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Message: <blockquote data-quote="touc" data-source="post: 9628779" data-attributes="member: 19270">Disclaimer: I'm biased because I'm helping out on the project. That said... I lean to Bryce Lynch's <a href="https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?page_id=1201" target="_blank">"Ten Foot Pole" criteria</a> for adventures and MEGO ("my eyes glazed over") flavor text. There's a 2005 WOTC article (archived in criteria comments, Dave Noonan & Jesse Decker) that discusses going incognito and watching MEGO in action over four days, at table after table:"...If you're the DM, you get two sentences. Period. Beyond that, your players are stacking dice, talking to each other, or staring off into space....I saw otherwise engaging DMs read through boxed text, then get frustrated because they wound up repeating and paraphrasing all the information in it anyway - often in the middle of the action."  Their conclusion was that conversation was better than narration for boxed text:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"At its heart, a D&D game is a conversation." Narrated boxes of text don't follow that format.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">DMs who didn't used boxed text had more engagement. Short descriptor, players ask questions as DM draws on grid map.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lesser factor: convention halls are noisy, but boxed text is where DMs lost folks' concentration.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lesser factor: DMs with box text are reading it "cold," not having written it in their style nor practiced how it sounds.</li> </ul></li> </ul>Solution?  "Ditch the boxed text and use your own words for the initial description of the room."Did this change D&D into "bullet-point" descriptors of rooms like some popular non-D&D modules? Nope, but 2-3 short sentences (impact the senses, contain a relevant clue perhaps) then looking at players is a good format: Two great, 15-foot-high oak doors loom before you. Reinforced with bands of black iron, they defy anyone eager to sunder them. Carved into their dark surface is an enormous and angry All-Seeing Eye. (Sons of Gruumsh adventure).</blockquote>

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