Quote from: Zak S;624855120. Kitchen. This place is 20' x 30' (...) Within the darkest recesses of the (...) fireplace dwells a giant poisonous snake. It is coiled and (...) may strike by surprise (50% chance). It has not eaten for a long time, and is very hungry. It can strike to 8 foot range, half its length, and attacks any creature coming within that range. Near the ogre skeleton is a usable shortsword (its "dagger") and a leather sack containing 84 gp. These are hidden under a small pile of nondescript debris. The ten-foot-square rooms were used for crockery storage and food storage, respectively for the south and west areas. Their contents are broken and smashed; food- stuffs are spoiled.

Quote from: Zak S;625001120. Ruined/vandalized Kitchen. Ogre skeleton. Hidden: snake, 8ft long, sack w/84gp. Shortsword (ogre's "dagger").

Quote from: Zak S;625001Is that dull? YES.
Is it any more dull than the original room? NO.
Is it easier for a GM to use in play (this is a megadungeon)? YES.
Are there any details missing a GM could not invent? NO.
Does it leave way more time and space for the actually interesting stuff that's worth evocative prose? YES.

Okay that's interesting. I see some value in both approaches. The first one refers to the function of the 10x10 rooms, provides me with a much better evocation I can "see" in my mind's eye, and connects the area with the rest of the complex. I think it's useful, more useful to some DMs than the terse approach in that regard.

I'd say that the terse description actually is more dull than the original one, but it gains in brevity, mostly, and relies more on GM interpretation and improvisation to make these elements come to life. What's interesting is that some DMs will want exactly that, welcome it and just run with it. They just want the minimum of info and run the thing from there. Others feel like "they've paid money for that" and that "something's missing" if all they got is one-liners for room descriptions. It's really a spectrum of what different DMs expect from a module and what they feel personally comfortable with, I think.

I'm pretty sure you're right when you are talking about actually running the module, though, in the sense that the terse approach is something that compiles critical information and "boom" you're there. That's useful to actual play in that sense.

The last rhetorical question (about pouring the word count into stuff actually worthy of the evocative prose) is of particular interest to me. I'm not sure a module necessarily gains from being super terse on the common areas and suddenly going about describing more complex/original areas with more evocative prose. It's like giving up on the "less special" parts to pour all the detail onto the special ones. It might create a very uneven experience. It certainly doesn't help make common areas more interesting to begin with.

One last thing coming to mind is the fact that there are DMs who simply don't "get" the terse room descriptions. You'll find a wealth of references to various TSR modules on this board and others which talk about them as though they are static environments that do not make sense and so on. Part of that comes from the terse description format where some of this stuff was implied, assumed to be understood, when in fact it wasn't by everyone, not by a long shot. Now does that mean we have to completely give up on those DMs and just assume that they won't get it anyway so we might as well do it that way and forget about it? I'm asking the question from the point of view of a maker, not a costumer. It's obvious that if you are comfortable with the terse style in the first place then that's what you are going to want. But from a maker's point of view, I'm not sure that's the only answer to that conundrum.

Quote from: Benoist;625116Okay that's interesting. I see some value in both approaches. The first one refers to the function of the 10x10 rooms, provides me with a much better evocation I can "see" in my mind's eye, and connects the area with the rest of the complex. I think it's useful, more useful to some DMs than the terse approach in that regard.

With the caveat that you really have to judge this on a room by room basis. I am mostly with Zack for this particular room. There is no reason to write the first description. An adventure is meant to be used and flavor text be incorporated when the information can't conveyed in any other way.  By now the general atmosphere of the dungeon level should have been conveyed so the referee have that as part of what he can use for his interpretation of the area.

However Zak S. example doesn't convey all the information that was in the original.

Here I would write it.

Quote120. Ruined/vandalized Kitchen. Hidden in a fireplace a 8 ft long snake. Will only attack when a character comes into range. Near a Ogre skeleton, under debris on the floor, is a usable shortsword (ogre's "dagger") along with a sack with 84 gp. The adjoining 10 x 10 rooms were pantries with spoiled food stuff and smashed crockery.

