Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8801601" data-attributes="member: 7006">The hardest part about how to do spell write-ups is finding the middle ground between being concise and quick in the language for easy understanding, while at the same time making the language interesting enough to read as a type of literature.We've have decades wherein players have said that they used to just read the AD&D books as books... even if they never played the game itself.  There was a feeling one could get, a falling into the fantasy, of reading things like the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.  That's something that I think many players still wish to maintain when it comes to these books.  As made obvious with an edition like 4E where it was exceedingly good as a rulebook-- giving precise rules on how to bring the things into the game-- but had that technical manual quality in many ways that some people said felt antiseptic.  The "fantasy" got lost in the fast descriptions because the writing was more about highlighting the numbers rather than provoking emotions of the game.So finding that place between fantasy literature that reads well but obfuscates the rules needed to get across, and technical jargon that makes understanding easy and quick but doesn't highlight the essence of what these rules are trying to describe... is the sweet spot everyone is looking for.  I honestly don't know what the right answer oftentimes is supposed to be.  Because even the Knock example you gave is a wonderful representation of the issue-- the second version is clear and makes what the spell is trying to do very easy to understand... but at the same time in the PHB version that tells us all the different types of objects that can get unlocked... I get a definite vision in my head of all of these things along with what happens when the spell goes off-- the lock pops open, the manacles fall off the wrists, the chest latch flips up, etc.  My inner eye is visualizing all of these things in a fantasy context because of the more in-depth language.  And having that view from my inner eye gives me ideas of where and when a spell like this can be used, and thus the kinds of narration that I'll bring forth to make the images to my players more visually interesting.At some point you certainly can go overboard, and I thus would not be averse to taking the PHB version and editing it down a little bit... but I also have the fear of the second version just not catching my interest as a fantasy reader as easily and thus we lose some of the emotion and feeling when the spell is used.</blockquote>

Verification