As humans, we rely on our senses to connect us to the world around us. There is a hierarchy amongst those senses that GMs can take advantage of, the better to communicate with our players.

The Associated Senses

At the bottom end of the senses are the associated senses – the sense of balance, and of motion, and the senses of hot and cold. The first two are strongly linked but there’s not much that we can be do with them in a static session such as sitting around a game table (there’s one exception that I’ll get to a little later). The third and fourth are bound up with our sense of touch, as is the fifth, our awareness of texture. As such, I’ll deal with the “tactile super-sense” when I get to that level of the hierarchy.

The Flavor Senses

That brings me to the linked senses of taste and scent. It’s possible to do something with these, though it can be a lot of effort and sometimes not worthwhile. In fact, the sense of taste is a tightly-grouped collection of six different senses – the five basic flavors, plus that aspect of the tactile sense that is experienced through the tongue.

Taste

The sense of taste can be used by presenting flavor “samples” that are iconically associated with a particular region, and help connect the place with the player’s awareness. Serving a bowl of chili, or salsa and corn chips, is a great way to make players “connect” with the idea that they are in Mexico. It doesn’t matter whether or not they particularly like the food on offer; a small taste is all that’s needed. Similarly, curries are quintessentially associated with the Indian region and neighboring countries, cheesecakes and créme caramels with France, and so on. Your selections don’t even have to be geographically accurate provided that the association exists in the minds of the players.

Provided that you understand something about the relationship between climate, geography and the foods that can be grown in the resulting environment, and the cuisine that results, you can even link various regions of an invented world with existing real-world cuisines (perhaps with variations) to create an instant association. Steamed broccoli (Chinese style) dipped in soy sauce and then sprinkled with sugar, for example – it doesn’t have to be a mindblowingly brilliant flavor creation (so long as it isn’t nauseating), so long as it is distinctive. A mixture of apple juice and dry ginger ale as a non-alcoholic representation of Dwarven Ale? why not?

Scent

Scent is both more subtle and more profound a sense. Even the memory of a scent is enough to invoke strong memories of a flavor that can actually stimulate the taste buds as though we were really consuming the flavor in question. Focus on recalling, just for a moment or two, the scent of lemon and you will find that the taste-buds at the sides of the back of the tongue respond – and trigger salivation, just as the real thing would.

More than once, the power of scent has broken through an amnesiac barrier. There are particular combinations of scents that seem to go directly to the hind-brain and label a place as “home”. And scent has a big role to play in the perception of flavor, to boot – in fact, appearance and scent can completely or partially overcome our senses of what we are actually tasting, as has been shown by a number of fascinating psychological experiments over the years. (I’d love to link to some authoritative websites regarding the phenomenon but they are being drowned out by thematically-related sites about enhancing weight-loss ability using the techniques. The best that I can offer are this site, and this article from the BBC, I’m afraid).

But there’s more. Different scents have been found to influence the behavior of the brain – lavender makes us sleepy and sluggish, lemon scents stimulate the brain and make us more alert and aware. Unfortunately, a web-search on the subject is dominated by two areas that are only marginally valuable and a plethora of sites that either make unsubstantiated claims or are blatantly commercial or counterculture in nature – Aromachology and Aromatherapy. Most will have heard of the latter, fewer will know of the former. Wikipedia defines Aromachology as “the study of the influence of odors on human behavior” and “the relationship between feelings and emotions such as relaxation, exhilaration, sensuality, happiness and well-being brought about by odors stimulating the olfactory pathways in the brain and, in particular, the limbic system.”

In theory, you can use air fresheners, scented candles, and the like to create an “atmosphere” that simulates the environment. In practice, it’s very difficult to remove or neutralize the “scent palette” after releasing one odor so that the next can be appreciated without contamination. It can be managed by using small sealed containers (about 1 cubic inch) which contain a particular scent – open and inhale – but this is a LOT of trouble to go to, and probably not worth the effort.

