How to write boxed text for Daggerheart
I keep a printed page next to the Fear tokens, and the only part I actually read is the indent. Everything else is for me. If you can write that indent so it looks like the rest of the game, you can drop a scene on the table tonight without performing a module at them.
Boxed text is the bit you read aloud, in present tense, about what is there.
Write what is in the room
Do not write the plot. Do not write last week’s raid, or why the mayor hired them, or that this is Act Two. The box is the room they are standing in, and the rest of the page is yours.
A bad box sounds like homework:
Nobody can see that. Try this instead.
Read this aloud.
That is a room. The cult can wait until they open the door.
Put it in present tense
Write what is happening now, because you are looking at it with them. A little past is fine for how they got here, and then you snap to the thing in front of their faces.
Read this aloud.
If you stay in past tense, they will wait for the story to finish, and you will still be reading when they want to move.
Stop on a question
A good box ends by handing the table a job, like who is driving, or what do you do, or what have you noticed. That is not flavour. That is the moment you stop performing.
Leave the last line for them.
Read this aloud.
If you do not ask, they will wait for the next paragraph, and there should not be a next paragraph.
Keep your notes out of the box
Difficulties, Fear spends, and “if they search the sacks” all live in ordinary type, under the indent or beside it. If you put a number in the box, you will read the number, and the room will vanish.
Under the mill box, I write this for me:
If they climb the catwalk, it is an Agility Roll at 12. On a failure with Fear, the lantern tips.
If they go straight for the cellar, they hear the wheel miss a beat.
Then, if I spend the Fear, I have a second tiny box ready, because that is the bit they should hear.
Read this aloud.
Keep it short on purpose, because a Fear spend is a change in the room, not a speech.
Indent it so you can see it
Write the cue above the box, in your own type: Read this aloud. Then indent the thing you will actually say. On a blog, that is a set-in box like the official modules. On a printout, the box is set in from the margin, and your notes are not.
It looks like this on the page.
Read this aloud.
If they climb the catwalk, it is an Agility Roll at 12. On a failure with Fear, the lantern tips.
You should be able to find the indent with a thumb at the table. If the box and the notes are the same width, you will read the notes, and that is how Duality lectures sneak into a scene.
What I would print tonight
Write one box for a room you already know, in present tense, about what is there, with a question at the end, and with the notes underneath, not inside. Indent it.
Read it once out loud, and if you cannot finish it in one breath and a sip, cut it.