OSR Modules with the best layout & presentation

[overgeeked]

I6 Ravenloft also contains one of my favorite examples of a buried lede in a room description box-text.

You enter a room in the vampire's castle with a FRIGGING VAMPIRE banging away madly on a pipe organ.

But the box text first describes the shape of the room.
Then the chandeliers (WHY???).
Then the stone pillars and walls and ceiling.
Then a table and tablecloth. Then EVERY KIND OF FOOD.
Then the china and silverware. Then the glasses and the drinks poured in them.
then mirrors. then the organ. Then the music from the organ.

and FINALLY... squints at the fine print at the bottom... oh... you know... strahd von zarovich no biggie


This is a magnificent 40-foot-square room, brilliantly lit by three massive crystal chandeliers. Pillars of stone stand against dull white marble walls, supporting the ceiling. In the center of the room, a long, heavy table stands covered with a fine white satin cloth. The table is laden with delectable foods of every type: roasted beast basted in a savory sauce, roots and herbs of every taste, and sweet fruits and vegetables. Places are set for each of you with fine delicate china and silver. At each place there is a crystal goblet filled with an amber liquid whose delicate fragrance tantalizes your senses. At the center of the far west wall, between floor-to-ceiling length mirrors, stands a massive organ. Its pipes blare out a thunderous melody that offers in its tone greatness and despair. Seated before the keys, its back toward you, a single caped figure pounds the keys in raptured ecstasy. The figure suddenly stops and a deep silence falls over the dining hall. The figure slowly turns toward you.



Absolutely amazing. I know the authors think this is an amazing little turn and button on the description. But... man this kind of thing is the opposite of how people look at a room.

WHAT KIND OF SILVERWARE HAS THE VAMPIRE LAYED OUT FOR US? WHAT'S THE TABLECLOTH LIKE, I NEED TO KNOW THAT FIRST!!

But it is how prose writers present room descriptions. It is also how a lot of directors, especially horror directors, will present things in a movie. Long, lingering shots on the table and food only to slowly pan up to reveal Dracula.

 

[BruceWright]

If the players can see the monster, I tell them they can see the monster without going on about the silverware and the cooking herbs used in the recipe for the food first.

I want to emulate what the players senses tell them, not deny them.

I'm emulating their senses, not a dracula movie nor a novel.

And I want quick access to that pertinent sensory information, most important first, least important last. And not in a verbose wall of box-text that's rambling on about how heavy the table is and how sweet the fruit is (two things they cannot actually experience when first entering the room anyway).

 

[zakael19]

I6 Ravenloft also contains one of my favorite examples of a buried lede in a room description box-text.

You enter a room in the vampire's castle with a FRIGGING VAMPIRE banging away madly on a pipe organ.

But the box text first describes the shape of the room.
Then the chandeliers (WHY???).
Then the stone pillars and walls and ceiling.
Then a table and tablecloth. Then EVERY KIND OF FOOD.
Then the china and silverware. Then the glasses and the drinks poured in them.
then mirrors. then the organ. Then the music from the organ.

and FINALLY... squints at the fine print at the bottom... oh... you know... strahd von zarovich no biggie


This is a magnificent 40-foot-square room, brilliantly lit by three massive crystal chandeliers. Pillars of stone stand against dull white marble walls, supporting the ceiling. In the center of the room, a long, heavy table stands covered with a fine white satin cloth. The table is laden with delectable foods of every type: roasted beast basted in a savory sauce, roots and herbs of every taste, and sweet fruits and vegetables. Places are set for each of you with fine delicate china and silver. At each place there is a crystal goblet filled with an amber liquid whose delicate fragrance tantalizes your senses. At the center of the far west wall, between floor-to-ceiling length mirrors, stands a massive organ. Its pipes blare out a thunderous melody that offers in its tone greatness and despair. Seated before the keys, its back toward you, a single caped figure pounds the keys in raptured ecstasy. The figure suddenly stops and a deep silence falls over the dining hall. The figure slowly turns toward you.



Absolutely amazing. I know the authors think this is an amazing little turn and button on the description. But... man this kind of thing is the opposite of how people look at a room.

WHAT KIND OF SILVERWARE HAS THE VAMPIRE LAYED OUT FOR US? WHAT'S THE TABLECLOTH LIKE, I NEED TO KNOW THAT FIRST!!

Oh that's another good note, Iglanced through a few of the better recent OSR modules I have and they all lead with the most active and important thing. If there's a bunch of goblins flinging trash off the edge of the room, that's the first thing you're told in the description. If there's a demon bound by a restraining circle, same.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Rot Black Sludge in Mork Borg -- surprise! -- is excellent in its presentation. As opposed to the rest of the book, the adventure is clear, clean and simply laid out.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But it is how prose writers present room descriptions. It is also how a lot of directors, especially horror directors, will present things in a movie. Long, lingering shots on the table and food only to slowly pan up to reveal Dracula.

