Modules: Made to Read vs Made to Run?

[Bill Zebub]

It exists. It's called Content Management Software or sometimes Typesetting software.

Errr....yeah.

That's a bit like saying "My perfect VTT already exists; it's called C." (Which may be an exaggeration, but is along the same spectrum.)

I was imagining something a bit more customized for the task than a general purpose CMS, with context-specific implementations for both the creator and consumers.

 

[LordEntrails]

Errr....yeah.

That's a bit like saying "My perfect VTT already exists; it's called C." (Which may be an exaggeration, but is along the same spectrum.)

I was imagining something a bit more customized for the task than a general purpose CMS, with context-specific implementations for both the creator and consumers.

Well yea, you do have to setup the styles in the tool, but that's something you do once to establish your trade dress. It's not some big challenge, it's done all the time. Actually you can see the S1000D international standard for an example.

Someone like WotC is big enough to make such an effort reasonable. Heck, I hope they are doing native content conversions and stylings with DDB, but I doubt they are as the FG conversions are still manual.

 

[Velderan]

Yeah. That's what set me off initially. I'm generally more familiar with OSR-style easy-to-run modules and in a fit of nostalgia started looking over some of my Call of Cthulhu and Trail of Cthulhu modules. They are the epitome of walls of text you have to dig and dig and dig through to get anything useful.

When many of them could just as easily be presented as:

[X] dabbled in something they should not have and unleashed [Y] into the world. You have to follow the clues to piece together what happened and prevent [Y] from destroying [Z].

Now here's a list of far too many NPCs, a few locations with bad maps, and the most convoluted and largely irrelevant backstory we could come up with.

Good luck.

The one thing I noticed in the CoC modules I've used is they sometimes reference a far away expert on something the group is investigating, with the intent being the info they find in the newspaper clipping is enough to move things along when combined with other vague info they have not yet found. What I found happened in play was the group I run games for would decide maybe there was more info available from that expert if they paid them a visit and next thing you know I have to stop play for a one shot and say "traveling to New Orleans is a dead end, all the info you need is in the local area". If we were running a full campaign I'd throw together something to buy me time to plan taking the campaign in that direction, but for a short adventure.. not so much.

IMO it's good world building to reference things outside the area to make the world seem like the real world where info comes from all over, especially with players who live in the internet age where you can communicate instantly globally. But for an adventure it can be counterproductive to drop hints that come from far away places that the players might just decide the vague hint was meant to spur them to go see the expert in the far away place to make the info less vague.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The one thing I noticed in the CoC modules I've used is they sometimes reference a far away expert on something the group is investigating, with the intent being the info they find in the newspaper clipping is enough to move things along when combined with other vague info they have not yet found. What I found happened in play was the group I run games for would decide maybe there was more info available from that expert if they paid them a visit and next thing you know I have to stop play for a one shot and say "traveling to New Orleans is a dead end, all the info you need is in the local area". If we were running a full campaign I'd throw together something to buy me time to plan taking the campaign in that direction, but for a short adventure.. not so much.

IMO it's good world building to reference things outside the area to make the world seem like the real world where info comes from all over, especially with players who live in the internet age where you can communicate instantly globally. But for an adventure it can be counterproductive to drop hints that come from far away places that the players might just decide the vague hint was meant to spur them to go see the expert in the far away place to make the info less vague.

I would also talk to the players out of game and explain that CoC adventures are intended to be single-area adventures except for campaigns that are explicitly about globe-trotting and that trying to escape the confines of the one-shot is going to be unproductive and is more suited to long-running campaign play.

 

[Velderan]

I would also talk to the players out of game and explain that CoC adventures are intended to be single-area adventures except for campaigns that are explicitly about globe-trotting and that trying to escape the confines of the one-shot is going to be unproductive and is more suited to long-running campaign play.

Yeah, we did that after something similar happened twice. In reading the module I was able to connect all the info and not think the far away place was needed, but in play it wasn't so obvious that enough info was available locally as they were drip fed the backstory. I told them up front for the 3rd module if they need anything more than a car and a tank of gas, they're going too far.

 

[overgeeked]

I would also talk to the players out of game and explain that CoC adventures are intended to be single-area adventures except for campaigns that are explicitly about globe-trotting and that trying to escape the confines of the one-shot is going to be unproductive and is more suited to long-running campaign play.

Yeah, we did that after something similar happened twice. In reading the module I was able to connect all the info and not think the far away place was needed, but in play it wasn't so obvious that enough info was available locally as they were drip fed the backstory. I told them up front for the 3rd module if they need anything more than a car and a tank of gas, they're going too far.

The other options are using timers, dead experts, or moving the far-away expert into the local area.

 

[Bill Zebub]

IMO it's good world building to reference things outside the area to make the world seem like the real world where info comes from all over...

Here's another example where I agree that it can be useful information. However, my hesitation about including it is that so often the information that might be useful is intermingled with what I need right now to run the adventure. (And that's not because of a desire for zero prep: both for initially reading the module to understand it, and to speedily reference it while at the table, I want "just the facts" presented as cleanly as possible.)

So this is another category of information that I'd love to see moved to an appendix instead of being interwoven in the main body of the adventure. "Appendix F: World Building Hooks". After I have a handle on the adventure, but before I run it, I can skim over that section and see what ideas I can use.

 

[Lanefan]

Well yea, you do have to setup the styles in the tool, but that's something you do once to establish your trade dress. It's not some big challenge, it's done all the time. Actually you can see the S1000D international standard for an example.

Someone like WotC is big enough to make such an effort reasonable. Heck, I hope they are doing native content conversions and stylings with DDB, but I doubt they are as the FG conversions are still manual.

Which is fine for a big outfit like WotC but doesn't do much for a DM banging away in his kitchen at home, which is what I thought this was about.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Which is fine for a big outfit like WotC but doesn't do much for a DM banging away in his kitchen at home, which is what I thought this was about.

Yeah I am envisioning an easy-to-use tool for one man operations. Somehow that was entirely misunderstood and I received an unneeded primer on content management systems (which is ironic because I've spent the last two years redesigning an organization's tool for educators from a hard-to-use version modeled on content management systems into an easy-to-use tool modeled on gradebooks), but it was feeling less like a conversation and more like I was being lectured, so I dropped it.