You can adopt a simpler approach of selecting one dominant odor combination that reflects the most “important” scent of the day’s setting. Wildflowers and a lemon air-freshening spray, for example, or a sandalwood-incense odor that you deliberately associate with Orcs.

The other problem to be faced is that many people suffer from asthma and/or allergies to various substances, and you may inadvertently trigger an attack, and some people may simply not like the scent – I used to burn incense regularly at home when I wanted privacy because the people with whom I shared accommodations weren’t fans of the scent, while I liked it. These days, a combination of Lemon and Vanilla makes up my favorite environmental scent. But I’m wandering off-topic.

These difficulties and potential complications make this powerful tool less than universally-applicable. Think twice before using it, and make the relevant inquiries of your players in advance.

Hearing

With each step up the sensory ladder, the sense being considered is both more powerful in communicating subtle aspects of the world and more accessible to us at the game table – a potent double-whammy that explains why many GMs never explore beyond certain core senses and obvious applications of those senses. Hearing is the first of those core senses, and often the only one relied upon by GMs. Certainly, when I first started playing RPGs, this was as far as it went – people spoke and that was it.

Vocal Communications

The GM delivers a verbal description of the scene and environment and speaks on behalf of any NPCs. Each player responds with any verbal descriptions that the GM can’t provide (eg of their characters or actions) and speaks on behalf of the character they are playing, as well as requesting further details from the GM. Vocal communication is at the heart of every RPG that is not conducted in an online environment and many of those that are, as well. Only when the computer takes over the role of the GM and everyone is playing in a simulated world, ie a computer game, does vocal communication take a back seat; with text-based communications between a GM and one or more remote players either in a live-chat-room setting or by play-by-email taking somewhat of an intermediate space between the two extremes.

One of the earliest pieces of GM advice that I can remember reading had, as the subject, the enhancement of Vocal Communications through the use of accents and “alternate voices”. For all the ubiquity of this advice, I have only ever met one GM who I would regard as exceptional in this respect – his Cyberpunk campaign was weak in just about every other way, but he was insanely-gifted in his vocal malleability and capacity to be consistent. Most people just can’t do it, or can’t do it very well.

Ambient noise can pose an additional problem that can be difficult to overcome. Before you can think about anything more than the absolute minimum standards of vocalization, this needs to be eliminated as a factor.

One subject that rarely seems to get mentioned – including here at Campaign Mastery – is the degree of benefit that Public Speaking courses, and the Oratory techniques that they teach, can offer GMs. We all tend to focus more on the content than on the delivery; whether that’s because we consider it too obvious, or because the content tends to be rather more interesting, I don’t know. To partially redress the balance, here are a selection of websites and resources on the subject of oratory technique that are worth close examination, with comments concerning the relevance to our particular application of the subject:

