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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flying Toaster" data-source="post: 9885185" data-attributes="member: 7052563">Unfortunately published D&D modules have long had a problem with excessive description and general verbosity.  The old TSR classics of the late 70s and early 80s were full of big thick slabs of Gygaxian purple prose.  Sometimes it was evocative and entertaining, but other times there would be huge unwieldy paragraphs describing room dimensions, architectural features, and furnishings in almost excruciating detail.  DMs would often rattle off these paragraphs in a dull monotone, and players had to try to listen carefully and decode them to see what was actually important or useful.When I was in seventh grade in the late 80s, a friend who had helped get me interested in D&D (and was two years older than me) ran a casual campaign of sorts for me, his younger brother (my age), and whoever else we could get.  He ran us through most of the iconic early AD&D modules, which I believe he had already experienced as a player.  Play could slow to a crawl as we listened to the lengthy room text and tried to figure out what we could do.  Sometimes the DM would realize that he had not done quite enough prep, and thus did not entirely understand the room description himself!  So we would have to wait while he read it silently to himself, and then read it out to us again with more clarity.  GM experience can help mitigate these problems somewhat, but it should not have been so difficult in the first place.  I cannot remember if the B/X and BECMI modules had the same issues.  OSR adventure writers seem to have realized that dense room descriptions were not something they wanted to revive or emulate, and many have embraced a much more terse and utilitarian style, leaving the GM to supply the flair and atmosphere as needed.</blockquote>

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