Bryce said...

[squeen]

I'm going to start quoting stuff here out of Bryce's comments and reviews that I think are particularly helpful reminders in adventure design.

Anyone that wants to help me mine the older posts, please chip in.

He's not here much, so I don't think he'll notice or mind.

 

[squeen]

from https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=6168#comment-8991

designer familiarity and the-adventure-as-reading-material

I’ve done about 2000 adventure reviews. I’m not saying that to argue I’m an expert, but rather to suggest that maybe my opinions should be given slightly more thought than some other internet rando.

I don’t always go in to detail on all subjects, but let me address two points: designer familiarity and the-adventure-as-reading-material.

The designer is always more familiar with their material than any reader. If my notes say “chasm, bridge” I know that means a slight breeze wafting up, a frayed rope bridge, shadowy lights on the other side and ominous drums down below. None of that is written, but, the “chasm, bridge” is a memory trigger to help me remember what I was thinking when I thought up the encounter. But if this were a published adventure I’d need to add more; there is no memory trigger. The designer always has more information and context than a DM. The challenge for a designer is to get the idea out of their head and down on paper in a way that conveys all of that context, everything that was in their head, without writing a novel. (Because you can’t use a novel at the table.)

Second, I utterly reject the adventure as a reading enjoyment for the DM. Or, rather, I reject that as a major consideration for design/usability. If this is your main goal then you are not writing adventures you’re writing something else. The primary purpose of an adventure is to be used as a resource for the DM at the table running a game. It may be that it can ALSO be a nice read for the DM, but not to the extent that it sacrifices it primary purpose: a resource for the DM at the table.

And none of this is to say that the stated Goo Goals are wrong or contradict my views. An immersive experience, etc, does not in any way necessarily at odds with being usable at the table, evocative, and interactive. I would, and have, argue though that the manner in which was tried to achieve this was wrong. More is NOT more. It’s less. A lot less.

 

[squeen]

From Darkland Moors

Abstracted Descriptions

The encounters, though, feel flat. The detail is, again, abstracted to a degree that it removes the life from the encounter. I think I can understand the why of this; you can’t fill in the details of these largish locations and still have a decently-sized product. Some of the hexes would easily be their own adventures if expanded upon in this way.

I would suggest, though, that there is another path. Rather than writing a very generalized and generic abstracted description the encounter/situation could instead be imbued with brief bursts of color. “A local farmer blinded the giant before being eaten.” is one of the sentences. Better, I think, would be some local color for this farmer, his family, or something else. Picking out one thing per encounter, maybe the most significant part of the place, and adding/changing the wording for some better adjectives and adverbs or more color. I’m not arguing for a significant increase in word count but rather a better use of those words, targeting some aspect of the encounter.

 

[squeen]

From Cult of the Blue Crab comments

Renfair vs. Gonzo

It’s the implied setting. Gonzo implies a weird world that is unpredictable and YOU ARE NOT SAFE. MY GOD WHAT IS THAT THING! RenFaire pushes the setting trappings up to the Ren period and then typically mixes it with modern culture. Archeology museums. Friendly city guards. In gonzo you have a world on the edge while in RenFaire you have a highly functioning society. In one the PC’s have room to breathe and in the other you are the guardians of order … because there’s not room for anything else.

I realize I’m generalizing, but it’s coming from recognizing the patterns in thousands of adventure reviews. I’d love to see a gonzo magical renfaire adventure without the trappings of modernity.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

Who’s a jerkfaced jerk? That’s right! Me! And now let the bloodletting and wailing begin!

THERE'S NOTHING TO THIS FUCKING THING

JABA – Just ANother Boring Adventure.

Be it well-meaning fuckwits on forums or freelance writers with a deadline, there’s almost nothing worthwhile.

How anyone thought this was a good idea is beyond me.

My life is a living hell.

Room 3 has … ah fuck, I can’t do this anymore.

We're supposed to pick our own favourites, right?

 

[Grützi]

I think squeen wanted to compile a best of Bryce's quotes as a helpfull archive of good design tips (and funny quotes )

With that in mind I got an idea from your post TerribleSorcery.
So here goes nothing
I present JABA ... all words by Bryce .. I swear ... I took them from his WORST Evar reviews myself

 

[TerribleSorcery]

GENIUS

 

[squeen]

Brilliant!

I now want a megadungeon of Bryce quotes. ($9.99 and no preview)

 

[Grützi]

I now want a megadungeon of Bryce quotes. ($9.99 and no preview)

Don't tempt me.
I fear this task is too much for a simple, mortal soul such as myself :/

And just imagine what would happen if Bryce ever reviewed this Frankensteinian creation of our hubris?
He would fall into an endless loop of self referential hate-writing and quote recycling ... until he would collapse into a yawing, black portal from which the worst of OSR writers would emerge like a many headed hydra of bland descriptions, statless monsters and nonsensical read aloud.

"This kitchen is full of cooking utensils and cutlery", spews one head, while the other endlessly drones out the dimensions of every room on the map.
One head only tells you what the party feels and which conclusions to draw, another drums out stats for grossly overpowered monsters to fight.

 

[squeen]

I don't think its much of a design principal, but I liked this from the tail-end of the The Webbed Herring

This is the internet. This is DriveThru. This is lower barrier to publishing. This is the ability of everyone to share their enthusiasm and creativity with everyone else. For better. And worse.

There are a wide variety of play styles, but, is there some essence that makes D&D what it is? Some platonic form that can be pointed to? This is D&D. This is not D&D.

Is everything meaningless?

 

[squeen]

Caught my eye in the comments of Hoard of the Dragon Queen

My review IS based on my expectations. I have review standards and I follow them. I think I know what makes a good adventure and I compare & contrast product to those standards. It is far too simple to say I want hand-holding. I don’t. I encourage you again to read the last paragraph of my review. I’m looking for an adventure that supports a DM in creative play. This explicitly does NOT mean pages of text for simple ideas. This means I expect the designer to communicate an evocative image to the DM expected to run the thing. If the adventure _requires_ pages of notes, highlighter, and many readings then the designer has failed. Every adventure is implicitly a framework. It’s how it goes about it that is at issue here.

 

[vanishing tower]

from https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=6168#comment-8991

designer familiarity and the-adventure-as-reading-material

A well written module designed with use at the table in mind is a wonderful DM read. It just doesn't happen much

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Here you go:

Adventure as a DM aid
Jacquayed maps
NPC relationships
Monsters DOING something
Abbreviated read-aloud
Gate to the mythic underworld
Non-book treasure
Evocative writing
Weird shit to interact with
We know what's in a kitchen
Bullets, spacing, indents
Fairytale vibes
Pay-by-word bullshit
Detailed preview
Order of battle
Statblocks are big
Why humanoids when humans are a thing?
Show us on the map
Greed as a motivator
Hire an editor

/thread

 

[squeen]

Lore Guide from Depths of Felk Mor

Almost half the pages are appendix but it’s really lacking in organizational, or summarizing data that could help orient the DM to the play of the thing. A few overviews would have been in order, and the ones that are present could be much better. The humanoid settlements get a page of so write up each with their motivations but then revert to traditional room key. And the write-ups are not really in a manner that help you use them. It’s more of a style guide that one could then use to develop DM aides and text for running an adventure. The lore guide full of background data that helps you write the actual play guide, so to speak. Oh! I like that analogy! And it works so well for so many descriptive errors in an adventure. “This room used to be …” Hey! That goes in the lore guide that the adventure writer uses to write the adventure! Not in the adventure proper! And this adventure does that a lot, with used to be’s and this is that way because Y … That sort of tex almost never contributes to the actual play of the adventure and gets in the way of the DM running it.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Lore Guides already exist - they are called "Setting Sourcebooks"

IMO, unless it's directly pertinent specifically to the adventure (which should be done very sparingly anyways), lore should not be included in a module. DMs already have their own worlds and lore and whatnot - the less an adventure requires interference with that, the more versatile and useable the adventure becomes, and the fewer details the DM has to "take along with the party" when they finish the adventure.

I can see lore being relevant in only 2 instances, otherwise it feels like an author wanking a bunch of fantasy ideas all over the pages:

1) Used as foreshadowing in the adventure ("Everyone is talking about the King's missing son - could this Masked Duke be him?"); or

2) Used to flesh out a self-contained "ecosystem of lore", so to speak. That is to say, where it would be expected for the players to ask all sorts of questions pertaining to a locale or specific group of people, so fleshed out lore of those specific ecosystems can be useful. ("You say the orange men of the shimmering caves haven't been seen in three years... what events happened around that time which may have caused their disappearance?")

 

[squeen]

I agree with DP that most "Setting Sourcebooks" are awful and nobody wants to read long back-story prose, and I like with your #2 especially.

i think the platonic "Lore Book" hasn't been written. It might just be an appendix with a LotR's style timeline or bullet-list of major people/places---or just a sidebar at the beginning of a section. But the interesting idea to me in Byrce's post is that we divorce the world-glue elements (used by the deigners to build the setting), from the actionable setting description. We can then discard almost all of the "this used to be..."'s from the keys and just say what they are now without losing some form of God's-Eye view of the settling.

It's a handy mental cleaver to me.

 

[squeen]

Here's another recent tip from the Trials of a Young Wizard review

Formatting

There’s an attempt to use bolding to highlight keywords and phrases in the long text but it largely misses its mark, being the wrong words bolded to to get the flavor of an encounter. It largely shows an unfamiliarity with better formatting techniques like bullets and indentations. This isn’t a one-size fits all, an adventure should not be all bullets and indents, but a mix of text, bullets, indents, and bolding usually does a better job than just one of those techniques alone. Further, when bolding and text are used by themselves then it becomes critical to keep the text short, use para breaks appropriately, and bold the right things. And none of that is done here. The net impact is a kind text wall that resists scanning. And if you can’t scan the text easily then you can’t run the adventure easily.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

i think the platonic "Lore Book" hasn't been written. It might just be an appendix with a LotR's style timeline or bullet-list of major people/places---or just a sidebar at the beginning of a section.

Sticky topic. Due to the subjectivity of every table's needs and interests and game styles and whatnot, it's very possible the ideal lore book can't actually exist at all - you'll never please all of the people all of the time. But there are some decent ones out there. I got the 5e Eberron book for Christmas, and it's pretty decent so far. I mean, I know "magicpunk" isn't everyone's cup of tea ("Magical Ren-Faire", eh Bryce?), and it could be more user-friendly or have more in the ways of world-specific classes and races and whatnot, but the lore is actually interesting and pretty easy to translate and communicate into gameplay at the table. So it mostly works for me.

But the interesting idea to me in Byrce's post is that we divorce the world-glue elements (used by the deigners to build the setting), from the actionable setting description. We can then discard almost all of the "this used to be..."'s from the keys and just say what they are now without losing some form of God's-Eye view of the settling.

I still maintain that the best adventures are made interesting by specific events/actions that occur to the player party, rather than by building up a bunch of framing devices around the stuff that happens to the party. Atmosphere is great, but if it doesn't go in hand with actual player interaction with any of it, then it's just flowery prose without any tangible payoff.

I think Bryce's biggest issue though is clutter. To him, all the extraneous background stuff is just more to sift through, and he's not wrong.

 

[squeen]

I still maintain that the best adventures are made interesting by specific events/actions that occur to the player party, rather than by building up a bunch of framing devices around the stuff that happens to the party. Atmosphere is great, but if it doesn't go in hand with actual player interaction with any of it, then it's just flowery prose without any tangible payoff.

It's a tight rope to be sure. Contrast an overlong backstory with Bryce's Black Maw. There's a bit of world-view going on when he describes the dwarven faction and their cult---but otherwise it's all meat (keyed locals). I like a bit more ambiance to convey a vibe and get me excited to run the adventure and rift off the topics introduced. But where to put it without getting in the way? Something more than Dungeon Robber

The Holy Grail eludes!

Not to go all old-school gushy on you, but Gygax had a weird talent for it---salt for the imagination---as little as possible, but no less.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I like a bit more ambiance to convey a vibe and get me excited to run the adventure and rift off the topics introduced. But where to put it without getting in the way?

Introductory text for the area - the one that outlines what the place actually is; a little subheading called 'Relevant History" or some such thing seems easy enough. Doesn't get in the way of room keys. The trick is not to go beyond a paragraph or two, Most objections stem from the length/intrusiveness of the backstory rather than the actual presence of one.