D&D General Keying and how we all do it?

[R_J_K75]

Content is more important than format for sure. Simple rooms are easy to run regardless of format. If a room is complex enough that the DM has to pore over it multiple times before grokking it, format doesn't matter that much. It's like obsessing over what order to stack the parts in an Ikea furniture box. If it's assembly-required (in the DM's brain), order doesn't matter much.

Restrictive formats like the OSE style mostly work by forcing the writer to cut stuff. The same information presented in standard sentences/paragraphs would work just as well.

E.g. Tim's kitchen room above would be just as easy to run like this:


Meanwhile here's a sanity-blasting (for the DM) room from Arden Vul. This is way too much regardless of format. Any rewrite to make this playable without prior study would have to cut stuff, not just present it differently:

The feasting hall entry is ridiculously long. Are other entries similarly as long?

 

[Gus L]

Content is more important than format for sure. Simple rooms are easy to run regardless of format. If a room is complex enough that the DM has to pore over it multiple times before grokking it, format doesn't matter that much. It's like obsessing over what order to stack the parts in an Ikea furniture box. If it's assembly-required (in the DM's brain), order doesn't matter much.

I tend to agree the difficulty is 1) keying complex rooms and 2) Keying simple rooms in less standard spaces. E.G. "4 orcs arguing about what's on the menu" is likely functional for a room in a stone dungeon beneath the ruined castle when orcs are your basic "evil monster-men". It won't work 1/2 as well if your orcs are dinosaur riders with a set of specific cultural details who have conquered a golden step pyramid of the ancients with walls filled with glowing crystal wafer circuitry. Both room features and orcs need some description at that point. Where one puts that description is another question.

Restrictive formats like the OSE style mostly work by forcing the writer to cut stuff. The same information presented in standard sentences/paragraphs would work just as well.

I think minimalism of all sorts generally works like this. I watched the current bullet point style emerge, and I don't hate it, but like the "4 orcs" example above I think it starts to break down when there's more characterization and detail needed to convey the space. It also requires some skill to do well - at least for publication/use by others.

Meanwhile here's a sanity-blasting (for the DM) room from Arden Vul. This is way too much regardless of format. Any rewrite to make this playable without prior study would have to cut stuff, not just present it differently:

Yeah Arden-Vul is an interesting one. It's really nice, but at the same time it has bits like this where the "High OSR" style from before the push for usability & design (which is again hard to get right and often fails) started being very critical of these kinds of "90's Dungeon Magazine/Ed Greenwood" style descriptions. This one at least includes a fair amount of useful detail.

 

[Gus L]

The feasting hall entry is ridiculously long. Are other entries similarly as long?

No - they tend on the longer side for what they are - very late TSR - but that one is exceptional. To some degree I have to forgive Arden Vul for this. Unlike a lot of other mega-dungeons it goes all in on Jaquaysian archeological complexity ... and it largely succeeds. It's a pretty amazing feat. The problem of course is that this means a lot more prep for referees then something like Stonehell or even ASE.

 

[R_J_K75]

"90's Dungeon Magazine/Ed Greenwood" style descriptions.

Come to think of it, Ed Greenwoods room descriptions in the original Undermountain boxed set were pretty long and IIRC, I had to read some a few times to parse everything out to run them as intended. Sometimes I just re-wrote and truncated some rooms.

 

[AlexofBarbaria]

No - they tend on the longer side for what they are - very late TSR - but that one is exceptional. To some degree I have to forgive Arden Vul for this. Unlike a lot of other mega-dungeons it goes all in on Jaquaysian archeological complexity ... and it largely succeeds. It's a pretty amazing feat. The problem of course is that this means a lot more prep for referees then something like Stonehell or even ASE.

I'm not convinced AV couldn't accomplish what people love about it (sense of deep history, complex, multi-level puzzles to solve) without requiring GMs to pre-read and highlight the rooms.

(I bought it and occasionally flip through trying to convince myself to run it, only to decide not to every time)

The only minimalist manifesto I'd like to see dungeon authors commit to is "this room should be playable without the GM reading it first". That's the promise of the giant prewritten sandbox -- the players have the freedom to choose their own path through reams and reams of material, and prep is light because the GM doesn't have to read it first! AV fails by this standard.

 

[Gus L]

I'm not convinced AV couldn't accomplish what people love about it (sense of deep history, complex, multi-level puzzles to solve) without requiring GMs to pre-read and highlight the rooms.

Absolutely, I think it would take a lot of prep to run Arden Vul no matter what. Even if the keys were streamlined in whatever one's preferred method is there's still so much dungeon, so many factions, so many interactions and so many connected details to the thing that it needs to be understood (or at least parts of it do) to run it...

but...