Yes, I'm thinking either of a middle ground between the original and Zak's as you provided, Rob, and/or going with both, that is, the module describes things in evocative prose format, but also provides some sheets including one-line-ish summaries for quick reference. You can then read the full descriptions between the sessions, prep with that, put yourself in the zone etc, and as you run the game you can just use the one-line items on the key sheet for immediate reference.

The entire statement strikes me as pretty damned arrogant.  I mean, yes, there is better art and advances in the craft, but stating that OSR>TSR is showing disrespect for the greats that came before, IMO.  I think this guy is just blowing smoke.

Quote from: Benoist;625128Yes, I'm thinking either of a middle ground between the original and Zak's as you provided, Rob, and/or going with both, that is, the module describes things in evocative prose format, but also provides some sheets including one-line-ish summaries for quick reference. You can then read the full descriptions between the sessions, prep with that, put yourself in the zone etc, and as you run the game you can just use the one-line items on the key sheet for immediate reference.

I get what you are trying to do. After all I just published Scourge of the Demon Wolf which is really two books mashed into one. The adventure in the first half and the supplement the second half. However when I settled on that I wrote them as separate books and only combined them in layout.

 It not same as what you are proposing which is to write the adventure and then repeat the information in a highly condensed format.

But does evocative prose make it any more usable? Does it convey information for that particular area that is not found anywhere else? If the answer is no then it is extraneous for the purpose of running the adventure.

Now one could argue that it important as a matter of writing style. Which it is find for novels and other writings that are reading entertainment. But a module is a utility product. Meant to be used at the table by a referee to run an adventure. Prose that doesn't convey useful information just hinder that utility.

Doesn't mean there is no creativity in prose in adventure modules. How the writing builds up the overall design takes a lot of creativity. The characterizations of the NPCs, the narrative sections to convey needed background information and so on.

Quote from: RandallS;624435The claim seems silly to me. Some OSR stuff certainly is better than some of the stuff TSR published. Some of it certainly isn't better than most of the stuff TSR put out. The material put out by both is/was quite variable in quality.

Note: Even the worst OSR stuff often has better production values than early TSR stuff, but that's simply a function of low cost word processing/DTP software that is far better than anything early TSR had access to until they hit the "big time". However, as I don't measure the usefulness/"betterness" of game material by production values, I don't count this.

Well said and I agree.

Quote from: Premier;624455Dude, Giants, Tomb and WPM are 'iconic', as you put it, because A, they were/are widely known, and B, they've been around for decades. In contrast, the entire OSR itself A, doesn't incorporate as many players as D&D in its heydays, and neither does it have the same mass media presence, and B, it hasn't been around for decades. You're making a pointless comparison.

Also, the thread is about "are OSR modules better than TSR ones"? Not "have they been around for longer?" or "do they have higher sales figures?" Neither of these are indicative of how good a product is.

(Case in point, ToH is suitable for the cruel, American-college-fraternity style hazing of new players and is a good source of "Remember that time we got really fucking wasted and John woke up next morning with a transvestite" type quasi-masochistic rite-of-passage recollections with your gaming bros, but as an actual adventure module for actual play in someone's actual campaign? Please.)

And add to this, that TSR was the almost the only game in town when those came out, where now a days anyone with a computer can create material and submit it to an OSR publisher in a blink of an eye.

Quote from: estar;625135I get what you are trying to do. After all I just published Scourge of the Demon Wolf which is really two books mashed into one. The adventure in the first half and the supplement the second half. However when I settled on that I wrote them as separate books and only combined them in layout.

 It not same as what you are proposing which is to write the adventure and then repeat the information in a highly condensed format.

I'm proposing to repeat key game information in highly condensed format, which is not exactly the same thing. Kind of like you have the rules explained in say, RuneQuest 6 about combat maneuvers and the like, and cheat sheets or boxed stripped down summaries which compile the critical information, assuming you read the full rules to begin with.

Quote from: estar;625135But does evocative prose make it any more usable?

Yes, it can, by providing visual representations or convey an atmosphere the DM can feed on creatively speaking when he'll describe the room in his own words during the game.

Quote from: estar;625135Does it convey information for that particular area that is not found anywhere else? If the answer is no then it is extraneous for the purpose of running the adventure.

