[HN Gopher] Dungeons and Dragons taught me how to write alt text
___________________________________________________________________
Dungeons and Dragons taught me how to write alt text
Author : ohjeez
Score : 329 points
Date : 2024-07-24 20:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (ericwbailey.website)
(TXT) w3m dump (ericwbailey.website)
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I have heard that a DM is a full-time job, and I agree full
| heartily after reading this.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| As a DM, it's certainly something that's very easy to sink time
| into. And rewarding, too!
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Oooh, 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 wrote:
| Nevermind, everyone has their own style.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Yep. As long as everyone is at the table is having fun,
| there's no wrong way to play.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| > Solamnia knights
|
| Krynn/Dragonlance
| runiq wrote:
| Ya 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 wrote:
| Yep, although I myself never played tabletop DND gamed,
| Planescape and Return to the Tomb of Horrors are my two
| favorite readings.
| vundercind wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| I'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
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Related, 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 wrote:
| Grammatically those are participles and are in fact technically
| adjectives, even though they are derived from verbs.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Thank you! That's an excellent point.
| smolder wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| It has a certain charm to it :)
| nealmueller wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| Most 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 wrote:
| The 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.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I had played enough TTRPGs at that point that when I
| encountered Apocalypse World that I found the advice to
| generally just be common knowledge. But if you're new to
| TTRPGs I highly recommend it for good advice even when
| running traditional TTRPGs.
| Retric wrote:
| D&D has rules for fall damage that make no sense, worse they
| encourage people to jump from extreme heights because the risks
| are well understood.
|
| In 5e players fall at 500 feet per round which works out to 57
| MPH, take the same damage falling 30 feet onto a stone floor,
| pile of hay, or a lake and ignore what you're carrying. The
| temptation is to codify more realistic rules IE you fall up to
| 500 feet in the first round and up to 1,000 feet every round
| after that but complex rules don't necessarily add much to the
| game and it's always going to be a massive simplification.
|
| By comparison 'No Rules' just means do something reasonable for
| the situation, arguing about it is more an issue for your table
| not the game.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > D&D has rules for fall damage that make no sense, worse
| they encourage people to jump from extreme heights because
| the risks are well understood.
|
| This has nothing on MMOs, where everybody constantly takes
| jumps that they know will cause severe damage (say, 30-80% of
| the amount that would kill you) because it's faster and
| damage heals.
| NavinF wrote:
| > same damage falling 30 feet onto a stone floor, pile of
| hay, or a lake
|
| Pretty sure it's the DM's job to adjust that. Eg "You break a
| toe from hitting the stone floor. Roll 2d6 for damage"
|
| That aside, I'd say DnD is more like video games than real
| life. Most games have minimal fall damage because it's fun to
| jump. Also consider Mario games where you can kill an enemy
| by landing on them, but never kys by landing on bricks
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _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._
|
| It's _simpler_ , but it's not necessarily _easier_. I don 't
| remember the rules for fall-damage, off-hand - and it's
| certainly easier to just say, "you take 2 HP of damage" than it
| is to dig out or start googling around for a rule.
|
| I play a lot of D&D as well, and to me, it's a great framework
| for collaborative storytelling - but that's because I'm
| familiar with the flow of the game. That's not true for
| everyone, and for some people, it's more fun to have fewer
| rules and a more collaborative decision-making process.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| I don't even play DnD and I know it's 1d6 bludgeoning per
| 10ft fall damage with some very high cap that is unlikely to
| matter for player characters.
|
| I heard it once on a podcast. Rules esoterica sticks to me
| like glue. I'll remember 1000 of those rules before I
| remember the name of some person in a fantasy world and what
| exactly they were doing.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Because a lot of these d&d alternatives are fairly cheap I
| think it's worth your time just to buy a few here and there and
| give them a read (dungeon world, index card rpg, blades in the
| dark, vaesen, torchbearer, forbidden lands, not d&d adjacent
| but I'll just also mention mothership, I'm not going to really
| mention pathfinder here because it's very much still a fork of
| d&d though their action system I think beats the 5e action
| system).