I think that's the point. The same can be said for AV's inspiration - the Caverns of Thracia. High detail, connectivity, interactivity, secrets, and faction intrigue what I personally think of as Jaquaysing (it's not really about making sure you have a certain number of loops in your map...). The style though takes referee investment, and it take forever to write up, especially when the dungeon grows and its complexity grows. Yet this style of design is I think the most compelling for exploration based dungeon crawling as it gives the players a lot to do over many sessions, allows for a larger variety of approaches and has the opportunity to create moments of wonder.

The only minimalist manifesto I'd like to see dungeon authors commit to is "this room should be playable without the GM reading it first". That's the promise of the giant prewritten sandbox -- the players have the freedom to choose their own path through reams and reams of material, and prep is light because the GM doesn't have to read it first! AV fails by this standard.

That's a very hard standard. While I think it's possible at the room key level, the overall dungeon will usually need at least a skim if you want something that has connectivity or even complex traps and puzzles. What I personally aim for (and again I tend to be a maximalist in adventure design) is keys that can generally be read and used straight off the page, but larger dungeons (over 10 rooms) that require a small amount of prep - say 10 minutes per hour of play. So a 10 key jewelbox dungeon is something one could just read as you run it, but might do better with a quick read over. A 50 key, five level dungeon will be more involved and the referee might need to read through it once and write down some notes. Of course a 50 room dungeon with that level of detail is also likely to last 10 or more sessions, and I've even seen small dense jewelboxes take 2 to 5. Arden Vul is like this on the grandest imaginable scale.

Basically the more engagement with the adventure one wants, the more details, interactive elements, and connections between keys it has ... the more engagement the referee needs to have with it during prep time. I don't think it works any other way. I'm not a big improvisational referee though - I suspect some of those folks can wing a complex adventure from a couple of notes.

 

[Piperken]

9. Kitchen. Wicked cutlery, rusty pots and pans, pantry. The skeletons here are busy cooking and cleaning 24-7.
Wicked cutlery. Every knife here is the equivalent to a dagger; they are all brutish and nasty. No butter knives here!
Pantry. The nearest 2 skeletons will attack anyone entering the pantry that isn't cleared to do so. Several pounds of normal foodstuffs, 3 vials of giant scorpion venom (DMG p#).
Skeletons x2d4+2 (The Monster Overhaul p#)
Sue the Chef, goblin master chef (Appendix p#)

No add'l text for the rusty pots and pans. Game terms are bolded where appropriate/ necessary. Having an appendix of custom monster/ treasure stat blocks allows me to format it and page-number it independently, which is a hold-over from when I published games: I could easily have a separate appendix for printing out that kind of thing, or even have separate appendices based on game system or whatever.

That particular entry is actually pretty wordy for what I normally do. There are often rooms/ areas that don't even need that much text: just the first line is enough. Populating the room comes down to roll tables for encounters, treasures, and maybe even secrets/ clues or some other custom table relevant to the adventure.

If I were to run this room, my questions are:

• Who assigned the skeletons these tasks, to what end? (This could be elsewhere like in an overview or the like; I'm presuming it's Sue?)
• Who is cleared to enter the pantry? There must be some number who are, as there are food stuffs that aren't spoiled. How is that done?

The first isn't a necessary detail for PCs who enter, but contextually could be valuable based on where this room is dropped into. Or be valuable to PCs in determining what kind of individual might choose to have this arrangement (a lazy cook?)

The second provides for some of the modes and avenues of engagement.

There's meat enough! I can see where a lot of ppl would be able to just go with this as is, and why it works for you.

 

[Piperken]

...That's a very hard standard. While I think it's possible at the room key level, the overall dungeon will usually need at least a skim if you want something that has connectivity or even complex traps and puzzles. What I personally aim for (and again I tend to be a maximalist in adventure design) is keys that can generally be read and used straight off the page, but larger dungeons (over 10 rooms) that require a small amount of prep - say 10 minutes per hour of play. So a 10 key jewelbox dungeon is something one could just read as you run it, but might do better with a quick read over. A 50 key, five level dungeon will be more involved and the referee might need to read through it once and write down some notes. Of course a 50 room dungeon with that level of detail is also likely to last 10 or more sessions, and I've even seen small dense jewelboxes take 2 to 5. Arden Vul is like this on the grandest imaginable scale.

Basically the more engagement with the adventure one wants, the more details, interactive elements, and connections between keys it has ... the more engagement the referee needs to have with it during prep time. I don't think it works any other way. I'm not a big improvisational referee though - I suspect some of those folks can wing a complex adventure from a couple of notes.

