# What Does It Look Like? 4 Steps for Beating the Boxed Text Blues



## Rune (Jul 15, 2013)

Superb!


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## Dausuul (Jul 15, 2013)

"Those were all much more valid before Beavis and Butthead rose up out of the ether and destroyed our attention span."

Those were never valid. Writers and editors have known the value of concise prose for a very long time. My mother taught English at the college level (she's now retired), and she's always bemoaned the way high schools teach students to pad their word counts.

That aside, all the advice in this article is spot on. And the writing tips should be used everywhere, not just when writing boxed text.


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## Janx (Jul 15, 2013)

How about some examples.

take a crappy box text from a decent adventure (don't use that worst adventure ever, that's just picking on the retarded kid), then rewrite it.

I don't used canned adventurers, and I don't tend to write boxed text.  that doesn't mean my adventures are brimming with great descriptions, but I'm also not in a position to "show how its done".  I like articles to put their advice to an demonstration or two.


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## Dausuul (Jul 15, 2013)

Examples, you say? I'll take a whack at it. Here's a bit of boxed text from "Bastion of Broken Souls." (Very minor spoilers below.)



> A nine-foot-tall fiend appears out of thin air and attacks. The creature appears as a giant snake with green, scaly coils from the waist down, and as a chain-shrouded female humanoid above the waist. She has six arms, all of which wield hellishly animate loops of barbed chain. Cruelly barbed chains also serve her as armor and clothing.



Now, this isn't _awful_ boxed text--nothing like the infamous bit from "The Forest Oracle" with the men who are neither tarrying nor running--but it can certainly be tightened up considerably. Let's apply Gnome's process, in order.

*A/B: Pick the most important element of a scene and write your description of that one element.* There are three elements we really need to convey in order for the players to know what they're facing: Snake tail, six arms, chains. Let's start with the snake tail. Here's what we currently have:



> The creature appears as a giant snake with green, scaly coils from the waist down.



*C: Replace vague, generic words with more specific ones.* How about we specify the species of snake? I'm thinking python. It conveys the appropriate implications--big, constricting coils--and it's well-known enough that most people can come up with at least a vague mental image of a python.



> The creature appears as a giant python with green, scaly coils from the waist down.



*D: Try to cut out half the words.* We have 15 words right now, so we want to get to 7 or 8. First of all, by choosing "python" to replace "snake," we have already implied bigness, color, and coils, so we can cut those. Scaliness was pure fluff from the start. When was the last time you met a snake that _wasn't_ scaly? "Appears as" is just instinctive DM pedantry--hey, it _could_ be an illusion, so I have to qualify that it "appears" this way. This is unnecessary. Players know about illusions. Finally, "the creature" is unnecessary when referring to the subject of the previous sentence. So:



> It's a python from the waist down.



*E: Rinse and repeat for one or two more elements.* I won't go through the procedure again in detail, but here's the end result if I apply the same techniques to the arms and chains:



> A nine-foot-tall fiend pops out of thin air and attacks! It's a python from the waist down, a six-armed woman from the waist up, wielding barbed chains that lash out of their own accord.




"Lash out of their own accord" is a replacement for "hellishly animate," which sounds dramatic but is in fact pretty vague. My revised description omits the statement that the fiend is also using the chains for armor/clothing. I gave some thought to that detail, which presumably was meant as a hint that [sblock]the PCs are dealing with a marilith/chain devil hybrid.[/sblock] In the end, I concluded that the hint wasn't necessary, for three reasons:
[sblock]1) The players are unlikely to get said hint. Reading the original description, my takeaway was "uber-marilith specializing in spiked chains," not "marilith plus chain devil."
2) If the players do get the hint, they are unlikely to care. There is no plot significance to the fiend's hybrid nature, nor is there any benefit to the PCs in knowing it. This is one of those cases where the DM needs a reminder not to get all excited about the back story of a thing which the party is just going to butcher, loot, and leave bleeding in the dirt.
3) If the players do get the hint, and do care, it will derail the adventure as they try to figure out what awesomely horrible scheme lies behind the creation of such an abomination. Since there is in fact no such scheme and the whole demon/devil thing is just embroidery, they will only be wasting their time and making headaches for the DM.[/sblock]


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## Radiating Gnome (Jul 16, 2013)

Dausuul said:


> Examples, you say? I'll take a whack at it. Here's a bit of boxed text from "Bastion of Broken Souls." (Very minor spoilers below.)




