Quick housekeeping note: I turned off comments on the blog because it was 100% spam. Likely if you are here, you have received the link actually from me through discord or similar…comment there.
I have noticed brews made in the Homebrewery that have what I consider “very heavy pages” and I wonder if it’s a good idea to just showcase some alternatives quickly. Obviously not every page configuration can be discussed, and I want to keep this post relatively short, but let’s see what we can cover.
Here are a couple of examples of pages that I think are likely too heavy, or otherwise cluttered:
Most commonly the pages that need the most work are the ones with two, three, or even four framed monster stat blocks. Typically this is when someone is making a bestiary either as a standalone product or as an appendix or section of a longer campaign. I think there is some expectation that all monster stat blocks need to follow a particular convention, with the frame/background that clearly says “here is a monster”. It’s good to signpost that type of information so that it can be quickly found, but it only works if there is only one, maybe two of those framed blocks on a single page.
If you are working on a bestiary you can get away with multiple stat blocks on each page, but because the bestiary is like a dictionary of creatures it is expected that the monsters will be organized by their names alphabetically. With this type of organization, there isn’t a need to add flair to the blocks in the same way you would need to quickly draw the eye to a random stat block in a campaign book. A framed stat block can still be used in a bestiary; it might be nice to highlight a particularly dangerous foe or to highlight thematically important monsters for your setting, such as the custom creature on a page that is otherwise filled with basic goblins and orcs. Another reason to use the framed stat block is if you want to layer it over a large background image.
Dungeon adventure documents, which spell out everything in each room including traps, treasures, doors, and foes can lead to very disjointed writing. There are numerous headers, description boxes, lists, and stat blocks. I’m not sure what the best way of presenting this information looks like though I tend to believe it just relies on good editing. Being sure that the information you are sharing is actually important and appropriately concise for the theme is the first step. Too many green Note boxes giving themed character perspectives (quotes that just give background story) on a single page is likely unnecessary: can three different boxes be replaced by a single vignette, or even better, an image?
I’m going to cut this short here, but not before pointing out that WotC doesn’t follow the same conventions that I’ve hinted at above. Here is a page from one of their books (purposely potato quality):
So what do I know? Nuthin.