No sooner am I getting back into the thick of blogging that I get an email asking me for my thoughts on a given subject. Joy, instant inspiration!
Reader Cool Cyclone chimed in last week with quite an interesting letter:
“I wanted your opinion on something. When describing a setting for foreshadowing, how do I relay senses, besides visual stimuli, to the players?”
The Power of the Voice
Doing description is the core of GMing. While you can augment the roleplaying experience with specific light settings and soundtracks, verbal description of the game world is what makes a scene come alive or fall flat.
Thing is, depending on your players, as a DM you can only hold the groups’ collective attention for so long. You have to strike a subtle balance between your goals of making your game come alive past it’s numbers and rules and causing your players’ eyes to glaze over.
Sensory Overload
Using senses is a great tool. As Cyclone mention, we’re used to describing visual stuff “You enter a 20’X30′ Room and you see 2 chairs, a Chest, a bed… oh yeah and a large troll is charging you”. While this is okay (and its what many of us default too while GMing), there’s a way to spice this up.
The technique I propose is to try to fit the essence of each scene in one or two sentences and pack them with cues based on more than one of the 5 senses (or even a 6th one if you want to go spiritual).
“As you open the door, your are assaulted by the stench of something that’s never seen soap in many decades” While you notice the room is quite large, yet dimly lit, and contains some furniture, your attention is immediately brought to the Grey-green hulking Humanoid uttering a guttural battle cry as it sees you, making the floor tiles shake as it runs toward you”
“While apparently empty, this chapel features a gruesome altar made of sharp bloodstained bone spikes. The room is filled with a cloying coppery smell and light seems to be sucked directly into the altar, making it the only clearly discernible object in the room”
“The temperature drops sharply as you cross the portal into this Ancient Crypt. You feel the hair on your arms raise and a feeling of forboding fills you as you are convinced that the pure Essence of Evil is mixed with the air you breathe”
This mixing and matching of senses will enrich the description while keeping it short enough to allow players to ask more details or act faster.
Non verbal cues
Cool Cyclone then wonders if you should use other non-verbal tricks, to describe non-visual cues. Like using a glass of water to simulate water sloshing or plopping a piece of less than fresh meat to simulate the presence of Zombies (!!!).
Being the klutz that I am, I usually refrain from doing that (because I’d end up soaking my Books or my players). Instead, I usually try to do sound effects with my voice. Yes it often sounds a bit stupid and my friends sometime snicker a bit.
In fact, the best description techniques I’ve been using is to combine Speech with entusiastic mimicking with my hands (I’m French, we use our hands a lot when we talk). I once described how a Giant Snake engulfed a Hafling PC and using my hands to represents the spasmic action of a Snake trying to eat something bigger than its mouth ended up being very efficient indeed.
Alternatively, I’ve seen some people use sound effects to great effect. In fact, unless I’m mistaken, one of the readers here actually has a sound studio selling sound packages specifically for RPGs. (See here).
Whatever your prefered techniques, I encourage people to mix and match descriptions.
When Numbers get in the way of Description
Now here’s a side point I want to address.
I’ve played with enough groups now to notice a pattern where at a certain point in the game, atmosphere and immersion takes a second seat to plain old crunch. Especially in games with very detailed combat engines like D&D.
As fatigue sets in and a combat encounter stretches beyond the one hour point, GMs and players set into a routine where dice are rolled, numbers are called and results are noted and that’s about it.
Well this is a great time to practice adding description elements. Try to encourage each player to describe his attack, grant bonuses to very graphic descriptions (which often helps alleviate Frustration engendered by low dice rolls). When an attack hits, describe how the wound looks like and what the player feels like.
“After sparring for a few seconds, you land one solid hit of your Axe on the monster’s Thigh. Most of the blow was absorbed by its thick bony hide, but you see it limp perceptively as it gets ready to retaliate”
In fact combat is probably the best time to use touch as a sense. You can describe the feel of the weapon in one’s hand as it strikes an enemy or misses. (Although, players don’t really care very much about having descriptions of their misses).
What about you?
What are your tricks to tricks to enrich a scene’s description. What senses do you call to to make a scene come more alive to your players?
Sound Off!
Oh, Chatty, my man – this is an awesome post!!
Your bit about “sensory overload” is just amazing both in simplicit and efficiency – the very definition of elegance.
About “numbers getting in the way of description” – I certainly felt that in the game you DMed for us. I really enjoyed you trying to push me to describe a bit more.
I think techniques to stimulate better descriptions from the players could also be interesting. I think I’ll try using the “senses” thing when I next DM (either with my group of kids or adults).
Asking a simple sense-related question might just help even the shiest of players to do a little bit of description.
I know my narration is sure to improve from this simple tip.
Sweetness!!
Eric Maziades last blog post..Reflections on Scepter Tower of Spellgard
@Eric: I’m happy you liked it. Good luck in your future DMing!
I use voices, flavor text in combat (4e’s powers makes this really easy, frankly and can turn battles into great imagery-filled scenes), verbal sound effects, and when you’re describing things, I like to try for three senses.
In a completely dark room, what do they hear, what does the air smell and taste like?
Tromping through the jungle, what sounds do they hear, what smells are in the air, what does the air feel like?
The big challenge is shifting the location of the important information– sometimes you have to put it first, sometimes you want it somewhere in the middle, othertimes you want to build up to a reveal at the end of the description.
