D&D 5E To boxed text or not to boxed text

[billd91]

Everyone has a cistern in their house! It’s part of your toilet. It’s not an obscure word.

It may not be all that commonly used either. But common or not, part of the engagement of RPGs like D&D (and reading in general) is the way it helps people exercise and expand their vocabulary. It's pretty much always been this way and that's not a bad thing.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

It may not be all that commonly used either. But common or not, part of the engagement of RPGs like D&D (and reading in general) is the way it helps people exercise and expand their vocabulary. It's pretty much always been this way and that's not a bad thing.

Yeah, didn’t stop the use of “dweomer”.

 

[Hussar]

I have to say, in a game with as much esoteric language in it as D&D, complaining about vocabulary does seem to be a bit ... off.

As far as the rest of the criticisms go, these seem a lot more like personal preferences rather than any sort of actual judgment of quality. I prefer cardinal directions, but, probably because I've been playing for so long I just internalized the language. Not that one description is better or worse. Just a preference.

 

[billd91]

I have to say, in a game with as much esoteric language in it as D&D, complaining about vocabulary does seem to be a bit ... off.

Yes, it's an interesting topic, to be sure. There's a fun thread over on the Paizo boards about the use of tureen, propensity, and marzipan.

paizo.com - Forums / Dungeon Magazine: General Discussion: You take the Tureen and put it in the Marzipan, add propensity.

paizo.com

Ultimately, what's common vocabulary or esoteric is highly variable. It is tied up with experience and other social strata factors including background issues that can be pretty sensitive. I don't think people should feel embarrassed about not knowing what a word means nor be stigmatized for it. But I also don't think their lack of understanding absolves them from looking it up in a dictionary when they don't know a word nor that the text should cater to their relative lack of vocabulary. Interesting vocabulary is one of the many pleasures of activities that depend on words whether reading literature, describing ancient ruins as players search through them, watching a play, or even listening to the lyrics of a song.

 

[cmad1977]

Yeah, didn’t stop the use of “dweomer”.

Classic. I remember seeing that word in the 1e DMG and being like.... whaaat?

 

[hanexs]

This thread was a hilarious read.. I am the original poster of the Marzipan complaint who quickly found out I am in the minority, also being corrected by people I immensely respect like Erik Mona and James Jacobs didn't help my self esteem. Fun though to see the small wake my comments left even if most posters disagreed with me.

Still, I stand by my marizipan complaint/comments. I just opened a new paizo path, I've ran 10 or so and am a big fan because the adventures are interesting, rich, creative, but they are NOT easy to run. There is too much unnecessary distractions, back story, and boxed texts that I have to edit so that my players can understand. Sadly there is no product that is a creative adventure path that leaves room for me to build upon and not distract me with unnecessary details/complicated text, so I am stuck with Paizo

Im currently running "agents of edgewatch" its great, but as usual the work to turn it into an adventure is arduous. The boxed text debate is one I feel strongly about. I would rather pay for a small 5 page adventure that I can build upon, rather then a 50 page adventure I have to edit, read, and hunt for details I might miss (the latter is the paizo way). Why include boxed text if it is not presented in a way that I can simply read. In the 3rd edition SRD days, there used to be small 5 page adventures in this format, but increasingly that format is gone, and we have massive adventures that are harder to run and full of distractions.


Edit -- I think I just really miss dungeon magazine. It always had high quality adventures I can build upon.

 

[Lyxen]

I just opened a new paizo path, I've ran 10 or so and am a big fan because the adventures are interesting, rich, creative, but they are NOT easy to run.

I agree, I haven't run/played as many as you did, but they were all excellent. And yes, they still need a bit of work to make them really shine, especially with our groups who rarely follow the standard path, in particular if it avoids fighting or slogging through "dungeons".

