The Dungeon Master is in charge of many elements of Dungeons & Dragons. They set the scene, call for initiative, and move the game along, all while adjudicating the rules of the game and prepping for the next encounter.

I’ve been watching MCDM’s new D&D stream, the Chain. At one point during the first session, Matt Colville, the DM, describes a short series of scenes for the players. These scenes don’t take place anywhere near the player characters. There’s no way the characters know those scenes are happening. But, for players and audience, those moments give a cinematic feel to the events, and they’re foreshadowing something.

That got me thinking—

The Dungeon Master is like a director, right? As the DM, you’re the one who decides when it’s time to move in and out of initiative order, when to cut ahead to the end of the travel montage, and so on. You can say, “and you spent two days travelling, now you approach the castle gates,” and your players are ready to move forward.

So, you’re in charge of the “camera,” the way the players view the world. They use their characters to interact with what you show them, but that’s just it—you’re the one controlling what they see. You decide someone needs a successful Wisdom (Perception) check before they notice the secret door in the hallway.

You can use this power for evil to direct your players’ attention and control the pacing of the session. For example:

  • You can show the players (out-of-character) something

You can build tension in the game by describing a scene the PCs aren’t aware of. Since this turns the players into an audience, I’d make these short, sparse, and sweet.

You can give a quick scene of what the villain is up to, either right before or right after they run into the party. An epilogue of what goes on in a location after the player characters leave, or a prologue that takes place before they arrive.

These scenes let the players see the campaign world as something that lives and changes even when their characters aren’t around. I’m excited to make more use of these types of “cinematics” in the future! The next “camera movement” is something that comes more intuitively:

  • You decide when initiative order starts and ends

“Let’s roll initiative” is a natural staple in the Dungeon Master vocabulary. You decide when to slow down time to 2-6 second rounds and when to speed it back up to normal again. Player characters stop rolling attacks and start negotiating? It might be time to let go of initiative order, but it’s ultimately up to your judgment of the situation.

  • You can move past a slow part of the story

This is the tactic where you give a short narration of time passing and move the player characters up to the next beat of the story. You skip the travel montage, past rolling checks to not get lost, and past random encounters to get to the characters’ arrival at their destination. After resolving downtime activities, you give a brief summary of what happens, and you speed along a two-month time skip. You don’t have to have the players play out each day of their journey if nothing is going to happen during it.

This works best when there’s an uninterrupted span of time in front of the characters—that time needs to pass before the next thing happens, but there isn’t too much going on during that span. On the other hand:

  • You can encourage players to make their own scenes

“After you report back to the Guildmaster, you have the day to yourselves. What do you do?”

“What do you talk about on the way back home?”

Instead of simply skipping over them, you can have your players fill in a few scenes between what you’ve prepared. This also encourages your players to ask for scenes in the future—“if we can, I’d like to talk to [other character’s name] after dinner one night.” This works especially well for groups already predisposed to roleplaying, but it can also add some variety to other styles of play or show new players what they can do.

When to use which “technique” is up to you. You know your group, so I’d say go for it and trust your gut. The worst thing that can happen is that it just doesn’t work. And in that case, you can learn from the experience and do it better next time!

What do you think? Have you used “cinematics” in your game? Can you think of other camera tricks not included here?