Yes, this took me all fucking day. Fuck you. I hate writing and I suck at it and it's not very good.
First Things First 1
The party has been exploring ruins, looking for an evil cultist. They come upon the following read-aloud:
“A limestone altar carved with religious symbols is in front of a statue of the light goddess. The statue's head is missing and black goo flows from its fractures to the floor. It’s pooling around a huge black spire in the center of the chamber, reaching upward like a great hand.Stairs lead up to the southwest. Collapsed stone fills the northeast of the room. A beam of red light is coming from the stone, shooting up through a hole in the ceiling.”
Overall that’s not too terrible a description. I might suggest leading the description with the black spire and the red light, since that’s the most obvious thing, and then following it up with the goo, the statue, and then the altar, leaving out the religious symbols entirely as something for the party to discover when they examine the altar more closely. There is, however, an issue. In the real adventure that’s a three paragraph read-aloud taking up about a quarter of the page. It’s not until two paragraphs later, and on a separate page, in the DMs notes, that we learn that there’s a figure lying prone on the floor in front of the altar that rises as the party enters. The cultist in question.
Invariably during a game the DM will pause after relating the read-aloud and the party will begin asking questions and taking actions, perhaps even interrupting the DMs read-aloud, while the DM scans the notes. In this case we get to the dreaded DM interrupting the players to say “Wait, wait, there’s a cultist lying prone on the floor that gets up when you enter.” Not good.
This could be resolved by placing the cultist at the end of the read-aloud, or even better, putting the prone cultist up front, right after the spire, and then at the end noting that they rise up. Alternatively, in some adventures it’s possible that the creature may not be in the room, having responded to the party previously by hunting them down. In these cases it might be appropriate to have the creatures be the very first thing in the DM notes after the read-aloud, allowing the DM to move it to immediately after reading the text to the players.
First Things First 2
These problems are not only relegated to the realm of read-aloud. Many adventures don’t have read-aloud, but all have a section for the DMs eyes only. The ability to organize information in a logical order for the DM is critical.
The party has reached the final room of the adventure. They have found the room they were looking for. They had been tracking the creeping plague through the wilderness for days, explored the ruins at the center, and made it to the final room. The DM is now faced with a page and a half of DM text, this being an adventure with no read-aloud. The first several paragraphs of the room description detail the history of the room and the rebel priests actions over the last few months. How they found the object in the room and manipulated its levers, turned it on, couldn’t turn it off, and how a number of them volunteered to stay behind. Buried in this is the fact that there are two zombies in the room. Then what follows is the journal “next to the device”, which we still don’t have a description of yet. Then it notes that there is a piece of paper in one corner of the room in the trash. Oh, it looks like the room has trash in it. We then get notes about the parchment. Then, finally, we get some notes about working the machine and to go look in the appendix for more information. The appendix does indeed have more information, but still, no real description of the machine, or the room for that matter, anywhere. There is an art piece of an iron lung.
First, kudos for putting in some art to show the machine, even if it does little to bring it to life beyond “a metal tube.” And, putting the more detailed notes in the appendix is a good idea to help keep the main DM text workable. But, multiple paragraphs of history, before getting to the zombies trying to eat you, and burning important facts like a journal in the middle of a history paragraph, and no real description of the machine ever, is not exactly working with the DM to run the adventure.
The DM doesn’t need the life story of the recent events of the room. The description should lead with a brief description of the machine, then the zombies, and sprinkle in the room state via an adjective or two. An enormous brass tube on squat legs, covered in levers, blocks the middle of this grimy room, with two figures in tattered red robes stumbling towards the party.” The DM notes can then handle the zombies (the most important thing) and then the parchment/journal and then the machine. Normally I might note the machine being, very important, might come second in the DMs notes, but give the length of its description in some cases it makes sense to end a room description with the longest entry, as long as it’s easily findable by the DM.
First Things First 3
The Forbidden Barrow is an adventure by Nickolas Brown, published by Five Cataclysms. It uses a terse format to describe a room, with the first paragraph being a general overview, with the follow up paragraphs being keyed to the first one by bolded words. Let’s look at room ten:
Dozens of skulls are suspended from chains or settled on metal spikes in this room, their mouths all agape in silent laughter. The East and South walls are clearly sealed crypts, with words upon them in an ancient language.
This is presented as DM text, no read-aloud is present in this adventure, but might just as well be read-aloud and could clearly be used as such. While it’s a little hand-wavey in the “clearly sealed crypts” portion of the description (I’d prefer a description that causes a player to say “oh! A clearly sealed crypt!”), it does a decent job is setting a scene with the skulls. What’s the first thing you would notice in the room? Dozens of skulls. And dozens of skulls come first in the description, with the secondary feature, the sealed crypts, following. The bolded words indicate that there is more DM text for those items, in the following paragraphs, making it easy for the DM to locate.
