Anyone else bothered by blurbs?

[Deussu]

This is more of a query than a rant. Lately I've noticed how I feel irritated after reading the blurb or see the front page of the scenario. With the level of metaknowledge I have, I can't help but to immediately recognize the monster in the picture. To me it's a bit of the possible surprise taken away.

Today I'm running You Only Die Twice, and was displeased to see the greatest twist in the scenario was outright given to anyone who bothers to read the blurb.

Has anyone else had these sorts of feelings? Have they ever given you troubles? Has a player used the blurb knowledge in a meta-game sense? I'm curious.

EDIT: Muser mentioned To Scale the Dragon as a scenario that gives out it entirely in its blurb. And ... whoah, it does. You read the blurb, you've played the scenario.

[Paz]

The blurb for #7: Among the Living gives quite a bit away.

[Paz]

(Now I have time for a proper answer...)

I find it easier to ignore the picture than I do to ignore the very text I'm reading. A spoiler-light blurb is also useful for advertising game sessions, sign-up sheets, etc. For those reasons, I prefer blurb text not to spoil scenarios too much.

[Jiggy]

Deussu wrote:

Today I'm running You Only Die Twice, and was displeased to see the greatest twist in the scenario was outright given to anyone who bothers to read the blurb.

Telling you the basic premise, which happens before you leave your mission briefing, is not a spoiler.

Even so, I see your general point. Sometimes it's even the title: "Murder on the Throaty Mermaid"? Yeah, good luck keeping the metagaming off of that one. :/

[nosig]

I'm not sure. I read the blurbs before playing often - and I've never had a problem with them so far... but YMMV.
.
But it seems to be to be easy enough to fix isn't it? I mean, just don't read them right? (Oh! I personally never look at the covers to the scenarios unless I am going to run them, and don't even print them normally. First time I see the cover is when I order the scenario online.)

I have played a "Face" character in a dungeon crawl more than once, realizing later that for the entire scenario the only thing to talk to was the VC during the briefing - and he refused questions and left. OH! and the insane guy at the end who just through spells at us. So it makes me feel better to read the blurb and realize that maybe I should run my Trapsmith on this one, and the Talker on the other. Blurbs often help me fit my PC to the scenario. (I guess if I only had one PC to run at that tier, maybe it wouldn't matter so much to me).

[CRobledo]

Jiggy wrote:

Sometimes it's even the title: "Murder on the Throaty Mermaid"? Yeah, good luck keeping the metagaming off of that one. :/

Do note this can backfire as well. I can think of two scenarios with a specific monster name in its title that contains no actual monsters of said name.

[Gwen Smith]

Walking the fine line between generating interest and giving away too much is a constant issue with blurbs, trailers, commercials, cover art, and reviews: every book, movie, TV show, comic book, etc. faces the exact same problem. (Video games have it a bit easier, because they don't rely on a hook or surprise as much as other content does.)

You might try to give the writers/producers some feedback (both good and bad!) on blurbs and cover art. Writing those is an art form, and specific, detailed responses is the best way to refine the craft.

(This is from my experience in the industry as a whole; Paizo's MMV.)

[Chris Mortika]

I have a handful of characters bunched up at level 6-8. I find the blubs helpful to guide me in deciding which PC would have the most interesting adventure.

(Not necessarily the easiest. I sent my paladin through an adventure in Geb, rather than my Dhampyr undead lord, and my monk through a scenario with a lot of haunts instead of the paladin.)

I have a character with a deep background and abiding interest in Thassilon. Knowing a sentence or two about the mission briefing gives me a chance to know whether he'd be eager to volunteer.

[nosig]

Chris Mortika wrote:

I have a handful of characters bunched up at level 6-8. I find the blubs helpful to guide me in deciding which PC would have the most interesting adventure.

(Not necessarily the easiest. I sent my paladin through an adventure in Geb, rather than my Dhampyr undead lord, and my monk through a scenario with a lot of haunts instead of the paladin.)

I have a character with a deep background and abiding interest in Thassilon. Knowing a sentence or two about the mission briefing gives me a chance to know whether he'd be eager to volunteer.

+1.

This, very much this.

[sieylianna]

I don't print the first page of any module that I am running because the picture gives away too much information in virtually every case.

[Deussu]

I might have given a bit exaggerated examples, I admit. And I admit that the blurbs can be helpful in selecting a proper character for the job.

Location is by far the most important aspect in a blurb to me. Geb? Sure! Rahadoum! Okay, no clerics then! Razmir? Again, no clerics (preferably)! Worldwound? No soft characters. :)

I mean that some blurbs give out too much. To Scale the Dragon actually explains the whole story... it's more of a synapse, not a premise.

[nosig]

Deussu wrote:

I might have given a bit exaggerated examples, I admit. And I admit that the blurbs can be helpful in selecting a proper character for the job.

