How do I write boxed text for Daggerheart? | The indent I actually read

I keep a printed page next to the Fear tokens, and the only part I actually read is the indent.

Boxed text is the short present-tense room you read aloud, and the notes stay underneath where your thumb can miss them. Write only what they can see right now, stop on a question they can answer from the room, and cut anything you cannot finish in one breath and a sip of water at the table.

Here is what belongs in the room, why the tense stays now, why the last line is a job, and where the numbers go so you do not read them.

What belongs in the boxed text

Do not write the plot. Do not write last week’s raid, or why the mayor hired them, or that this is the second act. The box is the room they are standing in, and the rest of the page is yours. If they cannot see it, hear it, or smell it from where they are standing, it does not belong in the indent.

A bad box sounds like homework. The mill was attacked last week and the mayor wants you to find the cult in the cellar, so you have come here to investigate. Nobody can see that. They can see a wheel. They can see a lantern. They cannot see your outline.

The mill wheel turns with nobody at the crank. Cold water slaps the paddles, and a lantern on the catwalk is still lit. The door at the top hangs open a hand’s width. What do you do?

That is a room. The cult can wait until they open the door. I used to hide the reason they came inside the box, and then I would read the homework and watch them wait for a paragraph that never became a thing they could touch. The reason can live in the pitch you already said at the door. The box is only the mill.

I keep one object doing something. The wheel turns. The lantern is still lit. The door is not shut. Three details is enough to stand in the room. A fourth detail is usually the plot, or a second room I have not earned. If I need the cellar, I write a second box for the stairs. I do not stack both rooms into the first breath.

Why the box stays in the present

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. 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.

You take the last of the river path, and the mill fills the view. The wheel is still turning. The lantern is still lit.

That path sentence is the arrival. It is already over by the time I say it. The wheel and the lantern are the present, and that is where I stay. I do not then tell them what the mill used to be, or who oiled it last harvest, unless they ask. Asking is how the past gets into the room without me performing a history.

Present tense also keeps me from acting for them. A box in the past says they already walked in, already noticed the sack, already decided the cellar mattered. Then the question at the end is a lie, because I finished the scene while I was reading. Present tense leaves the door a hand’s width open and their feet still outside it. They can choose the catwalk. They can choose the boards. They can ignore the lantern. I have not spent their action in the indent.

I read it once out loud before they arrive. If I stumble, the sentence is doing two jobs. I split it. If I cannot finish the box in one breath and a sip, I cut the second room and I keep the wheel.

How I end a box

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. If you do not ask, they will wait for the next paragraph, and there should not be a next paragraph.

Grain dust hangs in the doorway, and someone has dragged a wet sack across the boards toward the cellar stairs. Which of you goes first?

The question has to be answerable from the room. Which of you goes first can become a walk, a look, or a roll. What do you do is wider, and I use it when I do not want to aim them at the cellar. I pick the job that matches the object I described. A sack wants a first person on the boards. A clerk wants a talker.

The question is also how I stop myself. I print it as the last line, and I do not write a second box until they have answered. If they answer with a roll, the dice take the next beat. If they answer with a look, I describe the one new thing they can see, and I ask again. I do not ask a question I have already answered in the indent.

Where the notes go

Difficulties, Fear spends, and the line about what happens 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. The indent is the only part my eye should catch when I look down.

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.

The lantern tips. Oil hits the wet boards, and the flame crawls sideways toward the grain sacks.

Keep that second box short, because a Fear spend is a change in the room, not a speech. I write the cue above the first box, in my own type. Read this aloud. Then I indent the thing I will actually say. On a printout, the box is set in from the margin, and the notes are not. I should be able to find the indent with a thumb at the table. If the box and the notes are the same width, I will read the notes, and that is how a Duality explanation sneaks into a mill.

Write one box for a room you already know, in present tense, about what is there, with a question at the end and the notes underneath. Indent it. If you cannot finish it in one breath, cut it.