Box Text

[Oryan77]

Wow, I had no idea a large amount of people didn't like when DM's read box text.

I had a player once that actually complained to me that I was reading the descriptions of a room rather than giving the description off the top of my head and wording it myself. I don't read in a monotone voice...at least I don't think I do. She complained about everything and eventually quit the group, so I wrote that complaint off as her just complaining again because I DM'ed differently than her last DM.

A big part of my DM'ing style is to be descriptive and attempt to absorb the players into the environment so they get a feel for the mood of the place & can get a good mental image of their surroundings. I believe this is a must when running a Planescape campaign since everything is so different from session to session. I usually read boxed text and then I explain it again in my own words just to spicen it up more.

Now I'm wondering what bad boxed text is! None of my current players complain, they seem to listen to it everytime I read boxed text. I have no idea what's too long, too boring, or too descriptive. I've read on Enworld before that you should describe sounds & smells in boxed text every so often. So, I'll be brave and post my latest boxed text that I wrote myself just to get some criticism...so is this considered bad boxed text:

(This is the first time they've entered into this coastal town on Arborea. They also don't know what happened to Rheen the Satyr that they captured & turned in for a bounty to a Merchant sailing ship.)

***While walking down the cobblestone street, you notice that this small coastal town boasts an amphitheater with a bowl-shaped set of marble seats all carved out of a hillside just outside the town. Houses within the town are stacked almost on top of one another on each side of the narrow streets. Both pleasant & foul scents such as fish, vineyards, sea water, & a multitude of other aromas can be smelled in the air.

As you pass through what appears to be the town square, you notice many young scholars debating issues of the day within a large rotunda. A slight breeze blows in the air & you catch a foul stench crossing your path. Glancing around, you find the source of the odor. On the edge of the town square, you see a limp dead body dangling from a 20 ft wooden post. It appears to be a male with the legs of a goat. His arms are stretched above him & tied to the top of the post. A wooden sign nailed to the post below the body has the following message burned into the wood: Here hangs Rheen, creature of lust & violator of the body, executed for past crimes of which, there are too many to name. Let mighty Zeus judge him, and punish his soul as he sees fit.***

Now I'm not a writer, so please don't judge me on my grammar or anything like that. I'm just wondering if this is bad boxed text for a group that's 50% roleplaying & 50% hack-n-slash. What makes this good or bad?

 

[Voadam]

I like boxed text that tells the PCs what they see.

I dislike boxed text that tells the players how they feel or react. That's for the players to decide IMO.

 

[Henrix]

I'm just wondering if this is bad boxed text for a group that's 50% roleplaying & 50% hack-n-slash. What makes this good or bad?

If I had encountered it in a published adventure I would have winced. (No, I wouldn't. I have seen so much worse....)

It deprotagonizes the PCs. It is a long episode where 80% of the people in the room are supposed to do nothing.

But, generally, text written by the DM isn't as bad as text written by someone else and read word for word by the DM.

A slight breeze blows in the air & you catch a foul stench crossing your path. Glancing around, you find the source of the odor.

Deprotagonisation at work. Why not allow the PCs to look around for themselves? And if they don't, and it is important, give more hints that they should look.

Parcel things out. Allow for player input. Build tension.

A long stretch like that is like what happens in a computer game when you suddenly loose control over your character(s) and a movie starts - frustrating.

That said, anything that makes the group happy is good. Some people, some DMs, can read a text and make it dramatic. I'm not one of them, and neither are most of my friends.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I like boxed text, assuming it is done properly. I seldom read it word-for-word, but it generally has some good description I can use while paraphrasing. Some is even well written enough it doesn't need to be paraphrased!

Bad boxed text -- either inconsistent description, or the kind that assumes the PCs take specific action -- is annoying, but easy enough to skip over.

 

[Oryan77]

Deprotagonisation at work. Why not allow the PCs to look around for themselves? And if they don't, and it is important, give more hints that they should look.

Hey, thanks for the critique! The reason I would rather mention what they see "as they glance around" in box-text is because I don't want to beat around the bush. Rather than spend game time dealing with players telling me, "I look around, what do I see?" I cut to the chase and just tell them important visuals they would obviously see around them. I don't see it as controlling their actions since I assume people look around rather than stare at the ground (unless a woman in a red dress walks by...then I assume all eyes are on her).

