A short discussion of writing style in games broke out on an industry mailing list last week. It wasn’t long before discussion turned to more pointless matters, naturally, but I thought I’d share just one of my voluminous opinions on the subject.

Tabletop RPG writers, leave the word “will” out of descriptions of things that might happen in a scenario’s future, especially conditionals that depends on what the player characters choose to do.

No: If the heroes manage to find the hidden compartment, the police will descend on the scene.

Yes: If the heroes manage to find the hidden compartment, the police descend on the scene.

Just jump right to the exciting verb, and no one will be confused. This seems trivial until you start to enumerate more possibilities.

Hells No: If the heroes manage to find the hidden compartment, the police will descend on the scene, but if they don’t, they will hang back in their command post, unless the Lieutenant arrives, in which case they will call for backup and then storm the place.

Clearly, eliminating three instances of “will” isn’t going to make the foregoing a sentence of brilliance, but it’s a start.

Go forth; shed wills.

(Incidentally, you have no idea how hard it was to title this post. “Ditch Will,” “Out Will,” “Enough With the Will, Already…” They all came out like announcements of some nefarious call to action against my inestimable Gameplaywright partner.)