First Things First 1
The party has been exploring ruins, looking for an evil cultist. They come upon the following read-aloud:
“A limestone altar carved with religious symbols is in front of a statue of the light goddess. The statue's head is missing and black goo flows from its fractures to the floor. It’s pooling around a huge black spire in the center of the chamber, reaching upward like a great hand.Stairs lead up to the southwest. Collapsed stone fills the northeast of the room. A beam of red light is coming from the stone, shooting up through a hole in the ceiling.”
Overall that’s not too terrible a description. I might suggest leading the description with the black spire and the red light, since that’s the most obvious thing, and then following it up with the goo, the statue, and then the altar, leaving out the religious symbols entirely as something for the party to discover when they examine the altar more closely. There is, however, an issue. In the real adventure that’s a three paragraph read-aloud taking up about a quarter of the page. It’s not until two paragraphs later, and on a separate page, in the DMs notes, that we learn that there’s a figure lying prone on the floor in front of the altar that rises as the party enters. The cultist in question.
Invariably during a game the DM will pause after relating the read-aloud and the party will begin asking questions and taking actions, perhaps even interrupting the DMs read-aloud, while the DM scans the notes. In this case we get to the dreaded DM interrupting the players to say “Wait, wait, there’s a cultist lying prone on the floor that gets up when you enter.” Not good.
This could be resolved by placing the cultist at the end of the read-aloud, or even better, putting the prone cultist up front, right after the spire, and then at the end noting that they rise up. Alternatively, in some adventures it’s possible that the creature may not be in the room, having responded to the party previously by hunting them down. In these cases it might be appropriate to have the creatures be the very first thing in the DM notes after the read-aloud, allowing the DM to move it to immediately after reading the text to the players.
First Things First 2
These problems are not only relegated to the realm of read-aloud. Many adventures don’t have read-aloud, but all have a section for the DMs eyes only. The ability to organize information in a logical order for the DM is critical.
The party has reached the final room of the adventure. They have found the room they were looking for. They had been tracking the creeping plague through the wilderness for days, explored the ruins at the center, and made it to the final room. The DM is now faced with a page and a half of DM text, this being an adventure with no read-aloud. The first several paragraphs of the room description detail the history of the room and the rebel priests actions over the last few months. How they found the object in the room and manipulated its levers, turned it on, couldn’t turn it off, and how a number of them volunteered to stay behind. Buried in this is the fact that there are two zombies in the room. Then what follows is the journal “next to the device”, which we still don’t have a description of yet. Then it notes that there is a piece of paper in one corner of the room in the trash. Oh, it looks like the room has trash in it. We then get notes about the parchment. Then, finally, we get some notes about working the machine and to go look in the appendix for more information. The appendix does indeed have more information, but still, no real description of the machine, or the room for that matter, anywhere. There is an art piece of an iron lung.
First, kudos for putting in some art to show the machine, even if it does little to bring it to life beyond “a metal tube.” And, putting the more detailed notes in the appendix is a good idea to help keep the main DM text workable. But, multiple paragraphs of history, before getting to the zombies trying to eat you, and burning important facts like a journal in the middle of a history paragraph, and no real description of the machine ever, is not exactly working with the DM to run the adventure.
The DM doesn’t need the life story of the recent events of the room. The description should lead with a brief description of the machine, then the zombies, and sprinkle in the room state via an adjective or two. An enormous brass tube on squat legs, covered in levers, blocks the middle of this grimy room, with two figures in tattered red robes stumbling towards the party.” The DM notes can then handle the zombies (the most important thing) and then the parchment/journal and then the machine. Normally I might note the machine being, very important, might come second in the DMs notes, but give the length of its description in some cases it makes sense to end a room description with the longest entry, as long as it’s easily findable by the DM.
First Things First 3
The Forbidden Barrow is an adventure by Nickolas Brown, published by Five Cataclysms. It uses a terse format to describe a room, with the first paragraph being a general overview, with the follow up paragraphs being keyed to the first one by bolded words. Let’s look at room ten:
Dozens of skulls are suspended from chains or settled on metal spikes in this room, their mouths all agape in silent laughter. The East and South walls are clearly sealed crypts, with words upon them in an ancient language.
This is presented as DM text, no read-aloud is present in this adventure, but might just as well be read-aloud and could clearly be used as such. While it’s a little hand-wavey in the “clearly sealed crypts” portion of the description (I’d prefer a description that causes a player to say “oh! A clearly sealed crypt!”), it does a decent job is setting a scene with the skulls. What’s the first thing you would notice in the room? Dozens of skulls. And dozens of skulls come first in the description, with the secondary feature, the sealed crypts, following. The bolded words indicate that there is more DM text for those items, in the following paragraphs, making it easy for the DM to locate.
