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Dungeons and Dragons taught me how to write alt text
- markus_zhang 2y agoI have heard that a DM is a full-time job, and I agree full heartily after reading this.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoAs a DM, it's certainly something that's very easy to sink time into. And rewarding, too!
- markus_zhang 2y agoI agree! I'd expect my DM to have knowledge of multiple worlds so that he can pull out things such as Solamnia knights got caught up in a time-space torrent and appear in Greyhawk. I guess it takes a lot of reading and planning.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoOooh, you'd be disappointed by my style, I think. I know the broad strokes of the D&D "canon", but I have no idea who the Solamnia knights are, I can name maybe five of the gods of the pantheon, and not much else. I prefer to run homebrew games, personally - let the players inform, decide, and deduce the world.
- markus_zhang 2y agoNevermind, everyone has their own style.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoYep. As long as everyone is at the table is having fun, there's no wrong way to play.
- sleepybrett 2y ago> Solamnia knights Krynn/Dragonlance
- runiq 2y agoYa can't just do time/space torrents without throwing Sigil into the mix. And spelljamming. And a kender. (I really, really miss Planescape.)
- markus_zhang 2y agoYep, although I myself never played tabletop DND gamed, Planescape and Return to the Tomb of Horrors are my two favorite readings.
- vundercind 2y agoIt depends a whole, whole bunch on what exactly you do. Custom setting with great attention to detail and an entire campaign mapped out? Every possible semi-important NPC with a biography and set of motivations and stats for every place they might go in the whole campaign? Yeah, shitloads of work, hundreds of hours, maybe thousands. Or you can have a basic setting and a little town with some adventure hooks, a few partially fleshed out items and NPCs, a few more randomly-generated ones for roles like “shop keeper” or “bar patron” when you don’t have anything better, crib some other setting’s gods and politics and what have you, and only fill more stuff in if the players take an interest. They really engaged with that random street juggler and are already trying to figure out how she fits into the plot? Well… she didn’t, but now she does! Time to pick a clue or hook to attach to her and put her in their path again. Only write enough runway to get through the next session, and take your writing & prep where the players go. Saves tons of time, doesn’t necessarily make for a less-satisfying game than an intricately constructed complete world (often, it’s better) Run a decent pre-written module? Usually not much work at all, just read the whole thing once then refresh yourself on the next one part before each session. Provided you’re already comfortable with the game and setting, anyway.
- jamesponddotco 2y agoI've to write alt tags daily and I still suck at it, since I suck at describing things (which is weird, since I write documentation every day). I might start attending my friend's D&D sessions just to improve on that. For now, I wrote a tool[1] that uses AI to do the job for me. [1]: https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/allalt https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/allalt
- RyanAdamas 2y ago[flagged]
- retrocryptid 2y agoI think the CoC says ixnay on the arkisness-ay. I also get downvoted for similar reasons sometime. No point complaining. It's not your circus, you don't get to pick the monkeys. [note, however, as a conniseur of fine s*rk, I did not downvote you.]
- kelseyfrog 2y agoRelated, but for me it was Dwarf Fortress. The item descriptions aren't exceptionally good per se, they're auto-generated after all. But they employ particularly poignant verbs[1] over more adjective-heavy descriptions. Taking a cue from that style dramatically improved my alt text. 1. like encrusted, encircled, adorned
- hyperbolablabla 2y agoGrammatically those are participles and are in fact technically adjectives, even though they are derived from verbs.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoThank you! That's an excellent point.
- smolder 2y agoI played that game for the first time not long ago and found it funny how redundant statuses stack up when a creature gets something on them. It's a weird thing to not have changed after so many years of development. Something like: Urden McUrist is covered with the blood of Urden McUrist. He is covered with the blood of Urden McUrist. He is covered [...]
- kelseyfrog 2y agoIt has a certain charm to it :)
- nealmueller 2y agoThe author says in the first paragraph that he used to play a lot of D&D (dndbeyond.com) and now prefers Dungeon World (dungeon-world.com; PDF is $6). Does anyone know why he might prefer the latter? As context, I play D&D weekly, love it, and am always interested in learning more. Dungeon World is designed to focus on creativity and shared storytelling with simpler mechanics to make the game more fluid. However, there's nothing simpler than having a clear D&D rule for something like fall damage, instead of having the party debate if a player survived the fall. Dungeon World doesn't have fall damage calculator and instead relies in the narrative, presumably from the pre-written story or DM.
- ipsi 2y agoMost people who prefer DW would say that D&D sometimes has clear rules for something, but often has no rules, boring rules, or rules that aren't necessarily "fun". Combat, while tactical, tends to be slow and can frequently consume a lot of time in a session, plus the majority of rules and character powers are focused on combat. If you're playing sessions with a lot of RP, DW will have a much better balance of rules:session-time, it's much easier to prep for, and given how rules-lite D&D really is outside combat, will probably have about the same amount of narrative input. Note that it's not necessarily the "group debating if the player survived", but typically the GM giving the player a choice when they fail to climb the wall, like "you fall and take a little damage, or you slip a little, cursing loudly and alerting the enemies at the top to you". Done well, it gives the players a lot more agency, and much better buy-in for the story as they're now shaping it, instead of just being along for the ride. I would also say that pre-written narratives aren't really a thing for DW (at least, as far as I know!), so it's really down to what the DM sees as an appropriate penalty or choice, often phrased as "you succeed, but <thing>". It's not really better or worse than D&D overall, I'd just say that it's much better suited for certain play-styles. If you enjoy tactical gameplay and using miniatures, then D&D (or maybe Pathfinder) are much better options. If the thought of yet another fight makes you want to gouge your eyes out, I'd recommend giving DW a try.
