Boxed Text

[Morrus]

To be fully honest, as a player, I find nothing more insulting than discovering a GM is trying to do this. It's usually the last time I play under that GM, and I usually leave the session mildly angry. If I wanted a story to be principally out of my own head, I'd run the #$%% game myself. I don't get much chance to be the player, because everyone always wants me to be the GM, so I really look forward to chances to just worry about my character and not the whole game world and be sweating to invent most or all of the narrative and purpose to the game. I want someone else to be doing most of the heavy lifting, and to enjoy being in their story and discovering things I did not and perhaps could not have imagined on my own.

For once, I don't want to be the secret keeper. I want to discover vast new vistas.

If I find out that in fact, I'm the one that has been doing the imagining and the DM has just been stringing me along, I feel like I've been slapped in the face.

Extreme!

 

[UselessTriviaMan]

I do read boxed text, but rarely word-for-word unless it's particularly well-written. I will sometimes read it aloud to myself during prep, just to see how it sounds coming from my own mouth. If it's bad, I'll come up with a better way to word it.

Paraphrasing one of my favorite podcasts (Happy Jack's FTW!), I try hard to provide lurid and evocative descriptions to the players.

 

[Nagol]

I use something like boxed text; a bullet point list of factors immediately obvious in the room and/or things I want conveyed to the group. The most important thing about the list is its order.

After writing the list, I review it and sort it in order of immediacy. Things threatening the explorers go first. Things in motion/making noise go next. Attractive, bright or obvious items next. Less overt though still apparent items are last.

The actual presentation to the group is extemporised to take into account preceding events and actions. The description I give should include all the original items in the list though.

Each area typically has a second list of bullet points for things to be found from exploration/interaction sorted in a similar order. Things that attack/threaten with trigger, things that move/potentially startle with trigger, things that beckon, lure or reward, and finally things that foreshadow or provide atmosphere I want conveyed.

 

[RedSiegfried]

To be fully honest, as a player, I find nothing more insulting than discovering a GM is trying to do this.

I'm 180 degrees different. As a player, if I feel like I have no input into the story of the game - that there's only one person whose story matters and it's not me, I'm usually not long for that group. I find nothing more boring than playing out someone else's novel that they've written in advance. Which I guess is why when I do use the boxed text as a DM I almost always put my own spin on it.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm 180 degrees different. As a player, if I feel like I have no input into the story of the game...

That's not 180 degrees different. That's a strawman. My complaint would be just as valid in a fully realized sandbox where their was no single narrative thread. Indeed, if anything, its even more striking in a situation where I'm expected to set narrative goals rather than commit to a single group narrative, as sandboxes require more preparation to pull off than adventure paths. The question is not whether or not I have agency as a player. The question is who is actually developing the content.

 

[aramis erak]

I like boxed text. Whether I use it or not is another matter. I just like to have the option in case I haven't had time to prep much or I'm just feeling lazy or not particularly creative or evocative that day. Thinking back, I seldom read the boxed text exactly as it's presented anyway.

I'll often use it if its decent. When I write up my own adventures, I do write it for my own use. (Keeping in mind my above list.) I'll often write it with conditional chunks, too.

Often, when running Star Trek, Traveller, or other military games, some of the boxed text is just a copy of player handouts - things like mission orders, library data, or canned response lookups...

 

[Jhaelen]

So write your own. I'm almost always homebrewing anyway.

I don't have to And, ditto!

In the case of a module, you aren't passing out text for players to read and then reading it to them.

Actually, I've seen DM's do exactly that: copy the boxed texts and hand them out to the players.

Think how much preparation goes into being able to achieve that illusion of improvisation.

I don't think I've said that it doesn't take preparation.
Actually, that's something else I'm very wary of: Many (inexperienced?) DM's seem to be under the illusion that buying a published module will let them get away with little or no prep-work. In my experience, that often results in a pretty bumpy session. At the very least, DM's should read the whole thing at least once before starting their first session and think carefully about the parts that the group is likely to encounter in the next session. To run a smooth session, look up everything that's ony included by reference before-hand and think about what _isn't_ covered by the module at all.

When I run a published module I often notice that I actually have to invest _more_ time to prepare for a session than when I've written my own adventure. That's because I make the module my own: I always adapt the introduction to fit the player characters and I usually make changes to the storyline and encounters, as well, to better match my campaign.

I also take the time in-between sessions to take down notes and make adjustments to incorporate the character's actions. Every action has a reaction: Depending on how the party approaches an adventure, the behaviour of their opposition may change.
Sometimes (rarely!) the authors of published adventures take this kind of thing into account, but all too often, npcs and monsters just sit around and follow their script, regardless what the player characters do.

I am not opposed to my player's ideas, inputs, and actions to affect my world/story/adventure design. In fact I typically place multiple hooks in my adventures to see which one they'll bite into, and sometimes they even get interested in something I didn't foresee and didn't deem important at all. I'm not above embracing their ideas and re-purposing these items of interest to give them the meaning that the player's feel they should have. After all, their ideas may actually be better than what I have had in mind, right? ;-)

I know full well, that my approach to DMing isn't your cup of tea, Celebrim, but I've found it works extremely well for the groups I've DMed for

 

[chaochou]

Yes, the perennial question - do you like "boxed text" (or "read-aloud text" or "color text") in your RPG adventures?

No. It's an artefact of early 'competitive' tournament play, where it serves the function of ensuring that 10 or 15 different DMs present situations to tables of players in a consistent manner. If there's just one GM and one group hitting a situation once, it's only remaining function is as a crutch.

 

[M.T. Black]

Good boxed text presents information in narrative voice, not dialogue.

Bad boxed text

• presents trigger information in the middle
• presents dialogue
• presents player dialogue

Aramis - what do you mean by "trigger information"?

 

[aramis erak]

Aramis - what do you mean by "trigger information"?

Information that triggers an immediate player reaction.

Such as "He draws his gun, and continues to berate you" - a significant number of players jump at the "He draws his gun" and attack...