Feedback Thread: Format

[DangerousPuhson]

This is something I made a while back, as the preamble to an adventure I've been repurposing lately. Consists of the background piece/premise, brief overland trip to the adventure site, and an NPC roster.

I'm wondering what people think of the format and in general what people's thoughts are towards things like layout. Is it too simplistic, or not enough? Too terse? Is there enough here to run an adventure preamble, or does it need something more?

Any nuggets of feedback would be appreciated - I'm not afraid to kill this darling if it's gone entirely in the wrong direction.

Also if anyone else wants Format criticism, this I guess is the thread to do it in. Post up what you got.

 

[bryce0lynch]

First glance: looks great. Do the people have relationships with each other?

I want to pick apart your 2-day walk section tomorrow

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Do the people have relationships with each other?

They do, and your comment has inspired me to incorporate those relationships into the next iteration - probably by way of colored shapes somehow.

 

[Guy Fullerton]

Will post more later when I’m finished reading it, but it begs for a brief referee summary of the reality of the site/situation. Presumably that’s on one of the pages not-yet-included.

If you want prose feedback, the tone feels a little odd. The Welcome info could be for any modern (non-fantasy) rpg, but then it ends up being fantasy. In retrospect, the tone feels kinda like Operation Unfathomable, but not committed enough to the bureaucratic absurdity IMO. I’d nitpick on the “to be” verbs and some word choice. I like the conversational voice in the Welcome info.

I don’t understand the title, “Pre-Approved Words, State-Sanctioned Common.”

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I don’t understand the title, “Pre-Approved Words, State-Sanctioned Common.”

An attempt at a small joke about language selection. I suppose that's a point in the column towards ditching the "Self-Service Menu" format.

In short: don't worry about it.

The Welcome info could be for any modern (non-fantasy) rpg, but then it ends up being fantasy. In retrospect, the tone feels kinda like Operation Unfathomable, but not committed enough to the bureaucratic absurdity IMO.

I see what you're saying, and can jive with your point about consistencies. It's all dead text regardless, being re-done from scratch, but now I'm curious - which style would we say is generally preferable (perhaps it is a matter of uniqueness)?

 

[The1True]

Man, I loves me some artbook, but maybe dial back the colour assault?
Pretty engaging intro!

 

[bryce0lynch]

The Forbidden Zone.

It's fine. I mean that. What follow is nitpicking. And just commentary; you should challenge it.

1) Getting a little clever aren't we? "mourn the stumps"? Periodically muted. I get it, but I think the effect would be better served in those two cases by being more direct. Twisted willow trees and something like raw or savaged earth with stumps sticking out.
2) "The Goblin Lands" For better or worse, goblin now means the mundane dudes and you've got some fey like goblins ... and thus I'm in the wrong mood, expecting normies and getting fey. Maybe change the spelling of goblin to make it imply a few goblin? Gobline? gob-lin? idk.
3) "gigantic" fungal. Gigantic is not the best word, but you've already used towering. Something else?
4) Magical songbirds? I might use a different word that is more specific.
4) "strange" orange mist? Strange is both an abstraction and a conclusion. Winnowing? Fleeting? Something like that.
5) I like the imagery of the bird song in the forest ... and then the wail of the infected and screams of the victims. I'm not sure there is any of that? Or I misunderstand? In any event, I would make the wail/inflicted and screams/victims a little more ... forward. I like the bird song being interupted by it, but the wording, proper, seems wrong. Maybe I'm focused on the periodically muted part or thesentence structure you are yusing?
6) Murder of crows is good, but, i think it could be better. Blackened sky of crows, or some such?

2.3 - maybe a bier of a crushed pixie? Why did they leave their dead?

I'm finding some of the art portraits a little dark. The style is interesting, but, aybe, some half choice? IE: not gone all the way one direction or another. The first page, in particular, I struggle for detail in the portraits. I like, in particular, the maggots in the portait while not mentioning them in the description. Thats using the portait to good effect. I wonder if there's more ytou can do like that?

 

[DangerousPuhson]

1) I like the raw/savaged earth thing, but disagree about nixing the "periodically muted", which I consider to be good instruction for a DM trying to evoke atmosphere (they'll have to mute the bird sounds periodically to capture the vibe of the place; this tells them to do that).
2) I see what you're getting at. The way this is now prescribes a certain expectation of goblins in the setting, whereas calling them "goblyn" or whatever it doesn't shoehorn as much for further adventures. Point taken.
3) What's wrong with "gigantic"? Seems like a perfectly cromulent adjective to me...
4) I see the confusion here- the birds are not magical, the twinkling noises are (I should have used the terms "noises" after twinkling to differentiate).
4 v2) "Strange" is too subjective a term, you are right. I should remember to demonstrate the strangeness rather than just tell the party it's strange.
5) I was trying to squish the whole overland travel into a single page, and so cut out a bunch of further ideas from the random encounter table - the idea was to demonstrate the madness of infection through encounters (like the animal eating their own young). More of those "atmospheric" encounters would have done well to un-muddle your understanding of the place, I think.
6) A sky blackened by crows seems a bit excessive - I think my intent when I wrote this was to have the crows following the party like vultures waiting for something to die... I should have expressed as much.

2.3) I remember originally having the squished pixie in the guy's pocket (he killed a pixie, so the pixies killed him), but the intent was to describe a place where even gentle benign little pixies are afflicted with a madness that turns them into vicious killers - I suspect in such a case, the idea of a proper burial for a fallen comrade falls by the wayside.

I'm finding some of the art portraits a little dark. The style is interesting, but, aybe, some half choice? IE: not gone all the way one direction or another.

Can you expand on what you mean here? I don't quite understand.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Man, I loves me some artbook, but maybe dial back the colour assault?

Noted, though I think the colors may seem more pronounced due to the fact that there's not additional blander pages afterward against which to contrast it.

 

[Beoric]

Seriously, dude, I don't know about the adventure, but the Forbidden Zone deserves its own hexcrawl. A travel montage with (quite good) flavour text doesn't do it justice.

I like the NPC format, but in addition to goals they need something the PCs might want to get from them.

Re: colours, how well does this print in black and white? I doubt I'm the only one who tends to print in grayscale unless I have a good reason not to.

@bryce0lynch, these actually look like bog-standard late edition comic-relief goblins to me.

 

[bryce0lynch]

I'm finding some of the art portraits a little dark. The style is interesting, but, aybe, some half choice? IE: not gone all the way one direction or another. The first page, in particular, I struggle for detail in the portraits. I like, in particular, the maggots in the portait while not mentioning them in the description. Thats using the portait to good effect. I wonder if there's more ytou can do like that?

The shading is very dark? IDK, I don't know art. I can't pick out details of the art very well ... like the shading is too close to each other? Hmmm ... I'm going to go back to "I can't pick out the detail very well at all.) You could go down the path of something abstracted, almost Scrap Princess style, or something that it more "Realistic" or maybe something similiar to what you have but with a feature or two that REALLY stand out. Like, if maggot guy was even more ... muddy? than he is now, but the maggots, ear, and skull fracture stood out. It's not a big deal, I don't think, like I said, I think everything is fine. But you have a chance to do something very interesting with the art, I think.