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What Does It Look Like? 4 Steps for Beating the Boxed Text Blues
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<blockquote data-quote="Dr Simon" data-source="post: 7652084" data-attributes="member: 21938"><p>The boxed text started to become more prevalent as the idea of a plot behind the game began to become more prevalent as well, hence (in my mind at least) it tends to be linked to the more egregious examples of railroading (such as Dragonlance, or the FR1-3 series of modules). Perhaps it ties with adventure writers wanting to be story writers, so as well as imposing a sequence of events on the PCs they would also show off their writing "skills" (a connected phenomenon - the opening piece of short fiction inflicted on the GM, meant as a scene-setter but more often than not fully disposable).</p><p></p><p>There's a sweet-spot, though, between that kind of enforced prose and having to pick through the encounter area descriptions of e.g. the very early Gygax modules, such as Against the Giants or Tomb of Horrors, for the bits that are relevant to the room. Hence the bullet-point kind of idea. Another style I remember is from early RuneQuest adventures (Rainbow Caves and Snakepipe Hollow), which gave an At First Glance heading with a very brief, one-line summary of the obvious things, and Further Detail for what you would find on closer, more leisurely examination. Worked really well.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dr Simon, post: 7652084, member: 21938"] The boxed text started to become more prevalent as the idea of a plot behind the game began to become more prevalent as well, hence (in my mind at least) it tends to be linked to the more egregious examples of railroading (such as Dragonlance, or the FR1-3 series of modules). Perhaps it ties with adventure writers wanting to be story writers, so as well as imposing a sequence of events on the PCs they would also show off their writing "skills" (a connected phenomenon - the opening piece of short fiction inflicted on the GM, meant as a scene-setter but more often than not fully disposable). There's a sweet-spot, though, between that kind of enforced prose and having to pick through the encounter area descriptions of e.g. the very early Gygax modules, such as Against the Giants or Tomb of Horrors, for the bits that are relevant to the room. Hence the bullet-point kind of idea. Another style I remember is from early RuneQuest adventures (Rainbow Caves and Snakepipe Hollow), which gave an At First Glance heading with a very brief, one-line summary of the obvious things, and Further Detail for what you would find on closer, more leisurely examination. Worked really well. [/QUOTE]
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