Good descriptions don’t describe a locale, they describe the sense of a locale
+st cloud
Boring words
+tomb lovelorn
-lost hall tyr striking rock formation
+spores sad shroom
+tree f blight
+grave heartless
+life & death
+red prophet
-shards mystery
+bishops secret
+necromancers bane
+chapel cliffs
+maze screaming silence
+polute elfen memory water
-hand horla
+under temple crypt
-navrone – abstracted text
+dusty door
+little bit of thievery
Less is more
++deadly den wanton wolth
-overly flowery language in sandoval estate
+phaunts tower
+optic experiment
+barbarian king
+sense of loss
Abstracted text
-whispers from the void
You need to communicate the core concepts of the adventure, room, monster, whatever, in a flavorful manner. In a way that gets across all of the imagery you have in your head that only you can see. You have a powerful tool: English.
There’s another tool that the best authors use: ignoring the rules of language. You have my permission to murder the English language. Grammar, spelling, using nouns for verbs and verbs for nouns … it doesn’t matter. Do it. Do whatever you need to with the words in order to communicate what’s going on in your head. Do it. You need to lodge an idea seed in the DM’s head. The DM is going to read the adventure, once, probably just skimming it. From that you need to lodge an idea in their head that they can then riff off of. Something interesting. Something that springs to life and takes on an existence of its own, growing and festering their mind. If you do a good job you can do that for each and every room.
+st cloud
Boring words
+tomb lovelorn
-lost hall tyr striking rock formation
+spores sad shroom
+tree f blight
+grave heartless
+life & death
+red prophet
-shards mystery
+bishops secret
+necromancers bane
+chapel cliffs
+maze screaming silence
+polute elfen memory water
-hand horla
+under temple crypt
-navrone – abstracted text
+dusty door
+little bit of thievery
Less is more
++deadly den wanton wolth
-overly flowery language in sandoval estate
+phaunts tower
+optic experiment
+barbarian king
+sense of loss
Abstracted text
-whispers from the void
You need to communicate the core concepts of the adventure, room, monster, whatever, in a flavorful manner. In a way that gets across all of the imagery you have in your head that only you can see. You have a powerful tool: English.
There’s another tool that the best authors use: ignoring the rules of language. You have my permission to murder the English language. Grammar, spelling, using nouns for verbs and verbs for nouns … it doesn’t matter. Do it. Do whatever you need to with the words in order to communicate what’s going on in your head. Do it. You need to lodge an idea seed in the DM’s head. The DM is going to read the adventure, once, probably just skimming it. From that you need to lodge an idea in their head that they can then riff off of. Something interesting. Something that springs to life and takes on an existence of its own, growing and festering their mind. If you do a good job you can do that for each and every room.
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