|
| It kinda opens your mind to what is great about d&d (for me
| their well defined settings and a lot of expansiveness of their
| class subclass system.. that and a ton of nostalgia, I played
| my first game of redbox in the 80s) and where it lacks. It's
| kind of the middle of the road game, it does a lot of stuff
| reasonably well but some of these other games specialize the
| gameplay in some very interesting ways.
|
| Often as a group you probably aren't going to change systems
| but, and especially if you are your groups gamemaster, a lot of
| these little rpgs probably have very poachable rules or systems
| that could help your game run smoother, faster or push your
| game in new directions.
|
| Pretty soon you'll end up with a shelf (or directory of pdfs)
| of d&d adjacent books. RPG sourcebooks for games you may never
| play, but all of those books are farmable for a d&d campaign.
|
| If you are your tables 5e DM, I will take some time out to
| promote the best 3rd party monster manual i've come accross
| 'Flee Mortals!'. It introduces a alternative system for
| monsters (mostly bosses) in combat called 'action oriented
| monsters', there are some videos on youtube if you search.
| Great book, fun systems.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > RPG sourcebooks for games you may never play, but all of
| those books are farmable for a d&d campaign.
|
| I have purchased almost every printed GURPS 4e book and a
| fair number of 3e books for exactly this reason. None of my
| players have ever been interested in the system (I like it a
| lot, but won't force it because I'd rather play a game I
| enjoy but isn't in my top 3 systems than lose a group forcing
| a game I really like but they hate). However, the books are
| so well written and provide a wealth of references and ideas
| that when running other games I've borrowed liberally from
| them. I think I referenced some of them more than my CoC
| books when running a CoC campaign a few years back. And a lot
| of my OSR books are basically the same. I only ever run DCC
| or C&C these days in the D&D-adjacent space but keep getting
| other books and modules for other D&D-ish systems since they
| can be ported to those systems so easily.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Yeah i've been thinking about the dcc spellcasting system
| and how you could homebrew it into d&d to make playing a
| wizard a little more spicy.
| svachalek wrote:
| Dungeon World is a PBTA (Powered by the Apocalypse) game, one
| of many games inspired by Apocalypse World. I don't know much
| about DW in particular, other than it's an early PBTA hack and
| not generally considered one of the better examples of the
| system anymore, but it still has a lot of fans.
|
| However, these games share a lot in common, usually including a
| focus on Moves. The GM determines if something is a Move or
| not. If it's a move the player gets to roll for it, and if it's
| not a Move, it just happens. Moves tend to cover very broad
| areas of actions and are lot less specific and nitpicky than
| D&D rules.
|
| Unlike D&D, the GM _also_ has Moves. These moves are usually
| tailored to the particular PBTA game and generally include
| various ways to keep pressure on the players in a way that fits
| the theme and setting and mood of the particular game. It
| codifies the GM 's job in a way that makes it more approachable
| for many. D&D is among the most difficult systems to GM and it
| leads to a shortage of people wanting to GM vs those wanting to
| play. Experienced DMs over many years learn to be a little
| looser and how to wing things and improvise and make the jobs
| easier for themselves. PBTA games are designed to teach the GM
| how to do this from the start, partly by teaching the players
| that this is expected and correct.
| artimaeis wrote:
| Can you recommend some of the better examples of the system
| these days?
|
| I've played some Monster of the Week and read up on Dungeon
| World. I've played D&D regularly since 2008. I like the idea
| of the PBTA system but I've had a hard time justifying
| leading people into PBTA games since D&D seems to have such a
| larger ecosystem.
|
| I'd like to take another stab at PBTA games, hoping that
| looking through a system or two that you thin is a good
| example of the system might inspire me to pick up a game!
