Jeremy Mac Donald's page

Honestly, I'd say we get about four of these a year, and they're almost always from people who also provide an email address we use to discuss changes and whatnot.

--Erik

Just an attempt at humour.

I don't actually believe that you guys sit around bidding for the choice bits of each others lunches using International Reply Coupons as currency.

What Wil Save should be.

I love first level

I’ve been gaming for over 22 years now. In that time I’ve played

If your goal is to use this post to convince me why I should dislike Wil Save you have failed.

However if your goal is to right a good and entertaining post; well there you hit the nail on the head. Interesting insights and something I had never really put much thought into.

In fact as a DM I mostly don't like first level. For a DM here the pressure is really on not to make any sort of mis-step since you can so easily wipe a party out and kill off your whole campaign. So as a DM i tend to breath a sigh of releaf when the party hits 3rd. My life has just become so much easier...but your certianly correct in that the need for deoderant and air freshener around the gaming table drops dramatically as the players too know that they are no longer in likely to die at any second from something they never saw coming.

Oh, we've seen them. As to whether we've ever _used_ them, well, that's something of an open question.

--Erik

You see them but you don't use them?

Its like something out of 'The Simpsons'.

I can just see the staff sitting around the lunch table trying to buy the best bits of each others lunchs with unused stacks of international reply coupons.

Odd...after a while it won't let me edit my own posts.

I note I made an error. Shadow Born is actually issue #35. Mud Sorcerers Tomb is issue #37. So I guess that would put my younger campaigns from about '86-'92.

Looking at the flavour text for Shadow Born again...holy shamoly...I'm guessing close to 40% of the writing for that fairly lengthy adventure is in a flavor text box.

This is a good point; Gygax certainly had a habit of using big words when small ones would do.

But it's not just him: The unusual subject matter of the D&D game results in the frequent use of words that would otherwise be relegated to Scrabble playoff rounds. My sister, who is far smarter and more educated than I, learned what "eldritch" meant a couple months ago, from a word-of-the-day calendar. I've known for about 20 years now. At age 10, I greatly impressed the local librarians by knowing what "Brachiation" meant.

D&D is full of this stuff: Codex, Falchion, Enervation, Interposing, Blackguard, Simulacrum — these are all honest-to-Webster's words that your average D&D person knows without thinking, and your average regular person probably doesn't.

Personally, I'm fine with this. D&D is a mental game of words and numbers and imagination. Encouraging players to exercise their noggins a little is no bad thing.

My opinion is this has good points and bad.

On the upside everyone will think your smarter then you really are.

On the downside everyone will think your smarter then you really are.

Either way your good to go on ruining a game of Balderdash for everyone else because you know to many of the 'obscure' words in the book that comes with the game.

On a side note, reading the text can have some funny repercussions. An encounter in a troll filled cave complex was once described as a room with a small fire in the center, lying next to the fire was a blanketroll. Apparently the DM had trolls on the brain, because we ended up fighting a ferocious Blanke Troll. After the battle, we were on guard for other terrors…like Sheet Goblins…or Pillowcase Gnomes.

ASEO out

Yeah - those blanketrolls are almost as bad as the dreaded Gazebo - or so I've read.

(A) Exactly how "old school" are you? I bought the Basic boxed set back in 1983 when I began to play and it came with Keep on the Borderlands. Even then there was "read aloud" text for the DM.

(B) The fact that you want to say it in your own words is probably common among all of us. Myself, I read the text verbatim most of the time and then paraphrase in my own words to reinforce what the players just heard.

(C) The boxed text you complain of is there to aid you so you don't have to suddenly stop during your game and read through an area description to see what the players should and should not know and then give them a description. The authors have already done this for you. Boxed text is what the characters should get from an initial glance and is designed for you to not say too little and not say too much.

(D)I suppose you would rather have a Monster Manual that isn't full of tedious things like descriptions and what-not, either. Just a nice streamlined stat block, right?

(E)Anyway, while we're on the subject of words, try this one...

