I’ve been thinking about our (my) design problem and about possible solutions. The idea of the ‘Adventure Stanza’ is my potential solution, though maybe too ‘froofy’/abstract to be useful.
I’m going to talk about this in two ways to start;
One; as it relates to layout, or the interrelationship of
space.
Two; as it relates to the interrelationship of
information.
SPACE
If we assume a double page A5 spread, meant to be looked at and considered as one
thing then there must be;
- a roughly-optimal font size.
- a roughly-optimal number of words you can get on the
spread at that size.
If we assume, like Medusa Maze, that we have a little
mini-map on this spread showing all the rooms described in it and how they
relate to the rest of the dungeon, then for each number of rooms on a single
spread there should be an optimal page count per room.
It might go something like this;
A5, 2 page spread Attempt One
Words per page; 900
Words per room
1 - 900
2 - 450
3 - 300
4 - 225
But, the way this imaginary dungeon works might be quite
different to the way Medusa Maze works.
If the map is just a map, and not art, perhaps it would
be smaller.
If the map is a top-down room-picture like the ones
Kelvin Green does, then that would change the interrelationship of space as
well.
Perhaps it would be better to start with a basic number
count, assuming no art or map present, and then go on from there;
A5, 2 page spread Attempt Two
Words per page; 1300 (roughly 2 pages of Quelong assuming
no art, map or table)
Words per room
1 - 1300
2 - 650
3 - 325
4 - 162
5 - 80
We can take this as our basic 'budget' of information and
then start deducting things from it. The things we deduct might include;
·
Corner Map
·
Art
·
Stats
·
Tables
·
White Space (for notes, Zak is fond of this
option)
Obviously all these things interrelate and can (and
perhaps should) be unique to a page.
Someone intelligent could probably work these up into
something like an excel table.
A5 Double Spread
|
||
Number of rooms
|
WPR – blank page
|
WPR with ‘Medusa-syle’
corner map( – 1/8)
|
1
|
1300
|
1136
|
2
|
650
|
568
|
3
|
325
|
284
|
4
|
162
|
141
|
5
|
80
|
70
|
Or for an A4 spread, try this;
A4 Double Spread
|
||
Number of rooms
|
WPR – blank page
|
WPR with ‘Medusa-syle’
corner map( – 1/8)
|
1
|
2500
|
2272
|
2
|
1300
|
1136
|
3
|
650
|
568
|
4
|
325
|
284
|
5
|
162
|
141
|
(These numbers might be junk, I’m not that smart. The
point is the idea.
INFORMATION
Ideally, everything in a single stanza, which is also a
single spread, should interrelate within itself and produce few, or no 'instant
interrelations' with the rest of the book.
As I'm defining it here, an 'instant interrelation' is a
piece of information, or a reference, that causes you to flip back and forth
between this spread and something else held elsewhere.
Obviously the definition of an ‘instant interrelation’
might differ a bit for each person, depending on their familiarity with the
system and how they play the game.
Flipping to a ‘what’s in their pockets’ table when
searching a body isn’t that bad as its assumed to happen after a fight in most
cases and the person waiting doesn’t mind waiting a little bit longer..
Flipping for a monsters AC or a special effect that takes
place in a fight is the worst kind of flipping as a fight has the greatest
amount in information going back and forth around the table and the results
have the greatest consequence.
Flipping for a special drug effect or trap effect might
not be that bad. It might not wound the player to wait a bit to see what’s
going to happen, provided that what’s going to happen is sufficiently
interesting.
I think the key here is that the tension of the choice
should not conflict with other multi-origin tensions happening at the same
time. All the data needed for those should be in one stanza.
HOW THIS COULD HELP US
Currently, when we (I) write adventures, we write a bunch
of stuff and do a bunch of art and then the layout person has the nightmare job
of trying to jam it all in together on a spread in a way that is both
attractive and useful.
Sometimes the layout person is also the writer or
creator, but this is rare, more usually they are an expert in layout, not
information architecture.
This leads to imperfect and ugly results. I don’t mean
ugly layout on the page, that’s
usually avoided, I mean an ugly arrangement
of ideas. An ugly architecture of
thought.
But if we knew the budget,
if we knew the basic allowance of words for the spread size we were writing for
first, and if we know the general
takeaways from that budget for art, maps, tables and stats, then we could work
differently.
Instead of writing, then arranging, then jamming in art
last our process might go something like this.
“Ah ha, so this is a LotFP adventure. That means the
pages will be A5. Let’s assume a word budget of 1300 per spread. It’s a dungeon
and we have the standard ‘medusa method’ map taking up roughly 1/8 of a spread.
That brings us down to 1137.
So if I want to arrange four rooms together then I have
about 284 words per room. Let’s say I
want two unique monsters in these rooms, or the possibility of that at least,
that’s two stat columns, so that brings us down to say 230 per room.