• How to Be a Better Orator – Basic introduction, with emphasis on prepared speeches. Steps three, five, and nine are particularly useless in an interactive situation like an RPG except when delivering canned text. If this was as good as it got, it might explain why few sources talk about improved Oratory as a way to better your GMing. But, as a beginning, it is still useful.
• Articulation Exercises – Practical exercises to improve your diction and articulation. There’s not much about shaping the content for delivery, or oratorical design techniques, this is all about successfully enunciating and delivering the message.
• Persuasive Speech from Nebo Literature – This covers the structural aspects that don’t get much of a mention at the preceding site; the two are a great one-two punch. You need to understand this stuff thoroughly to be able to use it without planning and forethought, but the benefits are well worth the effort of gaining that understanding.
• Leadership Skills: The 5 Essential Speaking Techniques from The Genard Method – Wants to sell you a book on their technique, but as enticement, they offer some useful advice and a cheat-sheet to download. Not having used their technique, I can’t comment further on it. Links purport to take you to other useful content, I didn’t follow any of them to be able to verify. Recommended as a supplement to the preceding sites listed.
• What can I do to quickly become a better orator/public speaker? – There are some useful tips, tricks, and techniques in the replies, and some things that are less useful to our particular purpose. But the hoped-for focus on “quickly” makes this worth a read. Use the information gleaned from the preceding sites as a means of assessing the usefulness of the advice on offer here.
• Public Speaking For Dummies – The first of several books sold by Amazon that seem directly relevant. Take the free advice above and run with it as far as you can go – and then contemplate this and the books that follow to supplement your skillset and education on the subject. I’m relying on the established reputation for quality in the “for dummies” series in making this recommendation, but an average 4.5 stars out of 5 from 20 customer reviews adds to the confidence factor.
• No Sweat Public Speaking! – This is all about overcoming the fear of speaking in public. In theory, it should be less relevant to GMing, but it isn’t, though it is tangential. I’ve been interviewed a couple of times (live “on the air”) because of my involvement in RPGs, I’ve been offered other interview opportunities since (podcasts and the like) but couldn’t manage the logistics, and I’ve been asked to speak in public at both weddings and funerals because of my association with the hobby (and a rep for doing it well, with both clarity and sincerity). Heck, I won a debate at the School Eisteddfod many many years ago because more organized and less nervous than my opponent – despite having only entered that morning, and written my speech just thirty minutes before it had to be delivered, cold (no rehearsal), and despite my being in third class, and him in his final year (“12th form” as it was then-known), a difference of nine years. The subject: Nuclear Energy. I had no time to research, he had weeks. And that was his downfall, as he had time for the task to prey on his mind… Make no mistake, if you begin to become a better public speaker, you WILL have opportunities to use the ability whether you want to or not! 5 stars average from 108 customer reviews mean you should consider buying this book!
• Communicating Effectively For Dummies – Although not as highly-rated as “Public Speaking For Dummies” this volume might be more relevant to the RPG experience. Described as “how to get your point across at work and interact most productively with bosses and coworkers”. So, while it doesn’t mention “Players”, it sounds right on point.
• Voice and Speaking Skills For Dummies – Although this offers to expand on the free advice on Diction and Articulation offered by one of the websites listed above, it isn’t rated as highly as the other Dummies books I’ve listed. However, there are only three reviews, so they can’t be considered enough to be a definitive review. Read the reviews at the bottom of the page and make your own assessment.
• Public Speaking – Concise Concepts : No stories, just point form secrets the pro’s use! – Note that this is available only as a a Kindle E-book. No customer reviews, but it’s only 80 cents US – if you have a Kindle. Offered for those who do, and probably worth taking a chance on at that price.
• 157 Most Asked Questions On Public Speaking – The newest and therefore most expensive of the books on offer, and no user reviews to use as a guide to the value of the book. But the description sounds promising: “It contains 157 answers, much more than you can imagine; comprehensive answers and extensive details and references, with insights that have never before been offered in print.” Worth serious thought, therefore.
• Effective Speaking – The last of the resources to which I’m linking, this has only one review, and that of only three stars. The reason I’m listing it lies in the price – it’s cheap, even Very Cheap if bought second-hand – and the content of that review: “A good solid book…” “…all the essentials…” “…useful advice in straightforward language.” ‘Nuff Said.

Audio Tapestries

Something that I have seen offered from time to time are audio tapestries (sometimes known as Ambient Environments) – essentially, sound effect/atmosphere compilations that can be looped to provide appropriate background noises. Assuming that he has a large enough library of such sounds, the GM simply has to cue up the appropriate track to fill the background with the chatter of bartering or the sounds of a ruined Gothic cathedral or whatever. If one doesn’t exist, sound effects libraries and the right software can enable you to create your own – the longer the loop, the less repetitive and more natural it will sound; the shorter, the smaller the file size will be. This is something I have always wanted to explore more thoroughly because I think it would add tremendously to the Ambiance of a game, but for one reason or another, every time I’ve gotten close to being able to do so, something has intervened. So it remains on my bucket list.

