It goes without saying that we want players to sense the distinctive ‘aura’ of a campaign’s genre, but all sorts of things get in the way of that, so it only happens occasionally and fleetingly. But there’s an easy solution, and it works in literary applications as well!

This vertically-oriented triptych symbolizes fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero RPGs. It’s a composite of three separate artworks:
fantasy-5758199, image by syaifulptak57 from Pixabay,
jedi-8177497, image by Bùi Xuân Tr??ng from Pixabay, and
woman-8026810,
image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay.

When I broke this article down into sections, it quickly became clear that it was too much for one post, so I’ve split it in two. Part 1 discusses the process and looks at the Fantasy Genre; Part 2 will look at Science Fiction, Superheros, The Wild West, and other genres.

If you really want to immerse your players in a sense of the genre of a campaign, the easiest way to do so is to apply that genre to mundane tasks in the same way that those tasks might be carried out if the campaign was “real”.

Throw in a little technobabble or other appropriate language, and you’re golden.

It’s that simple. Well, almost. I’ve broken this down to 7 basic steps, 1 of which is optional. If you carry them out in game prep, that’s generally preferable; if not, then you’ll have to think through steps 1-to-5 quickly and then improvise step 6. Some will find that easier than others.

This article will walk you through those 7 steps, and then I’ll look at some examples of applying them to some specific genres.

0. Make a list of possible Mundane Activities (optional, but it helps).

• Get yourself a clipboard and a pad and pen, and for a week or so, jot down everything you do.
• At the end, put any routine tasks that the PC would not normally have to perform in pencil brackets (so that if/when circumstances change, you can quickly adjust your list), and
• add in any routine tasks that you don’t have to perform, but the PCs would.

It’s a lot easier to pic a mundane activity from a list that you’ve prepared in advance, especially one that breaks the day into time periods.

Here’s an example, based on my typical day, translated into a Superhero campaign list where some tasks have already been noted in-game as automated, needing only a verbal command:

The only activity that might need further explanation is “Scan Groceries” – A marketing firm rewards me with points for informing them of what I buy by scanning the bar-codes of each item and recording how much it costs; those points accumulate until you ‘spend’ them on a reward. At the moment, I have enough for a brand-new $1000-dollar (Australian) smartphone with points to spare. In the past, I’ve bought color TVs and magazine subscriptions and books and CDs.

1. Pick A Mundane Activity.

• Figure out what period of the day it is, based on other in-game activities that have already been played.
• Pick a mundane activity from the list that immediately suggests that it would be different in-genre.
• If there isn’t one, check the periods immediately before and after. Repeat as necessary until inspiration strikes.

2. If it’s not something the PCs will perform in this game session, go back to step 1 and make a different choice.

I wasn’t originally going to be so pedantic as to include such an obvious step as this. But I was contemplating the difference between activities performed only once or twice a week, such as laundry, and decided it was necessary.

This paid off big-time when I contemplated non-contemporary / non-Fantasy / non-Sci-Fi campaigns, for example a Western campaign. Doing Laundry? Bathing? Maybe once a week, maybe less – but you would always do it before attending a social function. Which would include going to church if the character is a regular.

3. Imagine a more genre-appropriate method.

• Mark the item on the list so that you can tell at a glance that you’ve already translated it into genre terms. This maintains consistency throughout the campaign.
• Decide how that task is going to work in the genre of the campaign.
• If you can, make it interactive.

This is the core of the concept. You want to take a mundane task that wouldn’t normally even rate a mention and make it a genre-affirming activity. Something that takes between 30 seconds and 2-3 minutes to resolve in-game.

In the process, you tell the players a little more about the game world and the local society and the expectations that this society hold toward them, you give the genre itself a momentary piece of the spotlight, and you make the character’s lives seem more real.

Let’s pick a couple of examples (you can use these if you want, as a starting point):

In a Fantasy campaign, one of the most ubiquitous magic items might be a Scarab that crawls over dirty clothes, cleaning them and performing minor repairs. These have to be replenished every now and then. This takes a mundane activity that would normally get in the way of a day’s play, and so would be hand-waved, and turns it into something genre-affirming. You don’t have to include it every time; the occasional mention is enough. One PC, one mundane activity per game session, is plenty.

