Keying Dungeons

I have written about keying dungeons in the past, when discussing Dwimmermount, and when talking about Deep Carbon Observatory. This topic seems to be in the news again, after Ben shared an enjoyable video of his dislike of Goodman Games’ house style for their modules.¹ DCC RPG is quite text heavy, and uses simple two column layouts reminiscent of old TSR modules. They are essentially the best version of an old TSR module. I love many of the DCC RPG adventures, but I don’t love all the walls of text. On the flip side, I am not a big fan of the Old School Essentials house style Ben advocates for either. I find the excessive bolded text and bullet points harder to parse than straight forwards sentences. I also think it’s much more enjoyable to read plain prose.

• All the room keying hacks you see really aren’t necessary if your room keys are short and quick to read.
• You should start room descriptions with the things players will notice right away. Don’t bury the lede.
• You should cut anything extraneous. You could take the time to list out all the torture devices found in the torture room, but I would only bother if there is some value in letting the GM and players know about the particulars. A GM can likely ad-lib there is a rack and iron maiden if those things are simply there to provide colour.²

To me, there is more value in trying to write something short and evocative, than try and turn it into a deconstructed sandwich.