- sdenton4 2y agoThe player choices and handling of partial success in PBtA games (like dungeon world) really makes them sing. A partial success leads to adding complications, which creates really interesting situations. The original Apocalypse World book has some really great ideas on how to run a campaign, as well - very worth reading for anyone who runs ttrpgs.
- hinnisdael 2y agoGreat advice: describing things in order of importance. Most people intuitively describe images from foreground to background or left to right, a bit like they are mentally completing a checklist of all the things to describe. As correctly noted by the author, describing by importance first has the added benefit of allowing screen reader users to skip irrelevant/uninteresting images early. Compare: Torn-up painting in a gallery, observers standing in front of the work. vs. Gallery interior, people standing in front of a painting with visible damage.
- dyauspitr 2y agoThe first sentence leads me to imagine a torn up painting and a group of people clustered around it. The second sentences leads me to imagine a large gallery space with high ceilings with a smattering of people in front of one of the paintings. Both ways have their pros and cons. Describing the space first lets the reader paint a setting for the eventual object of interest.
- pimlottc 2y agoThat's true, but consider the context; this isn't a novel, it's functional text for someone who is probably trying to accomplish a task. A user in a hurry might skip part way through the second description and be misled to thinking the photo was just a normal picture of a gallery.
- RheingoldRiver 2y agoThe First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie starts with a fantastic inversion of this writing advice that sets you up for the tone of the entire series's humor, I highly recommend it!
- arscan 2y agoI have great trouble writing good descriptions of products I build at work (I’m in software). Often I find there are just too many possible ways for me to describe the thing that I get stuck… and inevitably end up with descriptions that simply aren’t very effective. It just seems really hard to flatten an inherently multifaceted or complex thing into a linear narrative. This topic is slightly different than this post, but there seems to be some useful advice that is applicable to my particular problem. I can “see” what my product is, but can’t really describe it well. Next time I’ll try to focus on what’s important first… which of course sounds obvious, but isn’t how my brain seems to want to describe things. Is there any other reading out there that people would recommend?
- dallas 2y agoI use the "pyramid format". Conclusion first. Main points with little explanation next. Explanation of main points after that. Details last. That way someone can stop reading at any point and still have a complete view at some level of detail.
- jyunwai 2y agoThis approach is also known as the "Minto Pyramid." The website "Untools" has a well-written webpage that explains this: https://untools.co/minto-pyramid/ https://untools.co/minto-pyramid/ Untools itself also inspired some good discussions on this forum (2020, 137 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23339830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23339830
- dallas 2y agoNice link, thanks! I was put on to this by someone who had done defence work in their past. They used the "Concept of Operations" for their preferred document style which I also like.
- bux93 2y agoSome people find that determining what the conclusion is, is difficult to begin with. Or that there are many conclusions. And, how do you present those details? Chronologically? A helpful techniques I've picked up (that some people absolutely hate); write down the individual statements on post-it notes. That way you can reshuffle. What would the story look like if A is 'the conclusion'? What if we start off with B? What does it look like if we present the supporting evidence chronologically? What if we present it in a more layered way? ("the colonel couldn't have done it, as on the day of the murder, he was in another city") Another tip is for the introduction, the lead up to the conclusion; start with listing the facts that are common knowledge, then the fact that raised the question to be answered; then you reach the conclusion. (E.g. Every week, grandma bakes a pie and leaves it to cool in the window. Last week was no exception. But when she went to retrieve the pie, it was half-eaten! The culprit was the cat!) This setting the scene can give the reader some context. In a real-world example, the known facts might include your company's strategy or objectives, underscoring why people should care about your advice.
- dallas 2y agoI often print out my D&D maps (say, from a scan of one I've drawn), transcribe important features on to it using coloured pens and run the game from that. Whitespace and simplicity is a feature here... "photo-realistic" maps with stone textures and artistic doodles get in the way of usability.
- lovegrenoble 2y agoI've recently been working on a web-based tool designed to make character creation in DnD easier: https://tabletopy.com/fantasy-character-generator.html https://tabletopy.com/fantasy-character-generator.html
- voidUpdate 2y agoCharacter creation is hard? Also I'm not sure this is entirely accurate. I generated an elf druid (the type I just created one of manually) and it gave me one less language than I should have, no wild shape, which feels pretty important for a druid character, one less spell than I should have and no actual details about what the spells do mechanically. Also I don't recognise half these classes from 5E, were they in an earlier edition of the game? And where's all my skills?
