First layout is better, because the second is just a wall of text.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;743192Second question:  What about just omitting interior artwork, and instead putting them all as handouts in an appendix? I already have about two dozen specific handouts (puzzles, etc), but I'm on the fence about including all artwork as handouts so when the encounter happens, the DM isn't the only one who sees a visual reference.

Do both for the electronic versions; it's not like you have page restrictions in a .pdf.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;743246Interesting, but to be honest, a bit too outliny for me.  That looks like how I'd format an adventure when I'm creating a video game, not a tabletop game.  You don't have to abbreviate or notate everything.  Whatever happened to the power of a full sentence or paragraph?

Too each their own

Your goal is to make it easy to use at the table, and to give the GM exactly as much information as they need. There's no inherent value in using more words than you need.

In other words, yeah, I like the simple keyword, highlight approach.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;743246Interesting, but to be honest, a bit too outliny for me.  That looks like how I'd format an adventure when I'm creating a video game, not a tabletop game.  You don't have to abbreviate or notate everything.  Whatever happened to the power of a full sentence or paragraph?

Too each their own

I think everyone requires different levels of text versus brevity. Personally I prefer stuff like location descriptions to be a bit brief, but if you want to give me tones of background material, I am fine with that being more robust. And for important places, where I intend to read the entries in advance of running them, I a fine with more text as well. i think the basic trade off is brevity is easier to use in live play, more text is harder to use live during play but (to me at least) tends to inspire my imagination more. I can work with either as a GM and approach using them differently.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;743246Interesting, but to be honest, a bit too outliny for me.  That looks like how I'd format an adventure when I'm creating a video game, not a tabletop game.  You don't have to abbreviate or notate everything.  Whatever happened to the power of a full sentence or paragraph?

I think it's useful to have a couple bullets at the beginning of each room/encounter/locale that outline very briefly the main points as a mnemonic device. I don't like fishing through columns of text looking for what's going to happen.

Then can come the prose that I'm supposed to digest earlier during prep.

I also like the NPCs and Monsters to be clearly indicated in the text either by indention or bold (if there's no bold elsewhere in the text).

Pictures in the module... I always thought that these were a bit weird as the players will never see them. If there is to be art, it should also be available as separate files (or a booklet like Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan).

Quote from: Sacrosanct;743246Whatever happened to the power of a full sentence or paragraph?

What happened to it was: does the thing you're writing have power that needs a sentence to convey it?

I mean "And one midnight I found her in the embrace of a black naked demon, and the sight twisted my mind. I stood back aghast. I was not seen, and I went slowly away. In the morning she came running across the terrace, smiling and happy, like a child. 'Leave me,' I told her. 'You are vile beyond calculation.'"
(Jack Vance)

...needs sentences. It is better for being in a sentence.

"There are fifteen goblins in the room, six of whom are armed with clubs." is a perfectly workable room but it doesn't gain anything by being in a sentence.

"15 goblins, 6 have clubs" has the same amount of "power". And distributes it over far fewer square inches.

As for details: if you are adding a mundane detail that is mechanically significant but not something any GM couldn't have come up with on their own ("The table is 15 feet long") then don't include it.

A helpful way I've found is to organize things like this:

Stuff you'll notice immediately is here in this first paragraph.

If the PCs enter the room then they see the stuff here.

If the PCs look under the table, they'll notice the stuff I wrote about here.

If the PCs try to cast This Spell then This will happen.

That way the GM knows which things s/he doesn't have to read immediately during the game.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;743191I quite like an approach like this. It allows me to sit down before hand and read at a more relaxed pace but looks like it it will be way to find what I need during play.

Yeah, I'd prefer that style as well. I don't like boxed text. My players' eyes tend to glaze over if I read room after room of text so I usually end up paraphrasing as I go.

I don't care for the minimalist approach. I like complete sentences. As a rule, I don't like generic encounters anyway so minimalist format doesn't work for me. If six goblins are in a room, I want to know why they're there. I want to know how they react to threats. I want to know who comes running to their aid. If none of that is present, I want at least one of them to stand out somehow, whether by an interesting tactic, choice of weapon, or special ability granted to him by his goblin god. A room with 6 goblins, 4 have clubs is something my kid can write so why am I paying for it?

Would I refuse to run an adventure that just provides lists and bare bones descriptions? Probably not. Would I feel like I got my money's worth? Depends on the adventure of course, but that's already one knock against it, so it would have to be outstanding.

Keep in mind I read adventures for inspiration and almost never run them as written, so I prefer a little more detail to hold my interest. For that same reason, I like to see art interspersed throughout the text unless it's specifically designed as a player handout. It makes it easier to locate rooms, encounters, etc. when flipping through pages. Plus, it breaks up all the text.

Quote from: Zak S;743487What happened to it was: does the thing you're writing have power that needs a sentence to convey it?

I mean "And one midnight I found her in the embrace of a black naked demon, and the sight twisted my mind. I stood back aghast. I was not seen, and I went slowly away. In the morning she came running across the terrace, smiling and happy, like a child. 'Leave me,' I told her. 'You are vile beyond calculation.'"
(Jack Vance)

...needs sentences. It is better for being in a sentence.

"There are fifteen goblins in the room, six of whom are armed with clubs." is a perfectly workable room but it doesn't gain anything by being in a sentence.

