Scene setting - the servants quarters

[ffutures]

Here's a little more scene setting - if you were the referee who had to run the scenario, and the adventurers happened to end up visiting the servants quarters of this particular residence, would you feel that this was enough description? I really don't want to give a massive list of interesting kitchen utensils since it isn't actually a major location in the story, and the focus is mostly on the characters and their personalities which I'm describing elsewhere.


Continuing along around the curve of the central shaft, the third tunnel leads into the servant’s quarters. There’s a kitchen, used mostly to brew herbal teas and other hot drinks, for the skinning of carcasses, and for the servants to dine on left-overs; a pantry, used for foods of all sorts and smelling strongly of exotic spices; and sleeping caves for the male and female servants. There’s enough room for the regular staff and the servants of three or four visitors. Although the pretence of a natural cave has been maintained in these areas, they are predominantly utilitarian without any of the artistic touches of the rest of the Caverns. There are some framed embroidered samplers with religious messages such as

Trample on the weakest,
Glory in their plight.
Veld 36 – VIII

and a large and extremely nasty Yarge painting of “Sunset over Irieth” which nobody wanted to exhibit elsewhere in the caverns, but nothing that any right-thinking dragon would voluntarily put on display without inviting ridicule.


Enough, or is more detail needed?

Comments

[raygungothic.livejournal.com]

Seems good to me. In fact, I would have thought this was probably about as long as scripted scenery description blocks ought to get, for a non-major location that isn't actually built out of plot.

Do you use the method of preparing short phrases to pepper in, when the players are actually moving around and you're not really working from the script?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Depends - a lot of the games I actually run are improvised for a new setting or playtests once I've got the setting half-way developed, so I tend to wing it a lot of the time; usually I have some events planned and a few characters who are going to put in an appearance, beyond that I'm making it up as I go along.

[raygungothic.livejournal.com]

Best way, I think - too much script can easily be counter-productive. I've become quite fond, though, of making myself a list of phrases I can call on for a given scene - so when I'm winging it I can shove in half a sentence of atmospheric description here, a line of quirky dialogue there. Maybe it's a crutch, certainly it's a sort of crib sheet, but I like the atmosphere-building effect it can have. You probably don't need the help that I do.

Anyway, I was thinking that might be a way of getting entertainingly peculiar draconic kitchen implements in without breaking up the flow...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Dragons don't actually cook much, apart from skinning carcasses and making tea, fruit cordials, etc., and I really don't think I can make that interesting enough to be worth describing in any detail.