Vignettes

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[MENTION=77624]SparqMan[/MENTION]
I remember towards the end of an adventure the group was split up around the king's castle and surrounds; one PC managed to sit in on the Council of Lords. They wouldn't get to participate but they would get to witness critical events unfold.

In advance I wrote out the gist of a scene wherein the evil prince brazenly asserts his authority over his extremely ill father with an insidious speech, engages in some banter with a dissenting noble, makes a subtle sign to two nobles he bought off/blackmailed into silence, and finally is tasked with finding an ancient lost crown by the council to prove his merit.

I really hammer it up with this scene since it was basically my moment in the spotlight. I did some ofthe prep you would imagine an actor would do before delivering a monologue. It went over well, and definitely engaged the group by making them hate the evil prince more, realizing who is in his pocket, noting potential allies, and providing strong direction for their next quest.

Normally I'm an advocate if the old adage "show, don't tell"; I would rather run a vignette (or any scene) with the players as the center of attention. After all it's a group game, not watch the DM make an ape out of himself.

Though, when used rarely and done well, apparently this too can be a lot of fun.

I really must one day read these things called "Dungeon Master's Guides". Apparently they're just chock-full of useful information.

That, or write one

 

[Riastlin]

In my current campaign I used a vignette to help flesh out the world's (and the campaign's) back story. We were short a few players and in the middle of an undead siege, so I didn't really want to "split the party" per se. Instead, I had one of the party's benefactors (a deva sage) bring the party into the Plane of Dreams wherein she then sent them to various momentous events in the world's history, and showing that at all of these events, there was a mysterious, cloaked figure that appeared to be merely watching. The idea was to show that all of these major events were linked in some fashion and provide some extra history that they didn't have previously.

I actually had the players continue to play their regular PCs, but just set things up such that they weren't going to change the outcomes. I think that by and large it worked really well. I only wish that one of the players who was missing had been there since he would have been the most into it, but oh well.