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.