Prose: the ordinary language people use in speaking and writing.
Hmmm.... You don't like that, huh? I'd love to see what method you use for DMing.

(A)Not quite as old school as that post of mine comes off as being. That said if your primary source of adventures is Dungeon Magazine - and 90% of mine was - then flavour text was hardly present in every module back in the mid '80s. In fact it went from being an unusual feature in an adventure to being extremely common and finally to a requirement as the years progressed.

(B) No doubt - but I would suspect that those of us that learned to DM when flavour text was purely optional on the part of the adventure writer and not all that common would tend to read it verbatim less frequently then those who learned after pretty much every adventure had it.

(C) Well there was always a method to the editors madness in Dungeon. 'Back in the Day' as it were, the first paragraph(s) would cover what the basic layout of the room was. So there was never any need to skim through the entire entry just to tell the players what they see (or hear or feel or whatever). In fact probably one of the things I did not like about the boxed flavour text was that the information was increasingly couched in stylistic prose that I had to remove on the fly and then rephrase in my own words.

My real complaint however was that this stylistic prose kept growing and becoming ever more elaborate - while at the same time the information contained in it stopped being repeated in the text below. This actually made things really tricky some of the time and could sometimes throw me off my pacing or cause inadvertant slips where relivent information got left out. It takes certian skills to be able to read some one elses elaborate prose effectively to a group of players and have it come out sounding really good.

Especially considering that sometimes you have to speed the stuff up or slow it down in the middle of the adventure - if your players are looking a little on the distracted side its time to cut to the chase...on the other hand if they are looking like deer caught in the headlights and are really in bad shape and still twitching from the last two kill or be killed duels you want to slow things down. Thats so much more difficult if your reading some one elses notes verbatum -I mean what do you do in the case where you want to cut to the action? speak faster?.

In anycase I found myself disliking the boxed flavour text ever more with each new issue until the whole thing reached a kind of extreme around the time of the 'Shadow Born' adventure. By this point flavour text boxes where becoming flavour text coloumns...Reading the stuff verbatum would be like delivering a sermon...after that things seem to have shrunk back down considerably to the point where the flavour of the boxed text seems to be vanilla - just the basic facts more or less. I can live with this - and anyway its not like its going to change anymore then the state is going to decide that I'm tax exempt just for being me.

(D)No. Nor did anything I said in my post imply that in any way.

(E)It means something slightly different when I use the term 'Stylistic Prose'. Of course I use prose; I'm just more comfortable with my own instead of some one elses. Especially when its going to be a different some one elses each week.

You've been a DM for an awfully long time then, since even the B modules from the early 80s had boxed flavor text.

I usually do read the text verbatim unless there is good cause not to. I might paraphrase, or hold back the description if they immediately encountered something. Typically though, I expect that writers may be trying to provide some of that feel, and I don't get uncomfortable with multi-syllabic vocabulary.

On the other hand, occassionally the boxed text is just awful, and best paraphrased.... haven't had that problem in Dungeon in a long time though.

- Ashavan

Well I went back and checked some of this and I'm exagerating to a certian extent. I should really say something along the lines of "I learned to DM before they consistantly had boxed flavour text".

At some point there is an editorial by (probably) either Barbara G. Young or Wolfgang Baur were they pretty much state that from this point forward all submissions must have boxed flavour text. After that presumably Dungeon always had boxed flavour text.

That said I went back as far as The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and note that it does in fact have quite a few flavour text boxs.

Now I'm basically certian that this module predates Dungeon and its pretty early on in my DMing that I picked this one up - Fond memories of it - it marks my very first Total Party Kill. Pretty hard for a DM to forget the first time he (or she) kills off the entire party. Couldn't decide if I was pleased with myself or felt somewhat responsable for the two players that were in tears and the rest that are sniffling and glaring accusingly at me.

