depending on surprise, etc. you can amend the description of the ogre's physical disposition or indicate, as they approach, that the mumbling abruptly stops.

 

[T. Foster]

Gygax's Necropolis (which, ironically, has been widely derided in this thread for its boxed text) does something like this -- for major encounters it has a boxed section labeled SHADOWS telling what characters can detect via various senses: Sight, Hearing, Auras, Detection (magical), Odors, Warnings, and Special.

 

[EricNoah]

Box text is for when there is no picture to convey a scene.

But if you have a picture in your head and you're trying to express it in writing ... that's where a photo would be a helpful frame of reference. To see what details different writers picked up on and conveyed in their boxed text.

 

[Quasqueton]

But if you have a picture in your head and you're trying to express it in writing ... that's where a photo would be a helpful frame of reference. To see what details different writers picked up on and conveyed in their boxed text.

I think that kind of “competition” would be counter-productive for a box text discussion. There’s a big difference between creative writing (describing a picture) and box text writing (functionally convey basic environment information).

For instance, box text should describe an orc as “an orc”. Creative writing should describe much more. Box text is lousy creative writing, and creative writing is lousy box text.

Quasqueton

 

[arscott]

I dunno, Quas... Sterile boxed text can be as bad as florid boxed text, and creative writers often fail by writing "greenish, hideously slavering hulking monstrosity" when they should stick with "orc".

That said, I think a room description will give more room for creativity and is a better indicator of what elements of the room are important to establish.