Modules: Made to Read vs Made to Run?

[BruceWright]

That reads as rather unkind, if you're unaware, and makes assumptions that your feelings in this area are objectively superior to others.

Then let me retract that phrasing and replace it with the objective statement that many companies including Wizards will pay writers based on word count, and leave others to draw their own conclusions on how that impacts the final product.

 

[Umbran]

I have to agree with @zakael19 here. I don't think the tradeoff you see is intrinsic or necessary. Modules can be both easy to run AND have that kind of complexity.

What's the example that proves your assertion correct?

To me it's the difference between long paragraphs explaining a faction's backstory, versus a standard template that lists a faction's key characteristics, it's relationships with other factions, and its goals.

1) Yes, but we are looking for both readability (for which prose paragraphs are best) and playability (standard templates being useful here) - you look to be prioritizing the latter, which isn't meeting the brief.

2) We are talking about many individual NPCs, with detailed (inter)personal histories, relationships, and motivations, not generalized factions with sketchily defined members.

3) You then have a choice - pull out all the faction information in one place, separate from the map and key (requiring frequent page flipping for reference, not good for reading), put all the faction information in every individual keyed area they appear (playable, but redundantly wasteful of print space, also not really readable), or put partial information in the keyed areas as you expect it will be needed (readable, but making reference difficult if you need the information at some other point), or some admixture (a readable and playable version of which is not certain to exist).

Information design for multiple intended uses at the same time isn't easy. Compromises and creativity are likely required. There's a reason why information design these days is a job-marketable skill, rather than a solved problem.

 

[Bill Zebub]

What's the example that proves your assertion correct?

Ha. Good one.

You're a smart enough guy to know both that I can't prove you wrong (as it were...) and that my failure to do so would not prove you right.

I can't, of course, provide such an example, because there isn't (as far as I am aware) an example of a module being done well in two different versions, one of each style. Any module that I were to propose in the terse, information-dense, easy-to-parse form in the style I prefer could easily be dismissed as "Yeah, but not as good as it would have been in long form." And even if I went through the trouble of taking, oh, let's say Marmoreal Tomb (god save me) and rewriting it in such a style, a naysayer could easily say, "You left out the word verdant. Now we might as well be playing a board game."

The argument can't be won by evidence. EDIT: At least, not in a way that would convince an already decided partisan. EDIT2: That wasn't a dig. I'm an "already decided partisan."

1) Yes, but we are looking for both readability (for which prose paragraphs are best) and playability (standard templates being useful here) - you look to be prioritizing the latter, which isn't meeting the brief.

Curious how you are defining "readability". I find standard templates and sentence fragments as bullet points to be very, very readable. More readable that walls of prose.

On the other hand, if you mean, "Curl up with a glass of boubon and a faerie dragon on my shoulder and enjoy a good book", then, yeah, sure. But contrary to your "we" that is absolutely not what I am looking for.

2) We are talking about many individual NPCs, with detailed (inter)personal histories, relationships, and motivations, not generalized factions with sketchily defined members.

Great. Then summarize each NPC with their personality quirks, goals, etc. Does not have to be in long-form prose.

I mean, sure there will invariably be some information loss (see "verdant" above). The question is whether that lost information would actually improve gameplay, as opposed to just being enjoyable to some readers.

3) You then have a choice - pull out all the faction information in one place, separate from the map and key (requiring frequent page flipping for reference, not good for reading), put all the faction information in every individual keyed area they appear (playable, but redundantly wasteful of print space, also not really readable), or put partial information in the keyed areas as you expect it will be needed (readable, but making reference difficult if you need the information at some other point), or some admixture (a readable and playable version of which is not certain to exist).

Information design for multiple intended uses at the same time isn't easy. Compromises and creativity are likely required. There's a reason why information design these days is a job-marketable skill, rather than a solved problem.

I 100% agree with the above. But true regardless of whether the faction is described in long form prose or a powerpoint presentation, no? Which suggests I am either missing something in what you are saying, or that you weren't understanding my position to begin with.

 

[Reynard]

What's the example that proves your assertion correct?



1) Yes, but we are looking for both readability (for which prose paragraphs are best) and playability (standard templates being useful here) - you look to be prioritizing the latter, which isn't meeting the brief.

