Ep 26: the black wyrm of Brandonsford

[misha]

I think I'm a little torn on that approach--I love encoding information that doesn't fit efficiently into text into the map, but I'm less of a fan when the ambiguity results in a bunch of annoying details I need to figure out.

The tree placement implying places where clearings exist on the Black Wyrm map is great--it's subtle and non-distracting, but if you go looking at the map for guidance it'll give you some.

The log on the lake is fun because "there's a log fallen across the lake somewhere" isn't really a worthwhile key to spend page space on, but you can slip it into the map very smoothly. The ambiguous fact that it might be a troll is something I feel like could easily be fun or annoying, but in this case I fall slightly on the fun side.

I've seen maps (specific book not named, because I feel like I've ragged on it too much already) that had a bunch of treasure chests and stuff that were totally unlabeled (or that contradicted the room's text description) did not work for me--detailing exact treasure type and value is about as hard a thing to dictate neutrally mid-session as you can think of, on top of being pretty boring and detail-oriented.

Looking at some Dragonbane maps, I think how I'd respond to those blank spots depends a lot on if I was running a sandbox or not. In a sandbox, the players wandering into an unlabeled landmark is annoying. In a more trad game, leaving room on the map for me to fill in makes a lot more sense.

[Hexed Pressman]

This came up during the episode and it's something that has occurred to me a few times while listening to past episodes: at one point do you feel like you have enough information to fill in a gap in the adventure material? Put another way, maybe, how much information is enough for you to feel comfortable running a game or adventure?

As I write this out, it seems like too big a question, but my hope is to get a sense of what you think you need and, maybe, what you think it is incumbent on a TTRPG writer to provide you.

[KurlyJ]

In regard to the Dragonbane maps, where the base game assumes a sandbox, I do think I would mostly just use any extra details as flavor ("You passed a hut") unless I really wanted to do something with them or the players demanded something ("Let's stay in the hut tonight"). But they do raise the possibility, something I don't really find the Black Wyrm map does.

(I do wish I knew why the Dragonbane maps were like that, and whether it was intentional.)

[sam_the_bold]

Put another way, maybe, how much information is enough for you to feel comfortable running a game or adventure?

A big question, of course, but here are a couple of specific things I've noticed from adventures I've been running (most recently The Feast of Tegny Wood, The Black Manse, and Aberrant Reflections) that I want: 

1. For multi-floor dungeons or other "multiple big regions containing other, smaller keyed locations" I really value and appreciate, like, overview descriptions. If I enter "Level 6: Geothermal Forge," I find brief overview descriptions of the entire floor helpful, things that are true of every room unless noted otherwise. Some of this is like logistical detail—ceiling heights, the materials of the walls, the types of stone or trees in an overland region, etc.—but some of it is also just tone and mood. I think brevity is key, like it shouldn't be any longer than another key, but something to say "Here is what the whole over-arching region is like" I think can be very helpful in supplying some of those details. 
   
2. I think "micro" random search tables (as opposed to "macro") are still somewhat underutilized. Like there's that bit in the original blorb post where Snan talks about using a rule to determine the contents of a desk in an office (as opposed to having it written down or just improv'd), and I don't know if I've ever seen that done quite the way I would find most helpful. I feel like most random search tables either include too many important things—you know, the key to the shortcut to the 3rd Floor is the "12" on a 1d12 table—or else are not repeated often enough (a 1d6 table for a single box) to warrant being randomized. But if I'm on the Office Floor of the dungeon where there might be hundreds of desks, a 1d20 or even 1d100 table of "random desk contents" could, I think, be super valuable and enable much wider play. It's also easy to go too broad with these kinds of tables, you know, randomizing entire rooms or something, but this is the importance of the "micro" in my mind: big random tables with a lot of entries are good for smaller, sub-single-key elements, like the contents of containers.  
   
3. I appreciate all numbered specifics, measurements, and quantities of physical spaces, especially when they don't take up too much room on the page but are just listed somewhere. I'm thinking of: ceiling and roof heights; wall thicknesses and materials; the number of barrels in the wine cellar or coins in the hoard; the height, width, length (and sub-lengths, like limbs and tails), and weight of monsters; the directions doors swing open; the location (and dimensions) of windows; population counts; all this kind of stuff. I think a lot of people assume it will require huge amounts of time and space to explain, but I don't think that's true. A lot of this I think again can be listed per-region or per-floor rather than per-key, but it's all stuff that I find very helpful. Reminds me that we're playing in a world that's not just squares on a grid, and now I have the information to give to players for them to exploit. 
   

All of these are things that I think to a lot of GMs and writers just... don't matter very much? Or they wouldn't think they matter? Kind of thing where a GM might just say either "Yeah, roll for it" or "I'll just make up something good." But each of these three are things I've found myself missing in various adventures I've read, one way or another. And having recurring details like these I think can really help make an adventure location or set of locations feel like a coherent place, rather than just abstracted rooms one to the next.

[misha]

There are three big things that I feel like I 'need' detailed to run a module: risks, rewards, and connections.

I need to know what's trying to thwart the players before play starts for the classic "don't throw rock after seeing scissors" reasons. I don't even really need to know exact monster statblocks and things, but a general power level is pretty necessary. Also, once play starts I'm going to lean pretty generous on enabling player schemes, so hard restrictions are useful--things like "this area can not be scried or teleported into" or "this character is unbribable".

Rewards are important because that's what the players are playing for, probably. Deciding on exact GP values of individual treasures is both boring and requires you to keep in your head the values of other treasures nearby for pacing, which makes it annoying to do at the table.

Connections are because they're, in my mind, what makes a module better than improv--they're what lets a module be more than the sum of its parts. How do the individual rooms/etc foreshadow each other, give the players information they can use elsewhere, point to a larger picture of what's going on, and just generally reference each other? That's the type of thing that comes out way stronger if it's handled as an editing pass after the whole module is written than as a thing you pull out of your ass in the moment.

Beyond that, I also really appreciate immediate sensory impressions of things and motivational character details I can use to help direct long-term play. Immediate sensory impressions are what I'll be describing to my players when they encounter a piece of the module, so framing keys that way makes my life way easier than just telling me big-picture information. Motivations give me guidance on how to run characters if they stick around and continue influencing play after their initial encounter, and without it offered it's very easy for NPCs to become pretty samey in practice.

I really don't mind coming up with details like ceiling height, since that's pretty easy to just oracle-out with a die roll if it becomes relevant to play.