Love 'em or hate 'em? I am currently working on an adventure that is designed to be fairly well influenced in playability based on how well it is told. Ironically it is more of a dungeon crawl than a narrative adventure. Telling it as I have written in the read aloud boxes isn't a requirement, but it may affect play, for better or worse. Obviously if I am going for a darker, moodier, and somewhat pulpier feel, but you want to run it as high adventure, you may not use my read aloud sections.

But I am curious, from a design and playable standpoint, how often do you use these in printed adventures? Do you rely on them or ignore them, or something in between. Is there such a thing as too much?

In the current design, I am almost flooding it. In the village the adventure launches from I am being pretty detailed, even offering read aloud descriptions for entering shops and such. But, is this too much, or rather annoying? I see it as a useful tool some may appreciate, and those that won't can ignore, but I am really wondering if it is a great thing, or something one might look at and think "God this is Horrid!"

The story has to be pretty much railroaded for read aloud sections to be useable, and that's generally a sign that your adventure isn't very well built. There are a lot of other little reasons why they rarely work, but that's the big one.

If I read aloud a text in an adventure I will feel like Keanu Reeves trying to act. Frankly, it sounds very wooden to me.

I think that if read-aloud text is used for descriptive purposes or to set a scene, then it can add to the visualisation of the scene. Read aloud vignets, monologues or conversation can sound really stilted, however, and can never take the place of a roleplaying scene - i farm them for typical responses or the gist of what the NPC is trying to say, and paraphrase accordingly.

I use text boxes in my adventures though. Just largely of the sort i mentioned first.

I think it's always useful. For new GMs, it gives them a bit of polish that can help get them into the game. For experienced GMs, they can use it as added flavour for the scenario, as a description of an NPC's personality would be treated. I treat them as nice little bits of description in a narrative form.

If you page limit is tight, then I'd treat them carefully but otherwise, have fun with them!

I've never used them.

How long are they?  Bear in mind, while this stuff is being read out (and many folk are not good readers out loud, I have a terrible reading voice for example) the players are just sitting there.

If the text takes more than about 20 seconds to read out, 30 tops, it's too long and the players are getting bored.  If it takes a minute, that's a lot of dead time actually, try sitting down watching a clock go round a minute, it takes longer than you'd think.

Reading out text for going into a shop is going way overboard.  As a player, I'd stop going into shops because the game would stop while the GM read me a story every time I did, I don't think I'd be unusual in that reaction.

I think once you get to shops, you're far more likely to get the horrid reaction than any other.  Keep it for key scenes, ones that really matter, not for a scene where a PC buys a lantern.

I like 'em.  Although you might want to mention the GM should either read or paraphrase the text.

They're good for GM's who want to play the game without doing as much prep-work, and can help new(er) GM's see what parts should be told to the players... and what they shouldn't tell them.

Once you get used to reading out loud (eg. speeches, presentations, children's stories) you don't feel as weird and Keannu Reeves about doing it.

I don't use 'em, but they can give me an idea of the stuff the author thought was important to get into the minds of the players.

Seanchai

I... use them myself but realize that they can suck I guess.

To clarify, I write descriptions of dungeon rooms and other important settings mostly (I would never use pre-written dialogue myself) to get myself ready. I include those elements that I figure will be important, usually only two or three key bits in a given room. I usually feel fine forgetting to mention smells, for example. It works for me because I wrote it (so what I say matches more or less perfectly with what I wanted me to say) and because I do have a good reading voice.

But I have seen it done terribly as well. Shame really.

Thank you all for the replies.

The consensus seems to run similarly to my own opinion. They are useful, either as written or as an aid to improvise your own (which is how I tend to use them sense they most often don't work with my storytelling style anyways). If someone finds them to not be useful they can be ignored. They aren't linchpins to the overall adventure.

That being said, while I think some of it may be overboard, and almost not worth the effort, I think that if 1 or 2% of GMs use them then they are useful for them. It is much easier for those that would use them to have them than it would be for those that don't use them to ignore them. I am always of the opinion that if it can help some peoples' gaming experience, and not hurt others, then it is worth my effort.

I do have to disagree with the railroading idea. I am not talking about Final Fantasy style exposition here where the characters have to sit out the villains monologue and are stunted to have to wait to act before the read aloud is completed. One thing I want to be associated with is adventures that are almost completely driven by player choice (not control, just choice). I have tried to become very careful about making sure that these text boxes set up a player action, something that could help them more than anything, rather than to show off my story telling skills or to force them into a backseat role.

I will also remember to keep the timing to a minimal. Most of the time, they are fairly small. I try to keep them under a paragraph, but there is one scene, so far, that may be running a bit long. I'll try to break it up or shorten it. Thanks for the advice.

Any more?

Its the sort of thing that should be used as rarely as possible.

RPGPundit

Quote from: beejazzI... use them myself but realize that they can suck I guess.

To clarify, I write descriptions of dungeon rooms and other important settings mostly (I would never use pre-written dialogue myself) to get myself ready. I include those elements that I figure will be important, usually only two or three key bits in a given room. I usually feel fine forgetting to mention smells, for example. It works for me because I wrote it (so what I say matches more or less perfectly with what I wanted me to say) and because I do have a good reading voice.

But I have seen it done terribly as well. Shame really.

I've never had a GM read out their own text, that might work better, I don't know.  It sounds like your approach would work, but I think it's different to the OP's as you're the GM reading your own material to make sure you capture what you wanted - plus if you've a good reading voice it just plain helps.

I wrote an "introductory scenario" for a game, once, which had five characters.  The back of each character sheet contained a chunk of rules.  The players were expected to take it in turns to read out their bits aloud, and then they were ready to play.

It worked decently.  Weird as hell, and not everyone that tried it was totally comfortable with the idea.  But it did work.

Old Shadowrun adventures had read aloud texts. Most of the time they weren't really good or useful, but they have potential.

For years I had never played in a game where a GM read box text but the D&D campaign that I played in a while back was run by one of the authors of Castle Whiterock for Goodman Games.  He wrote box text to read for his own campaign and didn't railroad us into it (he only read it when we ran into a situation he'd prepared for as part of the game).  It was actually pretty cool.  Much cooler than I ever imagined it could be.