Whats worse, a GM that describes too little or describes too much?

Whats worse, a GM that describes too little or describes too much?

too little. too much is obnoxious, too little just leads you being blind sided

Too much is incomprehensible. At least with too little, you can get through the game faster or ask for more clarity.

Too little. I'd rather have a clear but needlessly detailed idea of what's going on than hardly an idea at all.

"Purple prose" doesn't just mean "uses more words than necessary".

The words themselves are supposed to be purple. None of those words are anything above a middle-school vocabulary.

>The words themselves are supposed to be purple

I think purple prose more just boils down to using a lot of adjectives and adverbs, as well as passive rather than active voice. The words themselves don't actually need to be particularly advanced. Consider Robert E. Howard, a MASTER of purple prose, in his opening to "The Phoenix on the Sword", perhaps one of the most iconic examples of purple prose:

>"KNOW, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars—Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen- eyed,sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."—The Nemedian Chronicles

None of the words there are particularly advanced, obscure, or archaic, but the whole thing paints a glorious picture through an abundance of description. Like, it's not merely "the west", it's "the dreaming west".

Purple prose is best prose.

>Bear Purple Prose
Oh pfft. you know nothing of purple.

>In the sunstroked etherium of transcendence,
>the ursine beast gleefully, patiently, observes the calming spray of the river's mouth,
>and while it contemplates the totality of its existence,
>it savors a moment of trepidation, unease at it's plight.
>Is this really it's nature, or rather, is it nurtured to such an existential precipice,
>locked betwixt being and becoming,
>bound eternally to the twisted whims of Terra, and her sublime machinations.
>Does it forage forth, frantic for food,
>or is it left yearning, completing some habitual task out of compulsion?
>In the end, the bear still waits, bearing the weight of the world, and bearing her fruits stoically, contemplative in the ethos of eternity.

But seriously, too much is far worse. Too little can be summarized as absent paradigm, too much is just painful.
>

Yeah but purple prose is supposed to be bad and is mostly as a strawman insult.

This is beautiful. Thank you

That's not THAT purple, that's more allegorical. It's designed to mimic "epic" text, like Paradise Lost, whereas purple is more... unnecessary flowerly language and philosophical masturbation over mundane bullshit. All those "think of the children" arguments are more purple than anything. Something that can easily be summarized in a single, simple sentence with the same sort of effect.

>we need to censor the demons in MTG because, within their sinew lurks a diabolic torment, ready to pounce and eviscerate nubile young minds before their defenses are guarded. We need to be stalwart, we need to be draconian lest the menace rise up from our breast and overtake the morality of the world and plunge us into the depths of depravity.
vs
>That demon's got tits and a blood fetish, we should probably limit how much our children are exposed to it.

>purple prose is supposed to be bad

It's a style of writing, nothing more or less. Using it as an insult is like saying "oh, he's an oil painter, what a hack, acrylic is the only thing people should be looking at, only hacks use oil."

It comes down to personal taste. Which, on that note, I can't stand its opposite, beige prose. Hemmingway, London, it's also been my main obstacle in trying to tread through Asimov...

Give me description! Give me detail! English is one of, if not the, most expansive and descriptive languages in the world! In HISTORY! Limiting yourself to simple words and short descriptions would be like Michaelangelo trying to paint the Sistine Chapel with Crayola paints!

You actually liked that? Neat. I thought I was being intentionally pretentious and sappy, but I'm just happy someone read something I wrote and enjoyed it.

>That's not THAT purple

Howard is THE go-to example of purple prose; him or Lovecraft (fittingly, the two were good friends and correspondents and snuck references to each other in their works). It's not that the "hither came Conan" text isn't THAT purple, it's that it's an example of purple prose done well.

Wait wait wait, I thought purple prose was a derogatory statement about writing that's unnecessarily intricate for rhetorical effect without merit or substance.

What you're describing just sounds like "romantic" era writing, where everything is overly descriptive and uses themes of "the grandure of nature and humanity's ambition". But, I'm just nitpicking. I love Lovecraft and actually try to emulate his style whenever possible, so I may be biased.

This user gets it. "Purple" means "you strangled a thesaurus until it turned purple", not, "I used a lot of words".

Technically purple prose is really only that style but lot of people just use it as a derogatary term because they take "brievety is good" too litteraly or think it's pretentious.

>I thought purple prose was a derogatory statement about writing that's unnecessarily intricate for rhetorical effect without merit or substance.

Sort of, but it's inherently subjective. One mane's purple is another man's flowery writing. It's also got nothing to do with themes - Lovecraft can hardly be said to be talking about the grandeur of nature and humanity's ambition, after all. He writes about space monsters that are horrifying abominations against what we understand as nature, and how humanity is a small and tiny, unimportant thing who's every action is ultimately meaningless.

Except that one time in The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath, where a normal human tricks Nyarlathotep and gets him to admit defeat.

I think you're misreading Lovecraft. He writes about exactly that, but where it's different from more... established romatic authors is in the application. This is why I like him as an author so much; he takes classical tropes and applies them to a modernist, nonsensical world of magic and monsters.

I forget the name of the story, but the one where the guy goes into the cave and uncovers a gigantic labyrinth built by some unknown race millions of years ago perfectly captures this idea. Same with The Colour Out of Space, and how the weird alien plants take over everything. I mean, it's not strictly romantic due to content, but it's classically romantic in terms of composition.

Same with Baudelaire. He has a neat fusion of post-industrial grim into his otherwise romantic works, and it's neat, but also quintessentially modernist, so I don't know if it really counts either.

Yes, exactly. Modern writing prizes brevity and clarity, so "purple prose" becomes an insult. It ain't necessarily so; you're just supposed to hate the style of Howard and Lovecraft 'cause it's not contemporary. (And many people do.)

Purple prose is literally an insult. This is like a saying "I'm PROUD to be a FAGGOT/NERD/KEK". There is such thing as descriptive writing, and then there is purple prose, where the actual subject of the prose gets lost in all the descriptions.

Still, better a brilliant purple, than beige.

huh. turns out
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is now filtered into kek
I hate asian moot
Do you mean "the city"? I quite liked that one too, it just has a real sense of antiquity to it. The rats in the walls will always be the epitome of purple prose to me though, it took me three readthroughs to actually get the important information out of the long boring paragraphs about his family's history. Thoroughly unsettling story, but shit is it hard to read.

>newfag "informs" the board about filters

If you put sage in the Options field your reply won't bump the thread.

>Paradise Lost

>unnecessarily flowery

IS was right, western civilization is doomed.

I think one of the defining differences between Howard's work and other examples of prose is that Howard did a masterful job of pacing. Everything gets extra description, but he doesn't linger overlong except when using it as deliberate closure in advance of a pacing change.

Contrast to where you have technically correct prose but it doesn't flow off the tongue. Howard's work has a natural cadence that you automatically assume as you read it, while the Bear Prose constantly trips you with its changing pace.

Unsurprising, really. Howard was a man who had memorized The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and would at parties show off that he could recite and specific line from it on command. He was very much a lover of poetry as much as prose.

Id say too much because I came up with that conclusion in my current campaign where details are overbearing like we were recreating Silmarillion or some shit..

With too little, you can ask for more but with too much you can't really stop a bursting dam.

Don't forget Edgar Rice Boroughs.

I don't get this, most of his working is not about this sort of stuff. Most of it is Edgar Allan Poe imitation, very few of his stories are about cosmic anything. He's dominantly psychological thriller/low fantasy/soft sci Fi.

Too little is worse because it usually means the DM isn't putting much effort fleshing out the adventure