A sci-fi example: Rinsing plates, dishes, and cutlery is done with a sonic wand that vibrates loose particles of food from the surface. They then get loaded into a dishwasher that cleans them, dries them, applies an antibacterial coating, and automatically places them back in their usual storage location.

Customization

In particular, I want to point out a further refinement as an example of how to make these little scenes interactive.

Think about how this in-genre process might be different for different characters. Phrase it in the form of a standard question to be put to the player about their character’s preferences, one in which you have enunciated the options that are appropriate.

If it’s relevant, do some research in advance – for example, if the character is Norwegian and the task is making breakfast, look online for “Typical Norwegian Breakfast” so that the player can make an informed choice.

This is an opportunity for the player to add some color and nuance to their PC. The Barbarian who likes his woolen clothes to be extra-soft-and-fluffy. The Mage who over-starches their robes. The fighter who doesn’t trust magic and so does everything the hard way – and then carefully oils all the leather fittings – even if it means that he has to get up hours before the rest of the camp, and so always takes last watch.

4. Check for game balance issues. If necessary, vary the method to something that avoids the issues, or go back to step 1.

It’s very easy to make these in-genre solutions to mundane problems too powerful. Clever PCs can then use the ‘technologies’ in ways that the GM didn’t intent, effectively making the PCs more powerful than they should be, and throwing game balance out of whack.

For example, you might have come up with some sort of magical liquid-soap dispenser to make a cleaning task more colorful and less mundane. A PC might take that idea and the next time a difficulty opponent shows up in a battle, uses the dispenser to ‘spray’ soap into the eyes of the opponent, temporarily blinding them.

Oops. You might attempt to cover your mistake by stating “The magical soap cleans his eyes, he’s now at +1 to hit.” Bad move, it will only make it worse – from then on, the PC will spray the eyes of all the PCs as a prelude to combat, and your problem becomes worse.

The time to (try) and nip these things in the bid is before they ever appear in-game.

So think like a PC gifted this new technology and think of how it might be ‘perverted’ (from a GM’s perspective) before introducing it. You won’t get it 100% right, won’t think of everything, but even a lesser strike rate will be invaluable.

The other thing to remember is that whatever a PC can do, an NPC can do too. Use this principle to cover those cases where you’ve let something slip through the cracks – and remember that every such item makes your campaign more distinctive, so it’s not all doom-and-gloom.

5. Apply genre-appropriate color language. Document the language for future consistency.

Write it down as a piece of flavor text so that you can use it again in the future. I would use a separate list for this, indexed by time period and the activity that has been translated, so that I can go from list to prepared narrative very quickly.

6. Create the bubble of narrative and attach it to the day’s play.

It would be traditional to call it a “block” of text, but I wanted to coin a different term for this, one that implies that it is smaller and more ephemeral than is implied by the usual term “block”.

The more generic you can make the Narrative Bubble, the more easily it can be defined more precisely and individually for different PCs and NPCs – so the more useful it becomes as flavor text.

Genre Considerations: Introduction

That’s the whole process. But I wanted to look more deeply into the considerations that generally apply to the most common and instructive genres – the application of the technique, in particular those that apply to steps 3, and 4. That’s what the rest of this post, and the part 2 to follow, consists of.

Genre Discussion 1: Fantasy

I’m putting Fantasy first because it was in thinking about FRP (Fantasy Role-playing) that the problem of genre immersion first occurred to me. It was only when I re-framed the problem into a Sci-Fi context that I realized the answer, which is why it’s second on my list.

As I broke the subject down into sections to be written, a clear logical structure emerged. I start by listing (and briefly discussing) the existing parts of play that connect directly to the Genre, well, all the ones that I could think of.

That’s followed by a discussion of the points at which the process described above connects to the simulated reality within this particular genre.

Third, any conceptual tools that can help with the transformation of a mundane activity into a genre-specific activity.

Finally, any potential Game Balance and Campaign Issues get briefly examined.

Let’s get started…

Existing Genre Connections: Spellcasting

One of the most obvious connections between play and the fantasy genre is the casting of spells and the existence of magic more broadly.

Of course, you can downplay this connection to genre with minimalist description and flavor text, which makes the campaign feel less fantastic and more grounded, more Low Fantasy. Or you can make magic use far less prevalent and play up the fantastic when it does happen with some colorful narrative and achieve largely the same result.

