Modules: Made to Read vs Made to Run?

[Celebrim]

Most of my prep time is spent reading something like what your wrote there and transcribing that to my prep notes that read like:[

Steps 20 feet down, Dusty. Quiet.
DC 10 Investigation—-> Scratches.

I admit to liking that as a short note better than I like the stuff written with multiple fonts and parenthetical asides and out of natural language order. However, I also don't feel the advantage of your note is enough to make it worth the effort. My effort would probably be in adding more detail to that bare bones encounter because I hate bare rooms. You'll note even my short rewrite changed the encounter area a bit. The immediate note I see a need of is what is the source of the odor, since that is in a separate encounter area. (And if mildew is not in an adjacent encounter area, that's an oversight by the designer.)

But again, as you say, we have different things we like.

 

[BruceWright]

I definitely get the resistance to a bare-bones, even anodyne adventure. I find such things bloodless and cold and I often have to work hard to create an adventure worth running. So I certainly get that.

But also I read adventures where I have no real idea what’s going on, because the story is just kind of seeded in keyed areas and encounters and I have to imagine some adventurers going through it and looking at everything before it clicks… “oh, this adventure is a metaphor for the grief of losing a child. Got it.”

Summaries would help. Notes from the author and suggestions of how to run this. Themes. Metaphors. Guiding principles. Inspirations. Tone.

And maybe all the flavorful writing that you like, but then also a map with cues for quick reference.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Definitely. Nowhere am I saying that I am "right" about liking terse, information-dense formats. It's just what I happen to like.

That said, I don't think there is necessarily a contradiction between "Easy to Read" and "Easy to Run". I personally find the Easy to Run modules also Easy to Read, or at least easier than wall-of-text modules.

"Wall of text" itself is hardly a neutral term. Someone might as well call the style you prefer "bullet-point hell".

 

[Micah Sweet]

One thing reading this thread presses home for me is just how vastly different people's tastes, preferences and needs are as GMs.

I have looked at a lot of the examples that are raised as being made well and presenting information well, and I loathe them with all of my being. I feel insulted by the texts, that they are unfinished outlines where I'm left to do all the hard parts of making the idea come to life after the content creator has done the easy part of coming up with ideas. I feel the style is goofy and the adventure railroad-y and often inferior to the 1e AD&D module that inspired it. The staccato blips of micro-information with its bold fonts and frequent formatting changes just is oppressive to read. I like none of it.

But if it works at someone's table, OK, that's fine. It's just, please don't tell me that the stuff I like is hard to run and this stuff easy and well organized.

Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of loaded terms used to describe whatever style the poster doesn't care for. People clearly have strong feelings on this issue.