Using a few time-honored narrative techniques, you can immerse your players in your world and bring the game to life.
When you roleplay and narrate with enthusiasm, you add energy to the game and draw your players into the world. Encourage the players to describe their characters’ actions, then incorporate their narration into your accounts of the characters’ successes and failures.
Keep your descriptions short and evocative. Focus on the more important information to keep players’ interest and to highlight important clues and details. Players need to know about significant features their characters can perceive—especially things like monsters in a room—before they decide what to do. Allow your players to ask follow-up questions, and provide additional description as needed.
Bring a place to life by adding touches of atmosphere, such as a lingering smell of ash, tiny beetles skittering along the dungeon floor, or blue flowers blossoming in the otherwise desolate and gloomy graveyard. Pick a couple of senses (sight, hearing, smell, touch, or taste) to highlight.
Describe changes in the environment to direct your players’ attention. For example, a bird alighting on a gravestone might draw the characters’ attention to it.
Good narration invites the players to examine details of the environment that lead to encounters or important information. Anything you describe with extra, subtle details draws the players’ attention. Give them just enough to invite further exploration, but don’t create the equivalent of a flashing neon sign reading “This way to adventure!”
When using narration to guide your players, keep the following in mind:
Distinguish Options. When presenting options to players, add details to distinguish the options. Should the characters take the left path or the right path? Perhaps the left path smells of rot and decay, while the faint sound of lapping water comes from the right. These details give players more information to make an informed decision without explicitly telling them where to go.
Don’t Limit Options. In general, let the players use the information they’re given to decide what they want to do. Don’t put unnecessary limitations on the characters’ actions. That said, it can be helpful (especially with new players) to offer suggestions: “You can go through the door, search the chest, or look down the shaft.” Just make sure to finish by saying, “or anything else you can think of!”
Don’t Assume Character Actions. Don’t assume actions on the characters’ part. For example, don’t say “You step into the room and look up” unless the player has already told you that’s what their character is doing.
In the course of an adventure, the players and their characters will uncover information that was previously unknown to them. Make sure the information they need to complete the adventure is obtainable.
Don’t hide important secrets or discoveries in places where the characters aren’t likely to uncover them. Make sure they can’t miss an important secret or discovery simply by failing an ability check, not talking to the right person, or not looking in the right place.
See also “Perception” in this chapter for more advice on hidden secrets in adventures.
When one character separates from the rest of the group, it’s usually OK to let the rest of the players know what happens, assuming the separated character will update the rest of the party when they’re reunited. You might need to remind the other players that their characters aren’t present, so they can’t offer advice or information to the lone character.
Sometimes, though, you’ll want to give information to just one player. It might be information you think the character won’t want to share with the rest of the party, perhaps something related to elements of the character’s history that are still secret. In this case, you can use one of these methods to deliver that information:
Aside to Player. Pull the player into another room, or have the other players leave the room. This approach is best if there’s a whole scene that plays out with just one character involved. Try to keep these scenes brief so other players don’t get bored or feel left out.
Secret Message. If you just have a simple piece of information to convey, you can whisper to the player, pass a note to them, or send them a text or a direct message.