As a reader, I really appreciate thoughtfulness when someone takes what is dense and attempts through the choices they make in representing that information, to make it easier to parse for most readers (e.g. relationships/faction map, large maps broken up into smaller maps, a chapter on factions, their motivations, key figures, their lairs, how they could respond to something, random tables with intersections at their heart, etc).

Everyone will have their preferences ofc on what visually appeals and is effective or digestible, so ymmv, but I genuinely appreciate the attempt and consider the models the writer(s) outline.

Something like a mega dungeon or a campaign book would need to employ a variety of different tools or styles to get there I'd imagine; its format would have to be bespoke for each project. I couldn't imagine for example, writing an entire mega dungeon in rote bullet points, it'd get boring for me, and hard to look at! :3

 

[thirdkingdom]

I think minimalism of all sorts generally works like this. I watched the current bullet point style emerge, and I don't hate it, but like the "4 orcs" example above I think it starts to break down when there's more characterization and detail needed to convey the space. It also requires some skill to do well - at least for publication/use by others.


Yeah Arden-Vul is an interesting one. It's really nice, but at the same time it has bits like this where the "High OSR" style from before the push for usability & design (which is again hard to get right and often fails) started being very critical of these kinds of "90's Dungeon Magazine/Ed Greenwood" style descriptions. This one at least includes a fair amount of useful detail.

I've done and written a lot using OSE since it was published, and I gotta say that while I really appreciate it for what it does -- acting as a comprehensive, organized reference document -- the sparse bullet-point approach as begun to feel really cold and sterile. I've been moderating the main OSE Discord for awhile now, and it's been really eye-opening how the same 5-6 clarification questions pop up week after week. Things that could have easily been answered with more text and maybe some examples.

I've started toying with a box of text at the beginning of each entry, with basic information: first impression, what's in there, secrets, what happens in the PCs listen at the door (Sounds) what happens in the make a bunch of noise (Ruckus), etc. They're color coded: black means there's no light, yellow means sunlight/exposed to outside, orange or lantern-light, etc.).

Details are spelled out in the text below (what's the value of the stuff in the barrels and boxes, etc.

 

[Gus L]

I've been moderating the main OSE Discord for awhile now, and it's been really eye-opening how the same 5-6 clarification questions pop up week after week. Things that could have easily been answered with more text and maybe some examples.

So I hear you one OSE - I think it's a useful game text, but I also think it came a bit too late ... It originally designed at the beginning of the end of the G+ era. That is to say when OSE was written there was a fairly strong consensus in the largest part of the OSR that B/X was the preferred foundation for most people's fantasy games. The G+ era was heavily focused on bespoke setting and thematic rules hacks. OSE works great in this context. It's a good and useful game - I refer to the SRD all the time.

Unfortunately, since that time the OSR has broken apart, and OSE is not the reference/foundation text for a bunch of likeminded creatives in the same scene but oft promoted as the intro "OSR" (as a singular noun...ugh). There's little community and less consensus about the goals of play (so many folks moving to Trad from OSR, or trying to make it into a combat game like tournament AD&D...most claiming they represent the one true OSR (also ugh). OSE was not designed and isn't great for this environment - even the benign and positive part of it ... people coming from 5E or other more modern games and wanting to play an old school dungeon crawl but having a bunch of misconceptions about how to do it from video games or the RPGs they are used to (and there's nothing wrong with their ideas, but they also tend not to deliver much fun with OSE or other old school games).

<Old man done shouting at clouds>

TL&TMOMSAC ... DR:
I) I think a game with more instruction and flavor is what the spaces I see OSE most promoted in need, because it's too often people trying to use a chisel as a screw driver these days.
II) I think the bullet point style works for Gavin and a few others who know what they are down and write adventures that support it.

I've started toying with a box of text at the beginning of each entry, with basic information: first impression, what's in there, secrets, what happens in the PCs listen at the door (Sounds) what happens in the make a bunch of noise (Ruckus), etc. They're color coded: black means there's no light, yellow means sunlight/exposed to outside, orange or lantern-light, etc.).
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View attachment 409934

I was trying this same sort of matrix thing back at the end of 2013 through mid 2014 or so. I found the the problem with it is that not every entry needs all this data, and way its presented isn't that much more helpful to the referee (e.g. ceiling height only matters if it's too low to use certain weapons or so high things are hiding up there), and even disrupts comprehension of the room by being an fairly unnatural way for most people to absorb a bunch of unrelated data ... plus it takes up so much space!

Here's what mine looked like at it's best:

Now these days I still retain some of this - noting the light and threats next to the name of a room like this: