1st Person vs. 3rd Person DMing

[Weregrognard]

Are you saying you never get back to first person once you kind of step out of it? Because staying in 1st person the entire time... I'm not sure how you do that (unless I am missing something here, which is entirely possible - I'm not expert with the 1st/3rd person aspects)

I think the OP meant something like this
DM:NPC: Why yes! I do know the shortest way to the West Hill, I take it in order to trade my bread.
PC: How do you make your bread?
DM: He explains his process of baking his bread in detailed fashion.

It is then hard for the PC to keep the conversation going in the manner it started in.

That's pretty much it. I think the NPC interaction lost momentum when I switched to 3rd person mode and never regained it.

I haven't ran a game in 4 years. One thing I find though is that reading fairy tales to two of my reasons for not having a game in 4 years is very good practice for this aspect of running a game. Bouncing in and out of my 'narrator voice', and the voices of the prince, princes, beast, witch, fairy, etc. is good vocal practice. If you don't have darlings to read to, I suggest doing as the medievals did and do all your reading out loud for a while, even if you are just mouthing the words.

I think all DMs could benefit from studying oral storytelling techniques. But where to learn them? Hmmm...

Also, I think I would wilt and waste away if I couldn't run a game for 4 years. Go run something, dagnabbit!

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

I'd love advice on how to maintain the mood longer.

Have your first-person NPCs set up breaks in the mood. "Pardon me, I must answer the door" or "I see that you need some time to discuss this among yourselves".

You need the break to rest your voice and refresh your mojo; your players want a break to talk about what to do next without you saying "Uh, guys, the NPC is listening..."

During the break, you can use third person to set up the scene ("the person at the door is a traveling salesman who wants to sell your host a love potion"), answer player questions ("no, you didn't feel that he was lying to you"), and do normal, non-characterization DMing stuff.

When your players are ready to re-start the conversation with the NPC, they'll usually do it in a way that engages you back into the first-person again; even if not it's easy to re-establish the voice, mannerisms, etc. that you use to make that NPC vivid. Since I find it much easier to do characterization when I first start playing a NPC then I do to maintain it over a long period, breaking up the conversation into chunks really helps.

 

[DSlash]

When your players are ready to re-start the conversation with the NPC, they'll usually do it in a way that engages you back into the first-person again; even if not it's easy to re-establish the voice, mannerisms, etc. that you use to make that NPC vivid.

This is an issue that occasionally occurs, suddenly the bold warrior gets a heck of a lot more monotone. I don't think the players mind it as much as I do, but it does happen. That usually means a little break for snacks so I can regroup.

Also multiple NPC's at once can be pretty tricky. Drama is hard to create when you're talking to yourself. Strong third person narrative in the midst of the dialogue is very important.

 

[Mallus]

2) For each character have in mind a celebrity actor or a character from television or movies, and use that as a basis for their mannerisms...

This is always good advice. My Dragonborn paladin PC is supposed to resemble Patrick Stewart addressing a room full of people he believes are ST:TNG fans (but really aren't).

What, no 2nd Person love?

Ah... don't tempt me to bust out the "you's" when DM'ing! I've had a not-so-secret love of the 2nd person ever since I read Bright Lights, Big City and the stories in Lorrie Moore's Self-Help.

 

[Pbartender]

What, no 2nd Person love?

Trouble is, most players mistake 2nd Person narration for railroading...

"You are a craven coward. You blindly flee the combat, and fall into a pit filled with poisoned spikes. You die."

...and if you're not careful, they're very often right.

 

[Bedrockgames]

As always, I really think a lot of this depends on your individual group, but I do think shifting between 1st and 3rd person (and 2nd) are important to holding a players interest. I agree you are most immersed in the situation when the GM is running an NPC in first person, but it does lose its effect after a while. Contrasting it with 3rd person narration helps break things up a bit, and make the 1st person moments more significant. Also, 1st person is slow if you do it too long. After all, you can't really elapse time without breaking into 3rd person (unless your adept at signaling it somehow) and while it is great to chat with an interesting NPC for a while, if all you are doing is chatting and nothing happens at all, it can get boring. Of course you can place action into the dialogue ("Say what is that creature that just broke down the door and devoured the barmaid?"). I just tend to get bored in all 1st person situations. The trick is knowing when to shift, having a feel for the flow of the game.

 

[Mallus]

"You are a craven coward. You blindly flee the combat, and fall into a pit filled with poisoned spikes. You die."

I was thinking more along the lines of "You are not the kind of elf who would be in a dungeon like this at this time of the morning".

(followed by some crack about "Menzoberranzian Marching Powder"...)

 

[Celebrim]

Trouble is, most players mistake 2nd Person narration for railroading...

