What's a good length for descriptions in a campaign?

[Chiron]

So I've just started writing out the first sessions for my campaign but I'm wondering a little about what length my descriptions should be. I'm verbose at the best of times and I don't want to leave the party thinking they're listening to the reading of a novel.

So what's a good length for a campaign introduction in terms of word-count and/or time to speak whenever I'm doing the descriptive thing?
What about (time/word-count) for descriptions of the following:
A thorp, village, or city?
The scene of an encounter?
A minor NPC?
A major NPC?
A room with a hidden, but important, clue?
The Villain's lair?
The introduction to a campaign?

[xPANCAKEx]

being verbose can take some of the fun out of it for players - but it depends how much prodding they need to get going



A thorp, village, or city?


thorp - not long. Like a brief sentence or two mentioning the inhabitants, and maybe the village tavern if there is one. Thorps are usually what you'd call a "one horse town" so unless anything really stands out (and it would in a thorp), then leave it brief until they start poking around. These are the kind of places where you can take in 95% of the town at first glance

village - mention surroundings (is it a farming village? nestled next to a stream? on a road to a larger town? near a mine? a layover between places along a well travelled trade route?) to give it a sense of why it grew from being just another 1 horse town. What keeps people there? mention obvious local services (blacksmith, general store, temples etc), and anything that would initially grab a persons attention

town/city/metropolis - what it looks like on approach. obvious points of initial interest (no city would leave the gate unguarded). Towns reputation. Local power struggles.



A minor NPC?


Basic AT BEST - rough description of clothes and hair and what they carry (eg: red haired man in peasants clothes carrying a burlap sack). They don't need his life story, infact it would be silly to do so



A major NPC?


Basic - but give the PCs something to draw their attention. does this major NPC have a rep they'd know about?



A room with a hidden, but important, clue?


something to draw their interest (a painting maybe? a writing desk), but you don;t want to lead the player by the nose. A room has a purpose. Every room should have a random assortment of stuff in it. its up to them to do the hardwork, not up to you to feed it to them.

If they dont find the clue either you're making it too cryptic, or they're just lazy. Either way, a party rogues job should be to search most places.

its all down to context and how you plan to hide such clues



The Villain's lair?


Give them a sense of menace.
Why would a villain have this as his lair?
Villains are not comic book 2-demensional. An evil tyrant will not have rape, torture and killing out in the open (unless its one of those 'special' days they put on to show the populace whos boss) - so don't overstate it unless the person really is overtly evil (like a cleric to an evil god).
Servants of villains are either going to be ruled by similar goals, or through fear... some servants may even help if asked nicely enough. Or they may double cross the PCs?



The introduction to a campaign?

Give them a flavour of the world.
Why the group are together?
Don't make the intended goal of your campaign TOO overt or else its a case of "ok, so we're going to overthrow that guy and get the l00t, free the people, blah blah blah"

Really an introduction should be just enough to get people excited to get through the first few sessions so they get hooked week after week as things unfold

[shadzar]

First throw out any concern of word count. If you have to worry with word-count it is probably already too big for the game, or should be handed out as a, well, a handout.

If you want to read something to the players a good rule of thumb is that it should be 2 small paragraphs for major things, one small paragraph for minor things, and about a half paragraph (2-3 sentences) for minor minor things that need a good description.

You want to give enough information about what is going on, without giving it all away up front.

Make yourself some bullet points that you want to cover that needs to be known at the start. Make sure to pick all the ones that must be known before continuing, and you can leave some thing out for later that they can pick up along the way and in conversation with random NPCs they may meet along the travels.

city/etc = 2 small paragraphs detailing major things the players will more than likely have to interact with. This exposition would need to come form an NPC if the player party has never been here, or can be learned prior to arraving from various people in rumors or heresay about the area.

encounter scene = few sentences. Setup up the location so they can prepare any terrain for use to a tactical advantage as well any "props" they might use while having the encounter in case of fight and improvised weaponry.

