A detailed, engrossing campaign setting has always been always important to me in Dungeons & Dragons. Immersion in a magical world seemed like the point of the game, or else the character classes would have names like 'Tank/Support Hybrid A' and 'Tank/Support Hybrid B' instead of 'Paladin,' and 'Druid.' The game offered a chance to sink into an all-encompassing fantasy world with its own culture and history, like stepping into the Holodeck on Star Trek, only with more dice-rolling and less chance to unleash a deadly AI. I wanted to throw myself into an epic struggle, and have my investment pay off in an emotional climax like a season finale of Critical Role. I wanted jaw-dropping revelations that hit harder because of the time I had devoted to understanding the world, like Jon Snow's discovery that Valyrian Steel can kill a White Walker.
A few years ago I had a chance to play in just such an immersive campaign. I couldn't wait. The kingdoms and legends of the Dungeon Master’s home-brewed world filled many notebooks. My fellow players had adopted accents, carefully drawn their characters' portraits, and written out complex back-stories linked to his creation. We were all in to plunge into this new world and find our fortune. Yet three minutes into the Dungeon Master's intricate treatise on the society, geography, and factions of his city-state, and his words began to fade like those of Charlie Brown's teacher. He had printed out maps and glyphs and holy symbols as visual aids and none of it mattered. I could see my fellow players' eyes wander to their phones and snacks and beer labels. They had checked out. The Dungeon Master's earnest attempt to draw us into his expansive world had done the opposite.
His words began to fade like those of Charlie Brown's teacher...
A half-hour went by before I found the immersion I sought. By that point our party was on a “missing person” case in a tavern, rolling Investigation and Persuasion checks, trying to find a Dwarf. In short, we were playing the game we came to play. All the background information presented before that moment was a waste of effort - a pre-game cut-scene we weren’t allowed to skip. Dungeon Masters – at no point during a game of Dungeons and Dragons should you find yourselves reciting facts about your setting. Your players already have plenty on their minds. The person they normally think of as Brian, for example, they are for the next three hours to think of as 'Lord Argon Havelock III.' The accent they settled on for their Gnome Ranger keeps coming out like Brad Pitt in Snatch, and they can't remember exactly what a Gloom Stalker does. A history lesson on top of all that is bound to be ignored. Having an NPC deliver the same lecture to the party “in character” isn't much better. Telling your players a story and telling them the same story in a Liam Neeson voice will achieve similar results.
Fortunately, with the wealth of resources on D&D Beyond, you can inject immersive mythology right into the game-play of a session of Dungeons & Dragons. Just introduce each element of lore in the form of an environment, object, or character your players' characters can directly interact with. Never tell your players about important events in your setting's history when an illusion spell or astral travel can give them a first-person glimpse. Need another way to bring the past to life? Tasha's Cauldron of Everything contains rules for Magic Item creation. Write up a Harry Potter-esque magical oil painting that depicts an event on a loop like a movie. Such paintings could be placed throughout your campaign world whenever past events needed to be witnessed. Several might hang in a single dungeon, revealing a larger story when viewed in sequence.
As Dungeon Master, you may give a magic item any property you like. A ring of protection might provide a vision of its last owner, or someone who died wielding it. Such a scene might flash into a player character's mind the first time they used it. Perhaps the item talks. The Dungeon Master's Guide has rules for sentient magic items that communicate through speech or telepathy. A sword can be an entertaining teacher as well as a way to inflict piercing damage. The gift of speech need not be reserved for Infinity Gauntlet-level artifacts either. There's no reason your first-level players' Rogue can't find a talking 'dagger plus one' that won't stop warning its wielder about the imminent threat of a returning ancient evil.
Keep your 'lessons' simple...
It helps when imbuing your world with a history that the past is closer to the present in a fantasy setting. If you want to teach your players about a significant battle, their characters can fight the re-animated skeletal remains of its combatants as easily as read a plaque about it. The Monster Manual and Volo's Guide to Monsters are full of undead stat blocks to provide in-game vessels for voices from the past. Ghosts and Specters give players an opportunity to encounter historical figures and fight either against them or at their side.
