RPG Perspective and Scene Framing: How to Tell Your Narrative Story

Whether you’re a budding Game Master or you’ve been playing roleplaying games on a regular schedule with a group of people for years, there’s one common thread underpinning the entire tabletop RPG hobby: narrative. Even if your game is centered around murder-hacking your way through dungeons and grabbing loot, there’s still a story in some form or another being told.

When we sit down to the table to play an RPG, we suspend our disbelief for those precious few hours and let the waves of an imagined world wash over us as we bring characters and the world they interact with to life. We describe places that don’t exist, impossible technology, magic that shatters our preconceptions about the workings of the world, and creatures whose mere existence mocks the natural order and calls it unsavory names. You’re the filter through which the setting is transmitted to your players.

Your RPG story

Regardless of the setting, regardless of the genre of RPG, a story is told. And it’s those stories we continue to talk about after we pack up the dice and return to the waking world from the dreamscape of our GM’s design. There’s even been research done suggesting our way of processing experiences at the table mimics actual memory formation.

In other words, when we sit down to the table and our characters go through a portion of the story, we process that as if we had gone through it ourselves. You may have experienced this in the form of a player or yourself saying, “remember when I (insert badass thing your character did)” or “remember when we (insert event that happened to the party).” If this isn’t a reason to play tabletop RPGs, I don’t know what is.

In many ways, RPGs are the natural progression of the oral storytelling tradition we know goes far back, even to the ancient Greeks. They viewed stories as an enriching experience and there were people paid to write and memorize epic poetry and recite it to audiences. Perhaps more familiar to all the fantasy RPG players out there are the beloved bards: wandering minstrels and storytellers who entertained nobility in courts of stone around roaring fires of feasts.

Tabletop RPGs is an evolution of that great tradition. Except here, the campfire we tell stories around is the dining room table. And the narrative effort is collaborative, rather than just one person who has an ode or a myth memorized andrecites it to their audience. And of course there’s dice, agents of random chance to derail or accelerate the whole endeavor and create lasting moments from critical failures to critical successes.

This we know. And this we respect about the hobby. Whether it’s subconscious or obvious to us, humans love a good story.

But what happens when the method of storytelling gets old? Or when we want to seek out other methods to enhance the way we create this collaborative narrative?

Finding your voice

There are numerous ways to frame a scene, to set the stage for action to occur, to describe how action takes place, and to continue the narrative after the action concludes. And there are just as many ways, if not more, to articulate the meaning from an advice standpoint. 

Regardless of how you approach your particular style, there are always the big questions to be answered, the questions we all learned in grade school when we first started writing paragraphs and essays: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. All these questions are components driving the way we think about GMing as a whole, because the information the players both want and need to engage with the world, whether it’s a homebrew or a stock standard campaign setting, is encapsulated in those questions. And all these questions can be fluidly answered via any of the suggestions below.

I’ll approach these suggestions under the assuming when you narrate for your players you choose a role guiding the way you speak, the words you use, and the images your words evoke. Here are a few different roles you can take as you spin your narrative web for your players, along with examples of what they might sound like at the table. And of course, as with all GM advice, you can mix and match these roles to best fit the situation at hand. In fact, I suggest you do. Variety is never bad when it comes to telling your story.

Throughout all the following examples, let’s say we have characters Al’Anda, Bron, Carrow, and Darala at the table.

The director

Imagine you’re pitching a screenplay to a group of TV or film executives. Or perhaps you’re telling actors how the scene in the theater production plays out and what their motivation is for acting.

You’re the director. You understand the larger context of the scene at hand and you relay it to your players, outside the perspective of their characters. You use first person plural pronouns, as if you and the players are an audience watching everything play out. You’re the David Attenborough of RPGs. Here’s an example of what I mean:

“We open with the sound of soft birdsong making its way through the encampment. Here we see a ramshackle camp, set up in a small copse of trees in the middle of the verdant Throlin Forest. The clouds above are gray and foreboding, and the scent of last night’s battle permeates the air. The scene fades into an exchange between Carrow and the leader of the mercenary band, Krill Althan. As Carrow enters through the flap of the leader’s large tent, we see sweat beading on Krill’s brow, his eyebrows furrowed in frustration as he scribbles on a piece of parchment.”