| drivers99 wrote:
| I've been playing Ironsworn: Starforged (the sci-fi version
| of Ironsworn with similar but not identical rules; it's a
| solo-friendly PBTA game) for about 2 weeks, and as a
| generally non-creative person, it is stretching my brain in
| the best way. I can barely get my D&D 5e group to play D&D
| 5e (it's fizzled out completely now) let alone an alternate
| RPG so I joined a Play-by-Post game of Starforged that was
| just starting up. You can play it solo or co-op or guided
| (i.e. with a GM). We're playing it co-op and we're playing
| 4 player even though the game recommends 1 to 3 players. So
| we all have to be creative and figure out the rules
| together (we're also on the starforged discord where we can
| participate in discussion about the rules and ways to
| interpret them), as well as implement the best practices of
| play-by-post but we seem to be meshing very well so far.
|
| One catch is you need more than the core rulebook. You'll
| need the asset cards, which you can download and print but
| it's easier to just buy the cards. (edit: or you can just
| copy the images of the specific cards you pick for your
| character into its own document instead.) And the reference
| book which is spiral bound so it can lay flat might be
| useful, although lately I've just been looking up each move
| in the index of the main rulebook instead. There is a free
| reference for the moves in the playkit as well.[0] I see
| they also have a preview version of the game you can get
| there.
|
| [0] https://www.ironswornrpg.com/downloads
| egypturnash wrote:
| Ultimately a role-playing game comes down to a more organized
| game of Let's Pretend. Some people like to add on a heavy dose
| of recreational accounting and/or simulationism. Some people
| just want a few light rules to give their pretending _some_
| structure and an ample supply of narrative prompts to help when
| invention 's running dry.
|
| Does spending hours and hours looking for quirks in the complex
| rules to make a super-powerful character that's optimized for
| damage output per round sound like fun?
|
| Does spending a few minutes picking a set of attributes and
| getting right down to making up a story with your friends over
| some beer and pizza sound like fun?
|
| Does spending two hours working through highly detailed rules
| to simulate about five seconds of in-game combat as part of a
| multi-year-long campaign sound like fun?
|
| Does spending two hours with simple rules that boil combat down
| to a die roll or three and the option to alter the occasional
| roll with a limited supply of "Wait, That's Not What Happened"
| tokens to tell a short story with a beginning, middle, and an
| end sound like fun?
|
| Does spending hundreds of dollars on exquisitely detailed
| rulebooks and supplements, with new editions every few years,
| sound like fun? There's a new "2024" edition of D&D coming out
| and it's $180 list for a bundle of the PHB, DMG, and MM in
| physical and digital copies, maybe plus a subscription to the
| online service for everyone in the game, maybe plus a couple
| more physical copies of one book or another provided by the
| players. I'm sure there'll be a bunch of pretty artwork in
| there, I have the 5e PHB/DMG and they are gorgeous.
|
| Does spending six bucks on a ten-page PDF, plus making a dozen
| copies on the office laserjet so everyone at the table can have
| the full rules at hand, including your brokest friends, sound
| like fun?
|
| It's perfectly valid if the expensive, complicated options
| sound like fun to you. Sometimes complication is fun. But
| sometimes it gets in the way of fun.
| da_chicken wrote:
| Dungeon World is a Powered by the Apocalypse game. It's both
| ligher in rules and gives the players increased control over
| the narrative of the game. It's a narrative TTRPG. If you've
| played FATE or Blades in the Dark you've played a narrative
| RPG.
|
| Dungeon World is an open game and there is an SRD for it:
| https://www.dwsrd.org/
|
| In the case of falling, the GM would assign damage based on how
| dangerous it is: https://www.dwsrd.org/playing/playing-the-
| game.html#damage
|
| Bear in mind that HP essentially doesn't scale with level. PCs
| are likely to have an HP maximum between 15 and 25 for the
| entire campaign.