2) We are talking about many individual NPCs, with detailed (inter)personal histories, relationships, and motivations, not generalized factions with sketchily defined members.

3) You then have a choice - pull out all the faction information in one place, separate from the map and key (requiring frequent page flipping for reference, not good for reading), put all the faction information in every individual keyed area they appear (playable, but redundantly wasteful of print space, also not really readable), or put partial information in the keyed areas as you expect it will be needed (readable, but making reference difficult if you need the information at some other point), or some admixture (a readable and playable version of which is not certain to exist).

Information design for multiple intended uses at the same time isn't easy. Compromises and creativity are likely required. There's a reason why information design these days is a job-marketable skill, rather than a solved problem.

You seem to be making the case that information can only be presented one way, which is obviously false. If a module (for example) has two (or more) uses, then it is reasonable and best to present that information in both ways. Most modern modules, especially those by WotC and Paizo, fail to do that, or do it so badly that they might as well not have tried (Avernus).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't think published adventures are excessively narrative, but I am certainly forever waiting for someone to figure out such a good module layout that would allow me to read it for the first time when I am running it.

Here you go: 5E Adventures

I have run three of these without reading them ahead of time and they all ran great.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In the last published D&D adventure I ran, I had three major antagonist NPCs, each in their own area of the game space, effectively in their own "dungeon" and environs. But they are not entirely independent - they have complex interactions that are underway, with the other NPCs, and between each other, when the PCs arrive on the scene. Exactly how to put all that together, in terms of information design, is not trivial.

Mothership adventures manage those kinds of scenarios pretty well, often in a single pamphlet. (Mothership's third party community is, admittedly, top heavy with skilled layout designers.)

It's definitely doable, even if it's not trivial to get there.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Great. Then summarize each NPC with their personality quirks, goals, etc. I mean, sure there will invariably be some information loss (see "verdant" above). The question is whether that lost information would actually improve gameplay, as opposed to just being enjoyable to some readers.

Some people don't want information loss, because reading pleasure might be a higher priority than gameplay to some folks (not you, obviously, but that kinda is the whole point of the thread).

 

[zakael19]

Some people don't want information loss, because reading pleasure might be a higher priority than gameplay to some folks (not you, obviously, but that kinda is the whole point of the thread).

I’ve seen way more “oh holy crap why did I never think of that” creativity in OSR-esque stuff then anything written in long form prose with endless italics and the like.

Like, look at Dolmenwood. It’s got amazing factions + NPCs + ideas and just oodles of flavor, but puts that all in nice neat perfectly hyperlinked sections. Then the Hex Crawl portion refers back to pages or paragraphs as needed.

 

[Reynard]

Some people don't want information loss, because reading pleasure might be a higher priority than gameplay to some folks (not you, obviously, but that kinda is the whole point of the thread).

I’ve seen way more “oh holy crap why did I never think of that” creativity in OSR-esque stuff then anything written in long form prose with endless italics and the like.

Like, look at Dolmenwood. It’s got amazing factions + NPCs + ideas and just oodles of flavor, but puts that all in nice neat perfectly hyperlinked sections. Then the Hex Crawl portion refers back to pages or paragraphs as needed.

Again: you can do both. You can write the module with all the depth and lore and heavy prose you like. AND you can include tools that allow people tor it easily at the table.

 

[Celebrim]

All that jazz. What do you got?

Not what you got, though I recognize I'm different.

So typically, I find when I have to prep a module it's not condensing or taking notes that I need to do, but writing out all the important bits that are left out of the module. When I look at the sort of presentations that are "easy to run", what I generally see is "more bits have been left out" and as such I see "more work required to prep". They look to me like outlines and they expect the person running it to fill in all the details. Well, you can maybe do that extemporaneously but maybe you can't.

One of the things I admire about the old school modules (not OSR) was just how freaking dense the information was. They were often woefully incomplete, but the amount of play that they packed into 32 pages (or sometimes less!) was incredible. So many of the modern adventure formats just seem to have either so little going for them or else so little actually provided with leaving all the hard parts up to the GM. Of course, maybe that's because I'm weird about what I think the hard parts are, but I strongly suspect that I'm not going to agree over what is good. Multiple columns of dense information are fine. I'll read it once and it will largely stick in my brain. But don't have a one liner like, "This NPC tells funny inappropriate jokes." and think you are doing me any favors.