The director feels more omniscient than the GM usually is. And that’s because they are. The role of director enables the GM to share narrative information with the players their characters might not be aware of. This is a beautiful opportunity to invoke dramatic irony. If you can trust your players to keep the metagaming to a minimum, assuming the director role can create truly memorable reveals for plot twists or villains or intrigue in your campaign the players can then anticipate with bated breath, or horror, as their characters spiral into the maelstrom you’ve created for those events to transpire. Here’s another example:

“As the party retires to their chambers and the warmth from their fireplaces soothes them into peaceful slumber, the scene fades to black. But before we end, we see another soft glint of firelight slowly begin to clarify in the darkness. A cloaked figure approaches it and draws back its hood, revealing the familiar face of Garena Windheart. She looks pained, grimacing as she removes her armor and sets it on a nearby chair. She kneels before the fire and we see another glint: the glint of the Dagger of Garmourne. The dagger that killed the Emperor. She whispers to herself, barely audible over the popping wood. ‘I’m sorry, Father. It had to be done.’”

Cue the sharp gasps and the shouts of “Noooooo!”, “It was Garena?!”, “She helped us last month with the Cult of Hunger!” You can see the appeal. You’ve done your job well as a GM if you can elicit this kind of response from your players as the director.

A word of caution with this one: it’s difficult to use for combat directly involving the players. The role of director encourages neutrality and passive omniscience. It’s difficult to keep the action flowing in combat with that kind of mentality. I’d revert to another role when you try to explain what’s happening during a fight sequence.

But if your campaign revolves around political intrigue, societies and cultures, or exploration, the director can be a good choice.

The narrator

Picture yourself leading a walking tour through your world and the events occurring within it. You have to provide details evocative of the beauty and wonder, the horror and the mystery, the societies and the cultures, of the playground in which the characters are spending their time. You have to alternate between broad, sweeping strokes of storytelling and minute to minute action. You have to give context to your players when they ask about all the random minutiae players ask about. But this isn’t any problem for you, the narrator.

The narrator uses second person, primarily, addressing the players as if they were their characters. As if the imagined context was real and the players were experiencing their journey in real-time. As if they, the players, had all the knowledge the characters have. The narrator relies a bit more than the director on player input, fueled by questions and comments helping to drive the narrative forward with descriptions and precise answers to player contributions and interjections. Here’s an example:

“As you crest over the hill, you see the Tower of Kharan the Mad looming in the distance. Its iron gates once stood tall and proud, but now all you see are rusted, broken shadows of their former selves. One thing that has stood the test of time is the marble pillar, etched with runes all across its surface. They glow a faint purple in the fading twilight sun. Darala, you recognize the symbol of your deity’s immortal foe, The Yellow Knight, etched for all to see on the side of the pillar in some kind of dark fluid that has since dried. And Brom, you can faintly make out the sound of a song whistling through the still, dusk air. It reminds you of a song from back home, back when things weren’t as bad and comfort was just a warm meal and a story from your father away.”

As you can see, the narrator has the primary function of relaying information pertinent to the party’s current goals and objectives. The narrator provides context, but only the context the characters would be privy to or have immediately at their disposal. In this way, the narrator moves the story forward at the pace of the players, letting decisions (and the consequences of those decisions) come to light as the party encounters them. There’s little room for dramatic irony here as the narrator, because at its core this role is a facilitator for the story to develop, not the prime motivator for the story itself.

Combat is also a breeze in the role of the narrator, because you’re able to provide those gritty descriptions and quick sequences of action, driven by the characters and their interactions with the enemies. Here’s a couple examples of what I mean:

“Okay so it’s the mercenaries’ turn. You see a couple of them turn to each other and mutter something. The heavily armored one draws his laser rifle and tries to get a bead on you, Carrow, while the other one takes cover behind a dust-covered rock and points his pistol at Darala. They both shoot at the same time….And they both hit. Carrow, you feel the heat of the impact scorch through your thin armor and immediately start to burn your left side. Darala, the pistol shot ricochets off the shield emitter on your right arm and it shorts out. You can smell the acrid stink of burnt electronics and smoking circuits.”

