One of the things that I noticed from my last Karameikos session was the way in which my descriptive mindset – what I’ve recently discussed on the podcast as being the deployment of the Scout – has slipped and become less focused at the table.

The mindset of the Scout is one wherein I am walking the path alongside the players. I am an explorer discovering the world alongside them and focused upon marrying the player’s perception of the Otherworld to that of their characters. I use my senses to describe the texture of the stone, the smell of the rain, and the sound of the wind. I am the camera, the microphone, and the sensory input for the characters.

During Sessions 9 and 10 of the Karameikos campaign – which to be fair to myself occurred before I had managed to cohere the mental framework of the Sentinel, Scout, and Sojourner that I’ve been speaking about in the podcast – these stances had slipped. I was allowing my anxiety to produce the jovial and joking persona that I can lapse into when I am not careful: making comments to elicit a laugh and banter with the players.

But, as Jamison would be the first to point out, the role of the Gamemaster is to shift through three distinct modes of play: the Judge, the Camera, and the Actor. In my own language, because those words bounce off me, this is the Sentinel, the Scout, and the Sojourner. The biggest victim of this anxious banter is generally the Scout because my description of the scenes the player characters enter becomes cursory and minimal in the extreme.

If you’re ever wondering why the group’s attention might be flagging – and this can be for many reasons – one of the primary things to consider is your own behaviour. Are you focused as the Gamemaster and shifting only between those three mental stances? Have you clearly described the scene so the players recognise what they are dealing with? Are your NPCs (goodness, I dislike that bland term) hollow and wooden, even being presented in third person and without the associated description? Are you clearly and efficiently adjudicating? If not, it’s time to refocus.

As I prepare for Karameikos Session 11, I’ve been refocusing my attention on the role of the Scout. For one, I need to be able to clearly visualise the scenes that I am preparing to present. While I don’t usually find blocks of read-aloud text to be something I enjoy using, producing some short paragraphs of description has helped me prepare. On the night, I can choose: paraphrasing those notes is preferable but, if all else fails, reading them out is an option.

I am seeking deeper Otherworld-immersion in my games. Without the descriptive Scout ready to deploy into the session and bring the Otherworld to life from the perspective of the player characters, I’ve already failed. The kind of bland and detached habit of presenting a situation that I fell into through many long years in the past has to be actively replaced with something more engaging but also clear. This is the art of the description as a Gamemaster.

At the tail end of the last session, when the player characters came upon a strange scene on the trail they were following towards Vander’s Hollow, it was the prepped description that helped them focus and which consequently radically shifted the tone of the session:

The trail narrows as it climbs into the throat of the Wulfwolde Hills, eventually spilling into a high, shadowed clearing where the path splits. Ahead, southward, a weathered wooden signpost leans at a drunken angle; its moss-clogged grain clearly points the southern path toward VANDER’S HOLLOW. To the right and left a thinner trail runs west to east across your trail. 

But the path is blocked.

The players shifted their attention, the cameras on Discord revealing all eyes moving to the screen as they focused attention on the words being spoken.

The silence here is heavy, muffled by a low-hanging mist that smells of ozone and crushed mint. In the centre of the junction, three figures in silver-grey robes are seated in a perfect triangle, their backs to one another. They are motionless, their heads bowed as if in deep meditation, but their skin has the translucent, waxen quality of the long-dead. Around them, a stark, shimmering ring of fine white powder has been traced into the dirt—a barrier that the surrounding forest seems to resent. Outside the circle, the tall grass is blackened and withered as if by a localised frost; inside, the clover is unnaturally vibrant, untouched by the autumn chill.

All hint of banter and distraction evaporated. I could see the expressions of curiosity emerge on their faces, only half-realised in the periphery of my conscious awareness but tangible nonetheless.

Leaning against a lightning-scarred stump in the very centre of this sanctuary is a younger woman. Her breathing is shallow, a rhythmic, wet rattle that is the only sound in the clearing. Her hands are white-knuckled, clutching a wooden bowl her chest as if it were a shield.

The dirt around the white ring is gouged with deep, violent furrows, as if massive talons repeatedly lashed against an invisible wall. You see no footprints leading away—only the oppressive, watchful weight of the trees and the dying girl trapped within her masters’ final, fading circle.

From here, the session became alert and electrified. The first player was desperate to act and they shifted visibly into their role. The others too, one by one, impatient to be given their turn, shifted in-character and began to speak and declare actions as-character. The spell was recast. The session ended on a high not felt for perhaps two or three previous.

The Scout is something I need to always prepare for. Visualising the key scenes pre-game is a useful practice. Noting down a description as a baseline for presentation at the table is also something I value, at least at this point in my Gamemastering. Remembering to take a beat in-session and visualise the things I need to improvise is the final part of this discipline. Then speak: clearly, simply, descriptively. Three senses if you can manage it.

Game on!