Assessing my Boxed Text
I am not a fan of boxed text for location descriptions: as a DM, I find it hard to get a quick overview of what is in the room from boxed text when preparing for an adventure. Also, somehow starting each new location with me as DM reading something to my players in what obviously is not my own way of phrasing things (unfortunately, I am usually not as eloquent as boxed text) feels about unnatural to me.
Hence, location descriptions in the adventure I am currently working on are written as itemized lists, For example, here is the description of the shipyard Bold & Co Vessels:
- A black flag flies from a large wooden building.
- The side of the building that faces the water is open; a broad canal leads directly into the building.
- Several builders are busy putting the finishing touches on a two-mast sailboat floating in the part of the canal outside the building (probably on account of the masts being too tall.)
- Second glance: Characters with some knowledge of sailing will recognize the ship as a caravelle; it's sails' color is a rather unusual scarlet.
(As you can see, I have stolen the "Second glance" from 13th Age, see, for example, the adventure module Crown of Axis; it is such a clever feature to help the DM!)
So, no boxed text in the adventure I am currently writing? Well, no, actually, there is quite a bit of boxed text. Almost never for location descriptions, but often for getting an encounter started or for highlighting something special happening (or likely to happen, with players you never know, of course.) My concession towards my own desire to be able to get a quick glance over what is in text is to set the essential information in the boxed text in bold face.
The example above describing the shipyard Bold & Co Vessels is from the gazetteer of the City of Pentée, where the first part of my adventure takes place. At some point of time, the adventures will go to Bold & Co Vessels. The encounter start thus:
As you approach the waterfront, your eyes are drawn to a majestic wooden structure, a black flag fluttering over it. Its open side faces a broad canal that leads directly into the building.
Standing nearby, a red dragonborn with what looks like a constant hint of amusement on his reptilian features oversees the final touches being made to a stunning two-masted boat with scarlet sails. It bobs gently in the canal, almost ready to embark on its first voyage.
Beside him stands a female tiefling with deep blue skin, her flowing blonde hair and blood-red horns creating a breathtaking contrast. As you draw nearer, they both turn to regard you with an air of expectation.
The bold pieces in the text mark what is essential: the characters meet Wulf Bold and Seraphine Skyler, and there is boat almost ready to sail. The rest is dressing: an experienced DM with confidence in his own voice may ignore it or take some inspiration from it (using the bold text to quickly get the gist of what is going on,) a less experienced DM may read some and paraphrase some, a newbie DM may want to read the whole thing.
The advantages and drawbacks of boxed text have been argued many times and will be argued several times more. Since I have by now written the majority of boxed text in my adventure, it is high time to get some perspective on what I have done.
So this weekend I turned to Shawn Merwin's article Let's Design an Adventure: Boxed Text. He offers the following tips:
Move from the 2nd person point of view to the 3rd person
I understand the rationale behind this -- in third person view, the DM is not tempted to take agency away from the players. And in a way, I am following this advice for my room descriptions by keeping them as factual itemized lists. But for my use case of boxed text, namely initiating encounters or describing something special/dramatic in an encounter, third person does not work. But indeed, I need to be careful not to assume things about the players' actions when writing boxed text for encounters.
Avoid the novelist/dramatist urge
Shawn gives three common examples:
- "It was a dark and stormy night" (i.e., too much detail)
I may be guilty of this and will have to re-examine my boxed text. - The villain's soliloquy
Not in this adventure, thank god. - The action in progress
I may also be guilty of this -- I am thinking of a specific encounter in which the characters are looking for one NPC and get to watch him in action with a second NPC. The root of the problem may be that I love my NPCs and want to give them room to shine. I will re-examine this, but these passages may well stay in -- I hope that those DMs who don't care for these passages find the bold text helpful to quickly see what is happening and can decide to integrate into their game as much or little as they want.
Say what the characters can sense, not what they can't
I think I have got this covered.
Let maps and art do their jobs (Meaning that, e.g., a room description does not have to describe all exits)
Since my room descriptions are itemized lists, there is no danger for me here.
Avoid "seems to be" or "appears to be." (because the players will think they smell a rat and start meta gaming)
Excellent point, I directly did a text search and removed several "seems".
Read your boxed text aloud to check readability
I just tried this out with the boxed text shown above, this one seems alright, but I have many more to read through.
No game mechanical terms used in a non-mechanical way (Meaning, e.g., reaction, action, incapacitated, stunned, frightened, magical)
A quick text search shows that I should be fine regarding this tip of Shawn.
To sum up: I think the main thing for me to do moving forward is to recheck specifically regarding Shawn's advice on reigning in the novelist's urge esp. regarding the danger of providing too much detail and/or describing too much action with the characters as mere bystanders. The latter issue is related to what Shawn proposes to avoid by using third rather than second person, namely taking away the players' agency. And I will have to read out load everything of my boxed text -- it is not for nothing that boxed text is also called "read-aloud text" ...