Describing things to players

[Gentlegamer]

This is without doubt one of the core skills necessary for a good GM.
On a post-it write down the 5 (or 6) senses and stick it to the inside of your screen. Refer to it often.

I follow the 'brief description at first but detailed as they ask questions' camp.

Here's a funny aside:
One of my players was running a game and described a scene in which there was a cow in the middle of a field. For some reason the players clung to the notion that this cow was a critical plot element, and barraged my friend with numerous questions, even casting spells to see if it was polymorphed.
Finally, after about half an hour, he threw up his hands and yelled out, 'Dude! It's just a cow!'

So now, if at any point during the game someone gets hung-up on a piece of 'flavor text', I can just lean over and say 'it's just a cow man, let it go.'

Some cows are magical, dude. Just ask Dave . . .

 

[der_kluge]

Anyone who has studied art will understand the concept of a focus point. Though, there may be a more appropriate name, you get the idea.

Visualize Monet's _Water Lilies_ - an ethereal blue/green landscape. Now, place a yellow smily-face in the corner of that picture. When you look at the picture now, your eye is automatically going to zoom in on the smily face. It's now become the focus point (and quite an eyesore, I might add).

I hate when I read the descriptions of a room in published modules. I see this all the time:

"You open the door and you see a large chamber, some 100-feet wide, with a vaulted ceiling of oak buttresses. In the corners you see some disheveled furniture and some assorted chests, trunks, broken furniture scattered about, and a few things with dust clothes covering them, concealing their true nature. In the center of the room you see Michael Jackson sodomizing a young boy."

Ok, maybe not *that* example. But replace the latter with "You see a Beholder" or something like that, and you get the idea. The thing is completely backwards. If you opened the door, the details of the room are going to be completely blurred, and all you're going to see is the freaking monster. I see that all the time.


So, focus on the important parts and gloss over the rest. That's what people do anyway.

 

[der_kluge]

This is without doubt one of the core skills necessary for a good GM.
On a post-it write down the 5 (or 6) senses and stick it to the inside of your screen. Refer to it often.

I follow the 'brief description at first but detailed as they ask questions' camp.

Here's a funny aside:
One of my players was running a game and described a scene in which there was a cow in the middle of a field. For some reason the players clung to the notion that this cow was a critical plot element, and barraged my friend with numerous questions, even casting spells to see if it was polymorphed.
Finally, after about half an hour, he threw up his hands and yelled out, 'Dude! It's just a cow!'

So now, if at any point during the game someone gets hung-up on a piece of 'flavor text', I can just lean over and say 'it's just a cow man, let it go.'

I've had players do that to me before. I'll describe some mundane aspect of a scene, and they'll fixate on it like it's important. It's kind of meta-gamey, but it's human nature.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Anyone who has studied art will understand the concept of a focus point. Though, there may be a more appropriate name, you get the idea.

Visualize Monet's _Water Lilies_ - an ethereal blue/green landscape. Now, place a yellow smily-face in the corner of that picture. When you look at the picture now, your eye is automatically going to zoom in on the smily face. It's now become the focus point (and quite an eyesore, I might add).

I hate when I read the descriptions of a room in published modules. I see this all the time:

"You open the door and you see a large chamber, some 100-feet wide, with a vaulted ceiling of oak buttresses. In the corners you see some disheveled furniture and some assorted chests, trunks, broken furniture scattered about, and a few things with dust clothes covering them, concealing their true nature. In the center of the room you see Michael Jackson sodomizing a young boy."

Ok, maybe not *that* example. But replace the latter with "You see a Beholder" or something like that, and you get the idea. The thing is completely backwards. If you opened the door, the details of the room are going to be completely blurred, and all you're going to see is the freaking monster. I see that all the time.


So, focus on the important parts and gloss over the rest. That's what people do anyway.

Ditto the criticism of the standard "boxed text" found in published modules.

 

[gizmo33]

So, focus on the important parts and gloss over the rest. That's what people do anyway.

I like this advice because it suits me. I get nervous when people advocate the "five senses" approach because I don't do that and it makes me think that maybe I'm a bad DM. Maybe I just can't think of enough synonyms for "bad smelling. Plus, most all players I've DMed have a limited attention span for flavor text. I have an instinct for when people's eyes are about to glaze over (no such instinct for posting however)

I guess the only place where my descriptions get interesting is when I'm withholding information. Instead of saying "you see three orcs", I might say "you see three vaguely humanoid shadows looming against the glow of the burning village". I could talk about the smell of smoke and all of that but it takes up time and my gut instincts are to not do it. My description gives the players the general idea, I'm 90% sure they're visualizing the rest in a way that is much more interesting than me adding another three sentences.

I might talk about sound or smell in lieu of visual info. I might introduce an encounter by saying "you hear the thwap thwap of a large pair of bare feet coming down the corridor". It's not poetry, to be sure, and I don't know that "thwap" is really the proper sound, but it gets the job done.