The only companies I’m aware of who produce these things are Toxic Bag and their Sound Products (all in my wishlist at DrivethruRPG) and Tabletop Audio, who have an excellent range of products. A Kickstarter project to create a tool to let GMs create their own ambient soundtracks failed to get up, unfortunately – I was asked to review and promote it but didn’t have the capacity to do so before the campaign concluded.

Beyond those two specific resources, two Google searches might lead you to more choices:

• Google Search “RPG Soundtracks” (excluding music, at least in theory), and
• Google Search “Ambient Sounds”. To further refine the search, you might try adding “+RPG” to the search terms.

Background Music

Where you can’t get sound effects, appropriate background music may fill the gap. Music is used extensively in movies and TV shows to enhance the emotional content and visceral atmosphere of the images, but the producers work very hard at synchronizing the appropriate beats and sounds with the on-screen visuals; this can make RPG use of a musical soundtrack more difficult than it might initially seem. For that reason, the “ambient sounds” approach holds greater appeal to me.

For example, contemplate the Star Wars soundtrack. You might think that when you’re playing the Star Wars RPG that this would provide the perfect background ambiance, but it doesn’t work – you can be having a “these are not the droids you’re looking for” moment, or a “trust me (smile)” moment, when Darth Vader’s theme comes blasting out, or the main imperial theme. You can actually be better off with a whole bunch of instrumental pieces that have nothing to do with the subject matter, such as a Jean Michel Jarre album, or some generic science-fiction ambient sounds – especially if you lead off with the Star Wars main title theme to set the initial mood.

Sight

Even more powerful than sounds is the sense of sight. It used to be the case that there were relatively few visual references available for use, and even if the images were there, you didn’t have the technology available to display them. Then the internet came along, and especially Google Image Search and Google Maps.

I’ve actually written an article or two on this subject before – see, for example:

• A Picture Should Be Worth 1,000 Words
• Stream Of Consciousness: Image-based narrative
• Vampire’s Creep and other stories: Working With Places, and
• An Experimental Failure – 10 lessons from a train-wreck Session (which deals with what happens when you go too far)

…so I don’t intend to go too far into this subject in this article. Suffice it to say that a picture can, indeed, be worth 1,000 words (or more).

Using sight to stimulate the sense of motion

However, before I go any further, it’s time to delve into the exception to the sense-of-movement problems that I referred to early in the article. I have a pair of metal miniature bi-planes – I’m not sure of the scale, but they are about the size of the palm of my hand or a little larger – and they excel at enabling complex aerial maneuvers to be illustrated, translating movement into something visual. The wings are important because, being at right angles and straight out from the center of the model, they provide a visual horizontal plane that is readily visible from the outside; this wouldn’t work as well with swept-wing aircraft. In essence, they are (when viewed from above) a giant cross, with the tail longer than the head, so that position and attitude relative to the direction of future movement is readily visible. It only takes a little knowledge of the mechanics of flight – what you can pick up from Blue Max, for example, plus watching something like “Top Gun” once or twice – and you have all the tools you need to convey a dogfight. (I actually adapt Blue Max for the game mechanics of flight in my superhero campaign, it is worth noting).

If you don’t have a metal miniature, make a paper plane – it will be better than nothing, I assure you, and can convey action in a heartbeat that would easily require far more than 10,000 words to state, and would be both boring and capable of easy misinterpretation. If you have opposing flying characters, no matter what your game system, such a visual aid is a must-have!

Environmental Immersion

Technically, this isn’t a sense at all, and it’s also devilishly difficult for a GM to take advantage of, but I felt I needed to highlight it. Being somewhere is not the same as seeing a photo of it, and a photo doesn’t give the same sense of a location being real. This is a problem that TV and movies confront all the time, and they have developed techniques to combat it, such as showing a conversation from different angles; since the conversation has the two (or more) actors involved at the same time, the mind of the viewer assumes that they are in the same place, and stitches the two views together to create an impression of a three-dimensional reality in which the individuals are present. A lot of the early special effects shots, especially involving green-screen, or projections, failed to look all that credible because they couldn’t achieve this illusionary immersion, or because the motions didn’t match up. Star Wars and Babylon-5 were the two notable pioneers in solving those problems, using motion-capture and 3D modeling, respectively. Other shows refined the results and processes, but weren’t as ground-breaking.

