Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 183 - Improving Your Narration

Episode Date: July 16, 2023

RPG players depend on we DMs to effectively describe the combat, the encounter areas, and the world at large during exploration activities.  The words we use and the quality of our narration has a direct effect on the quality of our game and the potential immersion into our game world.  Narration is a skill that all GMs, including and especially me, need to practice and improve.  In this episode I give you 4.5 tips for improving your narration.  You heard me.  4 and a half tips...   #dmtips #dnd #Pathfinder #narration   Resources: https://theangrygm.com/how-to-talk-to-players-the-art-of-narration/ Extra Credits:  History of Dungeons and Dragons:  https://youtu.be/paEGFYSBZTE Taking 20 Episode 170 - Combat Narration - https://taking20.podbean.com/e/ep-170-narrative-combat-armor-class-and-hit-points/  Taking 20 Episode 78 - Tips for Scene Descriptions:  https://taking20.podbean.com/e/ep-78-tips-for-scene-descriptions/

This week on the Taking 20 Podcast. But during commutes, car rides, lunch breaks, start thinking in terms of narration, how you describe the environment you're in, the sights, sounds, and people that are near you. Thank you so much for listening to the Taking 20 Podcast, episode 183, how GMs and players can improve their narration. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Darts. for listening to the Taking20 Podcast, episode 183, How GMs and Players Can Improve Their Narration. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Darts. I have a friend who can make a beautiful picture by throwing pointed objects at a target,

but he doesn't make a lot of money at it. He truly is a starving Dartist. Yes, yes, groan your disapproval for me. It only makes me stronger. Please like and subscribe wherever you happen to find this little podcast. I work hard every week to provide this level of entertainment for you at absolutely no cost. What a bargain! All I ask is maybe if you find it interesting, give me a few more clicks.

Please like and subscribe, and if you got the time, rate it wherever you found it. I want to thank a very generous donor this week. Robert Nores donated to the podcast for the second time this year. This podcast survives thanks to generous donations from listeners like him. Thank you so much, sir. I greatly appreciate your kind generosity. He also had a great topic idea that I had somewhere down my topic list already, but I reshuffled it and bumped it back up to the front, so I need to get my happy ass in gear and put some meat on those topic bones. How to prep a one-shot. That's what's coming next week.

Thank you again, Robert. Hopefully I'll put together something that you'll enjoy. I also want to call your attention to a YouTube video that was made by one of my favorite channels called Extra Credits. Usually they talk about game design, focusing on video games primarily, gameplay loops, that kind of thing, but they made a great episode called The History of Dungeons & Dragons that does a pretty good job of showing that the tabletop RPG world really is cyclical, and that Hasbro maybe hasn't learned lessons from TSR's history. I'll put a link in the resources for the episode.

If you're watching on YouTube, there should be a little card in the corner and a link will be in the resources of the episode description as well. If you're listening to the podcast, you can see them in the resource section of the episode description wherever this podcast is available, but definitely on my hosting provider, Podbean. Head there, www.taking20podcast.com, and check out the resources for each episode. What makes DMs amazing? Matt Mercer, Matt Colville, Troy LaVallee,

Abria Iyengar, Chris Perkins, Debra Ann Wohl, Ethan Ralphs, Rick Sandidge, and I better stop now because I'll accidentally leave someone out that I love listening to. There was a question that I started at the beginning of that list. What the hell was it? Oh, yeah, that's right. What makes them great? Is it the ability to do a lot of voices? Great production value? Fantastic players? Nah. I mean, those help, but I'd say the one trait all of them have in common is the quality of their narration. Each one of them in their own unique styles can paint a picture with words that keeps an adventure engaging and fun. What, narration? As in describing things? Yeah, they're all damned good at it. Whether you play the game entirely theater of the mind or use a tactical battle map for encounters, the player characters experience

the world through the descriptions provided by the GM. The more complete that description, the more immersive the shared narrative experience is. The more real it feels, the easier it is to get lost in the world, and in general, the better your game is. Let me give you an example. Suppose the PCs are trekking through the forest and you say the following. The tangle of trees suddenly gives way and you're standing in a clearing. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. If that's your DM style, go with the gods, my friends. But what if you said something like, The sun streams through the trees, dappling the forest floor with golden light.

