It's been a day or two since I posted the adventure and, this morning, I received the first comment for it, over at a Discord on which I'll sometimes drop links to things that I do. Unintentionally, the commenter addressed one of my lingering concerns about the format of the adventure, namely the amount of words I spent to detail the actions of the adventure;s antagonist, the mysterious Stranger. Here is the text, as it appears in the adventure:

It's quite a detailed section. It uses, by my count, 81 words, or, roughly, 16% of the adventure's entire word-budget. My question has been, since I wrote it: is this worth it?

Here's the content of the comment:

...you put good detail in to  his combat tactics, I get an very good sense of who this guy is as a person... and how to run the encounter with him... (sic)

A little bit of added context: the Discord this comment came from is a Shadowdark-focused community. I mention this because what a Shadowdark-player might appreciate may be a bit different from what an OSR-player or a D&D5E-player might appreciate or, obviously, what I appreciate.

I'm glad, at least, that, for them, the text landed about where I wanted it to, giving them an idea over how to play an NPC that is essentially undescribed, outside their name. They're given no physical or character cues. They get two lines of dialog, one via a Magic Mouth style spell near the beginning, and the line delivered at the end. They've got a couple of spells and a trick up their sleeve but, beyond that, they're a total enigma.

For an adventure like this, the lack of detail around the antagonist doesn't bother me. This is why I've grappled with reducing the words spent on them to even less than what's currently written. The adventure setup makes it clear that the Stranger is bad, that their plans are to be thwarted, if possible, and their hostage saved. The Stranger's kit defines their most obvious tactics: they've got a charm spell, a hold portal spell, a dagger, and a use of teleportation. They're clearly willing to sacrifice others for their ends but will they die for it? The teleportation effect seems an obvious option of last resort, the charm spell a dangerous opening gambit, and the hold portal spell a nice utility with the potential to aid in escape or retreat. They're not a fighter so while the dagger is a viable weapon, it's not likely that engaging in melee will be an option, particularly not against multiple armed opponents. With all that said, if everything seemed so obvious to me, why did I write out their tactics to begin with?

I think the reason is because this adventure is something of a narrative vignette. The text describes a location but there isn't any map nor any real navigational choice other than to proceed or turn back. The interesting choices lie in how the players choose to interact with what they find in each area. The Stranger appears only in the final room. It is clearly the climactic encounter of the adventure. Thus, I felt empowered, perhaps even compelled, to format that encounter to ensure, as best I can, a fitting confrontation with the enemy.

If you have a chance to read the adventure, please let me know what you think about my approach to this encounter, or anything else about it!

Game on!