NPCs = these depend, and should be given as needed when the NPC offers this info or has reason to. You really don't have to spill the NPC backstory up front, unless such is important to hook the party into some scenario like save the dirt farmer for his crippled old wife. Players can learn this as they go along.

room = only ever described what they can immediately see, unless they actively search for something. You can hint to the person with the most wisdom, or best search ability that something about this room seems to have been overlooked should the party need something form it and neglect to find it for a bit more RP, or just make it easier to find should they just want to move on. Also you could move the plot object elswhere if it will fit another location. You rarely want to hand a party the silver platter and the item just be sitting on it each time. They need to feel as though they did something and get the reward of doing it from their own work.

lair = depends. this should stretch out over the course of the lair form entrance to final chamber. how must detail do you want into the story of the villain and the items s/he posses to be important to the character outside of that which is used to fight. Is there some item collected that may give the character more feel to them and connect in some way for the players to interact with this connection through their own characters?

Campaign intros = should be about 2 small paragraphs for something that will last, or few new characters in a new game. This gives the setup and what to expect that was not already mentioned when characters were created. You want to explain a bit about the current area of the world, and what odd info the game has outside of a standard game. So if there is a different monetary structure you will want to mention it, and not really have to worry with other thing if it is a standard society for the type of game. One feudal area is the same as the next, so shouldn't need to describe it beyond a feudal era you know.

So try to put as much info into small chunks as you can and the game will allow to let the players soak it in like a sponge as they go along. This will give more draw to the story and the surroundings. Also for those not interested in such deep details it will allow them smaller blocks of descriptions to digest before they can continue with what they prefer about the game.

Well that is just my views on it....

[Tsotha-lanti]

This is a weird question, and fundamentally unanswerable.

You're talking about tabletop, right? Descriptions should be concise (being concise does not mean you can't be evocative; good writers are both), short enough not to be boring, but long enough to tell the players what's necessary.

If you're trying to emphasize something, you describe it more. If you're trying to hammer a theme or clue through, you emphasize it. If you're trying to evoke horror, you describe more things (not necessarily in more detail, but you usually want to include textures and smells in addition to sights and sounds).

Descriptions should provide hooks - details or elements the players will ask about. You need to be able to answer these. So you need to come up with slightly more than you're going to give out without being prompted, so that you can answer when the PCs ask about something. You don't want to come up with things that will never come into play; deep backgrounds for NPCs are useless unless the PCs have some way (and some reason) to find them out (unless, of course, you feel more able to improvise and run the NPC if you know everything). You also want to leave yourself room to improvise a bit as the game goes on.

[Rapidwhirl]

Go ahead and write it as detailed as you want, and make some maps for reference. Then, when it's go time you abridge your descriptions. Depending on your players, you can either tell them everything, or sum give them a quick, accurate description. You don't want to be number 12 on this list (http://www.kaila.pl/rpg/28gm.htm), and you don't want to be number 27. Finding what works will be different for you then for me, take some time and experiment. Better yet, ask your players if they want the full description or not a few times.

Example: You enter the town known as "Mordias". This area consists of houses made of dried mud bricks, it is where the poorer citizens live. This area has larger homes made of stone and wood. This is the town square and market, most of the merchants have their wares in stalls or wagons instead of buildings. Just to the west is a guard tower and barracks where the town garrison resides. You are at the southern gate here.

Encounters take place in wilderness (which starts to look the same after awhile) or in specific places at the climax of a story. A throne room may consider more depth then the forest newly depopulated of ambushing rogues.

If the clue is hidden, then list it as a detail with everything else. If it is not an object, say decoration like a mural, or something more subtle like script on the wall, then you will have to mention it. A spot check can draw the attention of your players, and let them know that something is different about this room.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Oh, also: don't write descriptions that you're just going to read aloud to the players. This is similar to Rapidwhirl's abridging. Write descriptions for yourself - as complete as necessary - and become familiar enough with your stuff that you can describe it on the fly, improvising.

Personally, I tend to do bullet-points or keyword lists and go off that. Using cliches, tropes, and other familiar points of reference is useful, since it gives you a lot of information in very few words - but you always extrapolate from them rather than quote or tell the players "it's like X."