|
| If you're conscious, the GM might let you Defy Danger to
| mitigate some of that, but you have to describe what your
| character is doing to achieve that:
| https://www.dwsrd.org/playing/basic-moves.html#defy-danger
|
| If it was a fall from a great height, you'd just skip to Last
| Breath: https://www.dwsrd.org/playing/special-moves.html#last-
| breath
|
| There's no specific rules for it because the general rules are
| good enough, especially considering how often falling damage
| actually comes up
| dallas wrote:
| You'd need to ask the author of the article.
|
| I backed the original DW project and was a user of Google+ in
| that time and place where the "Old School Renaissance" (my
| preference) clashed with "Story Gamers" - "you see me now, a
| veteran of a thousand psychic wars".
|
| From those interactions I could say that preference for DW
| could range from simple technical preferences to deep-seated
| politics resulting from trauma.
| lmm wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I don't think anyone's suggesting having the party debate
| things.
|
| D&D has a bunch of precise mechanical rules for combat, and
| very few for anything else. This makes sense for a game about
| simulating small-squad combat (which is what D&D started life
| as), but it's not really what you want for a game about
| narrative and roleplay. It means combat tends to take up a
| disproportionate amount of playtime in D&D (because you have
| all these mechanical rules, and the multiple-round system),
| when the combat actually isn't such a big part of the narrative
| or the fun; I've found that most successful/fun D&D groups tend
| to skip the fiddlier rules (e.g. how many people actually
| bother with full encumbrance calculations?) and even handwave
| away entire combats ("you kill the goblins, don't bother
| rolling").
|
| Think about how you handle conflicts in non-combat parts of the
| game. If you're trying to persuade the King to overrule the
| evil chancellor or whatever, how do you do that? You certainly
| don't have n rounds of following precise calculations and
| looking up tables about each step of persuasion. Generally you
| either have narrative steps towards your goal (you break into
| the chancellor's vaults to collect the papers that prove he's
| been embezzling, you bribe a reporter to frame him in a
| compromising position, ...), and/or the GM decides whether your
| ideas were clever enough to succeed, or maybe the GM assigns a
| difficulty (modified by the previous two points) and then you
| do one roll.
|
| In my experience even people who like D&D tend to enjoy
| sessions where they're doing stuff like that more than doing a
| series of combats (except for the occasional powergamer type
| who really does just want to kill as many orcs as possible for
| 90 minutes - but if you're after "creativity and shared
| storytelling" then you're presumably not that kind of gamer);
| often when people look back on a campaign their favourite
| session was one with no (or very few) combats but one where
| interesting character moments or story developments happened.
| (And conversely, more than once I've had a fun session where we
| were all doing some great roleplay, riffing off each other, and
| then we hit a big combat and everything just ground to a halt
| as we had to dig out dice and tables and stop the story for
| half an hour while we did a bunch of mechanics)
|
| So what if you handled combat the way you handle other
| conflicts? The GM takes narrative reasons why one side should
| win or lose, gives the players points for creativity if they
| come up with a good idea, then comes up with a difficulty and
| you make one roll. Or maybe you do several rounds of that, but
| based on the narrative flow of the combat, not just crunching
| numbers. In my experience that makes for a much more fun,
| interesting game.
|
| (I actually enjoy, like, Mordenheim or Kill Team, which is the
| kind of game that D&D originally was. But that's as a
| competitive game first and roleplaying second. Detailed
| mechanical simulation makes sense when you're competing about
| who's better at combat. But it's a waste when you're trying to
| do collaborative storytelling)
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Not everyone likes having to have rules or a table for
| everything. For some people, they're okay with the DM
| adjudicating a ruling and letting dice tell them whether
| there's a success, a success with consequences, or a failure.
