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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dykstrav" data-source="post: 3345857" data-attributes="member: 40522">When I'm describing things to my players, I go for the "less is more" approach. Why?I read alot of screenplays. When you check out a screenplay (or any piece of writing for that matter), what you want is to be concise. You want not only to keep the word count down, but you also don't want to lose the reader in a miasma of adjectives and descriptors that strip out one of the most fun parts of reading- imagination. If you catch yourself re-reading the same page of a screenplay over and over again, it's a good indication that it's either just not evocative or you're getting bogged down in irrelevant details. In my experience, it's almost always the latter.I've noticed the same phenomenon in my games. When you start describing a room and the players start fiddling with their dice or flipping through a sourcebook, it's a strong cue that they find some other detail of the game more interesting than the long description. Like all storytellers, a DM should pick up on this cue and give the audience what they want. Don't be vague, but try to avoid specific details unless prompted for them. This also gives you a "book is better than the movie" situation.Describing an abandoned temple of Pelor as an "old stone building in disrepair, with cracked flagstones and other signs of neglect" is my own happy medium. One player might imagine a Greco-Roman style temple with crumbling statues and columns. Another might picture a gothic cathedral with a tiled roof. Another might decide that it resembles an Aztec-style ziggurat overgrown with ivy and vines. We're all pushing around metal figures on a vinyl mat, but our imaginations can all be on totally different wavelengths without making anyone else share our particular vision of the scene. I'm always happy to provide more details if prompted, but less specifics tends to be more evocative. I only add more details by default if it's important to the story (for example, the frescoes in that temple might depict a powerful demon that the characters will fight later, so I'd detail those more).</blockquote>

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