That's dy-no-mite.  

Here's another example -- I just jumped into a copy of Dungeon on my computer already and picked one of the descriptions of a location from the first adventure I found in it -- so, very much at random -- so who knows what we're getting in to.  

This is from Dungeon 213: The Dread Pirate Braxis, by Jeffrey Ludwig.  Dungeon is pretty well edited, so improving it won't necessarily be softball.  

Here's the description (from page 40, encounter area 2, Approach)



> The ground beneath your feet slopes gradually upward as
> you approach the pirate stronghold, and the thick vegetation
> of the island’s interior gives way to scrub. Ahead, a
> sheer cliff juts up near the island’s edge, and perched upon
> ...




What's most important?  The whole thing is sort of atmospheric, really, but this is all about the access to the stronghold, which makes that squat stone tower that defends the causeway is the most important detail. That's what the PCs will have to deal with next, and it's buried in the description.  Assuming you lose listeners after the first or second sentence of reading this, they're going to know about a path, scrub, and a cliff, but may have entirely lost the detail of the ancient forest.  

Of the information in that block, I think the tower, the causeway, and the ancient fortress are the three things we need to have. 

So, I pretty much want to start here: 



> A craggy stone causeway, rising like a ramp out of the island’s bedrock, provides the only access to the stronghold above, its midpoint straddled by a squat stone tower




"Craggy Stone Causeway" is all right, but not great. I look long and hard at adjectives to see if they're really necessary.  Stone is probably not necessary, really -- not sure what else it would be.  And that gives us the alliterative "craggy causeway" which will resonate in the listener's ear.  Causeway, though, for a modern listener, is a risk.  How many members of my audience will have a concrete idea of what a causeway is?  

"rising like a ramp out of the island's bedrock" well, we really don't need "like a ramp" and "rising" isn't my first choice here.  We want to give the sense of the cliff and fortress above, the ramp needs to _climb_, not _rise_. Rise sounds like you're floating up effortlessly.  

"provides the only access to the stronghold above" Provides again is a gentle, polite word that doesn't really convey the flavor of the scene.  And, the idea that the causeway is the only access to the stronghold is buried here in the last third of the long sentence -- the idea has been lost again in the froth of words.  

"its midpoint straddled by a squat stone tower" I actually like this -- it's very visual and evocative. Well, actually, midpoint seems a bit clinical, but the rest is great. But this tower is the thing that stands in the way.  

Now... another element of the original description.  The description starts at the reader's feet -- "The ground beneath your feet slopes...", looks up to the cliff, the stronghold, it's battlements, the causeway, and the tower. So, the reader's attention is going from down (feet) to up (cliff) to up (stronghold) to up (battlements) jump all the way down (causeway) to up (stronghold) to down (tower).  That seems like a lot of redirection -- putting the causeway and the tower much earlier in the description also evens out that  progression a bit. 

Anyway... trying to put all of those thoughts together, here's a possible revision of the causeway section:



> A lone craggy causeway climbs from island bedrock through a squat stone tower and on to the stronghold above.




That's 19 words vs 29, so not quite half, but you don't always hit that goal.  But, comparing this to the causeway section I started with, is any information missing? Which works better to make the important details memorable?  All that's left is to add the description of the cliffs and fortress beyond. So my final version might look like this:



> A lone craggy causeway climbs from island bedrock through a squat stone tower. Beyond, a crumbling ruin's battlements extend the cliff's forbidding face.




I don't want to cover the rest of that in the same detail, but some notes -- "ancient fortress" is really vague -- what kind of fortress? In what way is in ancient?  I made it a crumbling ruin, but that might not be the author's intention. "Crumbling" isn't one of my favorite choices I've made here -- tried a bunch of options there.  "Ruin" wasn't quite enough there, so I decided I needed it.  And it bring's the "c" sounds in from the beginning of the passage. I also eliminated the "stronghold" bit of the previous section, since I'm now describing that -- and that's also a fairly vague term.  What sort of stronghold is it? "Stronghold describes the pirate defensive position, not the visual image the PCs have before them, so it really doesn't belong in this description. 