- vonnik 2y agoI grew up next to, and a couple years younger than, someone who is now a famous novelist and singer-songwriter. In our childhood, he was renowned in the neighborhood as a dungeon master. He rode the theater of the mind as far is it would take him. The advice in the magazine reminds me of the inverted pyramid structure of classic reporting. Most important first, assume that the reader could stop reading after any sentence, so make the most of each phrase. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism...
- looping8 2y agoI think they are the same thing, the magazine just put it in fun language so the reader would be more interested. This structure is why I don't like those ridiculous interviews where it starts with "the actor sits in his home with [long description of furniture], wearing [long description of clothes], he sips coffee from a [long description of mug]". I just want the interview, I understand that the actor is living somewhere and wearing something, it does not matter.
- orojackson 2y ago> This structure is why I don't like those ridiculous interviews where it starts with "the actor sits in his home with [long description of furniture], wearing [long description of clothes], he sips coffee from a [long description of mug]". I just want the interview, I understand that the actor is living somewhere and wearing something, it does not matter. While I agree with you that I find this style of writing commonly found in the entertainment section of a weekend piece to be very grating, I would argue that this still follows the bottom line up front. For the audience that these pieces are geared towards, the important part is whether the actor passes the vibe check or not. The latter part of the interview itself is not too important because it is mainly promoting whatever the actor wants to promote in the piece. For instance, "the actor sits in his home with [long description of furniture]" describes how they keep their home's interior stylistically. What the actor wears shows how good their fashion sense is. Sipping coffee from a fancy mug shows how wealthy they are and/or shows the morning vibe they would exude on a good day.
- 2y ago
- jonathanlydall 2y agoThis is actually important for all professional communication (maybe with an exception of marketing), if you want the best chance of getting what you want from the person you're communicating with, get to the point within the very first sentence, even if it's just a high-level summary, you then have the person's complete attention and can elaborate further. If you don't get to the point quickly, people might think it doesn't really apply/matter to them and ignore it. This became very obvious to me when my day job for a few years was responding to customer service requests over email for World of Warcraft. I would often find myself skimming all the useless (quite literally) pretext as quickly as possible scanning for what their actual problem was. Stereotypical example of a poor email from a customer: > Last night I finished the raid with my guild where we downed the Lich King. Then this morning I went to school where my friends and I also talked about WoW, then when I got home, everything seemed normal, I turned on my computer, logged on and entered my password, but it didn't work, then I went to the website and used the password reset, then I tried to log on and it said my account was locked, then I checked my email, and it said my account is locked and I need to contact Blizzard... At which point I stop reading and I'm thinking "finally, I see why he's emailing us". To be fair, these emails are often from adolescents who understandingly do not yet have the experience to do effective communication (which is actually an additional interesting aspect of customer service for a computer game compared to services which are only taken up by adults, but I digress). I now work as a software developer for a startup and often have to interact directly with clients, and when I communicate with them, I always make sure to have my desired "call to action" (even if only summarised) within the first sentence.
- HansardExpert 2y ago> At which point I stop reading and I'm thinking "finally, I see why he's emailing us". I never like to discourage 'too much' information because frankly 'end users' don't know what they need to tell us in support (that is kind of what our job is right?). I'd much prefer the above than just 'it won't let me log in' - where there maybe context that I'd want. I spend more time asking follow up questions (without being able to provide even a modicum of solution) in many cases, I try to couch my 'questions answering questions' reply with why I am asking (more typing and explaining) when users don't give me chapter and verse, even if it is mostly 'puff'. > I now work as a software developer for a startup and often have to interact directly with clients, and when I communicate with them, I always make sure have my desired "call to action" (even if only summarised) within the first sentence. But that is after they have emailed you right? You cannot summarize anything until you actually have them tell you what is wrong, no matter how long takes them. So yes summarize in the first sentence is always useful and if you don't kow the solution (yet) it never hurts to admit that and say something like, 'but we can try X or see what Y is doing as that will help me understand the issue in more detail' etc. Customer Support is hard work sometimes, now try doing it with someone who doesn't speak your language very well ;)
- myself248 2y agoLikewise, I've long encouraged people to compose the email first, then come back and summarize the most important part into the subject line. An email with a subject of "question" might just get deleted out of annoyance.
- AgentOrange1234 2y agoGreat advice. In my last homebrew campaign, the characters were insane and in a mental hospital. For box text, I purposely broke the bottom-line-up-front rule and had them, e.g., fixate on random irrelevant things as the danger built towards them. It was wonderfully effective at reinforcing the “you have trouble processing reality” aspect of the campaign. So unless you want your audience confused and disoriented, put the important part first!
- VagabundoP 2y agoI've been running D&D/TTPRGs for my group for 35 years at this point - with a few life breaks here and there - and its genuinely taught me so many skills that are usefully in life. Its an heady mix of things that really will stretch your mind in many ways at once. I love them. All kids (of all ages) should try them a few times. For the record I've nearly always run TotM except when for some very complicated things that really need that extra tactical oomf.
- ErigmolCt 2y agoD&D can teach so many things.