What makes a good dungeon description?

[Griffiana]

I’m curious to see the thoughts of people on what exactly makes a good dungeon room description?

We are all very, very well acquainted with the OSE house style, with bolding and bullets, terse clear sentences and a control panel layout.

I understand that this works well, but it is the product of a school of thought that a module is a manual. I don’t quite agree, because although a GM can run something by the book, the manual ethos kinda removes the emotional content of the description. I have found some of these (OSE) modules, even if the content is interesting, quite dry and boring. One needs to enjoy a work somewhat to have a decent crack at running it.

A good dungeon description needs to evoke an emotional reaction. That allows a GM to remember it more clearly, get excited to run, and convey that emotional aspect to the players

Am I speaking out of my arse? Am I just looking for better writing? I honestly am almost of the opinion that deliberately poor writing might work better than good lol

PS: Nightmare on Ragged Hollow shows how these descriptions can be long and memorable, and evoke a reaction. So does Zedeck’s work in A Thousand Thousand Islands. I can see how some of the work of TSR on the '80s (Dragonlance) tries to evoke the emotion but is verbose and dry. Brad notes on his review of Castle Xyntillian how the room descriptions are wonderfully terse and useful.

[thekernelinyellow]

I think there are multiple ways (or maybe schools?) to do this at least somewhat effectively and in the end they depend a lot on an interaction between the author’s style, the typesetter’s style and the preferences of whoever actually runs it at the table. In general, writing good TTRPG content is hard, because the emotional response and evocative style work great during prep, but at the table you’ll need to be able to either find or remember whatever bit you need on the fly, without having to parse a novel-worthy block of text, as cool as it can be.

I personally like the style I first encountered in Prison of the Hated Pretender, which describes the dungeon with good prose and mostly in text forms, but uses a coherent highlighting mechanism with bold, italics and such to outline the stuff you’re most likely to need on the fly (i.e. dangers, treasure and light sources). It also helps that the art is good and detailed, so looking at the map already gives me a feeling of the room.

OSE style is, for me, extremely unappealing to read and prepare, but when I finally get over it, it’s extremely effective at the table. I can glance on a room’s description and get what I want quickly, even if I had to reread the whole page multiple times because I kept skipping the terse sentences.

@Griffiana

Am I just looking for better writing?

I’m not sure. Every text can become more enjoyable to read with better writing, but I think this is more a case of needing to find the right tool for how you do your job.

[OperantGameLab]

I don’t think you’re talking out of your ass. I think there can be a happy medium between usability and interesting prose.

On the one hand, the super minimal, ItO style where the author just lists the contents of an area leaves me inspired. But on the other, Patrick Stuart’s rambling prose makes no distinction between GM info, player info, and dungeon history and is totally un-runnable without reformatting.

Lately, I’ve tried to start with an area’s initial impressions, bolding the interactive features. Then, I have subheadings for the interactive features where I allow myself to write more creatively. I think this approach works best when each keyed area has only 3 or fewer key elements. I’ve found myself breaking up complicated areas into several smaller rooms or points of interest lately. Here’s an example:

I like that it has bolding for quick referencing while maintaining full sentences. I do really like the OSE house style but its use of parenthetical over sentences can be jarring.