Fuzzy Descriptions?

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Post originally by Matthew Timmins at 2005-04-29 13:46:07
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Another great article. I'm interested in your "fuzzy" description of the barn. How did this work exactly? How do you keep track of things? Weren't the players confused? I assume you don't use minitures. Would you go into a little more detail about your lack of detail.

Good work & Thanks,

--M

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Post originally by Ian Sokoliwski at 2005-04-29 18:28:59
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Well, as I said, the barn was one that I knew pretty well, so I didn't have to worry about mapping it out to keep everything straight in my head.

I just let them know that, as they came in the big barn doors, their was a partially-open attic/loft above them (they could see the hanging bodies through the broken pieces of ceiling into the loft) with several stalls down the length of the barn and an open trap door a little ways in.

Periodically, for stuff like this, I will actually get the players up off their butts and kinda sorta act out part of the scene - at least so that they know where they are in relation to the bad guys (this will crop up a lot more in a future column, where I deal with an incident in a motel room and another in a rave). Having the players being able to visualize this stuff in the real world (and not just at minatures-scale) is a lot of fun, and dramatically cuts down on the questions over if somebody can punch someone else.

So, the combination of my 'atmospheric' description (describing the metal hooks on the wooden post of each of the stalls and how they had dried blood and bits of meat on them, for instance) along with the occassional bit of LARPing (I'm not really a LARPer, but do like to integrate bits of it into my games from time to time) kept the scene pretty solid in everybody's heads, and not too confusing.

Hope that helps :) Thanks for the compliment, by the by

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Post originally by Matthew Timmins at 2005-04-30 06:48:10
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Yes, thanks.

I also get the players up from time-time to enact combat in slow-motion. It helps to answer the age-old question: "Can my elbow reach the back of his neck?" In fact, during my most intense session I GM standing up, walking about the room, and generally over-acting. When it works it's great. When it doesn't I look like an idiot. Oh well, it's a dangerous job, GMing.