The Industry Standard Of Formatting-dungeon
When it comes to layout, I feel that DUNGEON has the most friendly method, tested and true after 18 years! WotC and the RPGA have copied that method for their writers guides. The DM-friendly layout is as follows:
1. ADVENTURE TITLE & AUTHOR
2. BLURB AND SCHEDULED LEVELS. The blurb's should be written FOR the DM, but are sometimes still written convention-style where they uselessly ask inane questions. The scheduled levels should be standard to 4-6 players and should include a side-bar for MODIFYING THE ADVENTURE LEVELS to make it more useful to more DM's.
3. NOTES ON HOW TO RUN THE ADVENTURE. Technical details go here, such as "it would be useful to have a cleric along this adventure."
4. ADVENTURE BACKGROUND (All the extra crap that a DM _MAY_ use to run the scenario, but that doesn't belong in the "DM's text" of the encounters. It's the history leading up to the scenario and local news going on currently).
5. ADVENTURE SUMMARY (a step-by-step method on how the scenario is expected to play out. All secrets and plot twists are listed here so the DM doesn't miss them in the fluffy-text later.)
6. ENCOUNTERS 1-20 without stupid encounter names (pet peeve)
..... a. Read Aloud Text (i.e. "Boxed Text" - written 3rd person without assuming any action on the parts of the players. The words, "..as you.." are not used when this is done properly otherwise it TELLS the players what they are doing instead of 'inviting' them to participate.)
..... b. DM's text - the text necessary to run the encounter and how the encounter ~should~ play out.
..... c. Monsters, traps, etc. or reference to the appropriate page in MM/DMG
..... d. Development and clue to the next encounter blatantly laid out
..... e. Relevant maps nearby. Sometimes these can be nicely grouped in the appendix.
7. CONCLUSION
8. APPENDICES
This may seem like a given, but it's amazing how many scenarios I see from 3rd party companies who seem to think that the DM must be a living encyclopedia to run their stuff. In the "notes on how to run the adventure" it says, "the DM should read through this adventuer sixty or seventy times and memorize all of the obscure details to run it properly. In fact, our formatting is so dumb that the DM will find the actual re-writting sufficient to have written his own adventure in the first place."
My other pet peeve is when the Read Aloud (aka boxed text) is written in 2nd person. Something like this: "As YOU enter the room, YOU see a book. YOU assume that the book is demonic because it has human skin on the cover. YOU also see a tapestry on the wall and get a chill up YOUR spine when you realize that it's from the ancient Suloise era of the Sea of Dust. While YOU are looking around YOU are attacked by a goblin. YOU don't have time to respond and YOU are surprised."
Where's there room for the player to take action when the author is telling him what he's doing and leading him by the nose. Third person is best. It's also a LOT more DM friendly.
Dungeon has been exceptional with their 3rd person Read-Aloud (aka boxed) text with the exception of the latest issue, where the PC's are insanely led by the nose from one encounter to the next with 2nd person-style writing (i.e. telling YOU what YOU are doing instead of what exists in view).
jh
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