Many years ago, I helped an acquaintance write an adventure outline to submit to Dungeon magazine. (That alone tells you how long ago it was.) The outline had something like a page of backstory, then a paragraph adventure summary, and some technical details.

I suggested he switch the content blocks around. “One page of adventure summary and a paragraph of backstory at most.”

He was dubious. “That’s not what I thought you would say,” I remember him commenting. “Isn’t backstory important? T...