Portrait by subhamshome, via pixabay.com

It’s an important question, and one not easy to answer.

Too much description can not only be boring to listen to, it can obscure important details and confuse the players.

Not enough and players will not be able to differentiate between the NPC being described and any others they happen to encounter – or a stuffed manikin, for that matter.

In the past, I have always relied on the literary model*, while acknowledging that it was an inadequate answer. Now, I think I have found a better one.

* Except for occasions and campaigns when I could use a photograph to avoid the need to offer any descriptions at all – but this article is more about D&D/Pathfinder, where the options for this sort of shortcut are limited.

The Difficulty

Trying to assess when you have gone too far is a difficult task.

It requires the GM to do several things simultaneously, and humans are limited in their capacities for that. Specifically, the GM has to:

1. build up a mental image of the character being described from his words alone;
2. ignore any predetermined knowledge of the things that he hasn’t described yet;
3. describe what the character looks like, what he is doing, and his mannerisms;
4. which means deciding and creating those things if he hasn’t done so already;
5. all while keeping control of the game, remembering the purpose that the character has within the plot, and finding a means of achieving that purpose;
6. which may be entirely separate from the purpose that the NPC thinks the he is fulfilling, which also has to be presented indirectly through his words and actions;
7. all while maintaining some standard of “Sufficient” in mind;
8. and comparing the mental image referred to earlier with that standard;
9. while making sure that he leaves out nothing that is important.

That’s nine simultaneous tasks. Small wonder that corners end up being cut and some of these get overlooked, or performed inadequately, from time to time.

A little prep can go a long way to easing this burden. A canned description eliminates 4, and permits 1, 2, 7, 8, and 9 to be done in advance of the game. That’s 2/3 of the task out of the way, leaving the GM free to concentrate on the things that have to be lived “in the moment” due to the dynamic interactions between game and players. And it’s easy to see why the literary standard seems to be a natural “best fit” in terms of the level of description to be provided.

Too Many Words

The literary standard is too much for an RPG situation. It works in that the reader absorbs some (not all) of the description and extracts from them a gestalt impression that can later be modified by reinforcement of the important details; it ensures that there is enough description to accommodate different standards of minds-eye visual acuity, and – of course – if necessary, a reader can flip back a few pages and re-read the description to better absorb it if they find their “picture” to be inadequate.

Too much description gets in the way of distinguishing between NPCs through their interactions with the character. Employing the literary standard ensures exceeding the actual requirements, rather than falling short of them, and until now, there has been nothing better; that’s about all that can be said for it.

The New Standard

While waiting for the bus this afternoon (as I write this, weeks in advance of actual publication), I was practicing the art of describing NPCs by picking people off the street and trying to describe them. Aside from being a good way to fill time, this exercise sharpens your descriptive “vocabulary”.

But, for the first time, I added a new rule to the exercise: “as succinctly as possible”. And I found something remarkable.

To be effective, the minimum explanation is:

• enough description to give an impression of gender, age bracket, and geographic origins;
• plus anything that was sufficiently distinguishing as to be noteworthy;
• plus anything that told me more about the person than just what they were wearing or looked like.

Strip away any verbiage that doesn’t serve the stated purpose from each of these three, and compress and abstract the remainder as much as you can, and that’s all you need. Anything more is excess beyond requirements – for RPG purposes.

Try it: “Male, Curly black hair, well groomed, slightly-olive skin, mole on left cheek, well-dressed, thick glasses, expensive car.” He might be Italian, or Greek or Spanish – but he’s a businessman, accountant, or lawyer from somewhere in Southern Europe. And you could even catenate “well-groomed” and “well-dressed”, using more emotive language, to “impeccably groomed and dressed”.

Or: “Male, very dark-skinned, long black frizzy hair, cap, oil-stained overalls with “Doug’s Smash Repairs” on a breast-patch, t-shirt, heavyset with thick muscles, whole-arm tattoo” – a mechanic of Pacific Islander background, possibly Maori.

By keeping the descriptions simple, you sketch in a general impression and then let the character’s personality, as expressed through what they are doing and their interactions with those around them, do the rest.

Notice that there are no names – quite often, you shouldn’t present a name until after the visual “sketch” has been established so that there is an association between the two – and the name itself will thereafter bring back the impression created.

Let them introduce themselves – the interaction will begin adding personality to the visual as well as providing the name.

From now on, this is the standard that I’m going to apply when describing my NPCs.