Actually it does. It provides a color and context, a creative inspiration and a feel of the place, which you read and come to own for yourself before the game, and then, when you run it, since it'd be horrible to refer to this information much like the dreaded boxed text you'd read out loud (which I really do not like), you just describe things in your own words, the cheat sheets possibly helping in that process by providing that critical game information and aid that'll help you run the thing as your own.

Quote from: estar;625135Now one could argue that it important as a matter of writing style. Which it is find for novels and other writings that are reading entertainment. But a module is a utility product. Meant to be used at the table by a referee to run an adventure. Prose that doesn't convey useful information just hinder that utility.

You're preaching the choir, Rob. I certainly don't think that modules should be treated as novels or that their primarily value would be as sources of "leisure reading" (though there certainly are people buying modules for that purpose). These are things meant to be played. And I do think that evocative writing does have a place in that equation when it comes to help the DM visualize the environment to then use it as a springboard for his imagination and run the thing from there. Kind of like a written form of impressionism, perhaps, with a purpose to create a picture in the reader/DMs mind that leaves all the room for him to grab it from there with his own imagination and run as his, if you will.

And let's be clear: from that standpoint (not novel writing, but adventure game design), there is good and bad prose. Useful information, and useless information. What would be the most useful, and word-count effective, giving the most evocative bang for your buck, if you will, is very much a question on the table in my mind. And in that sense, the description of area (120) Zak quoted before certainly wasn't optimal, I certainly agree.

Quote from: estar;625135Doesn't mean there is no creativity in prose in adventure modules. How the writing builds up the overall design takes a lot of creativity. The characterizations of the NPCs, the narrative sections to convey needed background information and so on.

The writing is part of the design, from my POV. I think that's part of my point.

Quote from: Benoist;625116I'd say that the terse description actually is more dull than the original one,

Overall?
Let's say you read 8 pages of a dungeon, would you rather have just read:

20 rooms that went on for paragraphs and paragraphs and, in the end, turned out to be totally mundane with maybe 1 interesting one thrown in

or

100 rooms that were the same rooms, only shorter, and 5 of them were interesting
?

Some people want to read workmanlike purple prose descriptions of unremarkable things--many modern novels prove that--not me.

QuoteOne last thing coming to mind is the fact that there are DMs who simply don't "get" the terse room descriptions.

I don't write modules for people who are painfully stupid and neither should anyone else.

This is another nice thing about the OSR: it hasn't achieved as much as TSR yet but when you buy an OSR project you can usually be sure this is something the author would actually use not something pumped out to fill a word count and vaguely aimed at a target audience.

 

QuoteNow does that mean we have to completely give up on those DMs and just assume that they won't get it anyway so we might as well do it that way and forget about it?

Yes!

This is an advantage of not needing to support a mass audience to survive: you have the freedom to write good things instead of lowest-common-denominator BS for drooling rubes.

As soon as I see:

"Dining room: This is the room where the family takes its meals."

Then I know this module is going to suck and the person who wrote it hates me, hates themselves, hates life and assumes s/he is being read by people who--real or imagined--just made all of our lives worse.

It's a "Dining Room" NEXT...

QuoteI'm not sure a module necessarily gains from being super terse on the common areas and suddenly going about describing more complex/original areas with more evocative prose. It's like giving up on the "less special" parts to pour all the detail onto the special ones. It might create a very uneven experience. It certainly doesn't help make common areas more interesting to begin with.

The module is not the game session. The GM needs to do the describing of textures, colors and details no matter what.

In general, you shouldn't just burst into "The echoes of your footsteps seem to crawl up the walls toward a ceiling your torchlight barely reaches" because it's a cool room--you use language when you need it to describe the place overall so the GM can do that when s/he needs to.

I've never heard anyone with half a brain complain they don't "get" any of the One-Page Dungeons--they use a few evocative words and images to convey what's needed and do the reader the courtesy of respecting his/her time and once an idea is conveyed, the rest is a tool.

There's no reason to create modules for people who have infinite time to read modules and read nothing else.

Quote from: Zak S;625150Overall?
Let's say you read 8 pages of a dungeon, would you rather have just read:

20 rooms that went on for paragraphs and paragraphs and, in the end, turned out to be totally mundane with maybe 1 interesting one thrown in

or

100 rooms that were the same rooms, only shorter, and 5 of them were interesting
?