If retention of setting lore is your goal, keep your 'lessons' simple. Pick one aspect of your world you'd like your players to understand peradventure and use everything you've got to drive it home. For example, in my Greyhawk (Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Tales From the Yawning Portal) campaign, I wanted to introduce the concept of The Great Kingdom, which once ruled most of the world but was now a decadent ruin. My players were hired to clear out an abandoned wizard's tower from the Kingdom's golden age guarded by animated suits of armor from the era. A series of magical paintings around the tower portrayed a young woman graduating from the Kingdom's magical university centuries ago. In the tower the players could find her graduation present, a sentient, talking pearl of power that boasts of the Kingdom that created it. I introduced the common magic items from Xanathar's Guide to Everything to my campaign as examples of the lost magic of the Great Kingdom's height. At the end of the adventure, the player characters could free the young wizard herself, magically frozen for two hundred years like Captain America, full of fresh memories of her homeland and desperate to return it to glory.
Don't spend preparation time on anything else...
No matter how many pages have been written about your setting, which, in the case of the Forgotten Realms, is millions, your players can only experience it in the form of objects and persons their characters can interact with. Don't spend preparation time on anything else. For example, faction membership can help embed player characters into the conflicts of your setting. Rather than draw up lists of operatives, ranks of command, or maps of their headquarters, think about how your players will encounter this faction. Most likely it will be in the form of a single non-player character representative. Spend your prep time making that character memorable. Give them an interesting set of challenges and opportunities for your players or they may not interact with them again no matter your plans. This character should embody everything the faction is intended to represent. If you want your players to understand that the Thieves' Guild of Greyhawk controls the city government, make sure the character you create to represent them does some city-controlling! Better yet, have them give your players' characters the means to do some themselves. Authors are told the first line from a character's mouth should show a reader all they need to know about them. Faction representatives should tell all there is to know about their faction by their actions.
Finally, when thinking about immersion, never forget that one of the core joys of Dungeons & Dragons is the rush of a series of high-stakes dice rolls. Their consequences for the character that the player identifies with make those dice rolls feel like life or death- and when connected directly to the lore you want to be communicated, will make it feel just as important, too. Those tense throws of multi-sided die are the heart of the game. If your players are to care about an aspect of your setting, it must affect the stakes of those rolls somehow. If you want it to matter that the wizards of the Circle of Eight wish to control magic in Greyhawk, make them the only source of a type of magic your players rely on. Reflect it in saves, advantages, and disadvantages. Want your players to understand that Mordenkainen from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is dedicated not to fighting evil but to maintaining balance? Just telling them won’t have much of an impact, nor would having Mordenkainen tell it, no matter how good your Ian McKellan impression is. Nor would reading it off worn parchment hot from the laser printer, even if you spent a few hours covering it in dirt and running it over with your car to age it. If you want that bit of lore to help foster the fantasy world immersion that is Dungeons and Dragons at its best, have Mordenkainen give your player's Paladin a quest that embodies his goals. Perhaps they must steal a powerful item from a Good-aligned castle full of elves and unicorns, lest it makes the elves too powerful, thus upsetting the balance. The Paladin's faith, of course, forbids them to kill anyone- so make sure it leads to plenty of difficult dice rolls with monumental consequences for everyone at the table. That's the kind of thing they just might remember forever.
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A Special Thing recording artist John Roy (@johnroycomic on Twitter and Instagram) is a comedian, writer, and podcaster based in Los Angeles. He has appeared on Conan, the Tonight Show, and Sirius radio and headlined clubs and festivals across North America. His writing has appeared in Vulture, Dragon Plus and Image Comics’ Radiant Black as well as numerous tv projects including Trump Vs Bernie and Maron in Space. He co-hosts wargaming podcast Legends of the Painty Men.
Players acting like that 3 mins into a DM's blood sweat and tears like that? Toss them out and get some decent players imo...
Based on the comments of the others on this article, I must be a super blessed DM to have not one, not two, but three groups that get hyper-engaged in my setting. I've been putting a lot into the world over 16 years to make it something that is immersive without being super in-depth. In fact, I've gone back and begun paring out some more mundane details, specifically for the reason in this article. By breaking down into minutia, you set yourself up for pulling the curtain too far back.