If I have an important visual in the area, it's going to waste a lot of game time if I have to provoke the PC's into simply looking over in a general direction or wait for them to tell me they "look around". I see box text as a way to eliminate unnecessary player/DM interaction and get to the good stuff.

I kind of disagree that box text causes people to sit around doing nothing. The biggest part of D&D is using your imagination. Just because you're not physically moving your arms or your mouth at the table doesn't mean you're not doing anything. When a DM reads a description to me, my imagination is doing something & I'm not bored at all unless his description is bad

I realize it's just a difference in playstyle though. I have had a player that would mouth off in the middle of me describing a scene because he didn't care...he just wanted to roll dice and fight something.

 

[Michael_R_Proteau]

No matter how well-written, a writer is not going to match my natural speaking cadence with boxed text. So reading the boxed text becomes obvious to a careful listener whether or not the DM reads ina monotone or not, because the reading will be in a different cadence than the DM's natural speech pattern.

I don't mind if a published adventure includes boxed text, but I will paraphrase it not read it to keep my natural cadence and flow. I have played with a guy who joked every time a DM/GM read boxed text that someone in the group must have cast a "detect boxed text" spell, or would announce during play-"I enter the room and cast detect boxed text, what do I find out?" Even without commentary like that it becomes obvious this is an exposition moment in the game.

The challenge-if it is indoors-what light source will the players use? Do I write a boxed text for a torch, another for a lantern, another for darkvision, another for some magical light source etc. They all have different radius of illumination so a player at a door in a dungeon room will not see as much if using a torch with a 20 ft. illumination as a lantern with 30 ft. If it's a 30 x 30 room, you can't see the far corner with a torch but could with a lantern.

If it is an outdoors encounter-do I write one boxed text if it is daytime and several for night time woith different illuminations? Do I write one for each possible weather condition? One for each possible light source again?

Even well-written boxed text cannot possible account for all the various possibilities and variables that adventuring in that environment can present. I much prefer all the relevant description information be presented in the first paragraph in fairly straightdforward terms (I would actually prefer a bullet list rather than prose actually) that allows me as DM (or any DM) to process the information and customize it to the specifics of the group playing.

So instead of:

You look in the doorway and see a 30 ft. x 30 ft. room with an overturned table and trash littered over the floor. A doorway stands opposite you in the south wall, and a pile of sacks are stacked in the corner. A stench of rotting flesh fills the room.

I would rather have something like this:
-30 x 30 room
-doors in north and south wall
-overturned table hides a kobold corpse on the south side
-trash litters floor
-stack of sacks in southeast corner
-no lightsource except what party brings in
-room stinks of rotting flesh, may be detected as they approach form the corridors in either direction

..and then go into details and mechanics of that particular room that the party would discover by exploration rather than upon a casual sweep of the room from the doorway.

-M

 

[Prince of Happiness]

I like boxed text that tells the PCs what they see.

I dislike boxed text that tells the players how they feel or react. That's for the players to decide IMO.

That's been my rule for boxed text. If it's just too dumb, useless, the situation has changed (or I'm drunk) I can it and paraphrase.

 

[el-remmen]

I like the room description in a box, but rarely if ever read it, but rather paraphrase it as I draw the room out on the battlemat, pointing out important features as I draw them.

 

[Delta]

So, I'll be brave and post my latest boxed text that I wrote myself just to get some criticism...so is this considered bad boxed text:

You've got kind of a different problem there, because you're trying to encapsulate a description of a whole town there. Most boxed text under discussion is in a dungeon describing a single room. In fact, I've never seen a "boxed text" description for a whole town in any published adventure. You're kind of going off in a unique (and separately interesting) problem-area with what you're trying to do.

 

[smerwin29]

One thing to try if you do have to write boxed text: avoid using the word "you." This mostly eliminates any tendencies to tell the PCs what they do or how they feel. It also tends to eliminate "lazy" writing; it really makes you look at the scene you are setting in a new way.