Too much prose in RPGs?

[Bill Zebub]

In the last week or so I've acquired a bunch of new RPG material to read:
- The "Bitter Reach" campaign for Forbidden Lands
- I pre-ordered (post-KS campaign) Stonetop and got some materials
- The huge Humble Bundle that includes the 661-page Rappan Athuk, the complete Dungeon Crawl Classics game, and a lot of other stuff

In perusing all this material, I realized something: RPGs have so much descriptive prose that I have trouble "getting" the materials.

I don't want to dismiss the efforts and talents of the writers. I've done a little bit of published RPG writing, and it's hard. It's much easier to, say, design a monster mechanically than it is to put those ideas into good prose (which includes avoiding clichés).

But...I don't actually find it useful. The opposite, really: it gets in my way.

I do have two 5e adventure modules I bought a while ago: The Secrets of Skyhorn Lighthouse and The Corruption of Skyhorn Lighthouse, by Kelsey Dionne, and they were a breath of fresh air. Instead of long, descriptive prose, much of the adventures are described in a consistent, concise shorthand. Areas (e.g. rooms) have subheading such as "Development", "Transition", and "Dramatic Question", and under each heading are succinct bullet points. Easy to scan, easy to grasp.

And here's an example of an NPC, all of which follow a similar format:

Silvara, N merfolk scout
“No chance o’ pearls or gold was worth coming to these blighted waters.”
• Appearance. Fishbone crossbow. Arm tattoo of an orca, her totem animal.
• Does. Echolocates with tongue clicks (she has 10 ft. blindsight when she does so).
• Secret. Is dodging a deep gambling debt owed to Captain Annabel Lee.

That is plenty of information for me to bring Silvara to life, but most RPGs would have used a short essay to describe Silvara, and while I might have appreciated those writing efforts, it would have actually made it harder to absorb the pertinent information. As DM I'm perfectly capable of translating Silvara's summary into prose for my players, but when I'm trying to understand the adventure the prose doesn't help.

This sort of reminds me of going to conferences and attending presentations in which the slides are bullet points of the exact same thing the speaker is saying. It takes me all of 30 seconds to fully absorb the page full of bullet points, and then for 5 minutes I have to listen to the speaker say the exact same thing in a more long-winded way.

(Total aside: the best Power Point presentations I have ever witnessed, on multiple topics, are by Lawrence Lessig. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, do it. He's amazing.)

Anyway, I will continue to buy and pore over RPG materials, but I wish more people would adopt/refine Kelsey Dionne's approach. And I'm sure there are lots of games/supplements out there that do use this approach, I just haven't seen a lot of them. (Suggestions welcome.)

Thoughts?

 

[payn]

Ah, I expected this to be about rulebooks and not adventures. I dont mind the prose in adventures at all. I really enjoy reading about the people, places, and things that make up the adventure. Some might find themselves limited to the script, but I always take it as optional or supplemental and change whatever I feel like. Though, im not much for a person to conjure something from nothing, im much better launching off somebody else's work and bringing it to life.

Though, I do understand the mixing of mechanical bits with prose and how that might be confusing or make a product hard to use. I could see both being used where you get the prose but a nice little executive summary is placed at the top that lays out the skinny of what you need to run the place, person, or event.

 

[Morrus]

I don't want to dismiss the efforts and talents of the writers. I've done a little bit of published RPG writing, and it's hard. It's much easier to, say, design a monster mechanically than it is to put those ideas into good prose (which includes avoiding clichés).

But...I don't actually find it useful. The opposite, really: it gets in my way.

I think it all depends on taste. Some folks really like a lot of lore, others less so. I've seen RPG rulebooks which read more like technical manuals, and RPG rulebooks which feel more like travel guides or novels. I prefer something in the middle, I think.

 

[Haiku Elvis]

In some the atmosphere and the setting is such a big part of the game the prose/lore is needed as much as the mechanics, at least on the first read through but when you are playing you need to get to the details and not be scanning pages of text so swings and roundabouts really.
To be honest it's more about layout than anything else but I have to say 661 pages! If it doesn't have the secrets of the universe as well as at least one good sponge cake recipe tucked away in there with the magic and armour rules I think a stricter editor was needed.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I think it all depends on taste. Some folks really like a lot of lore, others less so. I've seen RPG rulebooks which read more like technical manuals, and RPG rulebooks which feel more like travel guides or novels. I prefer something in the middle, I think.

What I do like are short bits of fiction, but on their own pages and clearly separated. That way my brain can more easily context switch between background color and necessary information.

 

[innerdude]

Have been noticing this exact problem with the FFG Star Wars rule sets.

Have you seen how thick those books are? Edge of the Empire is 445 pages. Age of Rebellion is 460. And this is full-size 8.5x11 pages with tiny, miniscule font. The font is so small I can hardly read it if I'm wearing my contact lenses rather than glasses (yeah, yeah, middle age and needing bifocals or reading glasses, whatever ).

But the problem is exactly as described. There's sooooooo much filler prose, it's crazy. Ideas that could easily be explained in 2 sentences and a simple visual or graphic get sprawled across 4 or 5 paragraphs or more.

By contrast, one of the absolute best examples of tight, concise RPG prose is Ironsworn. The book is 280 pages, but it's a 6x8 inch page size, with very large font with tons of white space and liberal use of headings and dividers to conceptually "chunk" content together. It's so easily digestible, and greatly facilitated by having a stellar visual layout and document design.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Some game books seem like they are written to be read more than played. I'm function first so I prefer them to lean more towards being clear and concise without a lot of clutter. Enough lore and background to support the scenario but as I will doubtlessly throw out a lot of it its not a big pull for me. Those 5e modules you describe sound like what I would find appealing. The OSE modules I have are like that, key parts of each area in bullet points making it quite clear what is going on in a room with a quick glance.

 

[Bill Zebub]

In some the atmosphere and the setting is such a big part of the game the prose/lore is needed as much as the mechanics,

I may be an outlier, but while I fully agree with you about atmosphere and setting, I just don't think conveying that requires full prose.

 

[payn]

Have been noticing this exact problem with the FFG Star Wars rule sets.

Have you seen how thick those books are? Edge of the Empire is 445 pages. Age of Rebellion is 460. And this is full-size 8.5x11 pages with tiny, miniscule font. The font is so small I can hardly read it if I'm wearing my contact lenses rather than glasses (yeah, yeah, middle age and needing bifocals or reading glasses, whatever ).

But the problem is exactly as described. There's sooooooo much filler prose, it's crazy. Ideas that could easily be explained in 2 sentences and a simple visual or graphic get sprawled across 4 or 5 paragraphs or more.

By contrast, one of the absolute best examples of tight, concise RPG prose is Ironsworn. The book is 280 pages, but it's a 6x8 inch page size, with very large font with tons of white space and liberal use of headings and dividers to conceptually "chunk" content together. It's so easily digestible, and greatly facilitated by having a stellar visual layout and document design.

FFG is known for that tiny print in hundreds of pages stuff with their RPG line. I enjoy it for their settings books that are not really intended to be straight adventure material, and largely mechanics free, but yeah I know what you are talking about.

 

[Bill Zebub]

And, honestly, I'm perfectly happy to pay for the extra page count of the prose, as long as it is separate from and visually distinct from the necessary information. And it doesn't work if most of the required information is in stat bloc form, but some of it is buried in the paragraphs.