That said I went and grabbed Dungeon number 7 (the first one I ever bought - my game store was apparently behind the times) and there is not a drop of boxed flavour text in it. In fact grabbing some more of the older issues its pretty much years before flavour text really starts to take off in the pages of Dungeon...Hmm or maybe not...there is relitivly little flavour text in (the very good) issue #10 - just a few boxes for adventure hooks and a couple of critical parts of the adventure 'Threshold of Evil' but half the modules in issue #9 use it.

Anyway I note that as late as issue #56 the excellent 'Mud Sorcerers Tomb' does not have any significant amount of flavour text (in boxs anyway).

I certianly really came into my DMing with adventures between issue #7 which would have been more or less introduced during my first 'real' (that is we are actually using most of the rules and they are being used properly) Campaign and issue #56 where Mud Sorcerers Tomb is the last adventure I run for my childhood-teenager gaming buddies/group. After that we all left for varous universities and for the most part went are seperate way. So if you were DMing during this period (looks like roughly from about '86-'95) and where a big fan of Dungeon you really could not get too comfortable with flavour text boxes because they might or might not exist. Which of course suited me fine since I decided I did not like them real early on.

Nope.

But I run a Home Brew world. I bought the Dragonlance hardcover partly for nostalgia - but also because I liked the layout and wanted to do a write up in something approaching a similier manner for my home brew. Actually eventually decided that I was not completely enthuised with the DragonLance layout but in coming to that conclusion I got a better idea of why and so I guess it worked out in the end. That said I don't plan on buying any of the campaign setting materials anymore with the exception of Oriental Adventures - but thats on part because I have an Oriental themed land in my Home Brew.

All of that said I probably won't mind reading some Eberron adventures. I can't even use Grayhawk modules without modifing them so this is not such an issue - Though I guess if its really out of left field (I know pretty much nothing about Eberron) then that might make it significantly harder. However I'm all for having some of the content support some of the more obsure D&D places.

In fact I'd like to see one adventure or so a year with some more exotic locals. Say one for a fantasy Africa, another for a Fantasy Indonesia, throw in some of the no longer primarly supported games like SpellJammer. Not that the content should be only this by any means - here I am saying one year do an Afican Adventure and the next year do something along the lines of SpellJammer.

Erik Mona wrote:

We assume that most DMs paraphrase the material in the "read aloud" text.

--Erik

This is interesting. When I DM, I read, verbatim, the flavor text and then let the PCs have at it aftward. I wonder how many DMs paraphrase and how many do not? Hmmmmmmmmmmm......

--Ray.

I'm old school - I learned to DM back before they had flavour text. Personally I would be happier if they dispenced with flavour text boxs altogether - but thats not going to happen. Basically I feel its my job to know what sort of things the PCs are going to be seeing. In Dungeons or other suitable environments I photocopy the maps and write on them etc. in order to help jog my memory about what this encounter was about.

So I don't even paraphrase instead I put what the players see into my own words. If I can't do that then its a sure sign that I did not prepare enough for this adventure (or I need more sleep).

I guess I have two things I don't like about the boxed flavour text. One is that its done in some one elses style - and its not consistent from module to module. Hence if one is reading the text verbatum then there are these different stylistic elements creeping into the game.

The other complaint is that I have to read these boxed texts much of the time just to find out whats in the room. This can some times mean trying to figure out what is just stylistic prose on the part of the adventure writer and what is actually relivent.

Actually that brings me to a third issue - conversions are more difficult. I run a home brewed campaign world so everything has to be adjusted. Having to read the boxed text and convert its prose laiden material is more difficult then the straight forward text that is for the DM.

All that said these issues are actually much less problematic then they have been in the past. The Ravonloft setting kicked off this fad to have obscenely heavy flavour text - and for a while there Dungeon seemed to decide to save some space by not repeating information again in the DMs description below the flavour text. So one had to wade through this prose ridden gothic tinged flavour text to work out that the room had two small beds and an open and empty chest in it with no windows and no other exits.

Well a situation occured while we were playing Shadowrun, a grey area game if there ever was one.

