RPG Writing and Design Needs a Paradigm Shift

[Micah Sweet]

I know this is happening in small corners of the indie scene, and some more well known games are starting to adopt alternate ways of presenting information, but mainstream publishers still seem buried in the past when it comes to TTRPG presentation.

Giant books full of walls of text with important information buried in questionable prose is no longer an acceptable way to present a game to an audience. The industry needs a paradigm shift in design -- both system, and visual. They need to stop paying by the word and start paying by the hour. they need to stop treating games like books and treat them like manuals. They need to leverage technology and techniques from other industries and make accessibility a primary goal in production.

I know I have ranted about this before and will likely do so again, so my apologies for evangelizing in this way.

This is really just your opinion. You can't say objectively that the traditional design model is no longer acceptable. Just no longer acceptable to you. You can make suggestions on how the industry might serve you better, but you can't say they're doing it wrong now in any scope larger than you personally.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It would be nice if the lore of a game was in a separate book from the rules. Take for instance the revised 5E coming this year. As I understand it the DMG will contain a sample campaign setting and an adventure IIRC. This could easily be its own separate book IMO.

Separate the lore and a large portion of the player base will ignore it entirely. It implicitly sends the message that it doesn't matter as much as the rules. That consequence seems pretty obvious to me.

 

[Swanosaurus]

the ‘you launch a silvery bolt of force at the enemy’ part?

We know the caster launches it at the enemy and that it uses force from the stat block already, so the only ‘flavor’ is ‘silvery’… Sorry, that too is sterile, it adds no flavor whatsoever, to me that is not just poor, it is nonexistent

I'd actually say that in this case, it's a perfectly fine description. It's not terribly evocative, sure, but one of the keys of writing good fiction is understanding that not everything needs to be elaborated. Sometimes, a door creaks when it opens, dust billows, yellow sunlight shines through the cracks ... sometimes "She opened the door", and that's it. What I dislike - both in fiction and in RPGs - if what I would call "bloat" serves no other purpose than signaling "evocative prose".
I'm not sure how compatible that view is with RPG writing, because usually, you want some consistency in the length and style of spell or skill entries. If you're going for "evocative and wordy" for some spells, it might seem strange to stick to a five word sentence for another. Therefore, I tend to prefer texts thar err towards brevity.

 

[kenada]

(I’m traveling, so replies may be delayed until I’m stuck on the plane again with nothing better to do.)

I’d like to separate the discussion of organization from 4e in particular. @TheSword posted an example in post #97 of a wonderfully evocative spell description. Instead of focusing on 4e or PF2 or whatever, let’s imagine that spell in the format.

Take, “You shriek the high-pitched words of the spell and a large, black skull wreathed with greenish-purple fire forms before you, then flies forwards, screaming and cackling as it goes,” as the description then format the rest as apropriate mechanics.

Would that spell presented in (for example) the style of 4e be okay? Are there things that could be done differently or better? It seems like we start from here, a more productive conversation can be had.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

everywhere? Compare the 4e spell description to a 5e one. I picked this one at random from this thread

https://www.enworld.org/attachments/4e-magic-missile-png.348011/

it absolutely does not, it has zero flavor, all it does is say what the spell does from
a technical perspective. It is absolutely sterile.

I am fine with adding a line that specifies something like ‘Range 150 feet, Radius 20 feet, 8d6 damage, Dex save halves’ before the text, but not as a replacement for it (if you have such a line, you can make that text more concise however)

Nonsense. There's a flavor section in every single power block. Beyond that the name and often the effects blocks state a good bit about how the fiction 'works'. Essentials versions of powers are additionally printed along with an explanation of what the power does in context. I don't know of a single 4e power where the intended fiction is not fairly obvious. In all cases the flavor text can be quoted verbatim in play to describe the effects.

In fairness some of the higher level more complex spells in classic D&D touch on, or suggest additional possibilities, but virtually all of those are rituals in 4e, which are mostly free text and closely resemble older spells.

