GMs: Do You Used "Boxed" Text?

[Viz]

I've written a few Fantasy Grounds adventure modules as part of White Haired Man. I have always assumed that GMs would greatly benefit by having complete descriptions they could drag and drop into the chat window. For this reason, our products include a lot of boxed text.

But I have never actually asked anyone if they use these or find them of value. Perhaps GMs find it difficult to include such text in the adventure without extensive revision, and would be just as happy with ideas and guidelines so that they could write their own descriptions.

I'd appreciate the opinions of any GMS out there who have purchased and used adventures from any publisher. How about those GMs who create all of their own material: do you write descriptions ahead of time?

[VenomousFiligree]

Yes I certainly do! I've made tweaks on the fly as well, if it didnt quite fit.

[dittotb]

I have always appreciated when the creators of the modules have thought about making our job as a DM much easier. Thank you for taking the time to do it.

[CAPryde]

I really like using boxed text. It saves time and allows you to provide a level of description that is often more difficult to think up on the fly.

[Koldoon]

when I work on modules myself, I always include the boxed text and frequently pieces of dialogue (with the appropriate formatting so that the NPC "says" the information) that I think may be useful. If a piece of the boxed text depends on something that may or may not happen, I have separate pieces of boxed text for each possibility. But I may be a little obsessive compulsive about the level of preparedness for my adventures.

[Zeus]

If anything, I tend to expand upon the Read Aloud text that usually forms part of the Encounter flavor in 4E games. This as over the years the encounter text has diminished with each edition.

In 4E its much lighter and less decriptive than those used in previous editions. This as I suspect 4E builds more reliance on minis/tokens and tactical maps and so there is more visual information for the players to digest. A picture aftr all paints a 1000 words and all ...

Being an old school D&D DM though, I tend to add further (sometime colourful) descriptions of the environment as additional read aloud text. This way I can add even more flavour to each encounter.

[Phystus]

I use the heck out of box text. I write my own adventures and use the boxes extensively for room descriptions and the like. It's especially helpful to make sure you mention that cool feature that you thought of while writing the adventure, but might forget about in the heat of running the session.

Even though my group mostly uses the chat for rules questions and making jokes (we use VOIP) I still drop the descriptions into chat. Maybe that's just because I'm too lazy to read it! ;)

~P

[Moon Wizard]

Other than preparing maps and encounters, the only other piece of adventures that I set up for my campaigns is boxed text. It allows me to give players the detailed adventure description, while paraphrasing over voice chat. Plus, if someone is away, they can scroll back up to review what happened while they were gone.

Cheers,
JPG

[Viz]

Plus, if someone is away, they can scroll back up to review what happened while they were gone.

That is a very good point.

[Valarian]

Yes, I use box text for lengthy descriptions or expositions. When I run a purchased adventure, I always use them - even for those I've converted myself. If it's there I'll use it, and find the prepared text extremely useful. Generally, I'm not that prepared though and I'm typing on the fly.

[Callum]

Yes, I always use it - though I find I often have to amend it. It's a great time-saver (for me) during a session, and becomes part of that session's log. Funnily enough, I never really use boxed text during F2F sessions, but I consider it essential for FG sessions.