DMing Tip: Describe LESS

[RPGPundit]

Here's a quick one I was thinking about. I've seen a lot of DMs put great effort into their descriptions. And there are certainly moments where that is appropriate. There are scads of books on good DMing all of which usually tell you to be really thurough in your descriptiveness, and how important it is to describe things in detail.

Bullshit.

 I am going to suggest that when it comes to descriptiveness, often less is more.

Here's why:  RPGs are a shared experience, not a shared world.

To illustrate: In one of my campaigns, one of my players was running a character who was blonde. He saw him as blonde haired and blue eyed.  At one point he mentioned this, after months of the game being run, and not one of the rest of us, myself (the GM included) had realized that.  He had mentioned it originally upon character creation, but for some reason I, and everyone else in the group, had imagined him either brown haired or dark haired.

Meanwhile, he'd gone along merrily imagining himself blonde.  And it did nothing to impede the running of the game.

The fact is, contrary to what the narrativist Swine out there might think, we are not playing in a common world. Its a shared experience to be sure, but to waste time in forcing the players to see everything the same will actually bog down the game and make it unpleasant.

One of your most powerful tools for making an RPG campaign enjoyable is the player's own individual imaginations.  You might be able to imagine some pretty cool things, but usually nothing will be as cool TO THEM as the way THEY imagine things.

No matter how much effort you put into describing your sinister dark wizard, nothing will work better than, say, picking one cool detail ("a scar that runs down his face, right over a milky dead right eye"), and then leaving the rest intentionally vague.  "You see the dark wizard Bargle, in black flowing robes with arcane symbols. A scar runs down his face, right over a milky dead right eye".
That's it. That's all you need. The PCs will fill in all the gaps.

So when is great detail required? Only when a particular detail is important beyond a merely descriptive sense. When its actually important to the game, either in a tactical sense, or as a clue, or because its a critical macguffin for solving the crisis.

Otherwise, trust me, less is more. Harness the power of your player's own imagination.

RPGPundit October 22 2005

[Blackleaf]

If this is true (and I suspect it is) then it should hold true for all the players at the table.  Whether that's a shared narrative forgery type game, or a more traditional game where the players are only narrating things about their own character -- less is more, if it leaves room for personal interpretation.

[KenHR]

Good post.

I try to use a similar approach, which I learned from an article on fiction writing that quoted a letter from Theodore Sturgeon:

In your own mind, you have to be able to visualise every single tiny detail of a scene, from the cracks on the wall plaster to the pattern of sunlight hitting a wall through a Venetian blind.  But when you describe the scene, you choose only those details that would directly impinge on the viewer's consciousness.

Of course, during a game, it's not always easy or feasible to visualise things so concretely in your mind (especially when the PCs wander into an area you didn't think to prepare), but it's the principle of this approach that's important.

[jcfiala]

I try to describe enough to give a sketch of the area and situation, enough so that anything unusual stands out and people know the situation, but not so much that I'm describing things for ten minutes.  The players aren't there to hear my attempts at writing, they're there to stop the Giants from overruning civilization.

[David R]

I've always found that description is a matter of group preference. Some folks like detailed descriptions others find it tedious. IME no matter how much detail goes into describing scenes, combat etc, players respond to the kind of words used in the description. Choosing your words carefully whether you fall in the more or less camp makes whatever atmosphere the group is trying to sustain, easier.

Regards,
David R

[KenHR]

That's a good point.  Well-chosen words can go a long, long way.  But I still think brevity is a virtue when it comes to static description.

Incorporating action into your descriptions - even trivial ones like a person scratching their head or taking a drink from a glass - can also make longer passages feel more dynamic and lively.

[droog]

The way I see it, I use as many words as I need to do the job – no more and no less. Of course, that's hard to bottle.

[David R]

That's a good point.  Well-chosen words can go a long, long way.  But I still think brevity is a virtue when it comes to static description.

Incorporating action into your descriptions - even trivial ones like a person scratching their head or taking a drink from a glass - can also make longer passages feel more dynamic and lively.

Good point.

The most important element of my gaming is the "we're all on the same page" aspect. I get the whole shared world/ shared experience deal, but IME the fun comes from realizing that we are all speaking the same language so to speak.So, maybe as a group, we are more inclined to view the game as a shared world type of enterprise.

Description by the GM and the players is extremely important to me because of this. Ultimately when it comes to description the issue of less or more is only important  as it relates to establishing atmosphere/tone.

Regards,
David R