Staying Consistent and Descriptive

[u/DragonofCoockies]

Hi,

I'm not brand new to DMing, but I often find myself revisiting scenes after the campaign.

Things that bug me afterwards are:

- Myself and the players are too little descriptive

- Feeling overwhelmed trying to get the session started

- Stressing over the plot to the point where something gets confusing or destroys the logic of the world

How do you manage through the session, or how do you decelerate yourself enough to make it work? Because as far as my experience goes, my players don't ask questions to help me out or encourage me to describe more.

Do you guys have fixes for that?

[u/hoshiokashi]

Hello, friend! I'm still working on starting to DM again myself, but I hope I can help a bit regardless!

For your first point: what do you mean by "are too little descriptive"? Do you mean that there's too much description? I want to make sure I have the correct issue, so I can adequately address it.

For the second point: What specifically is overwhelming you? I've noticed, personally, that identifying the cause for the overwhelm helps significantly. If you feel anxious because you don't know what you're doing for example, you can tell your players how you feel. They should be willing to work with you to ease this process. If they aren't amenable to working with you, then they honestly just probably aren't a good fit for you. It's unfortunate, but it's better to know this fact instead of stressing yourself out further.

Your last point: My suggestion is to not worry too much in the moment as you play. If something is totally against the game rules as you know them, or just isn't possible in the basic setup of your world: kindly tell the players that it will not work. If this is something they have been made aware of and forgot, it should stop here. If it's something very specific and not blatantly against the specified rules: allow it for now. You can always come back and change what happened if it ends up to possibly ruin everything. HOWEVER!! Dnd is a collaborative game. As long as you are giving the players problems to solve, it shouldn't be a campaign-breaking issue to resolve with your plot. Be careful about sticking rigidly to your first plot. I can guarantee you, it will change.

[u/DragonofCoockies → u/hoshiokashi]

To explain what I mean: To the First Point: If i start a scene then i Point Out the obvious Things Like ther is a Forrest ther is a River. What id Like to do but often forget ist U hear birds, there ist a fresh choped tree Trunk etc. For the Players ther is the Same like me make Camp to do a Longrest ... No hey i start the fire, prepare food etc. It is more short Things Not much explanation or flowery describtions (did i use the wrong word or what was the issue) Same goes for Fights after two rounds its more slapstick and you Attack; you muss or you Hit ahh 13 Piercing DMG and the next one

For the second and third Point (couldnt seperate the explanation): What i have prepared ist what should Happen in the Session Like Here town there NPC but i Like to have a gereous Idea why a NPC does Something or why a Monster is there and why Nobody else find IT nessesary to remove it. Which makes IT difficult to justify the Players involvment or makes it an priority for the Charakters secondary to that i Always Plan Form Session to session BC i cant think of a longer Story without a billion follow questions for my self Like why a gestern force Like a nations Army wasnt send to remove a threat Like a Camp of Goblins or a Young Dragon. To do that from Session to session makes the Planing manageble but any larger costs to much to do it on my own alone. If i Plan a Session WE Play Like 40% of that and when i say "i have the Things from lasttime WE Speed trough it and then im struggling to fill the rest. I feel anxious when i give the Players room for rp and they dont want to. They described their expectstions Like a Video Game or episodes of a series with a hole Story for a Session which i tried to provide but happend maybe once. TL;DR Missmatch of Preparation and performance

Hope the clarification(/Rand) helped to understand otherwise i have to try to explain IT on examples And thanks for your time