Criteria: Evocative-Terse continuum vs. Rorschach for the referee

[tetramorph]

I understand usability. Got it.

I understand his emphasis on evocative prose - even if I mildly disagree. In the link @Avi gave, it looks like what Lynch wants is to set up the ref to set up the players to "have some kind of feeling." I care little for this. I want the ref and the players to have fun playing a game solving puzzles and reaching goals. Watch a movie or read a book to "have a feeling." Just MHO.

So what is interactivity? As opposed to what?

And then what is design? From @squeen 's post it sounds like just designing something cool and making it playable? Yes?

Thanks for helping me understand this stuff.

 

[Beoric]

So what is interactivity? As opposed to what?

And then what is design? From @squeen 's post it sounds like just designing something cool and making it playable? Yes?

Thanks for helping me understand this stuff.

I believe interactivity refers to game elements that can be manipulated or interacted with by the PCs in open-ended ways, or that have non-obvious solutions that require experimentation. Like a pile of treasure at the bottom of a pool of acid, or a river that must be crossed with no bridge, and a dubious boat tied up on the other side, or monsters that might possibly be negotiated with. The non-interactive end of the spectrum would be "monsters attack on sight and fight to the death."

I am not entirely sure I understand what he means by design, either. I have a sense that it applies to the overall structure of the adventure, or the aggregate effect that the individual elements have on the play experience. Basic forms might be something like "hexcrawl", "dungeon crawl" or "lair assault", but to turn them into something interesting you need to think about things like frequency of wandering monster checks, the types of monsters and their goals, persistent environmental effects (like the poison gas in Tamoachan), use and goals of factions, etc. Or something like the chaos level in Marlinko, where the city gets crazier over time. But I stand to be corrected by Bryce.

 

[Avi]

Good one Avi. I did also find this:



Which in summary is:

1. Ease of Use at the Table
2. Evocative Writing
3. Interactivity
4. Design

But it's not what I remember. I wonder if the book chapter (rough draft) was taken down.

I would say:
1) Ease - how formatting helps the DM get the "room" quickly in the correct order
2) Evocative - helps the DM remember the "room" and transfer it to the players (Always causes me issues as I need to translate...)
3) Interactivity - the players have "things" to do (or as our host will put "fuck with room" ;-)
4) Design - the module has a "rhyme and reason" that is not rules derived.

 

[squeen]

I understand his emphasis on evocative prose - even if I mildly disagree. In the link @Avi gave, it looks like what Lynch wants is to set up the ref to set up the players to "have some kind of feeling." I care little for this. I want the ref and the players to have fun playing a game solving puzzles and reaching goals. Watch a movie or read a book to "have a feeling." Just MHO.

I think you are over-stating what evocative is...perhaps based on some past bad experience with a story-teller DM? It's not that.

In it's simplest form it's good adjectives. Powerful word choice. A well crafted sentence can evoke, a weak one will leave you feeling flat (e.g. "The room is large 30 feet by 60 feet...").

Why do we want to evoke? Because it puts both the player and the DM in the right mindset. They both mentally regurgitate past imagery and paint the scene in their minds (differently!...but close enough). If you don't evoke, and you want to fill out a scene with some detail...it's going to end up being a wall-of-text. Zzzzz....

There is an analogy in art/illustration. You hint as forms and make the viewers mind complete the image. That's the jedi-master way to paint. The sophmoric way is to zoom down in Photoshop to an infinite level-of-detail and fill everything in hyper-realistically (the way a computer does). The freshman way is to use stick figures.

I think you (and I) both want our players to "have a feeling", but just not in with the negative connotations of "story time". We do want our players anxious or scared when the poking through ancient ruins. We want them to have a sense of wonder when they find something amazing/unusual. We'd like them to possibly panic when they are being chased out of the dungeon. That's the sort of subtle emotional manipulations I think a good DM strives for. Evocative language when describing a setting can help.

So what is interactivity? As opposed to what?

Beoric nailed that. Basically an inert environment w/ combat.

And then what is design? From @squeen 's post it sounds like just designing something cool and making it playable? Yes?

Perhaps it's easiest to understand design by the lack of it. It's a fun-house dungeon, random monster placement. A red dragon in a 20x20 room right down the hall from 100 orcs usually equals poor Design.

I think Hawk's Bottomless pit of Zorth is a wonderful modern example of good design.

 

[tetramorph]

Okay, @squeen, I think I am starting to see it.