We had done our share of killing enemies but one time we were in Egypt and we were attacked by bandits who we defeated but not until one of the players had been seriously wounded. This player then proceeded to 'cap' all the bandits that lay bleeding yet still alive. The rest of us were mortified and an actual argument broke out over this.
The thing I found is that he was a younger player and IMHO unlike the older players of the group, didn't grow up with heroic role models like Superman, Spiderman and Luke Skywalker. Now days every youngster thinks Anakin Skywalker is soooo cooool but lets face it, he became evil. If that is what youngsters see as a role model these days then we're all doomed!
Reebo

I hit nearly the opposite situation. Same Game (Shadow Run) which is just crawling with this sort of thing. Anyway we grab some middle managment wage slave from the evil corp we are trying to infiltrate and we are interigating the guy in the back of a van. Well of course we threaten to kill him if he does not co-operate.

Anyway the Wage Slave procedes to press his emergancy call for help switch (there is some kind of insurance company that will come racing to get you in Shadowrun but the name of the company eludes me right know).

Well the younger players hop out of the Van we have this guy in and start sprinting for safety before his insuracne brokers show up and hose us all down. I however empty my clip into him probably killing him before sprinting for safty. This gets me in hot water with the other (much younger players). My take is that my word is my bond...I told him we wouldn't hurt him if he co-operated but did he do that? no. Just the opposite... I always keep my word.

I always liked moral quandries in adventures too. I was always amazed at how many lawful good characters would set in with relish to kill the largely defenseless non-com females and children that used to frequent D&D adventures. Sure, they were non-com female and children goblins and orcs and kobolds and lizardmen... but they were still defenseless creatures.

I would think that Lawful Good would be the easiest of the good alignments to explain this away with.

For a Lawful Good Character protecting society - specificially his or her own society is extremely important. Allowing the Goblins to live means allowing them to grow up and presumably to terrorize the nearby towns in the future.

Its the Neutral Good or Chaotic Good Characters have more of a moral dilemma I would think sense they don't place such a premium on the need to maintain Law and Order and hence have no moral imperitive to eliminate something thats a threat to Law and Order at some point in the future.

Wolf, I imagine you saying all that in a Grandpa Simpsons voice. ;)

I don't envy you the paper days.

On the other hand there probably was not as much competition. Any one of us can write and email and probably dozens or hundreds do. But actually having to pront something up and look up Dungeons adress in teh US - then go through all the trouble of buying a stamp...that alone was probably enough to cut back on the number of submissions dramatically.

I have to say that while Comedy adventures are fun to read, I've never had one work out well in play. Players either miss the humor, or find it to be silly to the point of destracting.

ASEO out

I found that it seemed to depend on what kind of humour was used...that said I can't really put my finger on exactly what the catagories of functional versus disfunctional humour was. I can sort of point to the extremes - The NPC without a clue who keeps trying to pick up the pretty female fighter with terrible one liners every time they return to their favourite inn(which serves as home base). This works - the NPC just seems to fit...Gags like singing Mushrooms seem much more difficult maybe because it strikes at the suspension of disbelief that the players and the DM have created. Huddle Farms Leprechaun worked because he did more then just paint the cow green so ones players could be both stupified and still manage to buy that this was in fact more then pure silliness.

I think you are forgetting Old Man Katan and His Mushroom Band. That is definitely Willie's best.

I found this on a fantastic adventure to read...certianly in one of the top spots to in terms of entertainment in that department. But I was never able to get it to work with a group - I was looking at it for a conversion to 3.5 the other day and was just stumped.

That actually got me wondering where all the humour went? 3rd Edition is great but some where in all the materialism the place for humour seems to have been lost. Or maybe I just can't figure out how to get it back in there.

(A) "The White Boar of Kilfay"(easily Willie Walsh's best effort)...

(B)..."The Mud Sorceror's Tomb". If you are looking for the quintessential Dungeon magazine, this one comes highly recommended.

(A) My vote is for Huddle Farm...that was a riot.

(B) Yeah - this was brilliant.

Does anyone remember Baba Yaga?

Wasn't she the one with the hut that went around eating people...

...or maybe that was a gazebo.