Flavor Text: Preparation and Use

Critical Role's Matt Mercer, a Dungeon Master of evocative flavor text

Flavor text is a catch-all term used to describe the descriptive blurbs of narration that provide imagery and visual context for the players. Descriptions of sights, sounds, and smells set the stage for your players' journey into imagination. I find that these are usually the most difficult notes to prepare before a game. They require skill at writing and narration in order to work with their full effect. It's hard enough to assemble a list of traps and encounters, but it is especially hard to sit at a keyboard and crank out several paragraphs describing steam-filled corridors or the slavering jaws of a previously undiscovered dinosaur.

Flavor text is still important, though. While it is possible to ad-lib the descriptive imagery of your campaign, having the occasional pre-written paragraph will help you on multiple levels... It gives you a break from having to improvise all your lines, it provides you with practice with phrasing things clearly, and it is usually prepared with more attention to detail than something you might come up with on the spot.

The most difficult aspect of flavor text to me is that you might spend a lot of time preparing it only to have players miss any opportunity to hear it read aloud. If you prepare pages of description of a haunted castle only to have your players opt for an adventure in the sewers instead, you might feel like you wasted a lot of your valuable prep time.

That's why I like to keep my flavor text loose and modular. There's no need to overdo description as if you were writing a full blown novel. Instead, it's important to focus on the essence of the story you want to convey. Here's how...

If nothing else I like to write down a list of keywords that seem evocative of the environment the players may find themselves in. For a hospital, this might be: Clean, sterile, pristine, quiet, brightly lit, somber... these are building blocks that might help with improvising on a basic level. Remember that these need to take into account all five senses. Just like a good book, the narrative is more immersive if it's about more than just what you see but also what you smell, feel, hear, and so on.

Next I will write out the descriptions for things that I am sure the players will encounter. A vital NPC or quest-giver, the main villain, the party's home base. I keep these short and sweet. No description needs to be longer than a line or two. Too much prose can bog down the pacing of an adventure.

Often I will create a bunch of modular descriptions, narration that I can work into different parts of the adventure as needed. These are notes of general ambiance, things that add to the mood and immersion. I will break out these descriptions in between players' actions to maintain the context of the setting. In a tavern it might be a waiter almost trips while carrrying drinks to a group of rowdy pirates. In a cave it might be the sound of dripping water echoing through the tunnels. This is just to add to the sense of being inside the environment, reminding the players of the scenery and setting.

Finally I will add whatever text I might or might not use. This part is just for fun, if I have extra time and feel creative. This will include descriptions of certain people, places, and things that the players might run into. I will often use the key words I made up earlier and mix them into these descriptions as needed. If these descriptions don't come up in the adventure, no problem! I might recycle them in a future session, using the description of a room or monster at a future point when it might be relevant.

Flavor text is one of the most iconic aspects of the DM's narrative patter. It shouldn't be neglected. Rich, elaborate descriptions of the game world can make a game more exciting and fun. But there is no need to feel pressured to write pages of these details in preparation for an adventure. Do what you can, and learn to improvise the rest. Have a handful of sentences ready to set the scene and make it memorable, and keep those keywords in mind when you get stuck. Remember to remind your players about their surroundings in the game world in a fun and engaging way. A memorably described scene is the first step to a memorable encounter, so have fun with the process of writing and creating your own tabletop world!

Happy ventures!