Location is by far the most important aspect in a blurb to me. Geb? Sure! Rahadoum! Okay, no clerics then! Razmir? Again, no clerics (preferably)! Worldwound? No soft characters. :)

I mean that some blurbs give out too much. To Scale the Dragon actually explains the whole story... it's more of a synapse, not a premise.

LOL, at the end, many players still ask "where was the Dragon?"

[Yiroep]

I always thought of blurbs and reviews more useful for GMs than players. If you're GMing the scenario, you'd like to know what it is generally about before buying it.

[JohnF]

Deussu wrote:

Today I'm running You Only Die Twice, and was displeased to see the greatest twist in the scenario was outright given to anyone who bothers to read the blurb.

Let me give a contrary view.

I can't be totally sure, because I haven't played in this scenario. But the information in the blurb (which didn't sound like a plot twist) was enough to make me wonder whether this would be enjoyable if I played it with my most plausible character. Perhaps I'm feeling a little jaded - we recently played Mists of Mwangi, and it's not a whole lot of fun if your character gets stripped of all the abilities you built him around. If you are very lucky you might still have enough usable equipment to be able to make a worthwhile contribution in a secondary role, but that's by no means a given.

[sveden]

I've always considered what is in the blurb to be fair game. I think it helps people from going looking for hints about what to expect.

[Raymond Lambert]

I do not waste money or paper printing the first two pages. That reduces artwork spoiling the combat challenge. Even so, I like that when viewing my files, the artwork helps me identify different mods from others with a quick glace without having to open them to read. Same with the yearly change of background color. The blurbs are very helpful to recall if you played a particular adventure or not. Though with so many games in the hobby, let alone society play, it is more and more essential to keep a check list. Fingering through all 20/50/100 of your chronicles is not a check list. I can recall one blurb that hinted I should make sure to buy an adamantine weapon before I go in. A recent one writing about going inside of a golem works factory. I have not yet had the chance to play it so I am not 100% sure of it. Adamantine or the Golembane scarab is a very expensive purchase. Havering a clue that now is the time to make that investment is a plus to me. Especially after going through a game where no one had an adamantine weapon and we saw two fights with dr/adamantine with three creatures. Eagerly looking forward to that mod, I find myself putting off the adamantine purchase but trying to keep at least 3k unspent in case that is the next game played.

[Mark Moreland]

With regards to covers, we're limited to full-body shots for those, and some adventures lend themselves better to those than others. Since we have the budget to do only a single body shot or two headshots per adventure, it means that sometimes, when we need to do headshots, we don't have a body shot to fall back on for the cover other than something that might be seen as a spoiler.

When I write scenario product blurbs, I always try to occlude spoilers, but at the same time, I don't want to be too opaque either. If the blurb doesn't give players, GMs, and organizers at least something to distinguish it from other scenarios, it doesn't serve its purpose of advertising the adventure nor getting people excited for upcoming events in the campaign.

In both cases, there will always be the chance for spoilers when looking at any adventure's cover or reading a synopsis of the content within. My advice if these are concerns for you is to avoid both until after playing a given scenario.

[Jason S]

I don't have a problem with the blurbs or front cover. If I did, I'd just avoid them.

The cover monster usually isn't the end boss or a big spoiler, so it usually doesn't matter. The title or blurb doesn't usually ruin any surprises in the scenario (mermaid is an exception, grrr).

[JohnF]

Jason S wrote:

The cover monster usually isn't the end boss or a big spoiler . . .

Well, I've only just run enough tables to qualify for that first star.

But that list includes:

Spoiler:

• The Dalsine Affair
  
• Quest for Perfection III (Defenders of Nesting Swallow)
  

In each case I'd rather not show the cover art to the players (which is one reason why I don't print out the cover page).

[Mike Lindner]

I don't print the covers either, though that is mainly to save ink. I think it would actually be nice if the blurb were on the cover, or at least somewhere.

[Sean H]

By blurb, do you mean the description on the store page?

Yeah, they can give a bit much out of the way. On the other hand, they can be useful. Obviously it's in the campaign's best interest to prevent too many spoilers, but it can be helpful to know what challenges are in a mission. Is there a lot of undead in this one? If so, I should probably play my cleric, and not my poisoner.

Granted, I totally understand that Pathfinders won't always know what challenges they will be facing, but when I write my poisoner's character number on the sign-in sheet, then the venture-captain leads off the scenario with "you're going be fightin' undeadz, yo", well... Often GMs are nice and will let me change it, but some won't.

[Mike Lindner]

I think having the blurbs in the first few pages would help more for those people who've played tons of stuff quickly figure out if it's one they can play.

[cblome59]

One of the biggest questions I used to get coming out of the Living Greyhawk days was "What's the blurb?"