You push your way through the underbrush, reaching the clearing that you had seen ahead. You emerge into the sunlight and are standing in a beautiful clearing, motes of fragrant pollen floating in the air of the perfectly circular grassy clearing. I'll say there's nothing wrong with the first one. It's straightforward. It keeps the game moving. Nothing wrong with that. But the second description really paints a picture in three sentences. It is a balancing act. Narration can be overdone, with too much description being given to inconsequential things in the scene or encounter that really detract from the tension. No one cares

about the dandelion seeds drifting on the gentle breeze when there's an ankylosaurus trying to slap them into next Wednesday with a big rock-like tail. I'll be the first to tell you that I sometimes struggle with narration balance, and honestly, it's more art than science. Different groups will strike this balance differently, and it's up to each group to determine where they want that balance to be. One of the groups I GM for aren't keen on descriptions at all. They prefer things spartanly described. What's important that we see? What input do we need for the encounter? Is there anything here trying to kill us? One, two, three, bippity boppity boo. They like it simple and clean, so for that group, I keep my

narration short and to the point. You enter a long-forgotten chamber with an engraved sarcophagus on a dais with six others in a ring shape around it. Cobwebs fill the corners and move with a gentle breeze. There are engravings on the sealed sarcophagus, but that's about all I'll say about it. I don't go into detail about the language, the quality of the carving, or it looks like the sarcophagus wasn't finished because the nameplate's been left blank. I don't describe all that stuff, at least initially. If the party takes an interest in the sarcophagus, starts to examine it, making perception checks and the like, maybe while they're exploring the room, yeah, I'll have those details at the ready.

So they may eventually figure out the sarcophagus contains the remains of Silsuth, the serpent folk so evil, committing heinous acts so repulsive and corrupt that even his own kind blotted him from their histories. However, there was a group that I GMed for about five to six years ago who were, and I say this with all the love in the world, as someone who has embraced who I am, theater nerds and writers. They loved descriptive narration. The ceiling of the long-lost chamber soars above you as you realize how deep under the ground you must be now.

The musty air moves gently in the room, too soft to stir up the thick, unmarked dust covering everything in the room. Seven sealed sarcophagi dominate the room, six with minimal decoration in a circle on a lower level, and one raised in the middle, covered with intricate carvings. Reading the inscription there, there's a tingle at the back of your neck, as if someone is looking over your shoulder. Sweat trickles down under your armor. Surely, that was just the wind. Different groups like different levels of narration, different levels of immersion.

The group that likes simple scenes would be on their phones by the time I was halfway through that longer narration. It's not their style, so I adjust my GM style accordingly. Before I go too much further into this topic, I want to remind you that narration and RPGs come in at least two flavors. At the simplest, there's combat narration and scene narration. I covered combat narration a bit in episode 170. I'll put a link in the resources and would encourage you to listen to that episode for more detailed tips. In short, narration in combat tends to describe hits and misses, spell effects and saving throws, critical hits, and hilarious failures. Combat narration is action-focused, and since action scenes are frenetic, crisp, and short, your narration should be shorter as well.

scenes are frenetic, crisp, and short, your narration should be shorter as well. Your dagger sinks in between the cleric's scale mail and you strike flesh, dealing eight points of damage. On the opponent's turn, the cleric steps back from your strike and brings a warhammer down in an overhead smash. Now is not the time to wax poetic about the intricate wrappings on the dwarven warhammer. The cleric is trying to stave in the character's skull, and the character's not going to be focusing on the craftsmanship, they're focused on surviving. Save that crap for after the character shoved that cleric's holy symbol right in their pack when looting the corpse. Out of combat, narration is mostly setting the scene and narrating exploration. This is where you can be more loquacious with your

descriptions, flowery in your language, wordy, long-winded, verbose, but only if that's what your players enjoy. Way back in episode 78, I gave some tips for scene descriptions, and I'd encourage you to listen to that episode for more specific tips. Briefly, I'll just say, keep it simple, only two to five chunks of information for describing a scene. Remember, all the senses can be engaged, not just sight, but smells and feelings and sounds. Save the most important thing for the last part of your description. No one's going to care about the quality of the ale being served at the tavern if you've already described the huge red dragon staring at the party through the partially torn off roof.

