Comments on: The Smell of a Good Wine, The Sound of a Crushing Bone

By: Cole

Cole — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:22:03 +0000

As a GM, I always aim to focus the game on what I perceive are the most important aspects. The focus on my games are on accurately depicting combat, the interaction between Players and NPC's, defeating whatever obstacle the party is faced with, keeping the fantasy world as consist as possible for the players, and allowing the players the freedom to try new ideas. All else is relegated to the background as not to interfere with the main elements.

By: John Arcadian

John Arcadian — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:50:42 +0000

That link is pretty great scott! I'm definitely going to have to keep that one bookmarked. You're right Squirrel_Herder, most published adventures only have sensory detail in the read aloud parts. I would love to see more aside boxes for treasure or item descriptions. Paizo publishing generally released supplements with just their images and maps. Something like that for treasures would be great. I once had a random descriptor generator. You could choose from a list of objects (sword, town, horse, orc, etc.) and it would bring up a list of random descriptors for that item. It was a great jump starter for my brain. I can't seem to find it anywhere though.

By: Squirrel_Herder

Squirrel_Herder — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:47:45 +0000

Thanks, Scott. The treasure pages are exactly the sort of thing I can use, and the rest of the site has WAY too many other generators that could probably come in handy too.

By: Scott Martin

Scott Martin — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:18:34 +0000

Squirrel Hunter: Abulafia is a website filled with random generators. Here's their page of links to specific random treasure pages. (System independent.)

By: Squirrel_Herder

Squirrel_Herder — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:01:33 +0000

Sensory details seem more important to me the more games I run. I often wish that published adventures contained more such details --what does the sword look like? what sort of bottle is the potion in? -- There often is plenty of detail in the read-aloud text, but players won't listen to read-aloud text, and often enough it's so poorly written that I can't blame them. They do pay attention if you describe the elements on your dungeon tiles and speak to them directly. Does anyone know of resources with lists or tables of flavor elements? Any other suggestions for improving the sensory detail in our games? I'm mainly interested in verbal descriptions, but there may be ways to do this that I haven't thought of, and I love to hear about them.

By: PaPeRoTTo

PaPeRoTTo — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:07:51 +0000

First Post Dance ^^

I prefer to create “the Scene” instead of creating “the Session”.. that’s because i never get using all the things i prepared for my players.. but if I prepare the Scene.. yes.. The Scene.. the one you always need in a session, the one without the whole game seems a bit unhappy.. a must I am sure that this will happen.. and i prefer to spend 10 extra minutes on this than 5 minutes on the session things..

but i find that after 5-6 “The Scene Preparation” i collected a bunch of “Everywhere material”.. and i found it quite easy to implement during the session.. “rainstorm foley”, “footsteps” “Growls”, “the atmosphere music” and so on..

So.. prepare for something special and in a few time you’ll get something general ;D