Some people want to read workmanlike purple prose descriptions of unremarkable things--many modern novels prove that--not me.

That's a nonsensical question to me. I would like an even design, with the common rooms and areas including interesting elements of their own right, and more complex rooms and areas with the same level of detail, which would of course translate in more words, since the area is more complex to begin with. I don't think there's a choice to pour all your creativity into one thing and not the other, to ignore the common areas and summarize them in a strictly technical manner "because they're not interesting anyway" versus the more complex areas getting all the attention "because they're naturally more interesting". I just don't get that.

Quote from: Zak S;625150I don't write modules for people who are painfully stupid and neither should anyone else.

Wait. What? "Not getting the terse description format" is being "painfully stupid" now?

I don't think that the people who don't "get" terse description formats are necessarily stupid. They might have different game experiences, more of an imagination based on the written word than the visual map or game elements, you never know. But I also think these people are very much out there. I can't count the number of times I read that this or that TSR dungeon was "bad" because "it's static and boring", which often comes down to a problem with the implicit description format. If you think these people are necessarily dumb and can't enjoy your games or are not even welcome to "the club", so be it, but I don't have to share that opinion. Certainly not.

Quote from: Zak S;625150This is another nice thing about the OSR: it hasn't achieved as much as TSR yet but when you buy an OSR project you can usually be sure this is something the author would actually use not something pumped out to fill a word count and vaguely aimed at a target audience.

 
Yes!

This is an advantage of not needing to support a mass audience to survive: you have the freedom to write good things instead of lowest-common-denominator BS for drooling rubes.

Write "good things" for whom, exactly? For you, okay, fine. So you're telling me you're strictly designing for yourself and your clones out there. If people buying your stuff get it cool, if not, fuck them. It's pure vanity stuff. Which is all fine and good really, but not everyone has to do it that way. I certainly don't want to just design modules for my clones out there. I want to bring stuff I enjoy to all kinds of DMs out there, so that they too can run it and get their own fill out of it in their own way, not necessarily mine.

And no, I'm not talking of lowest-common-denominator design. Please.

Quote from: Zak S;625150The module is not the game session. The GM needs to do the describing of textures, colors and details no matter what.

In general, you shouldn't just burst into "The echoes of your footsteps seem to crawl up the walls toward a ceiling your torchlight barely reaches" because it's a cool room--you use language when you need it to describe the place overall so the GM can do that when s/he needs to.

I've never heard anyone with half a brain complain they don't "get" any of the One-Page Dungeons--they use a few evocative words and images to convey what's needed and do the reader the courtesy of respecting his/her time and once an idea is conveyed, the rest is a tool.

There's no reason to create modules for people who have infinite time to read modules and read nothing else.

I just don't get where you are coming from, I guess. That last part to me reads like you're ranting against someone else that lives in your head, and not what I actually said. Nobody's talking about writing bad boxed text prose, and I'm certainly not talking about people who would have "less than half a brain", in your own words.

Quote from: Zak S;625150I don't write modules for people who are painfully stupid and neither should anyone else.

Yeah, I'm editing out most of the shit in Dwimmermount to be terse as fuck.

An example:

QuoteThe walls of this circular room have numerous metal hooks on which hang weapons and shields. The room is currently occupied by 5 orcs, acting as guards for their brethren. As soon as they encounter any opposition, one of their number will attempt to flee to Room 41 to gather reinforcements. In the event that the remaining Hogmen lose more than half their number or otherwise break morale, they will do the same.

becomes

QuoteNumerous metal hooks holding weapons and shields. 5 Hogmen. If they encounter any opposition, one will flee to Room 41 for reinforcements. If the Hogmen lose more than half their number or break morale, they will also flee.

Same info, half the calories.

Terse descriptions work to the extent that you're trading off a familiar cliche. I can write "Shrine" for a bog-standard D&D module and trust the reader will be able to manufacture a Standard Polytheistic Fantasy Shrine Room. I cannot write "Shrine" for a Spears of the Dawn adventure and expect the reader to just conjure up an African-styled household ancestor shrine.