"15 goblins, 6 have clubs" has the same amount of "power". And distributes it over far fewer square inches.

As for details: if you are adding a mundane detail that is mechanically significant but not something any GM couldn't have come up with on their own ("The table is 15 feet long") then don't include it.

A helpful way I've found is to organize things like this:

Stuff you'll notice immediately is here in this first paragraph.

If the PCs enter the room then they see the stuff here.

If the PCs look under the table, they'll notice the stuff I wrote about here.

If the PCs try to cast This Spell then This will happen.

That way the GM knows which things s/he doesn't have to read immediately during the game.

You can always do both as well. In a module, redundancy of info isnt such a bad thing, so you could have all the bare bones essentials for live play at the start of an entry, followed by a more in depth explanation for those desiring detail and full sentences prior to play.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;743582You can always do both as well. In a module, redundancy of info isnt such a bad thing, so you could have all the bare bones essentials for live play at the start of an entry, followed by a more in depth explanation for those desiring detail and full sentences prior to play.

Actual, redundancy can be a really bad thing. At least that kind of redundancy, where you put all the info next to the other info. Redundancy makes individual rooms take up more space and means you get less context for what's around the room per page spread. Instead of looking at 5 rooms at once you're looking at 1 or 2, flipping through pages just to find basic stuff.

Plus you still have to comb through the sentences to see if any of that stuff is important. Otherwise you wonder why it's there.

If it's essential to understand the character of the room: put it in front of the GM and do that efficiently with no fat.

If it's nice to know but takes a long time to explain: put it far far away from the room description in it's own memorable section so that the GM knows they need to memorize it before the game starts.

Quote from: Zak S;743585Actual, redundancy can be a really bad thing. At least that kind of redundancy, where you put all the info next to the other info. Redundancy makes individual rooms take up more space and means you get less context for what's around the room per page spread. Instead of looking at 5 rooms at once you're looking at 1 or 2, flipping through pages just to find basic stuff.

Plus you still have to comb through the sentences to see if any of that stuff is important. Otherwise you wonder why it's there.

If it's essential to understand the character of the room: put it in front of the GM and do that efficiently with no fat.

If it's nice to know but takes a long time to explain: put it far far away from the room description in it's own memorable section so that the GM knows they need to memorize it before the game starts.

Sure the particular organization i suggested may have been problematic for that reason, and the publisher needs to consider things like page count and maximizing value for the customer, but I think when page limits are not a consideration, redundancy can be enormously helpful in a module (so you dont have to flip back and forth). In this case where you have two competing needs (one for on the spot usefullness which definitely favors brevity and one for inspiring the GM before hand), I think in the right format redundancy is one approach. For instance it might work well in a PDF or a book where it wont drive you over your target page count. I do agree putting them next to each other is potentially confusing. Not sure of the best structure in practice. I also know as a gamemaster i kind of want both the brevity but also the deeper explanation with more inspiring text. So having both present in a module, but in seperate areas, would be helpful for my purposes.

Quote from: Zak S;743585Plus you still have to comb through the sentences to see if any of that stuff is important. Otherwise you wonder why it's there.

.

This is certainly a concern and it might trouble certain GMs. My attitude is to view it as optional information you can bring in if you remember it and find it useful. The stuff you absolutely need to know, you might want in those text light areas, then have something a little deeper later on to help get the Gm in the mood. I suppose it is preference but I do have to admit, I find i like having flavor text that really gets me interested in the module itself, and that can be achieved by giving me lots of interesting and well written background, location and npc information. But stuff in that format is easy to forget, so I want the ability to jettison stuff i dont really remember during play, but have the stuff I absolutely cant forget in an easy to find spot.

One of my favorite things about B1: In Search of the Unknown, is the empty monster and treasure blocks, along with the random monster encounter and treasure tables, so as a GM you could randomly (or not so randomly) stock your dungeon.

Didn't see any of this in either of those layouts.

Quote from: GameDaddy;743603One of my favorite things about B1: In Search of the Unknown, is the empty monster and treasure blocks, along with the random monster encounter and treasure tables, so as a GM you could randomly (or not so randomly) stock your dungeon.

Didn't see any of this in either of those layouts.

With the way the superdungeon is designed, it's not really conducive for the GM to replace encounters or go through and stock with his or her own.  Some of the encounters are very specific (like the Cultist Shrine example) and tie directly with other encounters further on.  

*edit*  also, adding those sections to each encounter would take up too much space, resulting in only one or two encounters per page.  On pages with no art, I'm at 2-4 per page.  With almost 300 encounters, it can get big.

Anyhoo....

This is another version I'm debating on.  Trying to keep the descriptive text (knowing how the contents of the encounter fits with the rest of the lair, yet having quick reference points of the important bits)

Like the one you just posted.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;743612Like the one you just posted.

I agree, I like this last one best.

//Panjumanju

Ooh, this latest one is clean and has potential! Nice compromise between flavor v. verbosity and discrete layout v. shopping list. Still would personally clean it up a bit more, but a vast improvement.

Here is one without art.  I unbolded the "Descriptive" and "DM Info"  and italicized them instead.  When they were bolded, it took away from the pop of the actual room #, visually.