Just Tell Them What They Need!

Better Interactive Text in RPGs

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In the very first sentence of a keyed room or opening scene, I want the text to clearly signal what information matters, which of those elements are interactive, and provide an obvious, frictionless path to the section where each is expanded.:

In other words:

1. What is important?

2. How’s it shown that it's important?

3. Why is it important?

This feels pretty self-evident on its face. Despite what some might say, RPG text is meant to convey information to the GM, who in turn can manipulate that information into actionable insight for the players.

However—it’s very easy to think you’re doing this when in fact you’re doing the opposite. Almost universally, older modules are notorious for making it functionally impossible to find “information to turn into actionable insight” quickly. Even modules written in modern times in the tradition of those older games (eg, OSR) fail the same metrics.

The Problem

There’s a common excuse for this that is trotted out whenever you complain about these things. “It’s meant as a sandbox / toolkit! You’re meant to fill in the blanks with whatever you want!” Which is all fine and good, except that it isn’t explained which blanks are meant to be filled and which are meant to be left alone.

Take, for example, the Caves of Chaos in B2: The Keep on the Borderlands:

This isn’t even that egregious of an example, but you can immediately start to see issues once you look at the caves themselves: there are dead-ends everywhere. Are you as the GM meant to fill those with “information for actionable insight”—or are you meant to leave those blank as a hit to resources (be it rations, torchlight, or time)?

Looking at more modern examples, here’s the first level of Stonehell:

We’ve eliminated the dead-ends (or at least, we’ve keyed them) but now we have an altogether more complicated issue: there’s a metric fuckton of rooms. And not all of them are winners:

• 12. Graffiti-covered Room: Crude pictures & lewd slogans on the walls; remnants of an old fire; dust & webs. Empty.

• 25. Flaking Room: Sagging ceiling; flaking painted frescoes; loose rubble and debris. Empty.

• 39. Cave: Dripping water; phosphorescent moss. Empty.

What, exactly, are you as the GM meant to do with these once your players enter them?

Should you add detail to these rooms and make them important, or gloss over them quickly so that the players can move on? Let the players decide whether to stay here and camp, or forewarn potential threats?

“All of those are good options!”, you might say. Which is technically true, but it’s not exactly clear in any case which you’re supposed to go with (if any). This is doubly true if you’re new to GMing or the hobby in general.

All of this is to say, there's a clear and distinct lack of instruction from the many, many lauded adventures and modules on what exactly you’re supposed to do with the mountains of information they provide. Follow them to the letter and you can have a terrible time. Deviate too much from the content and you can still have a terrible time.

The Solution (Sorta)

Thankfully, many designers have learned this lesson and have begun to course-correct. While Old-School Essentials won’t win any awards for being fresh or innovative (it is, functionally, a game from the 80s after all), it does give its information in a way that is easy to grok and disseminate to the people at the table.

Here’s an example from early on in the Incandescent Grottoes adventure:

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Here we see everything we need to know about the first area, “Swimming Simians”. We have:

• Bolded text that corresponds to important pieces of information

• Subheaders of relevant, interactive elements

• Monster stats formatted separately from location text

• Page number references to places elsewhere in the adventure.

• A few examples of what happens when certain things go awry (for example, being loud around the monkeys).

That all said, there’s still room for improvement.

For instance, I’m not sure that bolding 46 words helps as much as it could if only half of them were instead. Similarly, some things are repeated, such as the reference to bubble moss allowing breathing underwater found in both the Chirruping Monkeys section and it’s own section just beneath it.

Another great example is found in A Pound of Flesh for the Mothership RPG:

We’ve got a ton of information here, but it’s separated in a way that’s easy to parse:

• Areas are clearly delineated from one another with ample space around them.

• NPCs and locations that have information on other pages are bolded in a different color than the otherwise interactive elements in each area (eg, Dozens of hollering Console-Cowboys vs huge scoreboard in 1. The Battlestations)

• Stats are easy enough to include inline, while also keeping to the same text color as the beings they relate to

Again, though, we have some minor missteps. The bolded text that is meant to be interactive, such as the “servers and terminals” and “datacache” in 2. The Canyonheavy Datacache, isn’t immediately clear what is interactive about them. Similarly, while not captured here, there are a number of bolded items in the module that absolutely could use another sentence or two describing how they function… or even just what they are.

The Actual Solution

Photo by Edge2Edge Media on Unsplash

Ultimately, I think when you’re writing or reading text to prep for your games, it’s helpful to keep three things in mind:

1. Cut, Cut, Cut

   There is almost always too much text. Remove anything that isn’t an immediately actionable detail you reasonably expect the players to interact with. If arson isn’t on the table, you don’t need to mention whether the temple is stone or wood.

   When you think you’re done cutting—cut again.

   Tip: Aim for discrete words or phrases, not full sentences.

2. Highlight

   Once you’ve isolated the details the players will actually care about, bold or otherwise emphasize them so they’re easy to scan at the table.

   Tip: Over-highlighting defeats the purpose. Emphasize only what you’re likely to forget—remember, that’s the whole point of this.

3. Extrapolate Closely

   Minimize page-flipping. If a piece of text requires another reference to make sense, that’s friction. Some exceptions exist (stat blocks, major locations), but ideally, everything lives on the same page.

   Tip: If you think something must live elsewhere, consider rewriting to avoid the reference.

Before we wrap up, let’s give an example of something to improve—again from A Pound of Flesh:

2. RECOVERY ROOM. Six dingy bunks where those who have just undergone augmentation can recover. The beds are empty except for one filled with a melted lump of horrific organic cybermods. Investigation reveals it to be a terribly mutated former human (Fear Save). Zhenya will tell you that this is becoming increasingly common. Something is infecting cybermods on The Dream. Use of the Recovery Room costs 100cr/day.

Cut, cut, cut.

2. RECOVERY ROOM. Six dingy bunks where those who have just undergone augmentation can recover. The beds are empty except for one filled with a melted lump of horrific organic cybermods. Investigation reveals it to be a terribly mutated former human (Fear Save). Zhenya will tell you that this is becoming increasingly common. Something is infecting cybermods on The Dream. Use of the Recovery Room costs 100cr/day.

Chunk it out and highlight.

RECOVERY ROOM

• 6 bunks (post-augmentation recovery)

  • 1 bunk: melted organic cybermods → mutated former human (Fear Save)

• Cybermods infected on The Dream; mutations increasingly common (Zhenya)

• Recovery Room Usage: 100cr/day

Ensure it’s all there.

• We know what the room is, what’s weird about it, what to roll, and what it costs.

• Zhenya is mentioned on the same page, so we’re good there too.

• The Fear Save is bog-standard Mothership fare, so we don’t need to reference any additional rules here. We could put in a page number if we’re worried we’ll forget how it works, but that’s going to be different for each GM.

Astute viewers may recognize that the edits we made to the Pound of Flesh text mirror how text is presented in something like, say, Gradient Descent—another Mothership RPG module. This may very well be the difference between many different contributing authors (in the case of APoF) vs. a single authorial voice (in the case of GD). It may also just be that APoF is older than GD. Who knows.

Once you start doing this, you’ll notice just how much stuff isn’t important in the text as provided. Or, in the case of your own writing, how much time you can save by just giving the good stuff. 🟦

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