Part of being a good DM is keeping elements of the setting close to your vest. The world is there for the players to explore. Sure, you do get those groups who just want a "Beer and Pretzels", kick in the door and kill the monsters game session, and that's totally fine! It becomes your job as the DM to come up with a world that provides a small level of detail (let's say, enough to get the characters from Quest-Giver to Dungeon), and a reason to "do the thing."
If you wish to develop a detailed setting, do it. There is a balance to how much you should reveal. If you blow the whole wad on that opening exposition, you're going to disengage players, and your hard work is in vain. Keep the details in your DM Journal, prepared for that beautiful moment when you mention a name and the Players start asking "Who is that? Why is he/she/they important? What deity is that? I've never heard of that before, what might I know about it?" With little teasers and tastes of information, you can hook players in and get them to engage the setting.
When I start a campaign, I usually start my Session Zero with a short (3-5 pages) primer that players have the option to read. The primer acts as the "Opening Exposition Monologue" mentioned in the article, but is not a forced march. It opens with two to three paragraphs about the setting, giving the players enough reason to tie themselves to the world. The remainder of it gets into some details like the "movers and shakers" of the setting. Again, the goal is not to give away too much information.
For example: One of my campaigns is set in the Golden Kingdom of Areth-Atar. The chief religion is the Golden Goddess Sytha, lady of law (A bit heavy-handed, I know, but bear with me). The kingdom is currently in flux due to the king passing without an heir to the throne. Instead, a council of nobles from each of the Duchies within the kingdom rule as stewards. The council consists of a Master of Coin, a Master of War, a Master of Magic, and a Master of Laws. Decadence eats at the kingdom like a cancer, leaving the common folk to be ground by the boots of the nobility. All the while, the kingdom is waylaid by threats both from without and within. Areth-Atar is a world in need of heroes. Who will answer the call?
Behind the scenes, as the DM, I have created a setting with a core storyline. At the same time, I also go about summarizing those threats. This is where I can create some factions, like the Redband Bandit Gang (known for their red bandanas), or the Moonfang Gnolls. Once I have some loose notes on the movers and shakers, I bring in the heavy hitters. These are the legendary beasties, major nobles, and big-time threats. For each component, I create two or three bullet points to start. This way, when the players interact with the setting, they get little snippets of information. As their curiosity is piqued, start to take some more detailed notes.
I'll use my Redband Bandits as the example here. Before Session Zero, I take the following notes in my DM Journal:
So now I have a rough faction, a leader, and some notes on where they operate, and who they might be allied with. As the players venture into the Duchy of Lun, they might encounter the Redband Bandits. Perhaps they encounter them on the road between the city of Lun and the village of Bywood. Or they hear word about bandits in the Wayside Inn along the Gold Road. However your players learn of this group, you have some rough bullet points that you can spit out. If the players start asking questions, you can then hit them with the mistique.
"I heard that their leader Rogan the Red don't bleed!"
"They say that the Redband Bandits dye their bandanas in blood."
"Rumor has it that the guards patrolling the Gold Road are paid to turn a blind eye"
So now the players have a bit of information to go on. Bare minimum, they have an enemy to bash (The bandits). If your players are into political intrigue, perhaps they venture up to the city of Lun to investigate the rumors of corruption among the patrolmen. Perhaps they seek out bounty posters for the dreaded Rogan the Red. With a couple of bullet points, you have descriptive immersion, and build a hook for the start of an adventure, or even a campaign arc involving the Redband Bandits.
As I mentioned before, it all comes down to your table, and the amount of work you and the players put in to create a story. Your mileage will obviously vary, but what matters is that everyone has fun.
I strongly agree with this one. It's great to throw in some worldbuilding here and there, but to make most elements of your world a mystery to your players, it keeps them engaged to learn more. I find that when I play as a PC, the world ends up feeling like "our" world, once we slowly uncover all the hidden details and bits of lore throughout the story.