Jeremy, the episodes you mentioned describe great tips and tricks for narration. Well, thank you very much. That's very nice. I'm not done. How do I get better at it? Okay, well, I'm glad you asked. Unfortunately, my first few tips are not quick and do require diligence and your conscious decision to work at it. One, to get better at narrating, read. I can hear you rolling your eyes at me now. Jeremy, I don't have time to read. I'm busy, busy, busy, go, go, go.

Shit to do, fat to chew. Great many people will see about a great many things. I get it, my friend, I do. I have two jobs, run a podcast and have a family. Oh, and I like to game every now and then on the weekends. Still, I want to encourage you to find some time to read. Not social media, not YouTube comments. Books, works of fiction, biographies, stories with a narrator.

For example, before I started the pirate campaign I'm currently running, I read three different books about sailing and the lives of pirates. It took some time, but I think you could find the time, same place I did, just before you go to bed. Whatever time you like to go to sleep, let's say it's 10 o'clock, 2200 hours. About an hour before that, wash your face, brush your teeth, because cleanliness is important, get comfy and get ready for bed, turn off the TV, put down the phone, and read a book. That usually helps me unwind and would help me get to sleep some nights. Sure, there are mornings I woke up with a book on

my face, but that's the price of reading in bed. I bet that's why a lot of my dreams took place in a library and I have a thing for librarians with huge glasses, you perverts. Glasses. Huge glasses. Also big tits. Back to the point. The more you read, the more variety of words are poured into your brain, and the better you'll get at narration. Take a little bit of the time you spend doom-scrolling on social media and unwind with a good book instead, says the old man currently writing this on his phone at 2am. I have insomnia and writing helps me relax. I've found my thing. Go find yours.

A variant of this advice, by the way, would be to, well, I guess it would be tip number 1.5. Listen to audiobooks. I am not saying you take time away from listening to podcasts to listen to audiobooks. But for those who are very pressed for time, that's a great way to read quote-unquote. You're still getting the benefit, hopefully in less time. However, I found

I retained less of the vocabulary and nuance with audiobooks compared to reading it off the printed page, but it very easily could work better for you. Tip number two, use the narrative audio channel on movies. Quite a few movies, whether streaming or using in-home media like Blu-ray, contain an audio track that's sometimes called narrative audio or audio description or something similar. These audio tracks narrate the relevant visual information in a video or performance. In some cases, scenes that require an extended description will actually pause the video to make room for the necessary descriptive text. Audio description helps to provide the crucial information of the visual content in a cinematic and auditory way.

It was originally made for the sight impaired so they could know what was going on on the screen. Find a movie or TV show episode that has an audio description. I found this works best with movies and shows that I have seen so many times and I pretty much know them by heart. Whether you stream it or use physical media doesn't matter. Start the video, switch to the audio narrative channel, and listen to the descriptions given for the scenes you already know. The American Council for the Blind at adp.acb.org has a master list of movies with audio description channels. As you can imagine, more modern movies tend to have it than

older ones, but there are still great choices there. In looking at the site, a lot of the Disney, Fox, Sony, Universal, and Warner Brothers movies include an audio description track. For example, Universal, and Warner Brothers movies include an audio description track. For example, I went to Disney Plus and picked Doctor Strange because I've seen that movie I don't know how many times. And I feel like I pretty much know it by heart. By switching to the audio description track and closing my eyes, it gave me a vivid description of what was going on scene by scene between character discussions. So give narrative audio channels a try and see if

that helps you describe scenes better. Tip number three, practice. The first step of being great at something is sucking at it. What I would encourage you to do is to practice describing things around you. If you have a little downtime, narrate the description of the office that you're in, that office building across the window, the recent visitor to your office to discuss whatever that was in that report with you. His close-cropped hair was kept in a practical, bordering-on military style. The fine material of his shirt stretched over the extra pounds he carried at the midsection, buttons straining to hold back the flesh beneath. He tiredly murmured good morning as he launched directly into the discussion of a recent meeting and a recent report

in a humorless, matter-of-fact fashion. Of course, I don't think I'd say all this stuff out loud to the person while they're in the room. That's probably a one-way ticket to HR. But during commutes, car rides, lunch breaks, start thinking in terms of narration, how you'd describe the environment you're in, the sights, sounds, and people that are near you, but to yourself without being all creepy about it.