"You are a craven coward. You blindly flee the combat, and fall into a pit filled with poisoned spikes. You die."

...and if you're not careful, they're very often right.

Yeah, the trouble with 2nd person is that you can too easily slip into telling the player what his character feels or even how he acts. I think 2nd person voice has a very limited utility, and generally I only employ it as a stop gap measure when the player lacks some information that I believe his character should have. For example, I might employ 2nd person to explain some knowledge, intuition, or insight the character has, often as a result of me or the player making some sort of skill or wisdom check. Second person is particularly useful in this case for separating 'What the character has been taught or believes' from DM backed affirmations of campaign truth.

 

[DSlash]

Also, 1st person is slow if you do it too long. After all, you can't really elapse time without breaking into 3rd person (unless your adept at signaling it somehow) and while it is great to chat with an interesting NPC for a while, if all you are doing is chatting and nothing happens at all, it can get boring. Of course you can place action into the dialogue ("Say what is that creature that just broke down the door and devoured the barmaid?"). I just tend to get bored in all 1st person situations. The trick is knowing when to shift, having a feel for the flow of the game.

As long as the players stay on topic, the conversations hopefully aren't very long in my game. As for inserting 3rd person narration, agreed, you definitely need to throw some in there. I think the issue was more about using third person narration as pieces of dialog and then having a problem with player immersion in the situation.

Example:
First person narration dialog with third person narrative actions
DM NPC: Good day adventurers! I hear you're looking for a lost tomb.
DM: The dwarf appears to be swirling the contents of his glass nervously.
DM NPC: While I haven't been there in years, I know the way to that terrible place.

Now, in all third person narrative:
DM: The dwarf greets you and nervously tells you he knows the way to the lost tomb.

The first example throws the players a bone, they naturally know how to proceed with the conversation (in first person).

The second one certainly works but might distance some of the player from their characters as they reply in third person as well.

Neither is wrong, but I find the first example works much better with my group.

 

[Celebrim]

I think the OP meant something like this
DM:NPC: Why yes! I do know the shortest way to the West Hill, I take it in order to trade my bread.
PC: How do you make your bread?
DM: He explains his process of baking his bread in detailed fashion.

It is then hard for the PC to keep the conversation going in the manner it started in.

Yes, exactly. As a DM I really hate 'show stopper' questions when the player asks you something which ought to be obvious to the NPC, but which you as a DM have never considered and have no idea how to respond. Even expected questions like, 'What is your name?' that you'd think you'd always be ready for can cause momentary panic.

Dealing with 'show stoppers' is hard, and really I know of no special techniques for getting around them all except good preparation, broad study of trivia relevant to your setting, and practice.

In the above case, it took me probably 20-30 seconds flailing around in my head how to respond to the question when I realized the best responce was to dodge it with something like, "Ahhh now that would be an old family secret, and it doesn't do my purse much good to be giving away my secrets.", properly acted to suit the personality. That answer is believable, evocative, and builds the character, but whether I could come up with it under pressure much less smoothly get it out now past the rust I don't know.

Like yourself, it sometimes occurs that I lose interest in doing the voices and return to the typical third person format. This interest is immediately rekindled when I realize that the interest of the players has gone from 100 to 0.

Bingo. I believe that its pretty close to objective fact that the first person emmersive techniques are more skillful and objective than using third person or worse metagame language narration. DM's that say things like, "The orc steps two squares closer to the Paladin and makes a basic attack" drive me nuts, and to be honest I can barely maintain interest as a player in their games. Know the freakin' names of your PC's for crying out loud, and try to pretend that its a freakin' raging orc try to hack you apart with a battle axe, not some 1" high game peice moving across a tiny little board.

I really hate minatures. They have there place, but do they ever distract from the game.

You see yourself that it is important to your players' interest that you talk directly to them using NPCs. For awhile, I found some conversations lasting up to 20 minutes where only 5 minutes of it was actually useful to the party goals. I'm sure your players don't want to a majority of the night talking about the weather (unless of course, the weather is a major plot point). If the players are asking questions that you don't find much use in answering, answer it to the best of your ability, but then try to steer the conversation back in the direction you wanted it to go. Find a compromise between what you envisioned and what the players want.

This is one of my biggest problems as a DM and the one I want to strive hardest to fix if I ever get back to reffing a game. I sometimes forget the forest for the trees as I get so involved in trying to make each particular interaction believable, that I lose track of the why of it. I have this problem in my fiction writing as well, as I want to spend to much time on backstory before jumping into the action.

Oh yeah, no hats at my table.

I find props silly. Until the prop can actually match the imagination, it tends to be more of a distraction that break game emmersion rather than something that helps it.