Which is a point the article makes VERY CLEARLY -- all of those things you mentioned aren't IMMERSIVE. No matter how many voices you use, and no matter how many thrusts, parrys, ripostes or vicious decapitations you narrate ...that's not IMMERSION. It doesn't do anything to hook your pcs into the world. The WORLD has to be everything around them, everything they do, every accessory, every painting, every statue. IMMERSION isn't what they HEAR ...it's what they do and what they do it WITH. You want your players to understand the significance of a group of runic obelisks? Great ...how did you signpost that along the way? Did you give them an item that not only interacted with the obelisks, but also put them into a situation where they were able to use a spell or some such contrivance to see the obelisks working in the past? A character could *tell* them the obelisks were important ...in the past ...somehow ...and might even provide them with a passage from a book that details their fantastical use as recorded by REVERED SCHOLAR X. That's all well and good, but adventurers have LOTS of adventuring to do and they get sidetracked by things like the rogue stealing all those jelly donuts, managing to somehow shove FOUR DOZEN into his pants before getting caught and having to flee the city guard. So, if those obelisks REALLY matter then you better make sure your players are *interacting* with those obelisks in all sorts of immediate and inescapable ways.
I mean, the article definitely strikes a sort of idyllic tone in that it's just not feasible as a DM to ALWAYS have this intense a level of engagement and creation within your own world, but it definitely makes a very clear point: What a DM thinks will qualify as IMMERSION is often very different from what players actually NEED to be immersed. Your world matters to YOU ...VERY MUCH™! You're its creator; it's god; the one above all. You know every single nook and cranny, every bit of lore, every genealogy, every bit of heraldry, the properties of every artifact.
Because you're a DM and YOU love building worlds...
Players like exploring those worlds when something particular piques their interest, but what they're REALLY interested in doing is playing DnD.
And very often those are two entirely different things...
Some good tips in here, but tell you what, if you want to hook players on your immersive world, make the write ups really, really good. Draw inspiration from literature. Vary your prose and poetic forms. Add pictures. Convey the major events of your session, and connect them to the bright lines of your campaign. Emphasize the humor, but also allow depth when it makes sense. Don't make a big deal out of it, just make the write ups really, really good, and do use them in the the subsequent game sessions - if players don't remember the password for the gate to the Shadowfell, that's in the write up. Build the habit and celebrate player achievements in your write ups, and the world building will also be there, and the players who are prone to read them will become immersed. The ones who won't, won't. And that's fine.
I have no idea how to save this, so I am seeing if writing a comment will work.
"I wanted to throw myself into an epic struggle, and have my investment pay off in an emotional climax like a season finale of Critical Role."
The Matt Mercer effect strikes again...
Just a couple ideas I've tried or experienced:
1. Music - music evokes emotion at a basic level, so whether it is ambient nighttime campfire sound or epic chase music, I ensure I have some sort of music at all times during play.
2. Layers - I plant ordinary items, people, or places in my sessions that get a very base level description or attention. When players interact further, I reward with uncovering a layer that gives more detail or information that is helpful or beneficial to the character or party.
3. Handouts - sparingly, but of specific importance. Deeds to property, important notes (or parts of notes), "treasure maps", guild letters of membership, etc.
4. Prepare short, meaningful events that are fun. I RP'd out a festival with a parade that only took about 10 minutes, but contained some very subtle details that were clues to be discovered later in successful perception or history checks. The "Ahhhhhhh!" from the players landed the satisfaction of the immersive festival.
5. Have the players describe something in the environment...if I'm in the Underdark for example, I'd give a general description of what they see when they emerge from a cave, but then ask one of them to describe the startling small creature clinging from the stalagtite, or the shallow pool blocking their path to the right...then I'll try and work that into the immediate challenge right in front of them. This also works with passing a little time, asking the player to generally describe what their character is doing during the next 2 days...
I must say that I was pretty disappointed in the "judgmental" responses to this article that seemed to be a little "over-the-top." Have an opinion on the article? No problem, but everyone's a critic it appears...I'm not coming here to be a critic, I want to learn something new and I'd rather use my time to either pass on knowledge I might have or learn. Many times that comes from the comments and not the author, so I appreciate people who comment with what "works for them." I'm adult enough to read, evaluate, try and decide if it works for me...I don't have time to simply come here to tear someone else's writing apart.
