Comparing Room Description Styles - Part 1

In my quest to overthink everything about the #Dungeon23 challenge, I decided to do a deep-dive on how some of my favorite module writers do their thing. These are people who've gotten a lot of credit and props from very critical folks like Bryce Lynch (Ten Foot Pole) and the folks at Bones of Contention.

First up is Vasili Kaliman (Singing Flame). I'm going to take one room from two different things he did, that I like. There's no special reason for either of these rooms, I just picked one at random from each zine.

1. This is the description of room "1A" from DNGN Weird Fantasy Megadungeon #1. Note that the opposite page contains a map, and on that map it has notes about the "Floor" and "Light" for each room. For this one, it says: "Floor: fresh earth overlaid on stone. Light: Candles on floor." I think this way of giving room details that doesn't clutter the room description is original and neat, but now I'm looking in two different places for the information and my brain hates that. It could work really well for other people, I have no idea. Would love to hear their ideas and thoughts.
• Here's the actual text for the room, though (exactly as it is laid out in the book):
• 1A > CYBERNETIC CORPSE
• Human corpse (on the floor), its arm and face merged with cybernetic parts.
• 2 candles (next to body) emitting black smoke [see ILLUSTRATION, P.24)
• Corpse: cybernetic parts can be cut from the body (worth 100gp to a cult). Leather pouch containing a journal (penned in an unknown script), 12gp (next to the corpse)
• Door to 1C: Bronze (locked), inscribed with strange symbol. Opens from the other side.
• I think this is pretty good. Certainly miles above a lot of other things I've seen. Really pleasing to look at visually, and it feels good in my ADHD brain to look at the information so clearly disseminated (if you know, you know). I'm not sure if it's inspiring enough, but it's certainly got the information organized in a really easy to digest way, even down to his use of bold text. I understand that seeing the corpse of a cyborg with an indecipherable journal is pretty inspiring, but something about it just doesn't land for me. There's a lack of atmosphere, somehow. A lack of a vibe, maybe? It's just a very simple room with some weird stuff in it; which is definitely cool, but maybe not awesome?
• Side note: It's hard to do this when you don't know what you're actually looking for.
2. Moving onto Xanadu (such a fucking good module, Jesus Christ). This is the description of the room labelled "5. Statue":
• 5. STATUE
• Stone stairs, leading up to small vaulted chamber. Statue, 12' high, standing in the middle.
• STATUE
• Female, she is grand, smiling, joyous, body is chipped in placed [SIC]. One arm extended holding a bowl. Gems embedded in eyes, red garnets (worth 700 gp each). Small wings growing from her shoulders.
• If the bowl is examined: it is empty
• If something is placed in the bowl: nothing happens. Only one item can be placed in here that will have some kind of effect (see below on how to disarm the trap).
• If search for traps is made: gems in eyes are trapped.
• If attempts are made to remove gems from the eyes without disarming the trap: a disintegration ray will shoot out at the PC touching the gem, save vs. death or be obliterated.
• How to disarm the trap: a human tooth must be placed in the owl. It will melt into a sugary syrup, the syrup will disappear from the bowl and secrete from her mouth, parts of the chipped statue will begin to heal, the eyes will glow red for 1d6 rounds, at which time the germs can safely be removed.
• I like this a lot as well. In some ways I like it more than the first, but in other ways I see the appeal of the first. Xanadu gets 2 rooms on a page, sometimes 1 if there's a lot of cool stuff going on. DNGN gets between 6 and 9, depending on the floor of the dungeon. I mean, it's a megadungeon in a Zine form. Pretty impressive, in that sense.

The thing that the first one has is a cool description of the door leading to the next room, and a little bit more descriptive language about the stuff in the room. The thing that the second one has is this great information about how to interact with the stuff in that space. Xanadu is full of stuff like that, which I love. Again, it makes my brain happy. I really don't want to think when I run a pre-made thing. I think enough.

I would be fine with a much longer version of DNGN if it had that kind of stuff in it. But I get it: zines aren't books. I think DNGN is supposed to be a little more sparse, so that you can add stuff to it or mess with each. That's something people do, right? Personally, I think that's for people who don't freeze when you put them on the spot about what a place looks like.