I think that brings us to an observation that, yes indeed, some stuff may exceed the type of complexity which a vanilla stat block is ideal for. Items, creatures, etc. often come with considerable associated text.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The evocative part is at the top, followed by the mechanics. One can complain that the magic missile fluff is poor, but it is there.

How 'poor' is it though? I mean, it is not elaborate, but it explicates the function of MM very well. It also avoids locking it down too much. I am free to describe the look and feel of my missile to a large degree. All I am constrained to is a direct ranged attack dealing force damage. This is a plus in my book!

 

[Micah Sweet]

How 'poor' is it though? I mean, it is not elaborate, but it explicates the function of MM very well. It also avoids locking it down too much. I am free to describe the look and feel of my missile to a large degree. All I am constrained to is a direct ranged attack dealing force damage. This is a plus in my book!

This is all just preference. Some people are good with 4e's lore and the degree of association it has to the mechanics, and others aren't. No one's going to move at this point, and explaining your reasons for holding either view just leads to fights.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Now I can see why 4e didn’t work. They tried to turn magic missile into a single missile. Madness.



Fireball was literally selected as an example of a 5e spell that had unnecessary fluff.

I feel quite strongly that a visual description of what the spell does is not fluff - it’s essential to the spell. It may not have a mechanical impact but it is required to place the spell into the scenario for both the players and the DM. The fireball mechanics mentions nothing about sound or light but the description allows me to infer these things.

4e Magic Missile

"A glowing blue bolt of magical energy hurtles from your finger and unerringly strikes the target. "

It's hard to imagine a more precise and evocative bit of color.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm definitely of the "4e did this best" persuasion; keyword tech that elegantly marries clouds (fiction) to boxes (mechanics) and a one sentence cloud (fiction) that economically gives a (malleable) example. Its fantastic for cognitive overhead, fantastic for handling time, fantastic for page count; win, win, win.

Its just that the information is conveyed via a different vessel than traditional D&D medium. What is entailed in both (a) the Magic Missile entry, (b) the integrated text of the book, (c) and the implications upon both gamestate and attendant fiction:

* Wizard: Scions of arcane magic. Wizards tap the true power that permeates the cosmos, research esoteric rituals that can alter time and space, carry books full of mystic lore, carry orbs/staves/wands to direct/amplify their power, and hurl balls of fire that incinerate massed foes.

* Magic Missile: A glowing blue bolt of magical energy hurtles from your finger and unerringly strikes your target.

* At-Will: Can be used in perpetuity; does not exhaust.

* Arcane: Draws upon the magical energy that permeates the cosmos.

* Evocation: The most widely practiced school of magic brings magical effects into being that harm creatures and affect the environment which include explosions, rays of magical energy, and lingering environmental effects.

* Force: Invisible energy formed into incredibly hard yet nonsolid shapes.

* Ranged 20: The "long range" increment in the game.

* No Attack Roll: Ultra-rare, automatic damage that scales with level.

* Interacts with any feature (etc) that are amplifies/changes/mitigates/punishes Arcane, Evocation, Force, Ranged effects.

* "Minion Sweeper:" Automatically destroys any Minion at the longest range of the game without concern for cover or concealment (only line of sight/effect).

---

That integrated text and the played-and-understood implications of the Magic Missile spell is significant. It packs an enormous amount of (clouds and boxes) information in an extremely digestible chunk and leaves plenty of room for each table to generate their own adjacent and axillary fiction that builds out the imagined space.

 

[kenada]

How 'poor' is it though? I mean, it is not elaborate, but it explicates the function of MM very well. It also avoids locking it down too much. I am free to describe the look and feel of my missile to a large degree. All I am constrained to is a direct ranged attack dealing force damage. This is a plus in my book!

How “poor” is an aesthetic argument. There are obviously different preferences for what level of detail is needed. (Personally, I tend to favor brevity.)