HEARING is the Broken Stat

Just wanted to add a little story here. I played with a GM who did not do any voices, had barely any music, but had one of the best vocabularies I'd have ever heard. 

You do not need accents, music, or SFX to create verisimilitude. You need any form of immersion, and a good vocabulary or vernacular to do so. Language is the medium of this game, first and foremost, and hence optimizing for language (for most of us, it is hearing, for sign language it's visual, but it works the same) is integral to immersing your players in the world. There are many practical ways to do it, but I'll go through three main ones - using tips from the previous blog posts, the way the GM above does it, and the way that I do it. Before we go through the solutions however, let's create a sample.

I ran a game of Andrew Kolb's Wonderland today, so I'll be using the Mad Hatter's tea party as an example. In reality for this game, I'll be honest, I showed a picture of the tea party, and it described more than I could in words, but for the sake of this exercise, let's use this as an example.

Now imagine this visual is in your head with more details than this picture can provide. The most basic thing to say is,

There is a long table with tea cups and pots of tea. The Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Dormouse are sitting, staring at you.

Now grab a pencil or open your notes app, and let's try this out together.

Use Senses

From the previous blog posts, the easiest thing to do immediately go through the five senses. We've already mentioned what we see, but we can easily add more such as,

The tea cups are a striking pink, and the stools are haphazardly placed. The March Hare is focused on the tea, the Dormouse asleep, and the Mad Hatter's shocked face stares intensely.

Or you could describe the items in the opposite manner to give a different feel,

The table cloth and teacups are a matted bland color, and the three hosts are dull and forlorn. 

Easily, this changes the feel of the scene, by simply give one or two more descriptive sentences.

Now work through the senses - I like to visualise a head, and work my way top down. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and touch last. In practice, it would look like this, repeating the above quote,

The tea cups are a striking pink, and the stools are haphazardly placed. The March Hare is focused on the tea, the Dormouse asleep, and the Mad Hatter's shocked face stares intensely.

Just seconds ago, you heard them singing a song about "Unbirthdays", that turned into silence the moment their eyes met yours.

The smell of every tea you can think of, Earl Grey, Green, or Camomile hits your nostrils, creating the faint taste of hot water with leaves at the tip of your tongues.

The silence is punctuated by the cool breeze in the air.

Now we've gone through all 5 senses, and easily created a paragraph. 

"BUT BUT BUT HOW DO I DO THIS ON THE FLY MAN". The sad answer is practice. Load up your google images, or free image websites and look for scenes. Many people use Pinterest or the myriad of art websites, and just turn those images into words, like what we did with the tea party above. Screenshot a beautiful scene from a movie or TV show and describe it. One a day, try not to spend more than 5 minutes on it. If you're spending more than 5 minutes, you're not training the improv part of your brain. In fact, if you could spend less than 2 minutes, that's optimal. If you're describing something for more than that to a party, I'm not sure you've still got their attention (for most cases, I know you describing kings and queens out there can captivate your audiences forever).

Same thing for the following two tips - daily repetition is key, until it's automatic. Try to do it for 3 weeks, and you'll see great improvements, some automation will happen. 

Vocabulary Method

The GM above at the start of this post had one of the best vocabularies I had ever heard. Some words are just MORE than their synonyms. The easiest example is "big". We have big, huge, large, enormous, gargantuan, colossal, immense, gigantic, oversized, hefty, and to be honest, it could go on for quite a while. The way you say things also affect how they feel; colossal sounds big but CAAAAAAWWWLossal sounds bigger. 

Synonyms are a great place to start, but expanding your vocabulary is also great. For instance, "petrichor" is one of my favorite words to use because it's pretty and it describes something so specific - "the pleasant, earthy scent that fills the air when rain falls on dry soil or rock.". Many people will know this word, sure, but most people don't actually use it often. 

I like to pick what I call "anchor words". Borrowing this term for "anchor text" which are hyperlinked texts on websites, Anchor Words are a special word that you wanna use in your next campaign. For instance, I'd write a post-it with "petrichor" on it, and use it repeatedly until I can't forget what it means (usually this is like 3 to 5 sessions). Then change the word out. 

BUT BUT HOW DO WE FIND COOL WORDS MAN??? Easy. scryfall.com/. Just click on random card. Like 20 times. One of my favorite cards is "Verdant Catacombs" - so I started using Verdant way more. It's a great place to get names for characters too. You could read more books too, that's always a great place. 

The "Happy Unbirthday" songs were nauseogenic (to cause nausea or the feeling of nausea), and the amphoric (sound of blowing into a bottle or something similar) bellowing was earsplitting. There was an immediate stifle to the music the moment your eyes met the Hatter's, with his two friends, Dormouse and March Hare beside him. The table was littered with kaleidescopic (changing patterns) tea cups and table cloths. 

The main issue with this method is that it can become quite pretentious, so unless you're with a bunch of english (or other language) majors, I'd keep this down to one or two words each session so you don't end up sounding like a prick. 

The Vernacular Method

This however is my go to method. It is not 100% reliable, since it doesn't use standard language, but instead relies on players being exposed to pop culture. TLDR; if you're running an arena fight game to the death, I'd describe it as "like the hunger games". It usually starts with "you know that scene from [movie/tv show] where [character] does [action]?". 

This is heavily reliant on you being familiar with pop culture and consuming a lot of media, but also that your players have consumed similar media. Lord of the Rings is a great place to start, but there are many sci-fi and fantasy shows that will provide you with beautiful imagery. 

For our example, you could go with "more disney" or "more live action", but you could also quote other movies and TV shows with opulent tea parties, like Bridgerton. Relying on this purely however is a big risk. What if there's a player who hasn't seen Bridgerton? This is where I'd outsource some brain cells to the players who have seen Bridgerton, and simultaneously use the scene in my head to jump into the previous two methods. 

The table looks like that tea party scene from Bridgerton. Oh, you didn't watch that show? Imagine an opulent (extremely rich/luxurious) tea set, numbering in the dozens with chips and cracks eroding it's beauty. The teas are a hodgepodge of scents bombarding your olfactory senses and taste buds. You would enjoy the breeze if not for the excessive humidity in the air.

Some words I always appreciate are words that display more than just one meaning - "chips and cracks" for instance can also evoke the sounds of clanging cups together, even though it is not intended. 

THAT'S ALL FOLKS

That was longer than intended, so try it out, and see how it goes! If you're a player, this is a great way to describe your spells, abilities, and cool shit that you can do. Instead of "I do a flip and kick and punch like this", pull a "remember that scene in Spiderman: Homecoming where he...."... you get the idea! 

Who's awesome? You're awesome.