One thing that I think is really cool in DNGN is a little 1d6 table of dungeon dressing for each floor. You can roll on it every time the PCs enter a room and get stuff to put in the room, like:

1. human-sized cage
2. throne carved from wood
3. gurgling water from the floor
4. severed finger in a glass vial
5. half-burnt candles in a pool of wax
6. stone statue toppled on its side

I think that's a cool take on dungeon dressing. You have the main points of interest of each room placed within the room description, and then a cool little "flavor table" on the map. It's like the room description is the cupcake and the table is the sprinkles. Or pizza, with toppings. 

Okay let's look at another writer. Let's look at some rooms from good ol' Gavin Norman (Necrotic Gnome), in The Hole in The Oak:

1. 12 | Tiny People
• Stone blocks (walls, ceiling 10', and floor). Ornamental table (wooden, 2' high). Dozens of glass jars (on the table). Green bottle (on the table; corked). 
• In the jars: inside each jar is a tiny dead person (1" tall).
• In the bottle: half full of old wine (now potent vinegar). Two scrolls hidden, rolled up inside the neck:
• 1. A scroll of diminution (shrinks the reader to 6" tall for 6 turns).
• 2. A page from a tale about a journey to a world of micro-people.

Really fun things to interact with and look at. I just... again, the "stone blocks (walls, ceiling 10', and floor" just bothers me somehow. Also "Ornamental table (wooden, 2' high)" is definitely cooler than "Wooden Table" but "ornamental" is so vague. What about "Wooden table (2' high, ornate floral carvings" or "ornate carvings of stars." Ornate just makes me need to think more. You could add a ton of picture snacks for my brain to gorge on, with a few more words.

Let's check out another one:

2. 19 | Ghoul Bay
• Natural cavern (8' high, slick with mist). Rushing river (cold and fast-running). Sandy bay (streaked with gore).
• Half-Devoured Corpse
• Fairly fresh (flesh still intact). Partially dismembered (legless). Destroyed armour (remnants of rended [SIC] plate mail)
• Reaction: the legless corpse will crawl to attack PCs. (It is a recently killed adventurer half-way to ghoulhood.)
• Demi-Ghoul [stat-block]
• AC 8 [11], HD 1 (hp5), Att x1 bite (1d3), 1x claw 1d3, THAC0 19{0], MV 30' (10'), SV D12 W13 P14 B15 S16(1), ML 10, AL Chaotic, XP 10
• Bones and Driftwood
• Piled up (at the eastern end of the bay).
• Searching the pile: a sack containing 324gp, a ruby (worth 800gp), 5 black opals (200gp each0, and a crystal dagger as hard as steel (+1 magic).
• Moored Rowing Boat
• Drifting out in the current (10' into the water). Undamaged (battered but sound).
• Using the boat: up to three PCs can fit in the boat. Characters in heavy armour (or carrying other heavy loads) must make a DEX check to get into the boat. If they check fails, the character falls into the water and is swept away. See The Underground River, page 5.
• This is where Gavin really makes my brain mentally conjure the image of the Hannibal Lecter "Perfection" GIF. It takes up about half a page (there's two rooms on that page, and there could be more but the map on the opposite page only goes to room 20. And actually, this is where Gavin does something even more awesome: he puts the same map on two different pages, because the map has rooms from both pages on it. He could have condensed the writing to fit more rooms on one page, but he just repeated the map (or at least, the relevant part of it). And why not? He's adding value, and making my brain work less. ::chef's kiss::
• No mention of lighting, though. I went back to the beginning of the book just in case there was a note about it there, but there wasn't. I guess we're meant to infer that it's pitch-black unless otherwise noted, which makes sense. I just need things spelled out for me, because I have a goldfish brain. Ask my girlfriend, it's fun to watch me struggle to be a normal human.

By the by, I have The Incandescent Grottoes as well, and that one is written basically the same way so I didn't think it necessary to pull one from there.

So, what have we learned so far? Less is more, but only up to a point. At least, for me. I am willing to bet there are people out there who get really frazzled with someone else's details about a room, but I'm willing to make a second bet that those people are just running their own dungeons and don't feel the need to buy premade stuff.

//begin rant

That last paragraph got me thinking about some stuff: pre-made modules are like cover-songs. See, there's two kinds of people:

• People like me: I love music, but I never had any desire to write my own songs. I only wanted to learn how to play the songs that I loved. There were plenty of them to learn, and all I needed to do was copy them to enjoy playing them and sharing that with other people.
• People not like me: I had friends in high-school who were amazing musicians that never bothered to learn covers of other people's songs. They only wrote their own music.