I got about 15% through this and skipped down to the author's bio. I was surprised to read this guy's "writing has appeared..." anywhere. This is horrific. He writes like a seventh grader.
D&D Beyond, hire an editor.
I really feel like this article doesn’t give players enough credit. Absolutely, a massive lore dump on things that do not feel relevant practically (essentially something that will change their planned course of action) is very much not something you should do, no matter how much time you spent inventing it for yourself.
When I describe anything to my players, be it settings, NPCs, or lore that they have stumbled across in whatever form, I keep it concise - players then often press to find more, to explore, see what’s hiding in the ancient mahogany chest, or roll for if they’ve heard any more about ‘The Forgotten Land’ briefly mentioned. Because they’re interested they seek it out; they do want to be engaged in the world.
I feel where this article was lacking was that it didn’t mention one of a DM’s most valuable tools - the gift of empathy, of reading a room. No one likes being monologued to and an experienced DM for the most part should be able to recognise when people are checking out. There’s no point in a lore dump if no one’s listening. So freely and briefly give out the information that is actually needed - if players seem interested they will ask how to further engage. If not, then everyone moves on. If you love the lore so much then save it for a future campaign where other characters may be interested, or if you need to talk about it for hours on end then write a book. But you don’t always need to employ a gimmick to trick players into learning lore. Sure, it’s fun occasionally. But actually, if you’re empathetic then a cheeky little paragraph of lore here and there often gets the job done more quickly and easily, and yes is still engaging, and your party can happily skip on to go murder the big bad.
well your quite the troll
what do you mean don't design worlds for your players, do it for yourself? I do it for both, because once the game starts, it is their world, and you have to take into account things from their perspective.
aside from 1 or 2 players out of about 5 to 6 groups, the rest won't even ask you anything about your world. let alone learn anything about it. you might say it is their world, but aside from the basics, they won't be learning anything actively. you'll literally have to feed the information to them through their veins. otherwise they won't be learning it. exemple of critical role beginning of the first campaign... matt hasdone a monologue for 3 and a half minute describing the continent, then narrowing it down to the country, then narrowing it down again to the city they are in. sure it explains the environment where the players are in... but does those players even remembers what was said during that time ? the answer is no, so it was a whole 3 minutes lost for no reason aside from being nice on TV. i descrobed a city for a whole 5 minutes because it was gonna be the place where everything hapenned to my players, yet all the comments i received from that long winded description... "that was way too long man, you lost us all after 30 seconds." and thats not from 1 or 2 players, that was from all 9 of them !
based on that i realised the world i was creating, was not for the players... it was for me !
your players are living in that world, so you must be knowing the world around them. when you do a world, you are not doing it for them, you aredoing it for yourself, so you can know what is behind if they ever go left instead of right. thats why you have maps, thats why you have descriptions of what the people in your world do. but out of all that information, how much of it are you really giving your players ?
look at adventures... most of the first 5 pages of the books are not even gonna be used in the adventure. its just information granted to you, so "YOU" know why things happens. but most of it will not even be used. the players won'T ever know that before the mountain became home of trolls and orcs, it was created by dwarves... all they will really care about is what is hapenning in the present.
that's why you don't design worlds for your players, you design them for yourself.
also, a story shouldn't be designed with players in mind... their varyed backstory, their innate chaotic nature of just going left instead of right. all those cannot be planned out. so why would you lose time planning for potential issues the players are gonna create... be reactive instead...you already know what your boss is gonna do, what the world is trying to accomplish. now all that remains is for you to react to the players and ask yourself... how that boss or the events will unfold because of what the players just did. the world, after all, lives by itself. i mean do you even know what your neighbors are planning ? they are literally living next to you, yet you know nothing of them. its the same for your players... the world do not know about them, so why would the world plan anything about them. usually itsbetter to be proactive, but in D&D its better to be reactive.
so yeah... you don't design the world for them... you'll lose them as soon as you will try to teach them the world...
you design it for yourself.
again take exemple of critical role...
campaign 2 and yet the players already forgot everything about the world in campaign 1.