In the same way, I don't want terse descriptions when half the point of the module is to evoke a particular sense of place and atmosphere. The Nightmare Maze of Jigresh is a model of terseness in its room descriptions, but it is absolutely terrible at conveying the feeling that I'm actually adventuring in Tekumel and exploring an ancient shrine. Yes, I can add the cinnamon air freshener and meshqu plaques myself, but that's because I have read other, more evocative books that actually describe these things for me.

If all I want or need to convey is that the room is a Standard-Issue Dining Room, then it's fine to just write "Dining Room. Table service worth 50 gp, feral teacup halfling (1 HD, 6 HP, 1d4 spork) lairing beneath the table". If it's the dining room of the Breathatarian Monks of the Perpetual Fast I'm going to expect more local color, even if the ultimate outcome is that it's just a dining room. Ultra-efficient roomlines leave no room whatsoever for conveying flavor and feeling, and that can make for a much better GM's table experience than the marginal increase in efficiency and decrease in pagecount that can be had with a de minimis description style.

Yes, if someone needs "Dining Room: This is where the family takes its meals" then yes, they are painfully stupid and nobody should make things for them and if they do they should feel bad about it.

Quote from: Benoist;625152Write "good things" for whom, exactly? For you, okay, fine. So you're telling me you're strictly designing for yourself and your clones out there. If people buying your stuff get it cool, if not, fuck them. It's pure vanity stuff.

If you think "making a thing that you can use and then putting it out there in case anyone wants it and then they do and you make a profit" (which is Standard Operating Procedure in any creative field with any integrity) is "pure vanity stuff" then you really do not get it and never will and we don't need to keep talking.

Quote from: Zak S;625001A good version of this room would read:

120. Ruined/vandalized Kitchen. Ogre skeleton. Hidden: snake, 8ft long, sack w/84gp. Shortsword (ogre's "dagger").

That's about the way I'd do it, too, except I'd probably mention the fireplace (because that implies a chimney, which might go somewhere. Or, at the very least, offer a place to hide.)

Actually, for a megadungeon, I'm thinking that I'd rather have a list of room types (kitchen, larder, storage) and just use single-word or abbreviated labels on the map, and then have a numbered list of monster/treasure contents that each GM would assign to a room.

Quote from: Benoist;625116The last rhetorical question (about pouring the word count into stuff actually worthy of the evocative prose) is of particular interest to me. I'm not sure a module necessarily gains from being super terse on the common areas and suddenly going about describing more complex/original areas with more evocative prose. It's like giving up on the "less special" parts to pour all the detail onto the special ones. It might create a very uneven experience. It certainly doesn't help make common areas more interesting to begin with.

Everyone's talking about "evocative prose", but I think I'd like terseness in almost all the keyed descriptions, with evocative prose reserved for the introduction to the dungeon and the introductions to each level or region.

What I would like to see in a megadungeon (or even a dungeon) is the ultraterse descriptions for the ordinary encounters like the hidden snake, but a few unusual encounters with a little bit extra, like:

120. Ruined/vandalized Kitchen with fireplace. Ogre skeleton. Hidden: snake, 8ft long, sack w/84gp. Shortsword (ogre's "dagger"). Snake is reincarnation of ogre, becomes follower of high-charisma Chaotic adventurer.

Now you have something worth the extra prose. Not just a snake, but a snake that might act abnormally, even intelligently; it might even be possible to restore it to ogre form. As an ogre, would it remain normal? The extra text is worth it in this case because it creates extra possibilities.

Against the dull/terse descriptions here, for the same reasons I don't like the power descriptions in 4e mostly: what the fuck do I do with it, I may as well start from scratch. Really, I belong to the "fuck a damn module" contingent and don't see much use in any of them, much less worshipping Keep On The Borderlands or whatever the fuck, but the two uses I do see for a module are a) filling in for when you don't have time to make something yourself and b) inspiration for when you do have the time. Super terse descriptions cut against both of these, and if you're going to use a module with descriptions like

Quote120. Ruined/vandalized Kitchen. Ogre skeleton. Hidden: snake, 8ft long, sack w/84gp. Shortsword (ogre's "dagger").

you may as well use a random dungeon generator instead (no knock on those, I like those better than modules).