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How to force emotions down your players' throats?
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<blockquote data-quote="Imaculata" data-source="post: 6902446" data-attributes="member: 6801286"><p>Something that often seems to happen, is that DM's simply provide too much information, or too little, or too much irrelevant information. And I feel that some of the commercial adventure modules encourage the latter.</p><p></p><p>Does a player really need to know what the exact measurements of the room are, when a simple small/medium/large would suffice? In my experience, such details only lead to more questions.</p><p></p><p>Does a player really need to know every last detail of the room, or would simply telling them that there's various furniture in it be enough?</p><p></p><p>Take for example this description from LmoPD:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Would you have any idea what this room looks like based on this description? I tried it with my players, and the only detail that stuck, was the two flights of stairs. By the time I was finished reading them this short piece of text, they still had no idea of the scale of the room, nor did they have any idea what a cistern is in the first place. And yet these are the sorts of descriptions that DM's are encouraged to read to their players. It does not surprise me when the players have a lot of questions.</p><p></p><p>So what does the room actually look like?</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH]77035[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Ah, this changes things. If I need to show my players this picture to clarify things, I've already failed in my description. First of all the description leaves out one of the doors. But disregarding that error for a moment, there's a ton of questions that my players might have about this room. And the first question is quite an obvious one.</p><p></p><p><strong>1> Where are we in the room, in relation to everything the DM just described?</strong></p><p><strong>2> What is a cistern?</strong></p><p><strong>3> How big is the room?</strong></p><p><strong>4> What does the room actually look like?</strong></p><p><strong>5> How many doors are there again, and where are they?</strong></p><p></p><p>See, if the people who wrote this campaign module had paid a bit more attention to these 5 important points, they would have reached point 5, and caught the missing door. But point 1 is perhaps the most important of all. You should always describe things from the point of view of the party. You have to remember that the players are not looking at a top down view of the room. They are entering through the door to the right, and so everything in the description should be as viewed from that door.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Imaculata, post: 6902446, member: 6801286"] Something that often seems to happen, is that DM's simply provide too much information, or too little, or too much irrelevant information. And I feel that some of the commercial adventure modules encourage the latter. Does a player really need to know what the exact measurements of the room are, when a simple small/medium/large would suffice? In my experience, such details only lead to more questions. Does a player really need to know every last detail of the room, or would simply telling them that there's various furniture in it be enough? Take for example this description from LmoPD: Would you have any idea what this room looks like based on this description? I tried it with my players, and the only detail that stuck, was the two flights of stairs. By the time I was finished reading them this short piece of text, they still had no idea of the scale of the room, nor did they have any idea what a cistern is in the first place. And yet these are the sorts of descriptions that DM's are encouraged to read to their players. It does not surprise me when the players have a lot of questions. So what does the room actually look like? [ATTACH=CONFIG]77035._xfImport[/ATTACH] Ah, this changes things. If I need to show my players this picture to clarify things, I've already failed in my description. First of all the description leaves out one of the doors. But disregarding that error for a moment, there's a ton of questions that my players might have about this room. And the first question is quite an obvious one. [B]1> Where are we in the room, in relation to everything the DM just described? 2> What is a cistern? 3> How big is the room? 4> What does the room actually look like? 5> How many doors are there again, and where are they?[/B] See, if the people who wrote this campaign module had paid a bit more attention to these 5 important points, they would have reached point 5, and caught the missing door. But point 1 is perhaps the most important of all. You should always describe things from the point of view of the party. You have to remember that the players are not looking at a top down view of the room. They are entering through the door to the right, and so everything in the description should be as viewed from that door. [/QUOTE]
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