Here are the two -- the original and my revision -- side by side. 


The ground beneath your feet slopes gradually upward as you approach the pirate stronghold, and the thick vegetation of the island’s interior gives way to scrub. Ahead, a sheer cliff juts up near the island’s edge, and perched upon the rocky promontory is the ancient fortress, its battlements an extension of the cliff ’s forbidding face. A craggy stone
causeway, rising like a ramp out of the island’s bedrock, provides the only access to the stronghold above, its midpoint straddled by a squat stone tower.A lone craggy causeway climbs from island bedrock through a squat stone tower. Beyond, a crumbling ruin's battlements extend the cliff's forbidding face. 


That's 23 words verses the originals 81.  I've eliminated one detail (the road at the audience's feet), but actually added concrete detail to the "ancient fortress", I've tightened the language, and I think the result is a better package. 


Of course, that's not enough.  When I read that to the players, I want to make sure I'm using good hand gestures to describe the causeway and the stone tower.  There's interesting tension between the way the tower squats and the cliffs and battlements rise.  I need to make sure my hand gestures support that difference. 

###

That's a lot of work to do for every bit of boxed text in an adventure you're going to run. You probably don't have time to do this for every encounter, but try it on some and pay attention to the engagement level you have with your players when you give them these descriptions compared to when you read them the originals. 

-rg


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## delericho (Jul 16, 2013)

One piece of very useful advice I read on a blog somewhere (and sorry, I can't remember where) was to replace boxed text with a set of bullet points covering the salient points.

By not providing fixed text, it forces the DM to be engaged in the scene in a way that a canned description might not, plus a bullet-point description makes it easy to adapt if the PCs arrive from the East instead of the West.

(And one piece of advice I would add to it is this: make your last bullet point a list of suitable, and evocative, words to use. That way, your 'main' points can be more factual and consise without sacrificing flavour.)

Oh, and: good article!


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## Dr Simon (Jul 18, 2013)

Delericho,

I remember some adventures that did this, some time in the late 80s/early 90s, but for the life of me I can't recall who made them or what game they were for - possibly some Shadowrun adventures.

Basically, encounter area had a list of "mood" words for the GM to evoke when running the encounter. More useful, I think, than florid boxed text. I think my favourite worst offender is the very first piece of boxed text that you meet in the Dragonlance series; "The air surges fierce and sweet..."


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## Radiating Gnome (Jul 18, 2013)

Dr Simon said:


> Basically, encounter area had a list of "mood" words for the GM to evoke when running the encounter. More useful, I think, than florid boxed text. I think my favourite worst offender is the very first piece of boxed text that you meet in the Dragonlance series; "The air surges fierce and sweet..."




That sounds like it may have been an ancestor of the Fate concept of "aspects", which I find very interesting.  It's basically the idea of giving a thing (person, place or thing) a descriptor that can actually be used in play to gain advantage.  So, a descriptor with game impact. 

Can you tell I'm dying to try FATE?


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## Dr Simon (Jul 18, 2013)

It wasn't anything linked to mechanics, more a note to the GM to "evoke this kind of feel", kind of thing. That does sound intriguing, though, I'll have to investigate further!


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## ExploderWizard (Jul 18, 2013)

One thing to consider regarding description, attention spans, and modern game systems is the _importance _of the setting description in actual play. If room full of contents is described in detail, players are more likely to be engaged with the description if paying attention to key elements is essential to interacting with them. 

If the end result always ends up in : " we search everything taking 20" then the description might as well be " blah blah blah blah" as it relates to exploration activity. Who needs to listen to all that when it doesn't matter?

This by no means excuses extra long monotonous boxed text. Ideas for conveying the important parts without droning on are appreciated.