The second kind of person is unfathomable to me. Yes, of course I was amazed by their musical skills (and definitely a little jealous, as well), but I thought the fact that all they did was sit around playing their own music with each other was kind of weird, mildly pretentious, but most of all: unrelatable to the vast majority of people in the world.

If all you ever play is your own stuff (and you're not a famous musician), you're just a person singing to a crowd of people staring at you. It probably rules being a famous musician. You've got amazing music living inside of your head, and other people love your music so much they walk around singing it in their head as well.

That being said, there's obviously more schmucks like me in the world than the second type of person. We might not be the most creative, talented, or unique, but we're the majority. We want to buy your RPG books, because we don't write RPG books for a living (but we do love us some RPG books). We want to sing cover songs, because we don't have songs living in our heads, and practice an instrument for four hours a day (but we do love music).

//end rant

You know what comes next, of course. We have to give at least one of my Dungeon23 rooms "Da Treatment." Let's give it a shot:

1 | The Bloodwell - Ancient Burial Mound

• Deathly silent, misty field of overgrown burial mounds (40' high, 40' in diameter). One of them is covered in red flowers, like dandelions the color of fresh blood (smell is coppery). Rough-hewn stone archway has collapsed, blocking entry.
• Clearing the stones: requires some kind of draft animal, or several people pulling with ropes, crowbars, etc. When cleared, the wind picks up slightly with a whisper. The low opening is wide enough for one person to enter at a time (with head bowed). 
• The surrounding area:
• There are other barrows. Feel free to add more, but here's 1d6 table of stuff in other barrows:
1. Unsealed. A dead adventurer, mauled by an owl bear. Claw marks and owl-bear feathers (recent), a severed arm (fingers digging into the dirt), and two cases of expensive wine (one smashed, the other worth 100gp)
2. Unsealed. Rusty shovels and pickaxes next to empty 4' deep holes in the earth with three ancient brown skeletons in an embrace (two adults, one child).
3. Sealed, by a large stone with a weathered inscription. Magic-user can read: "Herein lies a foul spirit of darkness and death. Don't be a damn fool." Breaking it open releases a howling black wind that ages anyone within 20' by 2d10 years.
4. Partially sealed, with tools abandoned at entrance. Roughly carved statues of everyone in the party (minus one), smiling.
5. An adventurer's camp, hurriedly abandoned. A hastily handwritten note pinned to a log with a silver throwing knife reads: "We heard it again, last night. We're not staying here after what happened to M&P. Keep your money. -F&S" (pouch containing 100gp)
6. Entrance completely caved in. Climbing on top of it, there is a crack with a withered leathery arm reaching out of it. If anyone approaches or touches it: it will spring to life, detach itself, and attempt to choke the life out of them until it is destroyed.
• AC [10], HD 1 (hp 2), Att x1 choke (1 hp), MV 30' (10')
• Inner Mound (10' high, 20' diameter dome made of very old smooth, stacked stones with a hard dirt floor):
• The air is still, and clammy.  Eight stone menhirs are spaced equally around the room, part of the walls (words in ancient dialect, depictions of snarling guardian spirits).
• A magic-user or sage can translate: "With blood flowers, blood moon, and blood wine, the blood way opens." Close inspection shows carvings of the flowers that grow on top of the mound, and a hooded figure performing the ritual below ("opening the well as intended").
• In the center of the room is The Bloodwell (a cylindrical stone 4' high and 4' diameter, with a 1' stone lid of the same diameter). The lid is carved in a stylized script where all the letters connect via a smoothly carved channel. It is impossible to move, though it can be destroyed like any other stone.
• Destroying it curses the breaker of the seal to die in 2d6 days (dreaming every night of killing vampires). If they kill a vampire, the curse is broken. If not, their final dream is of being exsanguinated, and the other PCs will wake to find their desiccated body.
• Opening the well as intended: combine the red flowers and a few drops of blood with wine on a blood moon. Pour that on the lid, and the letters will glow red. The stone lid will slide aside easily. 
• Upon moving the stone lid aside, there is a strong smell of musty air and death. The whispering of the wind intensifies inside the barrow to a chorus of sighing and crying, then dies out. Light sources (even magical) are snuffed out.

After reading it over, I realized this is more like 7 rooms. That's because it's one of several entrances to a much larger dungeon, and I wanted each entrance to be more than just a room (more like an area to itself). Mine's obviously a lot longer than theirs and needs work, but that was still a fun exercise. I'm excited to see what things look like in a year...