-Ben.
Bens last blog post..Lord of the Rings, Conquest of Middle Earth…
It’s nice to hear that you voice sound effects even if sometimes the elicit snickers. Voices, accents, sounds is definitely one of my DM weakpoints. I worry too much about sounding like a fool, need to just go for it more often.
I tend to use phrases and evocative “flavor” words instead of sentences because it’s quicker to read/scan during play and they are more versatile to my adlib/freeform style of DMing. I’m a 3×5 card nut, and have numerous types.
Terrain cards for each major area such as “Kaim Plateau” or the “Dune Sea”. I put a few words for each of the 5 senses. Just enough to bring vivid mental images that I can then describe to my players. Every so often I’ll pick a couple of senses to use “The southern sun burns into your skin as you stumble across the red and brown layered rocks of the broken lands.” Each area also gets a signature trait to give players’ memories something to latch onto.
Encounter cards for each significant encounter. Pick a few senses and write a couple sentences or evocative words directly related to encounter. For instance I had “mush slide, odoriferous, dog pooh” on the Gnoll ambush card “You nearly tumble as your plate boot slides with a mush, the stench of canine feces spreads quickly, the whole party knows who’s responsible.”
NPC’s. I pick one sense for each major NPC and give them a memorable signature related to it. Such as the smelling the lavender perfume of the arch villianess, the distinctive battle growl of Gnoll chieftain, flowing red hair of the gate captain, how temperature drops and skin crawls EHP is near.
You’ll notice that both areas and npc’s have a unique sensual signature. This is a good descriptive “trick” to get into. Eventually you’ll be able just to mention the signature and the players minds will be flooded with past descriptions/imaginations.
One final descriptive trick I learned from http://www.roleplayingtips.com Before an encounter or major description, read to yourself your notes, descriptive text, whatever. Then close your eyes and take a few seconds to build up a mental image in your mind. When you open your eyes describe that mental image to your players. It will flow from your lips and be awesome. At least it works for me.
“Imagine the hell out it!”
Our group has just begun a description contest, of sorts. At the end of the session, whoever is felt to have made the most and best (quality and quantity) descriptions of their actions – especially in combat – gets the token for the next game. We’re still trying to figure out exactly what the ‘token’ will be. Maybe stone dice or something fancy like that. We’re working out the reward element and will be testing the contest next game (likely in January).
Rafes last blog post..The Three "R"s of Session Planning
Excellent practice for describing actions in combat is to pick up _Lunch Money_ or _Beer Money_ and play it by describing each attack and response, and not permitting the round unless the player does it right. Like…
“Mary Bernedette was headed for third period when she saw Mary Shannon getting a drink of water at the fountain. She still owed that little twit for the cold-cock donkey punch she’d gotten in gym. Pulling the pipe she’d hidden in her book bag, she laid into Mary Shannon’s knee with a full swing, causing the schoolgirl to fall to the ground clutching it in pain…”
Your turn. (I *love* lunch money…)
-Ben.
Bens last blog post..Lord of the Rings, Conquest of Middle Earth…
I was recently was a co-DM for a 9-hour, 12-player, all-night D&D session. (This was at end of semester at college). As the night/morning wore on, we 3 DMs definitely noticed a decrease in the amount of description. Thankfully, we had prepared some descriptive text in advance, and this helped keep the descriptions lively on our end. It also held players’ attention.
My favorite example:
“These strange, twisting enigmas of primal energy are as tributaries to a larger flow of evil, for their energies are centered on one spot: the air above the plaza. ”
While there aren’t any direct sensory words in that sentence, it definitely helped instill the mood of the scene. The event was a huge success, thanks in part to our descriptive text.
@Ben: If I go to Gen Con, I’m grabbing you for 2 hours so I can learn from your mastery! Then I’ll win the Iron DM contest.
@Norman: Hey welcome to the blog my man! Yeah, pushing through the ‘I feel stupid in front of my friends’ phase was a breaktrhough in my DMing. I mean here I am, playing with the same guys since 10-25 years and I still fear getting laughed at by guys I’d trust with my life? Not!
Thanks for sharing your tips.
@Rafe: Good idea! I love the concept of the token. It doesn’t have to mean much…
@ Zed: You went past sensory and jumped into spiritual and Energy flows…. that’s cool!
Thanks everyone! Its good to be back… I’ll try to write and post last Friday’s Game report tomorrow.
Welcome back, CDM. Good to see you’re back on form 😀
You’ve hit on the the most important sense of all – scent. Describe how something smells and you hit on the most primal part of the brain, and that (as GM) is right where you want to be.
For example, I had one villain (a psychic vampire) in a recent series who smelled of mouldy oranges. In the final session, I hid an orange under the table, and as the room warmed up………………
Boy, did that ever freak them out 😀
greywulfs last blog post..Greywulf’s Games of the Year 2008
Useful stuff, this! I especially like the short descriptions and tips on how to improve. I think I fall back on the “you enter a room, 5 by 10, with a door on the far side”-description a bit too often. It’s on of those things that need improvement.
On another note, I always try to, when I describe, leave out how the PC’s are feeling. I try never to tell them that they’re scared, happy, at ease, or high strung. Instead, I try to let them get a feeling of their own, trying never really to go beyond that “the room leaves you an unsettling feeling”. I have no idea if it helps, but I like to think so 😀