Advice for Game Masters: Dressing an Encounter. How to subtly tell players the mood of the scene before they engage it.
Dressing an encounter! Otherwise known as set dressing (or other terms I may not be aware of/ remember), this is used to describe details to make what your players engage with the world rather than feeling like a blank canvas in some places. I know personally the appeal of worldbuilding, and how much fun it is to mold gods from clay and to fill journals with the political gambits of the little monarchs in your mind. But, most of the time, what you show your player will be the mundane. Dirty caves reeking of stale and drying moss, villages bustling with activity and noise. Even if you have your game set toward the grand goal of overthrowing a mad deity, a world will almost never feel lived in if you ignore the smaller details, and this I know well.
Let's put this to a test- A brief description I would give players who come across the hut of a witch in a bog.
"After hours of trudging through gnarled branches sticking through the shallow water, after nearly losing your boot to sudden muddy patches, you see a thin trail of smoke leading up from the tops of the trees ahead of you. Focusing your gaze, you see a small wooden shelter, no larger than a small house. You continue to walk forward, and see the tell-tale signs of a witch littering the entrance to the shack. Carefully, with hands ready to drawn your weapons, you open the door and enter the domicile."
This tells a lot to the players. The party is tired and maybe irritated at having to cross difficult terrain, the bog gives them an ominous sense around them, and they enter the hut with trepidation. However, we can make this better. Take the line from above, "You continue to walk forward, and see the tell-tale signs of a witch littering the entrance to the shack". This line alone tells the players what kind of encounter they are looking at, whether you want it to be roleplay or combat is up to the player's actions. But if you elaborate some more, you can play out an entirely different theme and tell the players how to feel before they even open the door and speak to the witch. I'm going to give three examples of such, all with the simple idea of 'skulls surrounding the shack'.
Perhaps the witch is pure evil and covetous, hoarding the trophies of the slain and mounting their skulls on polearms sticking out of the muck, with chipped swords hanging from ropes covered in gristle. There are marks of dark gods etched into human mandibles that line the simple porch, bleeding thick gray smoke that pools around the door, forming a protective ward that alerts the witch if someone crosses it's boundary. As they approach, the players hear wailing and shrieking as the witch restrains a hostage for a dark ritual inside.
But maybe, the witch is not evil, but rather a neutral protector of the forest. Skulls still line the boundary of her home, but none are human. All of them are of animals, deer skulls with carefully braided grasses that web across the antlers and hang them from a tree, where runes of protection hang beside them. A skill check can tell the players that these runes spell out an ancient spell that is meant to bring departed spirits peace. The skull of a squirrel suddenly animates itself, with a ghostly body forming around it to run around the feet of the players and chitter playfully.
Maybe the witch has done dark magic, but only because it is for a good cause. Maybe she was not able to save her village from a disaster, and so communes evil forces to keep them at bay. The skulls around her house are from men and women, but the players notice none are misshandled. Each was reverently laid across a strip of velvet cloth with prayer beads laid before them in offering. Even after finishing her dark rituals, the witch will lay the remains of those slain to rest and vainly attempt to return them to the gods they prayed to. The players can hear crying, but this time it is the witch in sorrow.
A story can be told a million different ways, but sometimes the introduction to an encounter can guide the players to interact with it in the way you want, allowing the plot to progress seamlessly.
Note, just had this idea and wanted to jot it down someplace where it way help people with this issue. Lord knows I have in the past. I hope this is helpful to anyone who reads it, and happy roleplaying!!