OSR How To: Stop Writing (and Reading) Boxed Text!
- Paul Wolfe
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
When the PCs are crawling down a slimy dungeon passage, smoky torchlight in their eyes, trying to stay quiet, to avoid springing traps, while simultaneously mapping to keep themselves from getting lost, nothing kills the immediacy of the game more than boxed-text story time. Here's a quick OSR how-to...
I hate it.
I hate writing it. I hate reading it. And I immediately disassociate when the DM starts in on a multi-paragraph screed describing a dungeon room.
But, equally, I hate the “inventory” approach, most often coupled with the “blank screen.”
DM: You see 5 goblins with spears.
It’s a room, with some monsters, and nothing else to jenga.
In the moment, it’s sometimes difficult to remember that in addition keeping track of the rules, time, and paperwork of an OSR game, you’re building a world, a tone, and an experience for the players.
So, where’s the balance between story time and an immediate, evocative conversation about the PCs world?
What I’ve found is that if I just add some single words or short phrases engaging the player’s sensory imagination, it hooks them into the unique space, gives them context clues (maybe the smell of oil could presage a trap, for instance, or intense B.O. telegraph that the ogre has not surprised the party), and most importantly:
It keeps the immediacy of the game intact!
Here’s my example of a room with some sensory details organized in descending order of immediacy and obviousness.
4. Lair. Damp. Briny, metallic smell. Mud nests.
This gives you a short line of text to look at, with the immediate sensory details, as well as obvious areas in the room that the PCs might want to explore.
The active monsters in the room follow directly after, with a description at the ready, so I don’t just say, “You see three garbugs.”
Violet Garbugs (up to 3). If not encountered elsewhere. Crawfish the size of a warhorse with a mass of mouth-tentacles and wasp-like wings.
Once they’ve dealt with the monster (or other immediate threat), each thing that they can search is bulleted separately, along with a quick description, anything else found on a deeper examination, and any relevant mechanics.
Mud nests (3). Oval, translucent eggs the size of a chicken egg (4d10 in each nest; ½ ration each).
Then there’s the hidden stuff. This format tells me that the treasure is hidden in the mud nests (sub-bullet to the main). I’ve also started separating out any other containers – that way I’ve got that information at the ready as I’m describing what the players find.
Hidden treasure. Mixed in with mud (find as secret door): Coin-sized, verdigris-coated bronze cones (5,215cp), three-wicked bronze lamp with handle shaped like serpent (30gp), pewter flask (initials G.H. scratched in base, 20gp), finger-length ivory case (5gp) containing silver needles (10: 1gp ea).
I can talk a lot more about the importance of making treasure unique, as well (thank you Luke Gearing for Wolves Along the Coast), but we’ll save that for another blog post.
Check out the full format in Undercaves of the Crawling Hand and see if you like it.
If you’re not already doing this, try it out. It makes a real difference to the conversation of the game and engages the players through sensory clues and interesting things. And it keeps you organized at the table, focused on the immediacy of the game, and not on writing multi-paragraph boxed text that no one listens to.