But if you really want High Fantasy, you need to not only have magic use prevalent, but play into that with flavor text.

There’s an art to doing so with minimal verbiage. I employ a technique I call the Half Sentence as a first choice.

The Half-sentence Technique – Low-level Version

The basic concept is that you employ half a sentence of description of the casting, emphasizing unique special effects as much as possible, before describing the effect that the spell has from a character’s point-of-view.

Any sort of joining words are forbidden except at the end of the half sentence. No “and”s or “but”s or anything else of the sort. “Then”, “Before”, and other relative temporal terms are also to be avoided as much as possible.

The Half-Sentence technique – Advanced Version

There are a LOT of spells in most FRP, and coming up with minimalist descriptive text that is unique to that spell can become difficult quite quickly. Half-a-sentence is not a lot.

For that reason, from third level onwards (in D&D / Pathfinder terms), I transition to the advanced version of the technique, which provides 1/2 a sentence per spell level. Third character level, because that’s usually when 2nd-level spells become available.

It’s not necessary to use every one of those sentences – they are just what’s available.

What’s more, I reduce the number according to casting time, halving it for 1-round castings, or dividing by 3 (and rounding up to the next highest 1/2) for instant spells.

I also want to point out that this should not be used every single time. The first spell of a battle – okay. A higher-level spell than the ones already cast? Maybe.

A good rule of thumb is to take the allocation of descriptive sentences and spread them over multiple rounds of combat, keeping some in reserve for higher level spells if those are available to the combatant.

A little can go a very long way, and excessive use can frustrate players who want to get on with the battle.

I also try to make Druidic and Clerical spells different in flavor to Mage spells even if they are exactly the same in the rulebook.

You can balance things out a bit by applying the same technique to physical attacks and other actions by non-mages. Again, a little of this can go a long way.

But really, this is low-hanging fruit – some sources have even done the heavy lifting for you, putting effect descriptions in the sourcebook. Certainly, the better ones have done so!

Existing Genre Connections: Magic Weapons

Magic Weaponry is another potential connection to Genre, but one that’s far more frequently overlooked in a GM’s haste to get to the fight.

Does the magic weapon have a display or sensation when it’s drawn? Does it have a personality?
Does the magic weapon have a special ability that needs descriptive text when triggered?

It’s especially important to impart some flavor text in the event of a critical hit. Arm’s Law, part of Runemaster, can be very helpful when you’re starting out, but learning how to improv such narrative for yourself can only be put off for just so long.

Existing Genre Connections: Magikal Beasts

As soon as a Dragon or a Beholder shows up, you immediately establish a connection to the Genre because these things don’t exist in nature. Huge Spiders, Ogres, Trolls, etc … your sourcebooks are portals to the wonder of the Genre. All you have to do is weave the description of the Magical Beast into your description of the scene, possibly abbreviated or summarized.

A technique that I employ whenever I can is to remove a sentence from the provided description and use it to provide some other sensory trigger – scent, sound, or even taste. That means making the visual description more succinct, of course. The more unusual the visual display, the less I employ this – but for something like a Hellhound? Absolutely.

In some campaigns, I have used “glowing eyes” to indicate that a creature has been buffed up pre-encounter with magic of some kind. You can even hint at the general type of buff using different-colored glows.

Existing Genre Connections: Fantastic Locations

As you might surmise from reading

• Six Wonders: A selected assortment of Wondrous Locations for a fantasy RPG

or the sequel,

• Five More Wonders: Another assortment of Locations for a fantasy RPG,

I work very hard at emphasizing the fantastic when describing locations.

If you need help in this department, a good place to start is with

• Big Is Not Enough: Monuments and Places Of Wonder for ideas, and
• Adjectivizing Descriptions: Hitting the target for technique.

All of the above were part of the Blog Carnival of September 2013, which I hosted, and you may also get tips and ideas from the other contributions, which were summarized at

• Location, Location, Location! – the Roundup and Wrap-up (for now).

Beyond that, consult

• The Secrets of Stylish Narrative [series] for more technique, and
• Breaking Through Writer’s Block [series] for more ways of generating ideas.

Point Of Contact: Task meets Genre

Unfortunately, the standard / default option of translating a mundane task is the only one generally available for use with the Fantasy Genre, with the possible exception of some exotic vehicle.