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## howandwhy99 (Jul 18, 2013)

As someone who remembers the "bad old AD&D days" there was no overwhelming love of boxed text or read aloud text then either. It was a simple DM aid for those who where new to it and didn't know why some things were related to the players and others not. The authors of that text were often just as confused as so much of the material from that time shows.  A lot of the joke material now for mocking that time comes from some of the ridiculous box text (and non-read-aloud text too) in some of the best loved adventures.

The important part is understanding why the descriptions are there at all. First, it is a game. Just as a DM should relate certain elements upon meeting an NPC, like what they are wearing, carrying, saying, etc. they should also not describe elements that require further investigation. For example, what the NPC is thinking about, what they did before the PCs arrived, what they have underneath that armor, what's in their backpack, and so on. 

Locations (and items) are designed for encountering them similarly. The difficulty comes in when you have a dynamic world where everything is changing and the DM is expected to track it. What have the PCs told the NPC during the course of their conversation? Did they trade anything between them? Did they alter the room any? Leave a torch in a sconce behind? 

It's up to both the DM and players to be clear in the descriptions of actions so everyone is on the same page.


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## Dr Simon (Jul 19, 2013)

The boxed text started to become more prevalent as the idea of a plot behind the game began to become more prevalent as well, hence (in my mind at least) it tends to be linked to the more egregious examples of railroading (such as Dragonlance, or the FR1-3 series of modules). Perhaps it ties with adventure writers wanting to be story writers, so as well as imposing a sequence of events on the PCs they would also show off their writing "skills" (a connected phenomenon - the opening piece of short fiction inflicted on the GM, meant as a scene-setter but more often than not fully disposable).

There's a sweet-spot, though, between that kind of enforced prose and having to pick through the encounter area descriptions of e.g. the very early Gygax modules, such as Against the Giants or Tomb of Horrors, for the bits that are relevant to the room. Hence the bullet-point kind of idea. Another style I remember is from early RuneQuest adventures (Rainbow Caves and Snakepipe Hollow), which gave an At First Glance heading with a very brief, one-line summary of the obvious things, and Further Detail for what you would find on closer, more leisurely examination. Worked really well.


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## ExploderWizard (Jul 19, 2013)

Dr Simon said:


> Another style I remember is from early RuneQuest adventures (Rainbow Caves and Snakepipe Hollow), which gave an At First Glance heading with a very brief, one-line summary of the obvious things, and Further Detail for what you would find on closer, more leisurely examination. Worked really well.




There was a bit about that in Dragon issue #99.  The one thing about traditional boxed text that was amusing was the order of presentation in some situations. 

Quite possibly from some classic module:

[Boxed text]

The room beyond the wide mahogany door is richly furnished. The West wall is decorated with murals depicting a hunting scene, the East wall is hung with several tapestries which feature knights at a tourney. On the North wall, opposite the door is a large stone fireplace, with a fire crackling within. On a mantle above the fireplace are six statues of animals which appear to be made out of some silver colored metal. The statues are roughly 1 foot tall and appear to be a bear, a wolf, an elk, a moose, a tiger, and a wolverine. The fire, along with a large iron chandelier hanging ten feet above the floor provide adequate light. The floor of the room is carpeted in a deep plush royal purple area rug that covers most of the floor. The only furnishings in the room are a large dark wooden oval table and eight matching chairs. Upon the table are eight goblets, a deck of cards, and several piles of scattered coins of various types. Seated at the table are what appear to be eight orc warriors wearing ill fitting womens' undergarments. 

[End Boxed text]


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## Janx (Jul 19, 2013)

ExploderWizard said:


> There was a bit about that in Dragon issue #99.  The one thing about traditional boxed text that was amusing was the order of presentation in some situations.
> 
> Quite possibly from some classic module:
> 
> ...




An excellent example.  GM begins reading a long list of the room's contents, party interupts saying they go to look at the shiny important thing, GM then springs the giant dragon that was clearly sitting in the room, but hadn't mentioned because it was at the end of the description text he didn't finish reading aloud.

Box text needs to be ordered in the sequence of obviousness and importance to the players.

Threats
Exits
Big Details
Little Details

The first thing a guy notices when he enters a room are naked chicks, food, and dragons.  The last thing he will notice is a deck of cards on the table.

Putting the monster at the end of the description is really GM punishment for not listening to the entire boxed text.


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