How flowery/dramatic/illustrative is your game talk?

[Quasqueton]

How flowery, dramatic, and illustrative is your game talk? Do you talk in character with archaic-style dialects (thee and thou), or do you just talk as yourself (y’all and youse)? Does the DM describe the scene with Hemingway’s talent, or with no adjectives at all?

Since there is a limit to how much you can put on a poll item line, consider these explanations for items 10 and 0:

10 – Full-on King James/Tolkien/Gygax
DM: "It is a dark and stormy night. The rain falls in torrents, drumming heavily on the housetops, while a strong wind fiercely agitates the scanty flame of the lamps that struggle against the darkness."
Player: “Well met, good traveler. What brings thee out in this unkind weather?”

0 – Bob and Joe talking at Burger King.
DM: “It’s nighttime.”
Player: “Yo! Whassup dude?”

Quasqueton

 

[PK]

It is a mix...the DMs try to spend some time on scenery and atmosphere, but the player to player conversation tends to be modern.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Generally a mix between the two. I'm actually pretty darned good at describing a particular scene or encounter, but the characters just use proper English w/out the slang or archaic forms.

 

[Dog Moon]

Pretty bad, atm, unfortunately. I'm trying to work on that during my pbp campaign for my group [since circumstances mean we can't get together for a while]. I'm hoping that maybe we'll be able to transfer some of the 'flowery, dramatic, and illustrative' talk into real life. Even if not my players, I'M going to make an effort at it.

 

[Gold Roger]

3-I'm only describtive and atmosphere setting when appropiate, though sometimes I sweat it. (no need to explain something we went through already or when it's rather unimportant)

Dialogue is at times paraphrased (all in all we paraphrase a lot) and I often can't distinguish wether a player is currently talking in or out of charakter. Yeah, it's one of our big weaknesses.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

It really depends on the situation. If its a commonplace event, it gets a relatively short description. I tend to try and describe things based on the observer... one player's battle hardened warrior might go into a room and find a butchered body... it gets described matter of factly. The squeamish character goes in, it gets more effort and detail... they notice the fly crawling on the corpses unblinking eye, etc.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

I'm not very good at. Voted 3. Then again, most of the people I've gamed with have little tolerance for long chunks of descriptive text being read by the GM. An occasional flowery line is about the best I can usually manage.

 

[diaglo]

as a player playing my PC it depends on the wis, cha, and int score i rolled with 3d6


as a DM conversation depends on the wis, cha, and int score of the NPC. otherwise it depends on what the PCs do.

 

[diaglo]

i have in the past gamed in Klingon for a Star Fleet Battles scenario. and so did everyone else at the table. 8 of us

 

[Aaron L]

I voted 6, Im not sure if its completely accurate though. Wed never thee and thou, but we tend to speak in a formal manner (dependent on character, of course) and will use setting appropriate phrases (well met and so on) frequently. I have a character who speaks in a fairly modern/vulgar fashion, as befits his personality (even though he eventually became a king, hes only been moderatley succesful at curbing his language) Paladins and the like in our games tend to speak in a higher class style, elves tend to be more flowery, etc.

We get into character quite deeply, but wed be really uncomfortable going all Shakespearian, and probably break into giggles if we tried. Although I did have a character (Father Arloch) who spoke VERY expansively, just short of using thee and thou.