[Chiron]

Oh, also: don't write descriptions that you're just going to read aloud to the players. This is similar to Rapidwhirl's abridging. Write descriptions for yourself - as complete as necessary - and become familiar enough with your stuff that you can describe it on the fly, improvising.

Personally, I tend to do bullet-points or keyword lists and go off that. Using cliches, tropes, and other familiar points of reference is useful, since it gives you a lot of information in very few words - but you always extrapolate from them rather than quote or tell the players "it's like X."

Very good idea. Thanks!

[valadil]

I suck at descriptions as GM. Left to my own devices I just don't bother with them. It's something I've been trying very hard to improve on.

What I've been doing though is coming up with keywords for NPCs in the game. Sometimes the keyword will be a prop, other times a trait. A few are even characters from books or movies. Each time the group encounters an NPC I have to invoke the keyword somehow. Some examples are stern, likes bbq, and has big hat. They're just random little parts of the charicature that make an NPC more noticeable.

Anywa, you asked about word count. I wouldn't advise writing a paragraph for each object you describe. That much narration will make the game boring. Improvise around the keywords you've already decided to include. What I do is I go through each of the keywords on an object. The more important an object is, the more keywords it has. A throwaway NPC with a random name has one keyword. Someone recurring has three or four. How many someone gets should be dictated by their importance to the story. The king you meet once may only have regal while the innkeeper who feeds the group and checks in on you between adventures may have far, paternal, and inquisitive.

I've described this system only for NPCs, but it should work for locales too. My games are usually set in one city, so there isn't a lot of exploration to be done, but there are lots of people. If you wanted to show off how religious a town is, your keyword could be 'church of Pelor.' Then when the players enter that town, show how people are all hanging around the church for services, then how the church bells are ringing, then offer free healing at the church, etc.

[Totally Guy]

Although this might sound odd, use tropes.

If an npc conforms to a particular stereotype then you can communicate almost everything about that character in a couple of lines.

You meet a man all in black, he has a protuting chin, hooked nose and a black moustache.
Players know exactly who he is.

You meet a girl wearing greasy overalls with a nice smile on her face and an oversized wrench in her hand.

You meet an exotic woman wearing fur close to he skin and a cape. She stands steadfast with a staff in her hand.

The goblin seems eager to please as he smiles his ugly smiles. He bounces and squats far lower to the ground than other goblin.

Of course when you deviate from a stereotype you have to take a bit of extra time to explain but this is a sign of a healthy imagination. Your players will also have the added clue that a character that breaks a stereotype might be more significant than one that follows all a cliche.

[AslanCross]

Take the attention span of your players into consideration, but IMO, descriptions should only be limited to what the senses can tell the PCs. The rest of the information (if it is important enough for the PCs to know it) had best be in a handout so they can always refer to it.

This is especially helpful with contacts (shops/casters/other services) and magic item descriptions.

[bosssmiley]

So what's a good length for a campaign introduction in terms of word-count and/or time to speak whenever I'm doing the descriptive thing?
What about (time/word-count) for descriptions of the following:
A thorp, village, or city?
The scene of an encounter?
A minor NPC?
A major NPC?
A room with a hidden, but important, clue?
The Villain's lair?
The introduction to a campaign?

One line apiece. At most a short paragraph of a couple of sentences. Anything more is just infodump, and will either be glossed over or disregarded. Less textwall also makes it easier to use the power of imagination (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SljkCbs3eBY) to add, substract or otherwise amend things during play.

Brevity uber alles.

That said, I'm going to be an outlier. My design ideals include the one line trick/trap/hazard/monster, the one page dungeon (http://oldguyrpg.blogspot.com/2008/12/one-page-dungeon-level-templates.html) level, and the 25 word setting pitch (http://mbenign.blogspot.com/2009/03/wohoon-in-less-than-10-words.html).

[Satyr]

That question greatly depends on how eloquently you can write and describe. The better you are in description, the more you should employ this skill.
The best are brief, yet unique and thaught-inspring descriptions, but that is hard. But as always, questions of quality are more important than questions of quantity, and before your settings and support characters appears bland and repetitive, it's usually better to increase the number of details you put into the description.