That’s not really enough, so let’s add one that few GMs seem to think of.

Point Of Contact: Domestication

Humans, especially, love to take some creature from the wilderness and domesticate it (or try to) – just look at the sheer variety of pets that people can have.

But I’m talking about actively farming creatures either as a working beast (like the dog or the horse), as a tool (the cat, which hunts rats and mice), or as a meat source (cattle and the like). Heck, War Elephants make the point pretty succinctly.

It’s a sure bet that there have been attempts to domesticate virtually every creature in the Monster Manual, if not more. Of course, domesticating sentient creatures is also known as Slavery, so they might be an exception to the above rule.

Most of the time, these attempts would not have a fixed purpose – first, domesticate the animal, then figure out what you can do with it!

Some of these attempts will have failed, some will have succeeded, and some will be ongoing.

But this can be a very dangerous line of thought, as you’ll see when I get to the Game Balance section of this discussion.

The Medieval Lens

When adapting a task, you need to first understand how that task (or its equivalent) was performed in a Medieval society. Or in ancient Rome, or Greece, because most of them won’t have changed very much in between.

This includes factoring cultural expectations and changes. There were times in French History when no gentleman would be caught dead in public without his wig. Since this mandated wearing them daily, there was little or no chance to clean them, and as a result, they frequently became infested with insects and even (from time to time) vermin. Because they bathed not much more often than they washed their wigs, most had a natural stench, which they attempted to conceal with scented powders and perfumes.

Labor-intensive without the Labor

Most tasks had labor-intensive solutions. The higher up the social ladder, the more of this labor could / would be supplied by someone else, either because they were commanded to do so, or because they were paid to do so.

It follows that taking the labor out of a task using magic has significant social and economic ramifications, but this is such an obvious field of magic that continual research would be sponsored. Wave enough money at a problem, that problem tends to go away (eventually).

The problem is those social and economic ramifications, and PC conformity to them. Bathing is almost certainly an infrequent activity, and may involve the use of small fire Elementals to heat water, for example.

Don’t neglect public utilities – streets illuminated by magic lamps, some means of cleansing / purifying water, and so on – describing one of these has the same impact as if the PCs had to do it.

Take those magic lamps – PCs would expect to have some for use in camp, and when exploring dungeons, and would need a darned good reason not to have them.

Potential Game Balance issues

Always, there is the need to consider the game balance impact. Sometimes, these are of negligible impact – that’s a green light.

The more magic is used to supplement or replace labor, the greater the pool of potential labor becomes for other purposes, like standing armies and law enforcement and thief’s guilds. Those are usually acceptable, though they should be pointed out to the players when entering an affected society, especially for the first time.

But it’s domestication that is the real danger. I forget in which article I wrote about it, but when I was developing the house rules for my first D&D campaign, I tested them with a one-off for a set of experienced players. And, because the intent was to stress-test the rules, I asked them not to go easy on me.

One of them asked about domesticated monsters, and especially whether or not Black Puddings or the like had been captured and were being used for garbage disposal. I thought it sounded reasonably easy to capture a piece of a Black Pudding, and all you had to do was then feed it to get a bigger one, so it sounded reasonable. The players proceeded to fill potion bottles with little bits of Pudding. When they encountered a Monster of significant levels, one of them would lob a potion-bottle of Black Pudding at the Monster. Most opposition literally melted away at that point.

That one question-and-answer had a profound effect on Game Balance.

Anytime you extend the range of capabilities of a society, you run the risk of handing the PCs a tool that will have significant campaign effects. Sometimes, you can offset that with additional requirements or downsides, other times you have to say, “heck no!” and abandon that particular technology. And if that means forfeiting this particular chance to connect back to the parent genre, so be it.

That’s where part 1 has to end. Part 2 will pick up where I left off, probably next week, covering the Sci-Fi, Superheros, and Western genres. Well, Sci-Fi at least, there might need to be a part 3!

GMs who only run Fantasy campaigns should still read the rest of the article for ideas, just as some of the Fantasy Content material above will apply to non-Fantasy campaigns.

It will be worth remembering, too, that this two-part post was conceived as a single article; practicality of writing may have forced its division, but that shouldn’t be how it is read.