This guest post by John Arcadian of Silvervine Games started out as a comment on Creating Immersive Descriptions, yesterday’s post about how to describe your game world in terms of all five senses.
John’s technique for doing this revolves around a slick little template for writing up locations in your campaign. Thanks for letting me turn this into a TT post, John!
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When I’m writing up adventures/dungeons/areas I use a template that has the five senses, special notes, enemies, and a “something of interest” field.
I try to fill in every one of the descriptors. Then when I’m at the table, I just grab three or four to fit into my opening explanation of the room. I also try to write down something evocative about the area.
Descriptors
Sight:
Sound:
Feel:
Smell:
Taste:
Size:
Shape:
Evocative:
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Enemies:
Special Notes:
It would fit well onto an index card, but I usually just copy and paste into the Word file that I’m making up for the dungeon/area/etc. I don’t give a full description for everything, but try to think of my descriptions like the dungeon itself.
I’ll describe a room like this:
“You see the slimy rough (feel) stone walls stretching a few feet above your head (sight and size) in the oblong room. The pillars that support it are spaced every 10 feet are so and look solid enough to withstand Ragnarok (sight, evocative). Wind blows through the large and long room from corridors off to the side.”
Then when I get to the corridors, I try to grab one or two linking elements to get them down to the next place:
“The wind blows past, more fiercely and coldly. The slime traces a windblown path down the columns as you proceed past them.”
I try to keep linking in different descriptors to maintain the original immersion, but not detract from the game elements. Used with a picture or two that shows something similar to what I’m describing, I’ve gotten some pretty rapt audiences. One time they forgot to do anything — they were just waiting to hear what came next.
Update: Ready-to-use printable versions of this template are now available for free directly from Silvervine Games: Area Descriptor Templates.
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Thanks, John!
What do you think of John’s template? How would you modify it to fit your GMing style or game world?
Very nicely done. I like the idea of a template such as this to help keep descriptions and the feel that you are going for during the adventure universal.
Regards,
Walt
Thanks for the compliments. I think the template is just a tool though. It’s something to organize information before hand and grab it later. I think the whole topic of how GM’s describe things, and how to create immersive interactions always has more room to be explored.
ScottM’s comment yesterday about describing things in motion, not just the background of a scene but the goings on of it, is darn great and I plan to be paying more attention to that in my next game. It is something that is easy to forget when you are so focused on what is around the characters, and not what is going on around them.
a excellent tool, and an excellent Idea
I had played around with it, and I would add
magical auras: na or minor (abjuration)
sixth sense (“feeling”): a sense of fear and forboding comes over you peer into the room.
Really good.
Someone talked about that before. Maybe in Dragon or Dungeon Magazine?
but it´s always good to remember the simple and quick ideas that we often forget to pull into our games like powerful descriptions of places.
One problem I find that I´d like to share:
What to do when your players don´t pay attention to descriptions… Do you punish them IN GAME? or get angry OFF GAME?
I do both!!!
Play it cool. Make the description important so if they don’t pay attention, punishment is built-in to your scenario. Your players won’t have a choice but to be drawn in, as long as you’re not cheesy about it. It’s one thing to hit them with “HA! You didn’t remember that button I mentioned *once* in the flavor text for the room, now you all die!” but quite another to nudge them with “Guys, the room is decked out all in green… which faction carries the green herald?”
They don’t *have* to hang on your every word, but it probably works out better for them if they do.
I like the idea of adding a “magical auras” line (for D&D), and a “sixth sense” line in general — good suggestions, steve.
John, that’s awesome! Thanks for putting those together. I’ve updated the original post with a link to your ready-to-use templates.