Not everything has to be spelled out. Some things are better off in the imagination of ones mind. This can be especially true for our favourite hobby.
If at this point it sounded either ominous or maybe suggestive, you fell right into my trap.
I've talked about the iceberg recently, how it can help us, creating a believable world, without too much investment. And the same we can apply in designing (and most notable writing) adventures and modules.
I'm still in a phase of finding out how I want to actually write down my adventures. I could go very detailed, which is something I tend to do in preparation. But I don't think that is the best way to go.
In my first "published" adventure I tried to only give minimalistic prompts and descriptions and it was received well. So I continued in the same way for this adventure. But I'm not fully happy with that approach.
For all the cave rooms, for example, I repeat the following description: Natural rock and cave (walls, high ceilings, floor). A big offender is the last room (spoilers).
14. Cave Entrance
Natural rock and cave (walls, high ceilings, floor), Exit
Lurog and Hyde
Bored (whistling, talking to pet), Startled (by Adventurers appearing)
- Lurog (Orc Scout) and his pet Hyde (Wolf) have been relegated to guarding the back entrance
- Other Orcs don't think highly of him
- It is his time to shine...
This is a lot of text to convey a simple idea: This is the last room, but somebody stands in your way.
Cave Entrance should be enough information to know that the thing is rocky and probably leads to the exit (or entrance) of the bloody thing. So the first line is just completely useless.
Similar things could be said about the description of Lurog and Hyde. What they are doing and how they react to the adventurers shouldn't be necessarily be defined by me, but can be up to the GM. There's such things as reaction rolls after all. This is maybe my tendency to shove a specific story line or idea into someone's throat.
I like the idea, that they have been "punished" on guarding the back entrance. But I think I can rewrite this in a shorter way.
14. Cave Entrance
Lurog (Orc Scout) and his pet Hyde (Wolf) guard the back entrance, bullied there by the other Orcs.
This should convey the same information but in much less words. It also leaves some room for the GM to interpret the situation and the players on interaction. This doesn't have to lead to combat as the first iteration did.
This maybe gets me one step closer to finally write an adventure that fits into a trifold brochure.
Leave me some feedback if you do play or GM it. Either as a comment on itch.io or over @bluesky.