If you could somehow conjure up a three-dimensional image of the environment around the game table, immersion would be complete, and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how much more engaging and realistic and there the game would be as a result. It’s not going to happen anytime soon, I’m afraid. But there would be a quantum leap improvement over still pictures of a given location.

It’s possible that it will happen eventually, it should be noted – after all, the time was that photo editing was extremely difficult, and you could rely on whatever the camera captured actually being present in some form. Nowadays, anyone can do it, and it’s only a question of the quality of result.

Tactile Sense

Perhaps controversially, I am placing the tactile senses at the very top of the tree. Human beings are a very tactile race in some ways, and something that you can touch is immediately more “real” than something you merely see. There are a number of ways that GMs can take advantage of this tactile-based impression of realism.

Tactile Props

It’s quite one thing to offer a picture of a tree-trunk or a sword or whatever, and quite another to offer a tactile prop. This first occurred to me as a result of a “What’s New with Phil & Dixie” by Phil Foglio in The Dragon which talked about various ways of simulating the PC experience using everyday objects – in particular, banging two phone directories together for 30 minutes as a simulation of a minute’s sword-fighting (this memory also played a big part in my article on the Ergonomics of Elves and the sequel on Dwarves).

A piece of driftwood – sanded lightly, if necessary, to prevent splinters. Putting a kitchen knife (one not too sharp – a bread-and-butter knife, for example) in the freezer for 30 minutes. A small ceramic tile. A cheap oil painting. There are all sorts of found objects that can be used to convey a tactile sense of the object being handled. A bowling ball can be used to convey the weight of a large axe. A broom handle can be used as a sword or a spear, just by changing the location of your grip.

It’s just a matter of getting the player to close their eyes, putting the object into their hands and letting them get a feel for the texture, or an impression of the object of some other sort, and then putting a visual in front of them.

Of course, you would only do this when it mattered. But on those occasions when a tactile impression was important, this can establish a connection to the “reality” of the situation that no amount of words would convey as effectively.

Hit Point Counters

There are other forms of association through the tactile sense. We’re used to counting money, for example, so some physical representation of hit points makes the loss have a psychological impact that simply writing numbers on a sheet of paper (or any other means of representing the loss) cannot match. The mere sensation of handling the tactile simulation of the abstract value makes it “feel” more real in the emotional and intellectual sense.

XP counters

For a very long time, I’ve used glass beads – of the sort some CCG players use to indicate active cards – to represent the XP handed out in the course of a session, especially bonuses for good roleplaying or good ideas (or divining the intent of the GM). It doesn’t take much of an extension of the principles from the Hit-point section, in conjunction with the bonus-xp idea, to realize that something coin-like is a great way of making XP more than just a number.

Poker chips in various colors – if necessary from multiple cheap sets – are the perfect way of handling this, because few games will require the handing out of more than 10,000XP (and most considerably less) in a session. So four denominations of chips – thousands, hundreds, tens, and ones – will do the job fairly handily.

Wealth

And, of course, the ultimate tactile coin-counting experience comes from physically representing a character’s hard-currency wealth in some fashion. Nothing makes the player more aware of their character’s budgeting shortfall than handing them a dozen coins (in different denominations) and then demanding them back, one budgetary item at a time. “Rent… car maintenance… food…” At the same time, there can be real avarice and pleasure when characters receive a windfall.

