D&D General Preferences - Dungeon Detail?

[Retreater]

How much detail do you like in your published dungeons? Are you good with an adventure just having the basic layout, monsters, traps? Or do you like a good amount of evocative language, sensory descriptions, history, and motivation?

 

[Scott Christian]

Even split.

It does depend on the prelude to the dungeon. I mean, if we are searching the lost tomb of a god, I want 75% narrative, with tons of foreshadowing in the sessions prior. If we are in a mine that's been overrun with goblins, give me 50/50. If this is a side cave that has a troll that's been terrorizing travelers, give me 75/25.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

This question feels weird to me. I think because you're treating it like to competing elements, when in a good adventure the rules and the description should go reinforce each other, and more importantly they should both reinforce the story.

When it comes to room descriptions, what I real care about is how does it impact the player characters. Everything in the description should be something they can interact with or clues that the heroes can pick up on. They might be subtle things like hints about the personality of the creature that lives there, but I don't need obscure details about how the room was built unless its something that matters for the PCs in the adventure.

 

[Retreater]

This question feels weird to me. I think because you're treating it like to competing elements, when in a good adventure the rules and the description should go reinforce each other, and more importantly they should both reinforce the story.

When it comes to room descriptions, what I real care about is how does it impact the player characters. Everything in the description should be something they can interact with or clues that the heroes can pick up on. They might be subtle things like hints about the personality of the creature that lives there, but I don't need obscure details about how the room was built unless its something that matters for the PCs in the adventure.

They are actually competing elements for me. I am writing an adventure for publication with a specific word count. I'm trying to decide if I should put in more dungeon content (rooms, encounters, etc) or have smaller dungeons with more narrative text.

 

[Lanefan]

If you had no space limits I'd say throw it all in. But if something has to come out, take out as much backstory and narrative as you can as most DMs are likely to strip that stuff out anyway and replace it with whatever suits the specific campaign.

Put another way: I always find a 25-site dungeon with barebones descriptions and minimal backstory to be immensely more useful than a 5-site dungeon with loads of backstory and overlong flowery boxed text.

 

[Shiroiken]

They are actually competing elements for me. I am writing an adventure for publication with a specific word count. I'm trying to decide if I should put in more dungeon content (rooms, encounters, etc) or have smaller dungeons with more narrative text.

This is what I figured you were going for. There are a lot of things that people consider more important that others, however. For example, art is wasted space for me, unless it's a necessary aspect of the adventure (e.g. Tomb of Horrors). For most others, they like having the cool artwork. I think for publishing purposes you need to find a percent balance between each aspect, since you want to appeal to as many as possible. I'd suggest checking out Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation, both of which were very well received, and get an idea of what a good average of each might be.

 

[Charlaquin]

This question feels weird to me. I think because you're treating it like to competing elements, when in a good adventure the rules and the description should go reinforce each other, and more importantly they should both reinforce the story.

That was my impression as well. Descriptive detail and rules information are not a zero sum game. Furthermore, the question conflates rules information with challenge, which is extra weird.

When it comes to room descriptions, what I real care about is how does it impact the player characters. Everything in the description should be something they can interact with or clues that the heroes can pick up on. They might be subtle things like hints about the personality of the creature that lives there, but I don't need obscure details about how the room was built unless its something that matters for the PCs in the adventure.

Agreed. If the goal here is to figure out how best to spend your limited word count, then trying to figure out what percent of it should be description and what percent should be information about monsters and traps is going about it the wrong way. What you should be doing is trying to figure out what information (rules and narrative) is directly relevant to the players, and cutting as much as possible that is not. Nothing wrong with empty rooms, but don’t spend more than a short sentence describing them. Monsters and traps are great, but don’t pad out their stat blocks with details that aren’t likely to come up. Ideally, everything you write down should both communicate detail about the environment and have gameplay relevance.

 

[delericho]

I'd prefer a roughly equal split, but not 50/50. The game has three pillars, after all...

 

[aco175]

I agree with @Shiroiken that artwork is largely useless in the adventure, unless it is something to show the players to help with a description.

I voted with the almost all flavor box, but find what @Lanefan said about pagecount and space limits making a lite description adventure more likely to use than a great flowing short adventure that makes it hard to fit my game.

 

[Retreater]

I'd suggest checking out Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation, both of which were very well received, and get an idea of what a good average of each might be.

Oh boy, if only I had that kind of page count!
I am looking through some of this publishers other works to see how they line up with what I have. Looks like I might need a tad more fluff.