Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="T. Foster" data-source="post: 2926681" data-attributes="member: 16574">I hate almost all read-aloud boxed text in modules, especially when it assumes PC actions (which no right-thinking player would ever do -- "as you pluck an apple from the tree and bite into it you find the taste quite refreshing" wtf?!) or, worst of all, includes canned "dialogue" for NPCs, often complete with some sort of ridiculous 'accent' or other speech affectation. Reading this kind of stuff makes me want to gouge my eyes out, and I can't imagine actually reading it to a group of players (and, as a player, know all too well how horrible it is when the DM does try to read it 'straight' -- nothing takes me out of the game faster than the DM reciting a column or two of boxed description, or, absolutely worst of all, a canned NPC speech -- the prevalence of boxed narrative text is one of the big reasons I stopped playing in rpg tournaments 15 or so years ago). The best sort of boxed text, IMO, just summarizes the main features of the room that would be apparent at first glance (and, thus, doesn't need to be put in read-aloud format at all). I make an exception for 'scene setting' boxed text at the beginning of the dungeon/adventure (such as the first-view description of the Caves of Chaos in module B2, or of the Temple of Elemental Evil in module T1-4) which can do a great job of setting the mood, but on a room-by-room or encounter-by-encounter basis I find boxed text is rarely helpful and often extremely annoying.I already described my prefered alternative room-description format (from the RuneQuest module Snakepipe Hollow) in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=167493" target="_blank">this thread</a> so I'm not going to repeat it here.</blockquote>

Verification