Tranzar’s Redoubt

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• This may be your most positive review to date!

  I actually don't mind room dimensions in the key if it's something brief like "20 x 30". Just avoid wordiness.

• And yet, is not putting room dimensions in the description a way to prevent page flipping? Otherwise you have to look at the map every damn time, and probably count squares. And dimensions actually matter if players are mapping, which in old school play they probably.

• Long time reader, first time commenter. Bryce, I get that it's frustrating to see the points you made so often ignored - you bring valid observations to the table, and your suggestions are sound. That being said, you can't beat your head whenever your "rules of good design" get violated... as popular as the blog may be, not everyone agrees, adheres, or is even aware of your design philosophy.

  These days I'm beginning to see a lot of your reviews more colored by your own personal idiosyncratic hang-ups rather than objective design principles. The room dimension thing, while bothersome to you, probably doesn't bother most people. I personally find it handy to have t right there on the same entry I'm already reading, even though I also have a map handy. Verbosity of the entries is another one, coming up in almost all your reviews, but I imagine are generally ignored or un-cumbersome to most other DMs. Same goes for read-aloud, or lengthy backgrounds, or non-pertinent information, or book magic items... these aren't "design flaws", but rather "Bryce flaws". Not to say you don't have a point about why those things suck, but there are other people who can make points about why they don't suck too, so maybe keep things less subjective? I know, personal reviews are the definition of subjective, but it seems like you're aiming this blog towards a style-guide of sorts (which is fine), but keep in mind that an objective mindset would go a long way towards not pulling your own hair out every time you read a Dungeon Magazine.

  Concrete, concise points outlining the reasons that something is objectively bad will go further towards making your case than focusing on the same nitty-gritty issues that you don't like to see. I've seen you review a few modules this way, and it's been really helpful to read those reviews. Less helpful are the reviews where you talk for three paragraphs about how you hate that the designer devoted four paragraphs to a seemingly irrelevant backstory... we know that already, you've made your case about it. You ought to be taking your own advice - dock it a point in one sentence and move on.

  No disrespect, big fan of your work. I've literally read every review on here. Just highlighting a potential issue going forward is all. I know it's often a thankless task, so keep it up.

  • Rob, you noted that “...room dimension thing, while bothersome to you, probably doesn’t bother most people. I personally find it handy to have t right there on the same entry I’m already reading, even though I also have a map handy. Verbosity of the entries is another one, coming up in almost all your reviews, but I imagine are generally ignored or un-cumbersome to most other DMs. Same goes for read-aloud, or lengthy backgrounds, or non-pertinent information, or book magic items… these aren’t “design flaws”, but rather “Bryce flaws”.

    Actually, I'm going to disagree with you here (shocking, I know). And this is fresh in my mind as my wife and I just ran GRAVE OF THE GREEN FLAME this past Sunday (Bryce: thanks for mentioning a while back!) as a “duo solo” module (i.e.: no DM, but we each took two first level characters and ran them through it together). Verbosity of entries was a major problem for us along with a lack of clarity in general. At one point, I was trying to track down some key information in a block of text and I could...not...find...it. Scanning, scanning, couldn't see it. Couldn't find it. Argh! I had to pass the module over to my wife and she finally tracked down the piece of info. Simply bolding or otherwise highlighting key text would have helped immensely.

    FLAME also has a lot of read-aloud text, partially because of the solo nature of the module, but I believe that it could have been cut down. I did the read-aloud and man, it was ok-ish, but a lot of it was very clunky at the table. And I think it's far to say that FLAME is better than most. For the most part, it's a no-prep module that you can run immediately. Plus it's fun! But I think it could have been better organized, more intuitive and easy to use.

    While there's certainly an argument that some design choices are aesthetic (hell, it's design, right?), a lot of what Bryce talks about ARE design flaws and not just “Bryce flaws.” It seems almost counter-intuitive; when you give a module a read BEFORE you play it, you think you'll understand or remember everything. Then you're at the table, running it, and you partially remember something...and you start to scan, trying to find the reference. And you can't. It's incredibly annoying.

    Anything that makes finding key information fast and fires the imagination at the same time is gold.

