Hey all!

I was wondering, when you are creating your adventures/dungeons/campaigns, how much do you write out beforehand? Do you take the time to write out exactly how you intend to describe, say a room or a cavern? Or do you just describe it on the fly as the characters encounter it? I tend to describe things on the fly because I see it in my head, but I wonder how other people prepare.

I make somewhat detailed notes which imprints the information on my “Mind Rolodex” (My version of a mind palace) so that I can just wing it. When a DM reads aloud it puts me to sleep. Plus, I like to stand/walk/act while I DM, so I usually don’t have materials right in front of me except during combat.

I usually do it on the fly, which means I have more time to prep encounters and PC's and that kind of thing.

When it comes to room description, I endeavor to be efficient ( which will astonish people who are familiar with my posts :p ).

I figure out the general atmosphere I want to project: bright and bustling market, dark and creepy cavern, hectic and chaotic battlefield.

Then present the Players with as brief a description as you can get away with to describe the overall layout, and fill in one or two sense descriptors in a manner which evokes that atmosphere:  the smell of dust, a riot of colors, and the loud barking cries of the merchants; the sounds of dripping water, deep shifting shadows, and the rich smell of mold and old rot.

The thing to remember is that the Players are filling in all the details in their own imaginations. They can't help it, it's what humans do. You don't need to be exhaustive in your description, they're already doing all the work for you.

And they can always ask for clarification, at which point you can fill in more detail on demand.

It doesn't matter if they picture different details than you are envisioning, so long as it doesn't affect their options and game choices.

Quote from Vedexent >>

When it comes to room description, I endeavor to be efficient ( which will astonish people who are familiar with my posts :p ).

I figure out the general atmosphere I want to project: bright and bustling market, dark and creepy cavern, hectic and chaotic battlefield.

Then present the Players with as brief a description as you can get away with to describe the overall layout, and fill in one or two sense descriptors in a manner which evokes that atmosphere:  the smell of dust, a riot of colors, and the loud barking cries of the merchants; the sounds of dripping water, deep shifting shadows, and the rich smell of mold and old rot.

The thing to remember is that the Players are filling in all the details in their own imaginations. They can't help it, it's what humans do. You don't need to be exhaustive in your description, they're already doing all the work for you.

And they can always ask for clarification, at which point you can fill in more detail on demand.

It doesn't matter if they picture different details than you are envisioning, so long as it doesn't affect their options and game choices.

 Quite, yes!

And specifically don’t forget smells. It is proven that nothing is more evocative to human memory than scent. By describing what the PCs smell, it “tricks” the Players to remember that smell and that will help them fill in the blanks better than any visual description of the scene I could ever give.

Quote from IamSposta >>

And specifically don’t forget smells. It is proven that nothing is more evocative to human memory than scent. 

Generally 100% true. However, I have an interesting challenge there with one of my Players: my wife ( the perennial Shadow Monk ), is anosmic. She has absolutely no sense of smell, and has never had one. It makes for some interesting conversations about what things smell like :)

Quote from Vedexent >>

Quote from IamSposta >>

And specifically don’t forget smells. It is proven that nothing is more evocative to human memory than scent. 

 Generally 100% true. However, I have an interesting challenge there with one of my Players: my wife ( the perennial Shadow Monk ), is anosmic. She has absolutely no sense of smell, and has never had one. It makes for some interesting conversations about what things smell like :)

 As a side note, most of what people refer to as “flavor” is actually scent. Imagine what food would taste like if all you could actually detect were salty, sweet, sour, bitter, umami, and spicy....

I am painfully aware of this, because of my wife.

This is why I'm the cook in the family. I like cooking, and my wife just doesn't understand spicing. Sweet and salt she gets - she eats way too much of those, because to her, that's what she can taste.

Throw in the fact that she's violently allergic to seafood, is a picky eater, can't stand the taste of alcohol, and has come to equate sour/tangy with "this has gone off and will make me sick", and meal planning is real challenge for me :)

My general mindset is, lack of prep or writing makes for weak NPCs and less vivid environments. But overprep tends to make you inflexible for the chaos that is any table. 

I use my own home brewed world- I write about cities & locations/institutions in detail, I lay out dungeons in some detail as well, I also create a reserve pool of random NPCs that be worked in as needed. 

But when it comes to the adventure/running the table I go from memory- this allows changes on the fly as players make decisions. And I can’t tell you how many times something the player has done has inspired a better idea for how an npc should behave or how an adventure rolls out.

Quote from dexterious12 >>

My general mindset is, lack of prep or writing makes for weak NPCs and less vivid environments. But overprep tends to make you inflexible for the chaos that is any table. 

I use my own home brewed world- I write about cities & locations/institutions in detail, I lay out dungeons in some detail as well, I also create a reserve pool of random NPCs that be worked in as needed. 

But when it comes to the adventure/running the table I go from memory- this allows changes on the fly as players make decisions. And I can’t tell you how many times something the player has done has inspired a better idea for how an npc should behave or how an adventure rolls out.

This right here.

Having a pool of potential ideas about game elements ( locations, NPCs, etc. ), but not moving them into actual canon until that aspect becomes relevant, presented to the Players, and enshrined in the DM notes, is a very good way to handle it.