There must be some truly bad modules published out there to have to say outloud some of this stuff.

 

[Beoric]

There must be some truly bad modules published out there to have to say outloud some of this stuff.

There are. There are also modules that are generally accepted to be pretty good, but which suffer so badly from the design features that Bryce criticizes that I just can't read them. A lot of the 2e-era stuff falls into this category for me, including well-liked modules in the "B" series (after B4) and things like that Sahuagin series by Cordell that @PrinceofNothing likes.

 

[Yora]

I've seen several adventures in which the read aloud text at the start covers two full pages. And I think some of them actually had a really good core.

 

[PrinceofNothing]

There are. There are also modules that are generally accepted to be pretty good, but which suffer so badly from the design features that Bryce criticizes that I just can't read them. A lot of the 2e-era stuff falls into this category for me, including well-liked modules in the "B" series (after B4) and things like that Sahuagin series by Cordell that @PrinceofNothing likes.

They are a bit on the chubby side but that's okay after a couple of drinks.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

There are. There are also modules that are generally accepted to be pretty good, but which suffer so badly from the design features that Bryce criticizes that I just can't read them. A lot of the 2e-era stuff falls into this category for me, including well-liked modules in the "B" series (after B4) and things like that Sahuagin series by Cordell that @PrinceofNothing likes.

For me, the archetypal examples of this are the RPGA tournament modules. Not that they're terrible in their original context, but they have a number of faults like the "two pages of boxed text to start the adventure off" that are forgivable in that context but obnoxious outside of it, and no modern player will be using them in anything much resembling that original context.

 

[Beoric]

For me, the archetypal examples of this are the RPGA tournament modules. Not that they're terrible in their original context, but they have a number of faults like the "two pages of boxed text to start the adventure off" that are forgivable in that context but obnoxious outside of it, and no modern player will be using them in anything much resembling that original context.

That tracks. I note Rahasia was both an RPGA module and a B-series module (B7).

 

[squeen]

Evocative Language

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With the same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With the same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
Emily Dickinson

 

[The1True]

Aw. I miss everyone as well.

I honestly think there's something wrong with the site's email notifications. I've seen people complaining that they can't open a new account because the email verification doesn't work.

 

[squeen]

Aw. I miss everyone as well.

Lack of free time and, honestly, having run out of things to say.

But it's true, things are much quieter post-pandemic. A lot of folks have gone to Discord, which I think is more of a voice-based chat room and involves less typing.

I got me thinking back to the chat-room of the early 1980s --- pre-internet --- on 300 baud modems. The technology has changed, but not much else.

I think I just borked the HDD I kept most my D&D stuff on this morning. Sucks.

 

[Malrex]

Lack of free time and, honestly, having run out of things to say.

But it's true, things are much quieter post-pandemic. A lot of folks have gone to Discord, which I think is more of a voice-based chat room and involves less typing.

I got me thinking back to the chat-room of the early 1980s --- pre-internet --- on 300 baud modems. The technology has changed, but not much else.

I think I just borked the HDD I kept most my D&D stuff on this morning. Sucks.

Well.....we could talk about paladins again....

 

[The1True]

I think I just borked the HDD I kept most my D&D stuff on this morning. Sucks.

Nooooooooo!

 

[The1True]

Well.....we could talk about paladins again....

This will never get old!

 

[The1True]

But seriously, I think people are having trouble with this site's email notification system.

 

[squeen]

Well.....we could talk about paladins again....

I've also recently learned I'm biased against assassins, too---the new movie-badass apparently the kids all want to play.

I don't know about the email notifications, because I don't use it.


I only lost about of 6-months of D&D stuff....not everything. I have an older backup.

Tons of collected and sorted art. Some recently purchased music....

 

[squeen]

Totally get it, and I 'm not trying to disparage it...just can't bring myself to get that "live" right now.

 

[The1True]

With the whole 3 Rnds of study thing, assassins are mostly impossible to play anyway. And exceptionally hard to play in a group of other players.
I've seen it done as a sort of James Bond archetype, usually as part of a multi-class build. Even then though, in 3.5e terms, you should probably just be putting together some kind of tricked-out crit-hunter build. The abstract nature of combat in (every edition of) D&D makes it very difficult to create a character capable of dispatching level-matching creatures with one shot.

My group finally hit irreconcilable issues with Roll20's video chat and had to create a Discord server. It's...fine, I guess. Is this really going to be the new G+? uch