Are you a new Dungeon Master looking for a way to bring in some epic immersive play into your game but don’t know where to start? Are you an experienced DM that is looking for a trick to really elevate your game to the next level? Consider focusing on bringing in the 5 senses to your game descriptions. This alone can turn an “OK” DM’ing style into one that players really rave about and compliment. I’ve seen it happen!
In this guide, we’ll talk about our #1 tip for really immersing the players at your table. Ready? Let’s talk about bringing in the five senses.
If you’re a player or DM and really love the idea of bringing in awesome descriptions to make your game more epic, check out our related article on 8 Tips for Better Combat Descriptions
Using the Five Senses to Create Immersion in Your D&D (Or other Tabletop) Game
We’ll talk about creating immersion in the context of Dungeons and Dragons, but this guidance is really system and setting agnostic. This works for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, wild west, or anything in between. The most effective way to start really making a difference in how life-like your game sessions feel is in the use of the five senses in your descriptions. This minor change can really be the difference of your players receiving a briefing on what’s going on, compared to really feeling and sensing what is going on in your story. The best part is that this little shift is easy to incorporate.
The difference between using additional senses to describe the action, or the scene that the characters find themselves in, or just describing what they see is profoundly different. Let’s look at this by reading through two introductions:
“Your characters sidle up to the bar at the inn, it’s a bit crowded.”
Vs.
“Your characters sidle up to the bar at the inn. Dusk is just setting outside and the fire in the center of the in is roaring hot. It warms your bones to be near it. The sounds of hand symbols fill the air as the minstrel plays them in the corner and the smell of well-cooked boar fills your nostrils. The crowds are coming in and it’s getting quite boisterous.”
There are a lot of differences between the first scene setting and the second. Firstly, the more complex description really brings you in to the scene and you can almost feel yourself going from the 3rd person view of the character to the first person as you can imagine what it would be like to take in the sights, sounds, smells and heat from the scene. The first statement was easier to write, sure, however the more complex statement was not very hard. My process was to simply think of a tavern, then think of what additional senses can I bring to the description to really help the players experience this place.
The Awesome Byproduct of Being Descriptive as a DM is That it Sets the Tone for Players to Do the Same
If you follow the method described here and really bring in some captivating sensory input to your description, you can really set the tone and you may be surprised to see your players tending to follow suit. It’s much easier to have the bard describe the tune he adds, and what his instrument sounds like in this kind of first-person mode, then it is when he is reacting to an intro made in summary mode. Give your players bullet point descriptions and they will give you bullet point actions that they want to take. Set the tone with your players with immersive, interesting descriptions and they might just follow suit.
But I’m Not Really Good at All That Flowery Language Stuff
This may all sound nice, but how do we put it into action? Fancy language has never been your thing, and it sounds hard to do, right? Wrong.
It’s simple… there’s just a single mantra to add to your repertoire. When describing the scene that your players are entering, ask yourself how can I describe what is happening to the party by incorporating at least one more sense other than sight. Smell, hearing, taste or touch can all work… and some will work better than others depending on the scenario. Frequently adding more than just what the players see to your oratory may make worlds of difference. This works on encounter setup and on actions in and out of combat too.
Immersive Examples
Let’s create a single example scenario that we’ll reuse a few times to demonstrate how we could incorporate them into our descriptions to make our encounters more awesome. We’ll say that the party has been through this grueling backdrop of experiences:
-Has fallen hundreds of meters underground into a cave system and has been
-Has been swimming through underground rivers and lakes
-Have been going for 30 hours without food or rest and are exhausted
-Has come across an underground entrance to what appears to be an abandoned citadel.
-They go to open the door to see what is inside…
Adding Smell (and Sight)
“As you open the door, your nostrils are filled with the stench of rotting flesh. You feel the gag reflex instinctively as the odor reaches you and your system wants nothing of it. You look to your right, and your left and see large mounds of corpses with man-sized grubs crawling on and nibbling on the piles.”
Adding smell here gives an element of immersion. Beyond just understanding what is in front of the characters, this gives your players a chance to really kind of feel and sense what the characters may be experiencing.
Adding Touch
“You reach for the door; the bars and handles are cold
Like
Taste (and some touch)
“You open the door and there is a very surprised, very hospitable halfling woman there. Oh my! Welcome to my inn! What are you doing here? Please, drink this.” (Assuming the player drinks) “The taste of cinnamon is pleasant at first and then almost painful. It burns down your throat and as you feel the urge to spit it out, you feel your wounds closing, feeling great relief.”
Taste is a tricky one, because when we are experiencing dangerous situations and wanting to crank up the immersion in those moments… taste is not often a good option. However, given the right opportunity, taste be a great tool for bringing players into the moment.
Hearing
“You pull on the iron bars of the door. It doesn’t budge at first. As you put your weight into it more it gives way… creaking loudly and echoing through the cavernous chamber. (I would make my best creaky door noise here.)
Sight
We almost always are already describing what the characters see as their primary way of perceiving what’s going on. We won’t elaborate on this one.
Putting it all together
So, which of the five senses are the best ones to use in your encounters?
Is there a such thing as over-doing it with the descriptions?
One concern you might have is overdoing it? Is there a point where over describing the details of what is going on becomes too much? Probably. The key is to use sensory detail to captivate instead of to bore. You can get a good feel for how your players are reacting to your descriptions by just looking around the table. Are they leaning in when you are? Are they hanging off your every word? Awesome! Keep doing what you’re doing! Are they looking away? Grabbing and tapping on their phones or interrupting you? Then it may be too much detail for the player at hand. If you focus on practicing ways to bring in sensory detail and incorporating it into your descriptions, and trying to really captivate your players, you’ll get the hang of it in no time and your game will feel more epic and engaging.
Where do I start?
Getting started with more immersive descriptions is easy. Just start by trying to add one non-sight sensory description to every environment you describe in your next session. Then, try peppering it into combats and adventuring encounters.
What do You Think ?
Have any thoughts or questions? Please feel free to leave them in the comments below.