I write out descriptions but not in the style you find in a published module. Published modules will often write descriptions of things like, "As you walk down the road, you see...." Well, how do they know the party is coming in by the road? How do they know it's daylight out? etc. So instead I will write just the raw description. I also write out monster descriptions, which are sadly lacking from most of the MM entries (they seem to assume the picture is enough).

I do a decent amount of planning for the times players enter into an enemy's lair.  This can be anything from an actual dungeon to a thief's guild warehouse.  That way maps are in place with the miniatures or tokens I need to portray the expected bad guys.

The overall plot I will do as a framework in Word.  I can edit the document at the table to make changes or put notes in.  Most social and exploration encounters are ad-libbed as it lets me sculpt the encounter based on player actions.  Often these are started from a single sentence or a few words: Merchant with stuck cart, brother has mango plantation and knows about Sea Princes...  If the PCs end up meeting him, I will put the name and description in my Contacts sheet in my campaign XLSX to keep track of it.  Everything else is just made up as I go.

I do get all monster stats done ahead of time.  I have a reference sheet in Excel that has places to keep track of spell slots, legendary/mythic action use, recharges and the like.  That way combat goes a lot faster.

I will say that, I find if I do not put in vivid descriptions as written notes, when the time comes to describe a thing, orally off the cuff I tend not to be as verbose. That is, I write better descriptions than I say... so I try to write out descriptions ahead of time.

I like to note down my main beats. Mostly to be sure I include a detail important for the adenture.

The hard part is to ensure that everything else has the same level of detail when I bring it out. Players will notice when you give details for one thing and leave them out of another.

Thanks for saying this so succinctly. This is the right place between where I've been, and where I could have gone (with a paragraph per room or encounter)

I like to do as much as I can without going overboard. 

Example is when my players came up to a raven queens temple described as.. 

Coming around the bend in the city you look to the right. Down the brick path the landscape opens up to a white temple with dark purple accents. It's surrounded by 4 medium sized towers on each corner and in the center is a round glass dome. Pine trees line the path that are well trimmed and the grass is near perfect. Flowers address the walls with scents of jasmin and rose. Walking up to the door are two black rose bushes which have hints of red at the tips of them. Smelling them simply brings a peace to the senses as the cool salty air from the ocean flows through the trees.

Gives the players enough to help imagine what they are looking at without getting overly descriptive. At least in my eyes. For others that may be too much already. Or not enough. So to each their own. 

I make an outline of how the plot runs, why the important NPCs do what they do and how should the area feel. I keep that in my mind. the most important thing for me is nothing’s canon until the players see it and even that can be modified slightly 

Quote from Vedexent >>

Having a pool of potential ideas about game elements ( locations, NPCs, etc. ), but not moving them into actual canon until that aspect becomes relevant, presented to the Players, and enshrined in the DM notes, is a very good way to handle it.

 I like doing this as well.  Using either a Google Sheets or now a Microsoft 365 Excel mainly because I can jot down notes anywhere.  Once I use it, I will fill in a lot more details and put in the adventure I used it in.

The spreadsheet approach for this was mainly so I could classify ideas in a few different categories and have a Used column marked Yes to not show used ideas any more.  That way I will not be reusing them.

Depends on what it is. I have a description of key points in the story and give them flex. Most recently I've had an airship that the party crashed. I planned for this as a possibility so I wrote out the details of the fall with some flex because I wasn't sure where they would fall.

The grapples dug deeply into the side of the ship made removal of them impossible at the moment. The remains of the attacking ship swung below The Nimbus snatching her repeatedly back and forth while racing to the mountains below. Cold winds rushed past you as clouds gave way to snow fall and the ground below became an encroaching problem. The Nimbus tried to hold up the weight but flying an entire second half of a ship under the same power just made the decent slightly more manageable. 

I had most of this written out on my last session, but the details weren't there. The crash was happening the decent happening the cause was a bit different and the landing area was changed, but for the most part it set a nice guideline for the event when it happened and kept me from stumbling in a description.

I think we're talking about two slightly different, but related, facets of the game here. 

The DM knowing the setting they want to present in detail is useful. That helps them be consistent, and they don't need to scramble when the Characters start poking around the room and the Players start asking questions. However, even here, I really like the idea of the DM keeping things fluid and adaptable. Having those details pre-planned, but being willing to change up those details on the fly, in response to the context of the game - before those details are presented to the Players ( once the Characters "see" something, it's canon and locked into stone ) - is immensely powerful.

Reading a paragraph of box text at your Players is ... less good. Players have a tendency to glaze over and forget details when you "info dump" on them.

That's why I like the approach of giving them the bare minimum of detail needed so that everyone's imagined scene is consistent in the broad strokes ( I really like roughly sketching out a not-to-scale schematic of the room on my notepad and showing the Players ), and letting the imaginations of the Players do the rest of the work.

For insignificant details - what do the lamps look like? What color are the books? What is the design is the table? What is the rug design? - everyone is probably picturing them differently, but it doesn't matter, as it has no practical impact on the Characters' actions.