• Ah, WTF man! My comment got lost!

  WRONG!

  Errr, I mean: there is some amount of truth in what you say.

  You are absolutely correct about the writing/design abilities of others vs the beaten in standards I've been commenting on. I understand it, so why don't others? Well, because they haven't spent 1000+ review beating the concepts in to themselves.

  If you view the blog as my personal journal then that point, as well as the one about idiosyncratic issues, becomes clearer. I see something and then suddenly I see the same thing everywhere, getting on a months long kick in which I reinforce the concept over and over again ... until moving on to another whipping boy point.

  And you're wrong room dimensions, as is the previous poster. I'm not saying its a universal concept and that they are ALWAYS wrong to put in a room, but I do think it works counter to effective DM scanning, getting an evocative vibe across, and duplicates data from the map ... generally. From this standpoint it run counter to the information transfer goals that should guide the writing.

  I shant argue with the rest of your very fine points, except to point out that MAN, this shit can wear on you; an explanation rather than an excuse.

  I should get off my ass and finish my book.

  • "I do think it works counter to effective DM scanning, getting an evocative vibe across, and duplicates data from the map … generally"

    See, here's the great contradiction - as a DM, when I'm describing the room to my players, I like to look in one spot to find what I need. If the room dimensions are listed with the room description, I can kill two birds with one stone.

    I know where you're coming from on this - you think because the information is available elsewhere, that adding it to description is just redundant clutter. HOWEVER, room dimension size is a really small thing to add. No DM is going to claim they have to "sift through too much information" if there's a short "30' x 25'" blurb in there. Dimensions are probably the shortest possible piece of information that can be conveyed in D&D writing.

    I just fail to see how not having a summary Encounter Index or not having all your stat blocks neatly combined into an annex can be a deal-breaker in your reviews, yet rolling room dimensions into the description is a bad thing? Just seems like a really small thing to nitpick, especially since the two things are related (room size fits in with room description, seeing as you are DESCRIBING the SIZE of the room).

    So I say to you sir, that I believe you to be wrong on this point.

    I should get off my ass and finish writing that adventure module too though.

• I don't care about room dimensions, either, but that's just because they don't take up a lot of space. If an adventure is already far too verbose, then something like that can stick out like a sore thumb. Generally speaking, though, I think that Bryce is absolutely right about the general issue of excess verbosity.

  I ran a few adventures at Gen Con this weekend, and it makes a huge difference if it's easy to find the part that you're looking for on a moment's notice. Having to pick your way through two pages of text when you're under pressure to keep up a breezy pace is agonizing. It's all about table-readiness. Verbosity is great (up to a point) when I'm reading at my leisure, but terrible at the table, which is why something like Maze of the Blue Medusa worked so well.

  RPG authors are notorious for falling in love with their own purple prose. But adventure descriptions are not at all like novels. Rather, the adventures themselves are the novels, and the players do a lot of the writing.

• There *is* existing good practice for room dimensions, and it was established by Judges Guild almost immediately after D&D was published. You can put them in your room entries like...
  A1. 50'x70'x40' H Butler Bertalan, Balrog Ghost, politely asks to take wraps - indignantly leaves through wall if refused. Three mouldering corpses by outside door.
  (The H stands for Height)

  Or you can put them on your maps next to the rooms in a small font. It is simple and useful. Presenting numerical information or statistics in a descriptive fashion, however, is a waste of space and brainpower. You don't write "Five orcs, first level, with an AC of seven, damage one to six and one to eight Hp each, playing cards" You could, but there is no reason why you should.

  • Oh Judges Guild, we've fallen so far from your lofty heights ...

• I suspect most authors don't write the module first and then run the dungeon second. They run the dungeon first and then write the module second. If they did the former, they might change how they write on successive dungeons. But even that strategy fails (to a degree, anyway) because an author has so much of the invented dungeon in their head; the author wouldn't need use the written word as much as someone else would. Plus, write-then-run probably isn't practical for most people.

  I suspect most authors run very few dungeons authored by others. That would help too.

  I have a feeling most authors who do run other author's dungeons, don't feel Bryce's pain points much.