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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 237315" data-attributes="member: 259">Isn't it sad when you need root beer floats to recapture that childlike sense of wonder and excitement?Of course, it just bolsters my theory that children are in a constant state of having drunk way too much root beer floats.Ahem.It's definitely something I try to achieve in my game, but it's difficult:  the evocative scene.  Sometimes it's planned -- the PCs stumble across a group of thugs performing a midnight raid on a wizard's shop, and they must fight in the shadows of alleyways and canals.  Sometimes it's unplanned -- the PCs cast a detection spell and realize the demon is spying on them, so they chase it through the midnight woods while it taunts them and terrifies them with illusions and mindcontrol tricks.The key, I think, is to make the dice and the rules less important than the description.  And description can be a lot of things:-Verbal description ("The moon is full and heavy in the eastern sky.  By its light, you can barely see footprints in the mud by the barn door.")-Body Language (when speaking as a suspicious, not-terribly-clever NPC, squint and jut out your lower jaw a little bit to the left and hunch down a bit)-Props (when the PCs finally encounter the illithid, pull out a miniature and say, "Shimmering into existence next to the soldiers, you see this figure!")-Multimedia (play a looping sound file of echoing, dripping water when the PCs venture into a damp cave)-Environment (drink lots of root beer and game in the woods).I really do think it helps to view gaming as cooperative storytelling.  If everyone is cooperative and gets into the mood, you can do some really cool stuff.I heard someone talking about acting recently.  He said that if you weren't willing to make a total jackass of yourself, you'd fail as an actor.  I think the same thing holds true for gaming:  if you aren't willing to be a fool, you'll never be able to really get into the wondrous groove that really good gaming is in.Daniel</blockquote>

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