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Narrative Techniques

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 31
As the GM, you are the one and only conduit for the players to learn about their situation in the game. If you forget to describe something, the players quite rightly feel cheated. If you focus your description on an object, they sense that it might be important. As a result, your choices on how you convey information are crucial to your game’s success.

Description

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 31
The first thing to know is that there are such things as being too loud and too quiet as the GM. If you spend the whole game talking, with players barely squeezing in hit and damage information, you’re likely overbearing and boring your players. But just as dangerous is the GM that’s too quiet; if you’re intimidated or underprepared, you won’t have enough description to really give the players a sense of place, and one room of the castle or dungeon will feel pretty much like another.

There are ways to get across evocative information without writing out reams of text ahead of time. For instance, you might write down three or five words to describe each room, and then riff on those when the time comes to describe it. The words “purple tapestry, enormous fireplace, owlbear pelt on floor” set up a very different room than “bloodspattered walls, black candles, rusty manacles.” In each case, you’ve got enough to fix an image in the players’ minds, without going overboard on description.

Once you have that, you’ll probably also want to add any pertinent notes on treasure, unusual terrain or interactive elements (such as a well or a dangerously weak support stanchion), or hidden terrain elements like traps or secret doors.

This same approach works well for NPCs, though in most cases you need more than just physical description. If you boil it down, most NPCs need a name, a speaking style, a general appearance, weapons and armor, and a motivation or goal. If you have all those, it’s often possible to play a roleplaying scene without generating further stats for the NPC.

Spotlight

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 32
There are many in-game tricks that a GM can use to convey information or rework elements of his game, including those mentioned above. The most powerful technique, though, is simply describing a monster, person, or item in detail. Anything that a GM devotes playtime to rises in the awareness of the players.

In most cases, that just means mentioning an item more than once. Players pick up on GM references very quickly. If you want a particular character to draw the party’s attention, mention them as someone they see when they return to a particular location. Anyone they see more than once, or anyone they “notice” because the GM tells them they notice them, is bound to get extra scrutiny from experienced players. Of course, less experienced players might not pick up on it, and it’s certainly okay to go from mentioning something to the more direct, “This guard seems to want something from you,” or even “That painting seems bigger than the others, and the frame makes it look more important.”

The point of using the GM spotlight is to get the action moving again. Be brutally obvious only if you must, but don’t let the adventure derail just because someone failed a Perception roll.

Backstory

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 32
In-world continuity and stories from a setting’s history are usually a GM’s darling—and sheer boredom for the players. No one wants to hear the GM drone on about events from centuries ago, or the complex relationships of NPCs, or elements of the setting’s culture that have nothing to do with the adventure at hand. This historical material is justified only in two particular cases:

When the players ask about it or show interest
When it’s relevant to the adventure

In the second case, relevant doesn’t mean “the GM thought it was interesting.” The lore actually needs to matter in the present day, and help a player make a decision at some point in the adventure. If the backstory never matters to the adventure outcome, then it’s best ignored.

Cliffhangers

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 32
Leaving the outcome of any suspenseful moment in doubt is a time-honored technique from the early days of movies and literature, and the same trick works just as well for RPGs. When time’s running out, and the party is ready to wrap up for the week’s game, it’s always nice to leave them wanting more. The idea is to present just enough of a hint to make the party curious how events turn out, without requiring them to immediately roll initiative. Some ideas include:

An injured NPC claws his way out of a nearby passage
A messenger arrives with bad news just as the party thinks all is well
A monster bursts in on the party
The party is falsely accused
A villain arrives to gloat
A defeated foe shows up prepared to settle old scores

The point is that a new plot thread starts as soon as the old ones drop, and if you’re still in the middle of a story, freezing the frame on the cusp of a battle or huge revelation keeps player excitement high all the way until the next session.

Cut Scenes

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 32
When you flash from the main party scene to a secondary view (a lone PC scouting, or events happening somewhere else entirely) you can create tension by flipping back and forth between the two. This works especially well if one scene is fraught with danger and mayhem, or if there’s a race against the clock.

While this might seem like an ideal way to handle split parties and introduce historical events, it doesn’t work for all groups. Impatient players might want to “get back to the adventure” rather than learn about events happening 1,000 miles away.

Flashbacks

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 32
Like cut scenes, flashbacks pause the action to show the party pertinent information from another time. The best use of a flashback is usually one of the exact same location, but much earlier. The sight of blood on a throne room floor might trigger a flashback to a murder scene, or a magical phrase spoken by the vizier might kick off the memory of a fight to bind a genie.

Better still, the flashback could feature the PCs as earlier heroes whose failure led to the present calamity: the tomb raiders who set loose the Lich Lord, or even guards who failed as the prince was assassinated. Above all, keep it short—flashbacks have very specific uses, and a single scene in this style is usually plenty to get the point across.

Foreshadowing

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 33
The best payoff is sometimes the one that takes a long time to set up. The henchman hired at 4th level who betrays the party at 7th level is a long con, but it can have a huge impact if you’ve foreshadowed the betrayal in a way that seems obvious in hindsight (but which is tough to figure out ahead of time).

More practically, foreshadowing is often a clue that drops one or two sessions before the event you’re foreshadowing occurs. Some possible techniques:

Meeting a villain before anyone knows he’s a villain
Fortune-telling with a Harrow Deck
Telling the paladin that a certain town seems dangerous, even heretical
Having a madman complain about a certain locale or event in an over-the-top way
Having a sharp-eared PC hear something suspicious
Introducing omens and portents, such as dead birds or fiery comets

The idea is to make the foreshadowing creepy or unsettling, and vague enough that it doesn’t allow the party to prevent the foreshadowed event. The sense of horror when a PC realizes that he could have stopped something if he’d only put the pieces together sooner is a highly effective emotion, and one that roots the PC firmly in the game world.

When done right, foreshadowing ties in heavily with the idea of continuity. Instead of inventing a new villain every game, why not bring back an old one—appropriately leveled during his time away, of course—who already has reason to hate the PCs? Or you could throw a twist into the storyline by making the sweet maiden they saved in the first adventure turn out to be the major villain of the campaign. Such recurring figures make it feel like all the events in your campaign and even your world are somehow tied together, the story leading to some grand and inevitable conclusion.

Secrets

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 33
Sometimes a player may split off from the group, or you might want to give information secretly to a certain player because of a successful Perception check. Perhaps an NPC only trusts one character enough to impart her dangerous secret, or the players suspect a traitor in their midst. Similarly, sometimes a player may seek to give you information privately, especially if she’s working on her own secret agenda or a rogue attempting to steal from her companions. In instances where you need to box out most of your party, there are several options.

Simply taking the player aside and leaving the room, or passing a note, is perfectly adequate, but knowing another player is getting secret knowledge often eats at other players and can tempt even the most steadfast gamer into metagaming. Talking to the player in question between game sessions is a far safer option, but isn’t always possible. Though there are any number of sneaky ways to let a player know something important without alerting the rest of the party—for instance, covertly sending them a text message if you allow cell phones at the table—in general the best way to handle secrets is to either flat-out ask your players to respect the fact that they don’t know a given piece of information, or—better still—manipulate the game to avoid the need for intraparty secrets altogether. And remember that any time you spend with one player is time you aren’t spending with the rest.

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