But I want the monsters to have interesting personalities,
they aren’t just monsters, they are
embedded in the social context of the dungeon, and I want the DM energised,
interested and inventive when they play them. So let’s say I want each of them
to have a d6 two-column reaction/personality table. I can embed a lot of
condensed information about them in those tables as the DM will read them and
even if they don’t use all the results then they will still pick up a lot of
‘mood’ from the possibilities.
Now we’re at roughly 200 per room, not that bad if I have
two sets of stats and two tables to play with as well.”
Point being, we could write and create for each ‘room’
grouping’ or ‘hex grouping’ or idea grouping of any other kind and so long as
we knew how information related to space and how much space we had and how much
each kind of ‘extra’ thing would impact that space, then we could just write
neat stanzas of thought and interaction and stop killing layout guys with
stress and having imperfect janky pages.
Instead of imagining the adventure in one long unbroken
sequence and then chopping it up, we could think of it in pulses of information
, or ‘stanzas’.
“So ok,
·
The map of the area around the giants house,
that’s one stanza.
·
They might end up in this weird forest, that’s
not the main point of the adventure, but it should be interesting, we’ll make
that one stanza.
·
Getting into the house, that’s one stanza.
·
No, breaking
in is one stanza. They might persuade or trick the giant, and if we make
the giants personality one stanza then we can have a picture, some background
text and a bunch of interrelated tables just for what happens if you talk to
him.
·
If we say fighting
the giant is one stanza then we can have a bunch of complex effects, like how
he throws you, what if he uses a horse as a weapon etc, so the Giant Fight can
be one stanza.
·
Is the inside of the house one stanza? Well it’s
a giant house, so like a mad palace with giant mice & giant traps etc, so
let’s make upstairs & downstairs separate stanzas.
·
And of course the giant likes to swallow people
in a fight, so let’s make the inside
of the giant one stanza, like a liquid mini-dungeon.
·
The giants giant treasure might not be one stanza
on thier own, but transporting them, and people/bandits interested in them,
might be. So let’s make that one.
·
Throw in one stanza as a hook/mission
generator/rumour table page.
“So that’s a ten-stanza adventure. A5 spread. That means
a 20 page booklet. Thin and light, cheap to print and send. A Zine-sized
adventure.”
So then you just write to that.
A POSSIBLE CHALLENGE
Could we use this method to transform a badly laid-out
adventure into a well laid-out adventure?
We have already done the thing where we re-write an old
TSR adventure and made it a new weird one. I’m not talking about the content here, but about the layout,
informational architecture and usefulness.
In fact, Palace of the Silver Princess might be a very
good start for a project of this kind. We’ve already changed it enough that
fiddling with it wouldn’t present any serious copyright issues.
Point being, if we went through this thing and broke it
down and applied the Adventure Stanza principal to it, and documented and wrote
about what we did and how it worked, could we turn that experience into a kind
of ‘guide book’ for creating adventures, not just their laying out, or
usefulness, or conception or poetic quality, but the combination of them all on
the page?
And if would could collectively work out the basic
‘informational budgets’ for different pag /font combinations and the various
deductions and for different kinds of page furniture and a rough taxonomy of
tables and their usefulness (I think various people have addressed this
already) and if we could get it all together in one place then we could just
make a lulu document like that ‘OSR Primer’ that guy did.
Then no-one would need to write shiftily laid-out
adventures.
They would probably make mediocre adventures instead.
BUT, the bar would be raised! And its better to work out how to hack a useful
system that to have to invent a
useful system, probably.
The rule I used in Red & Pleasant Land and Vornheim was "The dead minimum # of words to describe the situation unless I thought of a turn of phrase I really liked"
ReplyDeleteThanks for starting this conversation, Patrick. It's a good discussion to think through.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of good, worthwhile advice on publishing layout and design, as well as good content writing/creation guidance, but very little discussion of adventure information architecture and how that influences both of the other disciplines. Edward Tufte's work strikes me as very applicable here, particularly his books _Envisioning Information_ and _Visual Explanations_. Are you familiar with his work?
What do you consider good examples of well-designed/-presented and highly-usable adventures, where the content is orchestrated in conjunction with an excellent visual design and an effective and usable layout?
Some good follow-up discussion is happening over on the K&K Alehouse @ http://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13943 where we're noodling through your thoughts from an old school design aesthetic.
Allan.
I am totally going to give this formatting a shot, once I am up to writing whole adventures. In the mean time I am still working on that 'creativity potion' to bring me up to your level. So far, it only seems to cause seizures and an urge to stab those smug, self-righteous, KNOW-IT-ALL TRAFFIC CONES!!! FOUL NEON OPPRESSORS!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is really good. I have been thinking about optimal layouts myself. I have committed by now to about 80 pages of layout that is not optimal, but could work under certain conditions.
ReplyDeleteWhat I see clearly now is there is no reason to put "new monsters" at the back of the book in their own section unless they recur throughout the book. I figured this out for magic items - they are one of a kind in my book, and described where they lie - but not, alas, for monsters. next best thing is to have a separate monster/map/illustration book.