And that doesn’t even begin to show how useful they can be for dividing up a treasure. “We have to tithe at least 10% to the temple for their Blessings, I get 250 off the top for my potions, and Franklin has to replace the shield that he used to stop the pit-trap mechanism for another 35. We have to pay the porters another 200, and we promised Trevor 10% of the profits for the tip that led us here. Oh, and we need to pay our bar tab, that’s another 73. Whatever’s left, we get to split between us, but Buddy only gets a half-share, so that’s divided two-and-a-half ways.”

Watching the stack get placed in the center of the playing table, and then seeing it dissapear bit-by-bit conveys a realism that you just don’t get any other way.

Fantasy Coins

That’s the premise behind the products of well-known game prop supplier, Fantasy Coins. I’ve seen their products in use, and drooled, but never had the money to actually buy some for my own use; postage to Australia tends to be fairly prohibitive, and the exchange rate hasn’t been very favorable lately.

As a result, I was quite excited when they advised me of a Kickstarter campaign to fund a further extension of their product line. I’m not the only person, either; they achieved 90% of their funding goals within five days of the campaign commencing, and are presently at 128% funded. The current trend estimates the final total at $119,000 in pledges – but, significantly, that leaves them just $6000 short of the next tier of stretch goals, a gap that is easily bridgeable. It needs 10% more pledges per day remaining the campaign to get there.

The new products and designs look absolutely fabulous, as you can see from the examples scattered here and there throughout this article (some are of existing products for comparison purposes, it should be noted). And, of course, buying through a Kickstarter gives a discount relative to the subsequent retail price, making this the most cost-effective way of buying this extremely useful and versatile game aid.

Plot Value

But the value goes even beyond the obvious, when you look at the individual products being offered. Consider: the PCs get hired to do a job, and subsequently paid off in Cthulhu Coins and not the usual ones. Without the GM ever saying so, the entire campaign takes a whole new and quite uncomfortable turn for the players, who have to wonder whether or not their characters were just used as the pawns of evil. Whereas they thought the adventure in question was ending, they might suddenly decide to investigate their former employer, launching into a whole new chapter of plotline.

Diversity in coin sets, in other words, enables the differences to be used for plot purposes and for inspiration. This is a great deal, so the time to get on-board is right now – you have (at the time of writing) sixteen days, but that will probably be down to 15 days by the time this is published.

You can check out the kickstarter campaign and wonderful photos of the products developed so far and the art for those still in progress by clicking on this link, and check out their full back catalog at the Fantasy Coins LLC website. And don’t forget to take advantage of their Pledge Calculator, which will make it easy to track what you want to order.

After I agreed to do an article about their fundraising campaign, Fantasy Coin were kind enough to offer me some sample coins. While I feel this offer has had no impact on my review – it still says what I intended it to say, even before this offer – I wanted to make certain that readers knew about this source of possible bias on my part. And it gives me the opportunity to publicly thank them for their generous offer – made, as I said, after I had agreed to review their kickstarter campaign as part of this article.

One thing to watch out for

While most of the campaign is fairly clear, there are one or two sources of potential confusion. The pledges refer to “Add-on sets” and an “add-on menu” but the sets that these refer to aren’t necessarily clear to the casual glance. Some people might think that they get one of everything by backing the campaign, or one set of everything, if they don’t read the pledge descriptions sufficiently clearly. If you take the time to read the content of the whole page, instead of skimming, these sources of potential confusion will become less problematic (Hint: read the text in the graphics, especially the scroll!). I suggest readers check out the campaign early to give them time to ask any questions necessary before the campaign closes – and bear in mind that there have already been 565 comments on the campaign, which may provide the answers you’re looking for.

A multi-sensory approach

No campaign will ever fully exploit every sense throughout. It’s neither practical nor even feasible. However, by selectively targeting different senses, the totality of the whole experience can be dramatically heightened. No prop or stimulus can ever replace good, interesting content, but the appropriate use of props and sensory stimuli can enhance the delivery of your content far beyond anything you can imagine until you try it. The trick is to harness the potential of each sense and target its application selectively, combining images, words, ambiance, scents, flavors, and tactile responses to open windows into the reality that you create for your players.