DEV-TALK 002: Show VS. Tell
Okay These Are Fun to Make
I'd only played a handful of sessions before I started DMing, a factor that I think heavily influenced not only my style for running games but also in the type of content that I create. At that time (about a decade ago) I'd just finished writing what only in the strictest sense could be called a novel, creating the first ideas and locales that would evolve into my homebrew world of Cealla. This would come in handy, because I didn't know ANYTHING about any of the standard Wizards of the Coast settings; unlike my brothers who wanted me to run a game for them. While I was (and remain) rather insecure about my writing, a one-shot I ran where I didn't know who Jarlaxle was quickly shot up the list of fears for running a game, and I decided I'd run my first game in a world of my own making. My logic, however naive at the time, was that I could never misremember or make a lore mistake if I was the one who made it!
Welcome to Cealla!
I have since seen the error in my ways, as the other side of the homebrew coin is of course MAKING all of this lore that you must reference. Which you over time will partially forget, and your lovely players will need to correct/remind you of the lore that you made. Luckily for me, I fell in love with the worldbuilding process so it became an added bit of fun to the game instead of a drain. Over time I got to play more D&D instead of simply running it, and I began solidifying the style of games I liked. I enjoyed (as a player and DM) games with a focus on roleplay and character development/stories, favoring lots of descriptions and art to really immerse yourself in the game and its setting. This of course bled into my first attempts at making neighborhood setting guides, as I thought a lot of this added detail and description would really help ground various locales or moments.
As I started testing a lot of my own content on my players however, I quickly found myself struggling to get through it all. I began feeling like I was reading a script, not setting the scene. While so much of TTRPGs is spoken and in the minds of the players, I now feel like you can end up 'telling' versus 'showing' and taking the reins on descriptions is a sure-fire way to do that. Now this isn't to say you can't get very detailed, or occasionally really embellish a moment or scene with some extra exposition. What I am saying though is that reading a large block of text that describes a scene AND players actions within it too much can feel more Tell than Show. In addition to taking a more agnostic approach to skill challenges & design (a topic I'll write more on next time I swear) we've focused on re-editing a lot of our descriptions and scene setters in the hopes of finding that sweet spot of detail and descriptors for DMs like me that want that immersion, but don't want to lose their player's attention in the process.
Lesson Learned
Written or well thought out descriptions can do a lot to set the tone for your game, or bring an added layer of immersion to it. But if you're someone who likes to write or can get lost in the process, less is almost always going to be more when it comes to describing scenes. A combination of an opening paragraph with a few one line descriptors/inspirations will go very far in having your players ask about the location or event. Let your players explore the scenes, and use your description to Show them what they're interacting with versus Telling them what they did!