| Personally that's not for me except in certain small doses, but
| I'm more of a GURPS player than a D&D player, which is its own
| different play style altogether.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Different rpg systems provide different experience with their
| rules. Dungeon World is much better than DnD at providing a
| cinematic experience that just feels loose and fun. Even if you
| want a lot of clear rules, D&D is a really bad game at that,
| and there are better systems (Gurps does that and plays much
| faster for example). My favorite system in Burning Wheel which
| is great at bringing out character development and pushing the
| story forward really focused on what the characters are
| striving for.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| There is no party debate. The person running the game figures
| out what they think is most reasonable. If you think that's a
| lot of trust, it is, but it's necessary for a smooth running
| game.
|
| As an aside, even rules light games I play has a rule for fall
| damage. But even DnD 5e doesn't have rules for falling onto
| softer surfaces. What if you fall on 10 foot thick foam? What
| about 1 inch thick foam? Into a bush? What if I use create food
| to create a pool of bread at the bottom of a cliff we're
| climbing so if someone falls they take less damage?
|
| Do we need fall damage rules for everything players could fall
| on? Are you going to tell a player that falling on a stone
| floor is the same damage as falling on a 10 foot thick piece of
| foam?
|
| Tabletop RPGs shine on the edges because no computer, much less
| a set of mechanical rules written for humans to understand, can
| account for every situation. And even if they did, you wouldn't
| want to spend 10 minutes looking up every rule anytime someone
| did anything.
| hinnisdael wrote:
| Great 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| That'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.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Absolutely true in the context of the article ie alt text.
| I was speaking more universally.
| lupire wrote:
| What task are they trying to accomplish with a picture of a
| torn up painting?
| pimlottc wrote:
| Who knows? Insurance adjuster, private investigator, art
| historian, security consultant...
| jmilloy wrote:
| I think GP is a great comment with a poor example, because I
| agree that the resulting images in my mind are quite
| different, but they don't inherently have to be due to the
| order things are described in.
| rcarr wrote:
| I think of this in cinematic terms. The first sentence is going
| to start with a shot of the painting, then it will either cut,
| zoom or dolly out to reveal the crowd. Whereas the second shot
| starts with the wide angle of the gallery and then does the
| opposite. Each has a slightly different effect on the scene and
| the audience.
| the_other wrote:
| > Most people intuitively describe images from foreground to
| background or left to right
|
| I've heard there are cultural biases to this ordering. Some
| cultures tend to describe the background or scene first. The
| example I read about identified Japan as an "outside in".
|
| I've been encouraging my kid to use "outside in" or "context
| first" in their descriptions with me, mainly because they suck
| at giving context. I doubt I'd have known about it if I hadn't
| read that about Japan.
|
| Would love to hear from a Japanese person on this.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I can't speak from a Japanese perspective, but there's
| definitely a specific-to-general or general-to-specific
| nature to languages.
|
| "If you can get it in the next 60 seconds there's a million
| dollars in the jar in the back right of the second shelf of
| refrigerator." My wife is Chinese, she works from a general-
| to-specific worldview and I would be surprised if she could
| follow those directions in the time limit.
|
| Flip it and say "If you can get to it in the next 60 seconds
| there's a million dollars in the refrigerator, on the second
| shelf, in the back right, in a jar." and she would have no
| problem with it.
|
| We focus on the specific, build up the image of it's
| environment and then paste it into the world. She refines the
| world so all the references are left hanging until the whole
| sentence is complete and that's probably enough to confuse
| her. We just find her approach to feel odd but we can still
| follow it much better than she can follow ours.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| The _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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| This approach is also known as the "Minto Pyramid." The
| website "Untools" has a well-written webpage that explains
| this: 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
| dallas wrote:
| Nice 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 wrote:
| Some 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.
| jyunwai wrote:
| Though this isn't a specific reading, there is a useful habit
| you can try out: you can start to regularly read well-written
| newspaper articles, because a focus of written journalism is to
| break down complex issues into understandable stories. These
| can provide exemplars for how to approach your own writing.
