When I started GMing I struggled with providing useful, well-constructed area descriptions. That may be a surprise to most people who have spent any amount of time around me, “speechless” is a rare and drastic state of being. Nevertheless, it was an obstacle that I ran into more than a few times.
I’d provide richly-detailed, flourishing descriptions of a dungeon room: the lushness of the carpeting, the ornate carvings running along the edges of the banquet table, the luxurious indigo velvet of the chairs surrounding the table, the intricate metal accents decorating an armchair along one wall, the fullness of the blossoms in the centerpiece bouquet, the pristine shining silver settings…
Once the other players woke up from the storytime-induced nap I’d just put them in, they’d start narrating the ways their characters poked around at every little thing in the room, checking the flower arrangement for traps, sweeping the cutlery into a satchel, investigating and deciphering the obvious coded message running around the table - well, you get the idea.
An hour or so of session time later, the other players are frustrated that they’re not turning up anything, irritated that nothing’s happened, and still pitching ideas of where the certain treasure-trap-mimic-hidden-passageway might be. Exasperated, I suggest that maybe there’s nothing of interest in this room and wearily check the clock to find that 1/3rd of our game time was wasted on combing a purely “scenic” room and now there’s no chance we’re going to make it all the way through the major milestone scene I had planned for the conclusion unless we really rush and stay late while the staff are up-ending chairs onto tables and sweeping to their personal playlist.
All of this feeds a vicious cycle of cutting scenes, skimping on narration, removing obstacles, simplifying and streamlining the adventure into a perfectly-waxed, straight-walled slide to some capstone moment - usually a “boss” fight. And that boss? It doesn’t stand a chance against a party of fresh-and-rested adventurers who haven’t just spent a few hours spending their spell slots, class features, HP, and special abilities to overcome some minor annoyances. Now that boss is going to get some upgrades to make this fight “worthwhile” because this final scene is the last chance for me to salvage this session. The final fight goes one of two ways: either the party steamrolls them, or a couple twists of fate throw us a TPK.
What went wrong? Maybe the other players just aren’t skilled enough at the game. I already cut the area descriptions down to save time, but now they’re asking a million nit-picky questions about everything under the sun. Maybe we need more time, maybe regular four-hour sessions just aren’t enough to get anything done. Maybe I’m not cut out for this role and should just quit. Maybe the game system sucks and I need to start a channel dedicated to telling everyone they’re suckers for propping up an engine of corporate greed.
Friends, it is none of these.
The problem is a lack of intention: there is no focus. You might as well concede that the point of the adventure has Full Cover, because no one is going to be able to target it for an action.
Among the responsibilities that come with the Dungeon Master role are describing the scenes, establishing the pace, and encouraging the other players to interact. When I cut my descriptions shorter, I abdicated (inadvertently, but still) one of my core duties. “Greasing the slide” wasn’t pace-setting, it was bad storytelling, rushing a point. Worst of all, no one was encouraged to interact with anything - we were all soldiering on for love of the game.
How do we find focus and imbue our scenes with intention? “Traits” are one important tool to this end, and one that every GM should build proficiency with.
A Trait is really nothing more than a brief phrase that describes some important element in a space. Traits can describe general, environment qualities like “Total Darkness”, “Thick Smoke”, or “Biting Cold”. They can also describe specific elements or objects of a scene: “Dry Fountain”, “Nailed-Shut Door”, or “Dust-Covered Sarcophagus”.
While any number of objects in a space may be described using Traits, we want to reserve using them for just the things that are important about the space. Whether a specific Trait is something that gets shared with the other players depends on the in-game context and circumstances - maybe the party can see that there is a “Metal Chandelier” in the room, but we know that it requires an Intelligence (Investigation) check to discern that it is actually a “Spinning Blades Trap” that will fall if it’s not disarmed.
In my own session notes, I make a small table to list the Traits in each area. “Public” Traits - the ones the other players start out knowing about - go on the left-side, “Private” Traits in the next column, then a column for Triggering Conditions, and finally a column for Discovery Requirements. Usually there are only one or two Traits in an area (because there are at most only a couple of actually interesting qualities), so this is quick and easy to implement.
It looks a bit like this:
Public Private Trigger Discovery Metal Chandelier Spinning Blades Center-floor pressure plate (save: DEX 15, 4d6 Slash) INT (Invest.) 15 Rusty Polearm Trap Bypass PC Pull INT (Invest.) 12
It’s a fairly simple note-taking device, but it pays dividends in multiple ways.
Rather than reading and extensively noting details about a space, we - the GMs - get to reduce our total cognitive load by distilling areas to just their important Traits, then improvise the less important, distracting qualities.
We can also use this technique while designing areas, briefly jotting in some Traits about each of the dungeon rooms instead of painstakingly detailed narrations.
When the GM is free to focus on the Traits that are important to the other players, those players also get to benefit from the improved intelligence they receive about their surroundings. The party depends (for its life) on the GM’s narrative capacity, poorly-formed room descriptions can lead them to all sorts of wrong ends.
I hope it’s clear that I don’t mean for the other players to always get a perfect accounting of the game space - because I don’t - but they should get reliable, useful information that helps them devise realistic responses to their circumstances.
As the narrator and GM, we have a responsibility to accurately and truthfully convey the particulars of the world to our tablemates. We should be careful to avoid lying, misrepresenting, or deceiving other players. It is (typically) not deceptive to describe some unfamiliar object in vague terms, as long those terms are still accurate. A hardened adventurer probably wouldn’t recognize a modern ceiling fan and assume it is some devious trap, so we would not describe it to their player as “a ceiling fan” - this would give away the anachronism - when we could call it a “bladed fixture” - which it is! - and induce both caution and a desire to investigate.
There is a lot of room for nuance and expansion here. The goal of this is help ease the process of session prep and improve the results of that preparation. As ever, if you find something I’ve said worthy of commenting on: please do! This is site is structured as a forum specifically because we need more places that we can co-develop our skills and processes.