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Any advice for writing a TDM? What are some things you like to see? What puts you off of playing on one?

what usually turns me off is just Too Damn Much. excessively wordy descriptions of things that are utterly inconsequential to whether or not two characters can interact. I get it, the setting or some aspect of the worldbuild is your baby, and you want everyone to know every last detail and love it the way you love it. been there, learned hard, that what really matters in a TDM is whether or not the prompts facilitate interaction. all that set dressing is nice but wholly unnecessary if people can't find a prompt buried inside.

that said, I'll still make an effort to wade through reams of set dressing if the prompts are genuinely engaging. there's been more than a few I passed on because all the prompts came down to "a thing happened, or an NPC did a thing, and you're here to react to it." that's not going to get characters either talking or doing some activity together. to that end, prompts should reflect what actually happens, has happened or could happen, in the game itself. I liked games that had mini or lite versions of events that either had just happened in-game as part of the TDM, but not every prompt. giving some sense of the usual flavor or tone of events and daily life for characters is good, because no matter what's on the game ad or EMP, people still judge whether the game is for them by the TDM. if it's a horror game and all your prompts are, idk, some flavor of winding flower wreaths with a partner (extreme hyperbole but you get me), people won't know what to expect. it's a tricky balance, and I don't envy mods who have to write them up, but you'll have to do the same thing in-game itself with events, so don't overthink it too much.

been there, learned hard, that what really matters in a TDM is whether or not the prompts facilitate interaction. all that set dressing is nice but wholly unnecessary if people can't find a prompt buried inside.

this this this. i don't want to have to read through three full paragraphs of set dressing just to try to figure out how i can write a toplevel for a single prompt.

These are some tips I've both seen and employed over the years that have resulted in successful TDMs.

- A short introduction (<400 words) to establish things like the weather, the general mood of the city, and so on can be very useful to help you cut down on needless exposition around the prompts themselves. e.g.: if you establish right off the bat that there's unusually heavy snowfall this month, you can cut right to the chase for any prompts about getting snowed in, winter sports, or snowball fights.

- For every prompt, provide at least one example of direct character interaction. Don't just say 'there's a snowball fight, have fun'. Explain how some characters might provide first aid or get randomly paired off with other participants. It doesn't have to be elaborate so long as it gives players an idea of where to start.

- Whenever you can, provide an option that forces characters to interact with each other or engage with the prompt. Maybe the snowball fight is compulsory, and when you step onto the field you can't leave until you hit a specific person/x number of people.

- Try to keep each individual prompt short. I wouldn't say there's a hard or fast limit to this, but I rarely see a single TDM prompt that needs to be more than 500 words, or a TDM with a total word count higher than 1500-2000. If you've got something so complicated that keeping it below those counts is hard, consider simplifying or completely ditching the prompt in question. The only exception is for prompts with multiple possible effects (like 'food items that change your mood' prompts) but even those you shouldn't go overboard on.

- Canon TDMs are a trend I like a lot, but avoid putting anything too metaplot-heavy into them. Incoming players don't have the context necessary to care about the death of a beloved NPC or that the magic forest got burned down last month. If you do have to include that stuff do it in a way that gives new players an inroad to getting invested later. For example, say the surviving NPCs are being exceptionally generous with newcomers in the dead NPC's memories, or that PCs are being recruited to help replant the magic forest.

personally i like longer TDMs with flavor text/meta about the setting and what's going on, especially if it's a plot-heavy or more complex game, but i agree with others mentioning interactivity. in my opinion, that is KEY. if i read a bunch of text and there's nothing for my character to actually do that involves someone else, i'm going to struggle to figure out how to play in the setting.

i've read a few tdms lately that i had trouble responding to because they assumed my character would behave a certain way. just because the world gave my character new clothes doesn't mean my character would put them on. just because they see someone in trouble doesn't mean they would try to help. offering more than one path for the same scenario allows a wider range of characters to participate

nothing turns me off faster to a tdm than prompts that try to railroad my character into a particular response. maybe my character isn't going to just accept the strange communication device they're handed. maybe they would try to destroy it. let me have the freedom to respond to a prompt in more than one scripted way.

This is good advice, but I'd add the additional caveat that it is okay to have prompts that aren't open to every possible character, too. Some characters will never play along with certain demands from the setting and if you smooth over things enough to accommodate everyone you'll end up with prompts that are bland and lifeless.

I'd say the trick here is to avoid including limitations in prompts that don't need them, and avoid including more than a one limited prompt per TDM. To use above anon's example, it does make sense that characters might have to wear specific clothes to get into a masquerade or costume party, but it's not usually necessary to lock less specific interactions behind a similar equivalent.

give us this day our daily bait

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+1

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