|
| Consider a recent article in the Financial Times about rising
| sea temperatures [1][2]. The topic is vast and complicated,
| which is perhaps relatable to your perspective, yet it's the
| job of the writer to produce the linear narrative that you
| mentioned. How does the writer do this?
|
| ---
|
| The article presents the key idea up front with a headline
| ("The dangerous effects of rising sea temperatures"), and then
| adds context with a sub-headline ("Scientists are increasingly
| concerned that the world's oceans are approaching the limits of
| their capacity to absorb heat").
|
| To ease the reader into the topic, the author then begins by
| focusing on a human subject by writing: "In 30 years of
| studying the oceans, Matthew England has learnt to understand
| their irregular yet constant rhythms -- the cycles of wind,
| temperature and atmospheric changes that interact with the
| masses of water covering most of the Earth's surface.
|
| The author continues: "But what he has seen in the past 15
| months has shocked him. Global sea surface temperatures have
| reached and stayed at record levels, fuelling heatwaves and
| melting sea ice. Temperatures in the north Atlantic waters he
| has been studying, including around the UK and Ireland, were
| described last year as "beyond extreme" by the EU's Earth
| observation service."
|
| The author later "zooms out" as a narrative technique--similar
| to the one described in the submitted article--that provides
| wider context for the problem that the interviewee is
| describing by presenting cases of natural disasters.
|
| To get deeper into the subject, the author then includes
| perspectives from various other researchers who study the
| phenomenon, and then dives deeper into competing theories about
| the immediate causes behind these environmental changes.
|
| ---
|
| So, in your context, you could begin describing how your
| software tool solves some problem by describing a human user
| who is facing a specific yet common issue that is frustrating.
| After the reader then grasps what the problem is, you could
| write about how your software tool fixes the problem.
|
| But this is just one approach of many. Another author might
| have taken a "lede-nut graf" [3] approach, where the bottom-
| line conclusion is put in the first sentence as the "lede,"
| followed by the "nut graf" of a paragraph providing additional
| context and motivation to read the rest of the article. With
| this approach, you could skip the focus on a human user, and
| instead jump right into a sentence that claims your software
| tool solves a specific problem (especially if the problem is a
| well-known one).
|
| One of the best methods I've found to get better at a
| particular skill is to immerse yourself in high-quality
| exemplars of what you're trying to do. Even without taking
| notes, you can naturally pick up lessons from what you're
| experiencing. For this reason, a habit of reading well-written
| articles could help with your own ability to describe
| complicated concepts in a way that's more accessible.
|
| [1] Link:
| https://www.ft.com/content/76c3747d-f068-467a-98f9-4ed687dcb...
|
| [2] Gift link (viewable up to three times):
| https://on.ft.com/3LJJmBT
|
| [3] More on nut grafs:
| https://www.theopennotebook.com/2014/04/29/nailing-the-nut-g...
| taormina wrote:
| https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-me...
| dallas wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I've recently been working on a web-based tool designed to make
|
| character creation in DnD easier: https://tabletopy.com/fantasy-
| character-generator.html
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Character 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 wrote:
| I 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...
| looping8 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| Why are you reading a lifestyle interview with <entertainment
| celebrity> if you don't care about their life and how they
| live? What content in this interview do you care about?
| vonnik wrote:
| That's true. The interesting thing is how D&D creates
| branching trees of inverted periods, scene by scene and
| character by character.
|
| In great fiction, IMO, there's usually something big that you
| are not certain of yet that makes it propulsive. Sometimes
| it's "which hard choice will the character make in a given
| scene?" D&D offloads that decision to the players.