Some D&D campaigns feel like they exist in a Potemkin village, where there is no depth beyond the surface of the adventure. Some DMs go too far in the opposite direction, creating gods no one cares about and towns no one will visit full of people no one will ever meet.
I think of "immersion" like an open-world RPG. The game engine doesn't render everything all the time. That's a waste of energy and processing power. Instead, it renders what the player is close enough to see and interact with.
IMHO, The way to create an immersive world is to (1) tell a compelling story, (2) be ready with some generic merchants, NPCs, etc. so that your players feel like there is something behind every door and around every corner, and (3) be able to improvise. If you can do 2 and 3, your players will feel like they can go anywhere, talk to anyone, and get the cues that will guide them to the next plot point. That's all your world needs to be "immersive", the feeling that the world has depth.
You don't need to render the whole world. Wherever your players go, be ready to flesh out the world immediately around them on the fly. Let the places that they go and the people they talk to guide your worldbuilding.
I'm surprised that this didn't mention This One Neat Trick: If you want players to remember fact X, gate X behind an ability check! Players do not remember long info dumps, but they DO remember the secret their PC only knows because they made a 20 roll on History, Religion, Investigation, Arcana...
Show don't tell is great, but could have summarized a little shorter with less ads. Besides feeling disingenuous this article does make me think of a few things.
Show, don't tell - if you can show it, then do it, but sometimes your players character would just know something and now you need to tell them what they would know. Not everyone cares for a huge info dump, but they do care about some info especially when it's going to help them out. I can't tell you as a player how thankful I am to hear the DM tell me something I would know so I don't die or make a terrible mistake. Also as a bonus, the other players are happy to listen in so they don't make the same mistake too.
If you don't agree with this then just don't do it and move on. Your players might have appreciated the info but they probably will be okay and won't have known there was any info anyways.
Immersion - It's wild to me that this isn't touched on in the article. Not the description of it itself, but the fact that it's extremely subjective. They wanted critical role level content, the DM wanted politics and history to play a huge role, and I'm willing to be their barbarian wanted only to hit things hard. It really takes a special group to want all the same things and is always on the same page, but it takes only a few patient people, and a willing DM to enjoy playing a version of Dnd with all of those aspects. Communication at the table is extremely important for this kind of thing. Ask your players if they liked all the lore, the combat, the RP and tell them what you like doing to debrief after a session. It's a great way to not only reflect on the awesome and fun shit that just happened but to also improve your respect for eachothers playstyles the next session and even lean more or less into those different aspects.
I could get into the theory of character building, improv storytelling tactics and techniques, tips and tricks to speed up combat, magic items that are more fun, encounter building with pizzazz, and more, but none of that matters if I don't know what my players want so they feel immersed and comfortable at my table. Ask them and then that's your goal, try your best to make those things more fun.
There's plenty of fantastic advice out there to explore too. I'm reading through The Return of the Lazy DM right now and it's amazingly suited towards my style of DMing. You'll find some advice that works great for you once you try it and talk about it!
This article was really helpful! I've always been beguiled at how immersive seasoned DM's games can be, yet whenever I attempt aforementioned immersion I end up boring my friends to sleep. This just helped to point out what I've been doing wrong. Thanks.
Super late to the party, but I kind of don't like this. People play D&D for escapism, so when someone who either isn't athletic or has a disability preventing them from holding their breath for a long time, that shouldn't hold the character back as well. Doing this exclusively for flavor purposes I sort of understand, but forcing the player to make a check IRL for their character sounds like a really rough time for some players.
Agreed. The most common version of this is when the player is asked *exactly* what their Super Charismatic Expertise-having Bard says to the NPCs, and then adjudicates the results of the encounter on that...
le sigh... do you expect the Fighter's player to swing their sword, or the Wizard to waggle their fingers to cast the spell? Let the player roll for their PC's works and let it be with that.
"the player is asked *exactly* what their Super Charismatic Expertise-having Bard says to the NPCs"
I don't mind that IF it's done so the GM knows what the player is trying to achieve. I see plenty of incompetent in-game combat tactics, just as much as incompetent RP. IMO the GM should take into account both the words and the dice roll. Great phrasing may obviate the need for a roll. Great rolling may make an outrageous suggestion sound persuasive.