There is too much unnecessary distractions, back story, and boxed texts that I have to edit so that my players can understand. Sadly there is no product that is a creative adventure path that leaves room for me to build upon and not distract me with unnecessary details/complicated text, so I am stuck with Paizo

The WotC Adventure paths, and those published in Dungeon were honestly good as well.

m currently running "agents of edgewatch" its great, but as usual the work to turn it into an adventure is arduous. The boxed text debate is one I feel strongly about. I would rather pay for a small 5 page adventure that I can build upon, rather then a 50 page adventure I have to edit, read, and hunt for details I might miss (the latter is the paizo way). Why include boxed text if it is not presented in a way that I can simply read.

Because it allows you to paraphrase or improvise, and you still know what the authors thought important to describe to the players. If anything, it also puts you in the right mood when reading through the adventure.

Edit -- I think I just really miss dungeon magazine. It always had high quality adventures I can build upon.

And yet, most of them had boxed text, no?

 

[turnip_farmer]

This thread was a hilarious read.. I am the original poster of the Marzipan complaint who quickly found out I am in the minority, also being corrected by people I immensely respect like Erik Mona and James Jacobs didn't help my self esteem. Fun though to see the small wake my comments left even if most posters disagreed with me.

Still, I stand by my marizipan complaint/comments. I just opened a new paizo path, I've ran 10 or so and am a big fan because the adventures are interesting, rich, creative, but they are NOT easy to run. There is too much unnecessary distractions, back story, and boxed texts that I have to edit so that my players can understand. Sadly there is no product that is a creative adventure path that leaves room for me to build upon and not distract me with unnecessary details/complicated text, so I am stuck with Paizo

Im currently running "agents of edgewatch" its great, but as usual the work to turn it into an adventure is arduous. The boxed text debate is one I feel strongly about. I would rather pay for a small 5 page adventure that I can build upon, rather then a 50 page adventure I have to edit, read, and hunt for details I might miss (the latter is the paizo way). Why include boxed text if it is not presented in a way that I can simply read. In the 3rd edition SRD days, there used to be small 5 page adventures in this format, but increasingly that format is gone, and we have massive adventures that are harder to run and full of distractions.


Edit -- I think I just really miss dungeon magazine. It always had high quality adventures I can build upon.

The problem with language, it's that it's often not at all clear which words are and aren't obscure. I would have thought that marzipan is a word any child would know, for example. And it's called the same thing in most European languages, so it would never have crossed my mind that it would trip up a non-native speaker either.

That's not meant to be a smug insult about my vocabulary. I just didn't know that the word marzipan is not common in North America. I was similarly flummoxed the first time an American didn't understand the word 'fortnight'. They would likely have been equally surprised that I was an adult before I learnt what cilantro was.

'Simplifying' language is not always as helpful for non-natives as you might think, either. A formal, technical term can sometimes be more straightforward for a non-native speaker than a common word, because it's some Latin or Greek derivative that's used in formal literature in many different languages.

For work purposes, I've taken to having a non-native colleague listen to my presentations before I deliver them to point out the words he doesn't know, so I can rephrase for my audience. Maybe I should start doing the same with my flavour text, as most of my players aren't native English speakers.

 

[hanexs]

And yet, most of them had boxed text, no?

They did, but I felt that most of the time Dungeon text was readable and I usualy could simply read the box text. But when they went from Dungeon Magazine to Pathfinder, I felt their thoughts on "quality" and "exclusivity" increased, this became a product for the dedicated. Their paths had more backstory, more intrigue, more interesting links to distractions, more text that didn't immediately make sense to players who are mostly interested in the pizza and chips.

Most of this is positive, you open their APs and you just get excited, but somewhere along the way you're reading about something insanely interesting and you have no idea how your players are actually going to find this backstory out and it slowly becomes aggravating the night before you have a session to run.

For every path I run, I have a binder where I have to rewrite or paste parts of the adventures to sort out whats actually going to happen. Hence why I asked for a magazine style adventures, I long for the days where I could simply write some notes in the margin of the adventure and use it "as is".

 

[Rune]

I prefer bullet points to boxed text. Boxed text usually doesn’t convey important information efficiently. It often isn’t well-prioritized and it’s very difficult for players to parse without having to be repeated.

I guess it’s okay if your goal is to misdirect the players.