Nowadays, if someone wrote a room description like that -- please don't -- one would hope they'd either preface it with a bullet pointed list of essentials (OSE style) or at least bold face key things like Strahd.

 

[Celebrim]

I just ran this last year and I really disagree. Maybe great for that era, but just really not very usable by modern standards. If the players take a staircase you aren't expecting, you're paging through numbered entries to figure out which room they're in.

There is a map. A really good one, actually. And I would say the only confusing thing here at all is K61 isn't actually marked on the map, possibly by mistake or possibly just because the 30x10 corridor is small or both.

Good luck with the table-readiness of the trap at K31

There isn't a trap at K31. All that is at K31 is the machinery that moves the trap at K61. If for some reason you disable the machinery at K31, the trap at K61 won't function.

which appears on 4 different floors of the castle which the players can access from K61

K61 is the location of the trap. The trap is activated by pressure plates in K61 as is described in detail by that entry.

K31b

Is a corridor that allows access to the shaft (K31a) used by K61's trap.

K47

This is the destination of the trap in K61. A sentence in that keyed location says that there is a trap door in this location that leads to K31a. But note, this door is not a trap. It's just an access panel.

K31a

Is the elevator shaft that the trap in K61 uses to reach K47. And K47 mentions this.

and K39

Contains the secret door leading to the K31b access corridor.

K31a tells you that the stone compartment of this trap will raise through a trap door to K47.

Err... K31a tells you a ton of things including that the trap is normally located in K61.

But there's no mention of a trap door in the entry for K47.

But there is "A trap door in the floor leads to K31a."

There's no mention of WHAT SPRINGS THIS TRAP or which way it's intended to harm people who haven't moved into its shaft out of pure investigation.

Nothing in K31 springs the trap. The trap is in K61 and described in detail there.

What I get from this though is that modern maps aren't complicated enough and have so much linearity and are generally so two-dimensional that this sort of confusion isn't even possible.

 

[Celebrim]

Absolutely amazing. I know the authors think this is an amazing little turn and button on the description. But... man this kind of thing is the opposite of how people look at a room.

Agreed. But it's also precisely how you describe a room that you try to present the most obvious features last. Why? First, because that's the part the players will remember the most. And secondly, if you describe the most important parts first, the players will be so distracted by that part they won't be listening when you tell them anything else, and then invariably you'll have to describe everything at least a second time.

What you are complaining about here is counter-intuitive I agree, but it is absolutely the right order to do the description.

 

[Celebrim]

Oh that's another good note, Iglanced through a few of the better recent OSR modules I have and they all lead with the most active and important thing. If there's a bunch of goblins flinging trash off the edge of the room, that's the first thing you're told in the description. If there's a demon bound by a restraining circle, same.

That's intuitive but also probably based off 40 years of doing this wrong. Because my experience with players is that they only tend to remember the last few things you said. So you want to keep it brief, because they'll forget. But you also can't keep it too brief because then you'll have chaos as everyone asks for the rest of the details before they act or else worse they'll act based on no details and thus an assumption of a small empty room.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

This is a magnificent 40-foot-square room, brilliantly lit by three massive crystal chandeliers. Pillars of stone stand against dull white marble walls, supporting the ceiling. In the center of the room, a long, heavy table stands covered with a fine white satin cloth. The table is laden with delectable foods of every type: roasted beast basted in a savory sauce, roots and herbs of every taste, and sweet fruits and vegetables. Places are set for each of you with fine delicate china and silver. At each place there is a crystal goblet filled with an amber liquid whose delicate fragrance tantalizes your senses. At the center of the far west wall, between floor-to-ceiling length mirrors, stands a massive organ. Its pipes blare out a thunderous melody that offers in its tone greatness and despair. Seated before the keys, its back toward you, a single caped figure pounds the keys in raptured ecstasy. The figure suddenly stops and a deep silence falls over the dining hall. The figure slowly turns toward you.



Absolutely amazing. I know the authors think this is an amazing little turn and button on the description. But... man this kind of thing is the opposite of how people look at a room.

My only changes would be prefacing it with a note to the DM that "In this room the player character meet STRAHD, read this aloud:", and cutting down on read aloud text elsewhere in the module.

I agree it's not good as a typical standard for how to present a room, but it's okay to have a "cutscene" once and a while. If the module doesn't have endless florid text you're supposed to read aloud then when the DM breaks with the norm and starts reading a whole long paragraph of description they know its a dramatic scene and will engage with it appropriately.

The big bad evil guy is already going to struggle to get his villain monologuing and exposition in before the PCs attack. We can at least let him get his dramatic entrance.

 

[guachi]

I3 Pharaoh is fantastic. The layout is entirely designed for being run at a table and not an adventure that's organized to be an entertaining read like it's some kind of vacation guide.

Here's random page (page 14) and you can see how each area is very easily keyed for DM use.