|
| With journalism and I guess alt text, you have one big
| inverted pyramid, and then a recipe for sentence structure
| that attempts to pack all the relevant facts in for each
| node. It's actually trying to front-load how it eliminates
| the unknowns.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Like an abstract
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| > 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 ;)
| bluGill wrote:
| The problem is all too often users have no clue what is
| useful information. Mechanics hear a lot about the color of
| the car making a funny noise, but nothing about where the
| noise seems to come from or when it is heard, nor do they get
| told when the last time the transmission oil was changed even
| though that might be a useful clue.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| > 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 agree that more information is sometimes better, but
| elaborate only _after_ stating the core issue. For example,
| if you 're emailing a provider about being overbilled. Start
| your email with "I'm writing to you because I have been
| overbilled and would please like this addressed", _then_ you
| lay out your case with all the facts that you think could be
| relevant. But don 't start with a whole bunch of facts
| because the service agent won't yet be in the correct context
| to know which facts are relevant until after they know what
| problem you're trying to have solved.
|
| > 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.
|
| Sorry, I wasn't entirely clear, but for this part I was not
| referring to responses to customer service requests, but more
| for proactive reach outs initiated from our side towards
| trying to ensure customer retention and (at the moment) we're
| more of a B2B product so we feel this is worth doing.
|
| As "random" reach outs by a supplier are not always
| appreciated, we always try to offer something of
| value/relevance when doing so, with the first sentence being
| something like "Hi <person name>, We've recently done
| <something to our product which we feel is relevant to you>,
| I was wanting to check if this would be useful to you?". I
| can then perhaps elaborate further on the potentially useful
| thing to them and also close by stating that I would be happy
| to do a video call to go through it in more detail if they
| would like.
|
| What's particularly noteworthy here is that I did a "call to
| action" which would be low effort on their part, namely to
| "please at least reply to let me know if this is useful" in
| the very first sentence. This is actually a bit of a
| psychological trick where because the recipient has been
| directly asked to do something in particular, they're more
| likely to continue reading towards doing this and engage.
|
| Once we started it on our side, I also started to notice that
| I see this trick very often to my own inbox from completely
| cold contact direct marketers, their first sentence often
| ends with something to the effect of "would <time and date>
| work for you for us to discuss further?", I don't engage with
| these completely cold contacts, but I see exactly what
| they're trying to do.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Absolutely. I once did a "how to communicate effectively for
| executives" course and the guy who ran it said his advice for
| anyone from a scientific/technical background was to write the
| long thoughtful email explaining everything. Cut and paste the
| last paragraph with your conclusion to the top. Make any minor
| changes in wording you need. Add (preferably within the first 2
| sentences) any action you want the person to take or something
| saying you don't expect them to do anything you're just telling
| them some information you think they will find useful and
| (hopefully) why.
|
| His point was that technical people tend to want to produce an
| argument with all the information etc and then get to the
| conclusion. Business people typically will read the first
| paragraph and sigh because they don't know what the email is
| expecting them to do[1]. Then they go on to doing something
| else and tell themselves they'll come back to it when they have
| time.
|
| [1] Especially not knowing whether the email is just for
| general information or there is a specific action the recipient
| needs to take.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| > technical people tend to want to produce an argument with
| all the information etc
|
| Yes, I was thinking after my comment I should bring this up
| too, you've said it possibly better than I would have.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Just a quibble,
|
| In a business situation, with a motivated person, state the
| action you want quickly and then give whatever needed details.
|
| In a business situation, with an unmotivated person, state the
| problem quickly and then the action needed for solution (or the
| reason this is the needed action and then the action, etc).
|
| In a story telling situation, you can draw out the scene
| setting 'till when you state the problem until the final result
| is suitably dramatic ("For just a second, the mist parts and
| the rust-red scaly snout of a red dragon can be")
|
| That why I can't get the author's idea D&D helps with business
| questions. As a DM, I describe the environment neutrally and
| don't give my players action bullet points 'cause it's their
| job to come up with those (and if I do their job for them, they
| lose out).
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I think his point is a priority-first ordering, rather than
| either a general-to-specific or a specific-to-general
| ordering. Most people do one of the latter two.
| myself248 wrote:
| Likewise, 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 wrote:
| Great 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 wrote:
| I'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.
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