I thought a lot about this one.

A message in the context of tabletop RPGs can mean many things, both in and out of the game. A message can be a prompt or the thing a prompt arrives in. In some cases, a game may want to promote a message. In others, it’s just about having fun, but that could be a message on its own.

And as I was thinking about that, I couldn’t actually decide what I could talk about. But then I got another idea.

Either when running a game or publishing one, make sure to let others know what exactly you want to do. I am not referring to talking about the message you want to pass through. I am talking about communicating what you are planning to do. In the case of running a game, a session zero basically covers what I mean. You want to run a horror-inspired game, and there are going to be quite a lot of graphic descriptions. You want to have the players go through an old-school dungeon crawl, which will be literally a crawl, having to check for traps every 10 feet or so.

The same goes for publishing. There are many things a product page must do, and one of them is communicating exactly what this thing is about and who it is for. And it’s pretty similar to the sentences I said above. You can make the product page as flashy and wordy as you like, with paragraphs of in-character descriptions and so on. But you also need to make sure you explain in a very simple way what you made and what it’s for.

This adventure is an old-school inspired dungeon crawl for a party of 3-5 characters of level X. The party will have to go through a maze-like dungeon, filled with traps, which they will have to face, as well as the crafty inhabitants who set up the traps in the first place. Expect careful exploration and encounters that reward caution.

This silly description informs the one checking out the adventure if it’s something for them and their group, and also lets them know what they need to prepare for. Plus, it almost takes care of the message from the side of the GM as well.

I called the description silly because you may think “that’s the absolute standard of a description”, and I would agree. But it’s important to emphasise things like that both for newcomers and for those who aren’t aware of it yet. Plus, I suck at product descriptions, so I need to repeat some things for them to stick in my head.

This has been a weird mix of session zero 101 and publishing 101. It doesn’t get deeper in either, but my brain saw a pattern there and went with it. Sorry, not sorry. And that’s all for today. Tomorrow I’ll be back with the prompt “ancient”. I love this word.

And until next time, have fun!

P.S.: You can find all of my posts for this year’s RPGaDay here. Thanks to AUTOCRATIK and Casting Shadows for hosting another year of the event..