Adding Atmosphere to Your Dungeons and Dragons Game
Storytelling is a really interesting art form that I personally love. To me, a good game of Dungeons and Dragons is not about the power leveling, it is not about the combat or any of that stuff. To me it has always been about participating in the ultimate interactive story – while goofing off with a lot of my friends.
I have always been a Dungeon Master as I played D&D growing up. Very rarely would you find me as a player character. I just loved crafting the dungeon, building the NPCs and plotting the epic storyline my friends were about to embark upon. Having said that, I have played underneath enough Dungeon Masters to know that there is certain things you can do to… let us say… enrich the experience.
One way I have found to enrich the experience of my players is to add props. Adding props is so damn easy it is almost silly so few DMs actually use it in their games. I remember one session in particular that I used a set of playing cards to add an incredibly eerie feel to what was happening in the story. The player was a poor nobleman, he had stopped in a bizarre when an old woman had caught his attention. She sold Tarot readings of your future, this particular PC decided for one reason or another to buy a reading of his own future.
The things she told him made him feel incredibly uneasy about where he was heading and the dangers he was about to face. I added to this aura of eeriness simply by playing the Deck of Cards in front of him as if I really was the fortuneteller. All I did was set the first few cards in a predictable order on top of the deck so I knew what was going to come up, I already made up what the cards numbers and symbols meant, but it all flowed as if it was totally random.
By the way, don’t think you have to go about learning to read Tarot cards from a normal deck of cards. I pretty much just bullshitted all the meanings. But… it worked great!
Till this day, that player still mentions the time he got his fortune read as being one of the strangest and coolest experiences he has had playing Dungeons and Dragons. All because of a simple prop.
Now depending on your campaign, this prop might help you or be totally useless for you. I am a big fan of Ravenloft and gothic horror in general, so I tend to play in that very brooding low-magic kind of a setting. My most famed campaign was my Ravenloft campaign taking place in Bluetspur. By adding props to my game, sound effects and ambient music, I was able to wrap my group of players so tightly into the story that they actually became afraid of the dark at night when it was time to leave the house and go back home.
Which led to a unique opportunity.
The next time we met to play, I had it setup where I could turn off the lights anytime I wanted in the room – leaving us in pitch blackness. I did this a few times at opportune moments when a monster would appear. Once the lights go off, I could use my voice to make sound effects of some creature crawling feverishly fast along the floor, coming ever closer to them. It sounds really stupid, but once you got your players hooked into your game… this stupid trick suddenly becomes incredibly clever.
The end result of my prop usage in my Ravenloft Dungeons and Dragons campaign?
My friends are traumatized.
Seriously. They still sometimes shit bricks thinking of my “white faces” when looking out at a window blinded by the darkness.
Try props. They are simple and worth it.





