[GMing] Description techniques

[Reynard]

My main concern is always in describing just enough to the players to make sure the important details of the scene are shared between everyone.

And then they latch onto one improvised side comment. Three hours later,one of them is married to a rug.

 

[Heilemann]

And then they latch onto one improvised side comment. Three hours later,one of them is married to a rug.

“Best game we ever played.”

 

[LordEntrails]

If it's not necessary, I rarely describe it, and then only briefly. I try to always put anything requiring action (enemies, hazards etc) last. Otherwise the players are reacting and not listening.

 

[Tonguez]

I now use Aspects for everything then stitch them together

so to take your example:

1 Tsurugi Industries headquarters is Tomoes domain
2 The Sky above is a concrete blue dead screen and endless cold stars
3 Its Tower soars beyond human comprehension and two and a half million lives
4 perfectly arranged in every line and shadow
5 .. except the bloodbath

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I use Paint the Scene a lot.

 

[loverdrive]

I like to keep descriptions short and to the point. I'm not going to give a lot of adjectives or such--"you're attacked by 4 giant spiders" rather than "they have glistening fangs and hungry eyes" or whatever. I know from the popularity of streams some people like that kind of thing, but for me it pulls me out of the game. I feel like, yeah, they're spiders, let's get on with it.

I think setting up the mood is very important, kind of like there's a reason Warhammer people generally play with nicely painted miniatures and not bottlecaps, even if the main gameplay experience is exactly the same (often better, because critical information is easier to see)

My main concern is always in describing just enough to the players to make sure the important details of the scene are shared between everyone.

And how do you determine what details are important? There probably are some rules of thumb or general approaches -- do start with the layout of the space (cover, concealment, entrances, exits, chokepoints), do you start with the people?

Those are technique details I'm most interested in.

I now use Aspects for everything then stitch them together

so to take your example:

1 Tsurugi Industries headquarters is Tomoes domain
2 The Sky above is a concrete blue dead screen and endless cold stars
3 Its Tower soars beyond human comprehension and two and a half million lives
4 perfectly arranged in every line and shadow
5 .. except the bloodbath

Sorrrryy I'm going to be annoying about Fate

I think it creates too many aspects and muddies the important information -- like, how am I realistically going to invoke or compel the fact that tower is big in the lobby scene at hand?

Just *Bloodbath in a corporate lobby would be a much better scene aspect, with whole Tsurugi megacorp being modeled as a character per the bronze rule, with skills like Discipline +4 and Security +3 to work as a catch-all stats for any guards, or locks, or computer passwords.

 

[The Firebird]

I think setting up the mood is very important, kind of like there's a reason Warhammer people generally play with nicely painted miniatures and not bottlecaps, even if the main gameplay experience is exactly the same (often better, because critical information is easier to see)

That's a fair viewpoint. I know people who just love 3D printed terrain and miniatures and games with glow up lights in a special table and set playlist. But it doesn't appeal to me, any more than flowery language does. The article isn't online afaik, but there was a nice one based on observations at GenCon that said the GM gets two sentences, full stop--more than that and the players would miss things. I can find it cited at least in this blog, which makes the same point.

Not to pick on you, because I think your example is very evocative and nicely written, but all the same--you're 3.5 paragraphs in and basic details of the scene still aren't known. How big is the lobby? Entrances or exits? What exactly happened in the bloodbath? You're now at the point of having to to define the scene again, which means more description and more listening.

I know that style works for some players and I'm sure it works for you. It reminds me, as I said, of streams which are popular. But it wouldn't work for me.

 

[Celebrim]

And how do you determine what details are important? There probably are some rules of thumb or general approaches -- do start with the layout of the space (cover, concealment, entrances, exits, chokepoints), do you start with the people?

I start with the layout of the space, do the big gross details of the interior, and then move to whatever is most immediate last, not because I want to create drama, but because I don't want the players to forget that there is a sleeping dragon in the room or a bomb about to go off or some other thing that could become an immediate problem by the time I finish my narration.

Brevity is good because its amazing the capacity of the players to zone out even when all you are doing is telling them the bare minimum of details that they need to explore the space and survive. There is a tradeoff between complely describing the scene and describing it so well that the players forget half of what you said by the time you finish saying it. My expectation is that I will have to draw a map on the battle map for them and that I'll have to repeat the narration and clarify it once or twice before everyone is imagining the same thing, even when I was trying to be concise and even when the average IQ in the room is about 140.

 

[loverdrive]

Brevity is good because its amazing the capacity of the players to zone out even when all you are doing is telling them the bare minimum of details that they need to explore the space and survive. There is a tradeoff between complely describing the scene and describing it so well that the players forget half of what you said by the time you finish saying it. My expectation is that I will have to draw a map on the battle map for them and that I'll have to repeat the narration and clarify it once or twice before everyone is imagining the same thing, even when I was trying to be concise and even when the average IQ in the room is about 140.

I see, this makes sense.

Now I wonder about, say, a mecha game where all the descriptions are aggressively condensed and even directly translated into mechanics: "Terrain difficulty 3, two hostile Scout-class mechs spotted"

 

[loverdrive]

That's a fair viewpoint. I know people who just love 3D printed terrain and miniatures and games with glow up lights in a special table and set playlist. But it doesn't appeal to me, any more than flowery language does. The article isn't online afaik, but there was a nice one based on observations at GenCon that said the GM gets two sentences, full stop--more than that and the players would miss things. I can find it cited at least in this blog, which makes the same point.

Not to pick on you, because I think your example is very evocative and nicely written, but all the same--you're 3.5 paragraphs in and basic details of the scene still aren't known. How big is the lobby? Entrances or exits? What exactly happened in the bloodbath? You're now at the point of having to to define the scene again, which means more description and more listening.

I know that style works for some players and I'm sure it works for you. It reminds me, as I said, of streams which are popular. But it wouldn't work for me.

The idea is to not give any necessary details, and focus on miscellaneous things until the last mic-drop line.

Technique works by making players zone out, paint a pretty but ultimately meaningless picture in their minds (that will never need to be repeated -- there's no point, nobody gives a damn about all the well-tended plants), and then move to all the relevant information after jolting the players by casually dropping The Most Important thing. Bloodbath, in this case.

Then I might move to the layout of the space and cover (for a more fight-y game), or important clues (for a detective game) or whatever else, after grabbing full unbroken attention of the players.