jumpingjacktrash:

elventiefling:

butyouarenotthesun:

elventiefling:

butyouarenotthesun:

elventiefling:

sometimes a descriptor is just that, guys: a descriptor

oh, goat?

PLEASE give me context for that

so, our party was traveling in a mountainous area and the DM mentioned there was a goat a little ways away, just a little scenery building. the party immediately spent the next (real-life) 20 minutes insight checking the goat, detecting magic on the goat, questioning the goat, ect. eventually the sorcerer ended up killing and eating the goat. DM was very exasperated.

oh my GOD

i have the solution for this, my darlings: describe everything.

players do this when you’re usually sparse on description; they’ll fixate on the things you do describe, because whether consciously or not, you’ve trained them to think that you only describe important things. if you say, “it’s a 20×20 room with pillars along the walls, and at the end there’s a throne with a red brocade cushion on it,” they will fixate on the cushion. because it’s the only movable object in the whole scene! it’s the only thing with a color or texture!

so instead, you say, “this is clearly where he held court before he became a lich. it’s a pillared arcade of honey-colored marble [a nature check will reveal it was imported from a thousand miles away, very ostentatious] with square pillars in the southern style. a dusty carpet runs the length of it; where your footsteps stir up the dust, you can see the carpet was purple once. between the pillars are carved wooden chairs, some of the gilding still intact, where courtiers and functionaries could’ve waited for an audience. at the far end, beneath the rags of a moth-eaten banner, is a throne of age-blackened wood. unlike the other chairs, it was never gilded, but its brocade cushions are still there and still red on the underside where the light hasn’t bleached them.”

now you not only have plenty of things for them to investigate, most of them more informative to their goal, you’ve immersed them in ATMOSPHERE, which is what turns a game from a mere exercise in dice-rolling to a cooperative storytelling experience. your lich king is now more than just a dungeon boss, he’s the sad but frightening remnant of a once-great civilization, clinging to the shadow of its dust-smothered glory.

that’s the kind of thing that raises your ‘adventure zone’ and ‘critical role’ type adventures above the bored number-crunching of freshman weekends. and also avoids the frustration of a zillion pointless digressions.