“Yeah, Al’Anda, you hit with your war hammer. You swing it downward in a wide arc at the troll’s head as it’s still reeling from Brom’s lightning bolt last round. It impacts the huge skull and you hear bones crunch as the resistance gives way and it topples to the ground, your hammer embedded in its head. Make a Perception check for me, as you yank the head of the hammer out…Okay, you hear some scrabbling on the rock walls of the cave in the distance. It sounds like a lot of tiny feet and pieces of leather armor rustling against each other. It appears as though the goblin hordes have arrived.”

All told, the narrator can be the jack of all trades when it comes to telling your story at the table. It’s a versatile role serving many GMs well. And consequently, it’s the most common role we find ourselves falling into.

The crowdsourcer

The last role I’ll touch on is the most reliant on player contribution. If you believe tabletop RPGs are a collaborative experience where people sit together and develop a story together guided by some form of narrative, you might think about employing the role of the crowdsourcer in your version of GMing. This role takes narrative developments and instead of forcing you as the GM to consistently come up with reasons, motivations, descriptions, pieces of lore, spell descriptions, combat actions, and anything else narrative in nature, you kick it back to the players and let them contribute to the world at large. For those who watch Critical Role, this is precisely what Matt Mercer does when he asks the player who kills a big bad “how do you want to do this?”

In other words, this role enhances player buy-in because it establishes the fact that they have direct agency in the narrative and the ability to flesh out aspects of their character and the world specific to their interests and desires at the table. If you consider player buy-in to be a useful aspect of tabletop roleplaying, then this role fits the bill.

Here’s a few examples of what I mean:

“You all enter the room. It’s dimly lit by sconces in the walls that are smoldering with embers that have been burning for quite a long time. There’s a figure seated in front of the altar, legs crossed. As you approach, it rises and turns to face you. Brom you recognize her face. Can you describe for us who this is and how you know her?”

“Carrow, you reach out to your memory of the spidery arcane words and summon the forces that will allow you to cast the fireball at the group of trolls. What does that look like? We haven’t seen this spell before from Carrow. So give us a description of the spell and its look and flavor.”

“You search the jungle floor and you find a plant that looks interesting. Seems to have some evident properties to you, Darala, based on your Nature check. What is this plant and how is it used?”

“Okay so you crit your Persuasion roll, Al’Anda. How do you convince this space pirate that your vessel is innocuous and shouldn’t be their target? He’s obviously hostile, but something about your words is enough to placate him. What does that look like?”

You can see taking the role of the crowdsourcer requires interaction with the players. And it also requires the players are willing to think imaginatively and creatively about the world. Getting them to think about the world might require a little prodding or nudges toward that direction. It might be best to employ the crowdsourcer with a well-established group, one already engaged, who’s willing to converse with you about the setting and the events inhabiting it.

This also necessitates the mindset that, while the players will have agency in describing how the scene plays out, there are limits. When a player casting fireball is asked for a description of what it looks like, they can’t just say “the whole group is vaporized instantly. We win.” (Unless the damage dice say so, of course.) When the player is searching for the plants in the jungle floor, they can’t just say “this is whisperleaf. It’s a magical cure-all instantly healing all wounds, no matter how grave.” Players have to have an appreciation for the limits of the setting and have to be willing to abide by them.

But the crowdsourcer is a fantastic role to take, assuming those characteristics hold. It’s especially useful for a GM who relies heavily on improv or on off-the-cuff narration. Or when the players derail your supposed story arc and go off in a completely different direction, which will happen at some point. You push the descriptions over to the players and engage with them in a collaborative improvisation helping to flesh out the world and actively involves them, even as they veer off the plot of the adventure.

Concluding remarks

Obviously, these roles aren’t all the roles possible for a GM to take. But they represent a few I employ often in my home games, to good effect (or at least, that’s the impression I get from my players). Hopefully this was a useful way to think about GMing and our roles as judge, jury, executioner, and orators behind the screen.

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