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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Melba Toast" data-source="post: 4609953" data-attributes="member: 80591">The article is full of good advice, though nothing an experienced GM should not already know. But you can't improvize everything.The more challenging aspect of Improv is consistency, especially with regard to description. If you need to describe a person, a forest, a palace, a dungeon, etc. it's often hard to remember features which you made up off the cuff. THis is why flavour text is so important. Players will jump on a GM if he forgets a name, or if the coniferous forest suddenly becomes a deciduous forest. Or if he forgets to include a door on the west wall. From the player's perspective, this is cheating. It's the DM's equivolent to a player saying he has a full compliment of rations when no rations are listed on his character sheet.More importantly, players like to feel they are moving through a concrete world, rather than one that is in perpetual flux. Having a little bit of text reminds them that some things are static. The problem with flavour text is that it is too often used to describe activities. Text should be limited to physical descriptions that can be assessed in a quick visual, aural, olfactory scan (about 10 seconds). Never, ever, ever write dialogue into flavour text. For instance, good flavour text:The grey stone masonry hallway smells of refuse. A faint light can be seen eminating from the bottom of the closed door. (DM rolls die) You hear grunting coming from within. Bad Flavour text:You approach the door in the west wall, light eminates from beneath the door. You listen closely and hear the familiar grunting of orcish language. Your dwarf interprets the orc's words, they are arguing over some meat. Then suddenly they fall silent. The light beneath the door dims. You hear them approaching.The first example allows room for the players to interact freely with their environment, and their inquiries will help refine it. Randomness can and should be used when a player does something unexpected.I find the second example is used far too often in published games, and, in my opinion, it's the worst kind of railroading. It's particularly egregious when the flavour text includes an extensive monologue from an NPC. NPC: "Now that I have the mask of the anc..."Player: "I stab him".DM: Can I at least finish!This situation is very common with prepared text, and invariably, the magnanimous DM always thinks he's right. But he isn't. Technically, the Player is in the right. The DM and player should immediately roll initiative, and, provided the NPC goes first, he is free to continue his monologue in leiu of defending himself. Which, in effect, gives the PC a free attack.</blockquote>

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