How to properly build a scene

This is just a random bit of advice I decided to just throw up on Patreon instead of throwing it somewhere in the website. I hope you enjoy, it'll go public 2 weeks after this is posted... so you enjoy this semi-exclusive content!  - Stephen

Describing, or building, a scene for your players is where you create the immersion. There are several things involved, and there have been several great blogs that have detailed specific things over other things. Today, I'm going to touch on a few major points, and I'm not even going to dither!

The Senses

When you are creating a scene, remember that there is more to describing than just what your eyes can see. For example, when describing a city street you can describe the cracked flagstones, the muddy peasants pushing carts of lettuce and the squat buildings made of mud and wood hanging close to the streets... But you have more than one sense. You have several, and far more than the five senses that you were taught way back when in pre-school, those are just the basic senses... the ones that small little minds can understand, but fully developed brains are capable of handling the other types of senses.

The other four basic senses besides sight are Hearing, Smelling, Taste, and Touch. These should all be used in your descriptions when appropriate. In our example above, I've described a few basic things you might see. But what might you hear on these busy streets? 

The sound of raised voices comes out from one vendor stall, someone is unhappy about the costs of a meatpie. The sounds of horse hooves rapidly striking cobblestones comes from behind you, and you must quickly move out of the way of a horsedrawn carriage, it's steel band wheels striking sparks against the cobblestones. Off in the distance, you can hear a bard tuning their instrument and booming great tales of ancient heroes. 

So now, we dealt with what you might hear. What about smells? Smells are incredibly important for really making yourself feel immersed in the world. You can describe the smells of a bakery, or maybe the passing alley smells of dung and worse. Smells can be a great way of targeting specific emotional centers of the brain without having to describe gore and worse. 

Describe how a body has decayed, and how it becomes all-consuming and you can't think because of the stench. You don't need to tell the players, unless it is incredibly important, that the person's intestines were ripped open, you can describe to the players that the smells of fecal matter permeate the air, that this body has been lying in the baking sun and smells like it as well. Players can start filling in with their own imagination what a body might look like at that point so long as you provide some basic input like it is a tiefling or a dwarf with dried, caked blood around it.

And that's another thing, sometimes you can hear or smell something far sooner than you could see something. Keep that in mind when they are exploring some ruins. If you know there is a fight up ahead, describe the clashing of swords and the yelling. If they just open the door and see massive combat, they'll be confused about why they didn't hear it first. 

Apart from hearing, seeing and smelling you have two more senses that are a bit more niche. You aren't always going to be able to touch something or be able to taste something. You probably don't want to taste a lot of things too begin with! But remember those senses! When a player eats something, describe its taste to them. Hot, oily meat juices or sweet and succulent cakes. It all goes to creating an atmosphere for them to be immersed in.

You can also describe taste as in you taste something foul in the air. How many of us have walked past a sewer entrance and tasted how foul the air is? That can be a powerful way of describing odor when you can actually taste it. 

And lastly touching. Touching is all about being personnel with it. When the players are looking at fabrics, you can describe how it feels rough for the cheaper fabric, while the more expensive fabric is soft and smooth. For the players, buying fabric could be what is cheapest, but if you want them to spend more money, take a moment to describe the feel of the fabric. This fabric feels rough and loose like it might tear easily. This fabric is soft and silky and holds firm. Descriptions can get players really into what they are shopping for.

But, that's only the five basic senses. There are a lot more you can add into your descriptions. The sense of space is your literal sense of perception. How far away are things, how do they feel when closer to you. The sense of equilibrioception is your actual sense of balance, if there is an earthquake you can describe how you are trying to keep your feet under you. Thermoception is the sense of temperature, chronoception is the sense of time passing and there are a lot more. 

When describing a scene, I found it helped me a lot to have a sticky note with these questions on it:

• What do they See?
• What do they Hear? 
• What do they Smell?
• What do they Feel?
• What do they Taste?

Layering your descriptions

But, there is more to describing a scene than just the senses. You also need to know how to layer it properly. Too often do I see descriptions in officially, published books who put the source of excitement as the first thing in the description box. Your players aren't listening to you when they hear something that will catch their focus, and they will tune out everything else you will say or immediately interrupt you. 

You must first layer your descriptions. This mean, you must decide what is important and save it for last, while putting everything else in front of it. When describing your setting, don't immediately blurt out that someone is being attacked, you want to describe the location first and then at the very end, describe that someone is being attacked. Its a bit misleading to bury something so important for the last thing, but it is for the good of your environment and for your players. 

Let's describe a scene. We will say that there is a graveyard and someone is being chased by a pack of skeletons and we will try to incorporate a few more senses than just what they see. 

As you are walking through the graveyard, the sky overhead is dark with just a few stars peaking through the heavy fog, and the light of the new moon meekly shining down. Scraggly trees dot the landscape, and the cracked, old headstones of the long dead stick out of the ground like rocks. The thick fog distorts the noises around you, and clings tight to your skin, its chill, wet air sticking to you. Off in the distance you can hear yelling, but the fog makes it difficult to see very far. 

A tingle creeps down your spine, something isn't right. And then a small child can be heard, her screaming echoing through the fog. She can then be seen through the thick fog, she is running, terrified of something in the dark. You can hear the panic in her screams, and they are quickly running to you. Out of the fog are strange shapes lumbering towards you, and the stench of death follows them. 

Now, in this scene we've described, we started very far out. We first told the players where they were, a graveyard, and then described things from a very wide angle, and then began swooping in closer to the heroes. 

During movies, they have what are establishing shots. These shots are very far out, but they allow the viewers to see where they are, and that should be included in your descriptions. You want to start out wide from the party and describe the general environment around them. Then, you start pulling in closer to them and start adding in more details that are immediately apparent to them. As you are tightening your focus, you can begin describing the taste of the fog, or how it creates the echoes of sound around the party. 

Once you are finished describing the closer area to them, you can start describing how their body feels while in this environment. Is it cold? Is it wet? How do they feel? Is another sense taking part? In the description, I touched on the sense of foreboding. They just know something bad is about to happen. Once I was finished focusing tightly on the characters, I only then described the action happening before them. If I had described the girl running first, no one is going to stop and think about the fog or the moon or the cool air. 

The only thing on their mind is the girl, and they are likely to immediately interrupt your description to go save the girl... which is a good thing! In so much that saving people is good. Interrupting and breaking the immersion is not a good thing, we want to weave a story and to do that, you have to set the groundwork. 

But, that isn't to say that you have to always describe the establishing shot every time. If your party is checking out the 5th room in a large house, you don't need to describe the look of the entire house in every description. When they first arrived, you describe the house. On the 5th room, you are describing that room with the occasional callbacks to the wider focus of the house. Like, if you described the house as old and leaky, in the 5th room you can describe the wet damage on the wood floors, or that you can hear the drip-drop of water dripping in from a window. 

You want to call back to the main flavor of the house, but you don't want to keep describing it over and over. 

And that's all! I just wanted to share about how to properly build and describe a scene, as I've been trying out new podcasts and it frustrates me to no end when they immediately describe little suzy being attacked and the party immediately interrupts them to go save little suzy. Its important to save little suzy, but she isn't going to die during your description because time is controlled by you, the DM, describing the scene.