Tip number four, listen to the pros. One of the best ways to learn is to sit at the feet of masters. Listen to the way they narrate scenes, describe combat, paint the picture of the adventure with the words they use. If you haven't done so already, I'd say find a Let's Play podcast that you love and listen to the way that the DM and the players describe what's going on. Take what you like about their narration and incorporate it into yours. But Jeremy, I really like Matt Mercer's or Matt Colville's or Rick Sandage's style, but they're going through an adventure I've already been through and I already know. Good. No, I'm sorry. Did I say good? I meant great. Let's say you've already played or DM'd the Hell's Rebels Adventure Path for Pathfinder. That means even if you don't remember the specific details, you'll know the major story beats that

happen. Listen to how they run it, the narration they use, the changes that they make to the story, the flavor text that they add, and it will give you an idea how you can narrate similar situations in your game. For example, I listened to a Let's Play podcast named Called Shot as I was preparing my Skull and Shackles campaign. They had finished their campaign long ago, and I'm not even sure if that group is even podcasting anymore. But it was interesting to get that GM's perspective on the adventure as written, and I took some notes from my campaign. One of the tenets of this podcast is that we are all better together than we are separately, and we can all learn from each other.

I'll grant you that we can all learn from Matt Mercer, but he'd be the first to tell you, I think, that he can glean knowledge and tips for his DMing from others as well. Speaking of great DMs, by the way, I have another interview lined up in the next few weeks. Rick Sandage of the Find the Path Ventures will be a guest. He GMs multiple podcasts for Find the Path and does a great job of integrating character backstory and story arcs into existing adventures, so I want to talk to him and learn from him. Look for that episode coming up before long. A variant of this tip, by the way, so I guess it's tip 4.5, would be to follow along with the adventure if you own it. If you know you're going to GM a D&D adventure or Paizo adventure or one shot or what have you, and there's a podcast or

a YouTube channel that's going through that same adventure, put the podcast on, open up the adventure module, and follow along with the group. Every DM is different, and there may be some pointers that you can pick up from them as they lead their group. Sure, there may be some stuff that you won't use or techniques that aren't your style, but be open to the way others run the adventure.

If nothing else, it at least exposes you to new ideas. However, players, if you're going to run through that adventure path, please don't do this. Adventures are so much better when you don't know what's going to happen next. Years ago, I was running a published adventure and noticed that one of my players seemed to always have the right equipment and always know where to look for secret doors. So I tweaked the map and on a few encounters watched him start to get frustrated. In a room where there was a secret door on one wall, according to the adventure, he went right to that wall and asked if there was a secret door. He then explained to me in great detail how he was an elf and elves in D&D 3.0

could detect secret doors automatically. The table got a little uncomfortable, and I called for a break. In the break, I explained that I suspected he was reading the adventure before playing it, or at least metagaming the hell out of his character, and doing so not only detracts from his fun, but the fun of other players around the table. I asked him to play his character in the moment, and failures are sometimes the most fun part of the game. He disagreed, we had a few more discussions, he lasted a couple more sessions, and then he left. I sincerely hope he found fun at the end of the table, though. My point of this is, there are a ton of Let's Play podcasts, streams, and YouTube channels out there. If you're going to play

through something that's been published, try not to spoil it ahead of time. To quote Monty Python's audio track involving the logician, his wife, and yogurt, I seem to have strayed somewhat from my original brief. Narration is a skill honed by practice and exposing yourself to people in your office. Sorry, exposing yourself to the written word. Read, listen to audiobooks, use the narrative description audio channel on movies and TV shows you know by heart, listen to some Let's Play podcasts of adventures that you know. Your narration will improve, your scenes will be more vibrant, and I'd bet you and your players will have fun doing it. If you want to support this podcast, head over to our ko-fi.com

slash taking20podcast and make a donation like Robert did. Thank you again, sir. This podcast survives on donations, and I have made the conscious decision not to sell advertising time despite how hard Podbean is pushing it. So if you'd be so inclined, I'd kindly appreciate

any donation that you would like to give to support the podcast. Every dollar helps keep it going and helps keep advertisements off of it. Tune in next week when I'm going to talk about how I prepared to run One Shot Adventures, a topic suggested by Robert when he generously donated. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Darts. I had an idea for putting the dartboard on the roof, but every time I threw the darts, it kind of made me sick. It made me throw up. This has been episode 183, all about improving your narration. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2023.

References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.