Using Body Language to Run Exciting D&D Games

Players are animals

Not only players are animals, of course. All humans are. We are social animals. Our brains evolved in a way that lets us experience a semblance of someone else’s emotional state. When we see someone break down in tears, we tend to feel sadness. Seeing someone throw up their arms in joyful triumph, can create the feeling of happiness in the observer. When we run our games, we can exploit that feature of our human psyche. When running D&D, we can use body language to invoke a desired emotional response in our players.

Using body language to create urgency in D&D

We can use our bodies to modulate the level of urgency we want our players to feel. When the characters are sitting around their campfire, having a friendly chat, we can lean back, take a sip of our favorite beverage, and enjoy the moment of calm together with the players. But then the characters sense a rumbling in the ground underneath them. Now we set our drink down, we lean in closer and look at the player expectantly: “What do you do?” When, moments later, an umber hulk bursts through the ground, we stand up, open our eyes wide, and use our arms and hands to visualize the chaos of the scene. When we are using body language to modulate the sense of urgency appropriate to the situation, we help our players immerse themselves in the story.

This technique of using body language to run an exciting game of D&D can be especially useful when we are running one-shots. In an interview, dungeon master Shawn Merwin makes this point about running one-hour-long adventures. He explains how he uses his whole body to impart the sense of urgency in his players that is necessary to finish an adventure in just one hour. Standing up, gesturing, facial expressions – we can use these tools to make the time constraints of exciting one-shot adventures work for us.

Using body language for better D&D NPCs

Body language is not something we tend to spend a lot of time on when preparing our D&D games. We do, however, spend some time on preparing relevant NPCs for an upcoming session. For those of us that are not professional voice actors, portraying NPCs as unique and memorable characters can be challenging. Body language can be an easily accessible tool to flesh out the way we roleplay an NPC.

Is the NPC an arrogant noble who stiffly puffs out their chest? Are they a slimy bartender who leans in closely to whomever she talks to? Or is it the quiet child that keeps his head low and draws up his shoulders? We can jot down a few words about the body language of an NPC when we prepare them before the session. We can do the same thing when we improvise an NPC. Note down the one or two body language aspects that we come up with in the moment. It will help our players remember them, and it will help us to portray NPCs with consistency, even though we might not be able to do amazing voices or accents.

Body language and D&D online play

Using body language to run an exciting D&D game gets trickier when we play online. Instead of sitting around a table, all of our expressions get crammed into a tiny pixelated box on our players’ devices. We can make some improvements simply by investing in a better technical setup, like a better camera, microphone, and internet connection. If our setup allows for it, we can stand up to create urgency, even when playing online. We can move the camera to create a wider angle so that players can see the full extent of our dungeon mastering acrobatics. It might seem strange at first to jump around in front of our desktops. However, it is worth the weirdness if we are able to bring some of the power of body language, as a dungeon master’s tool, back into the online experience.

Go big or go home

When we dungeon masters use body language to create an engaging D&D experience, we shouldn’t be afraid to give it our best effort. Work within the limits of your physicality, but “leave it all on the field.” Reach with both hands over your head to show the orc’s devastating blow with her greataxe. Stumble backwards, and clutch your throat when the fighter slits the bad guy’s throat. Hunch down and then explode outwards with your whole body to mimic the destructive power of the wizard’s fireball. We are not going for subtlety here. We’re not auditioning for a role. Go big or go home. We can use everything we got to tell the tales of high adventure that excite and engage our players.

Body language: An undervalued dungeon mastering tool

We tend to talk a lot about game mechanics, world building, and adventure design. Body language rarely comes up when we talk about running D&D. Yet it is a robust tool to modulate the emotional response of our players. We can use body language to create memorable NPCs. Body language can help us impart a sense of urgency to our players. Even when we’re playing D&D online, we can make the best of our technical setup to be able to use as much of our bodies as possible. However we use body language in our games, “go big or go home” is a great mantra. Give it your all, and make big gestures. Throw your physicality behind your descriptions and interactions. Then, body language can become a powerful tool to create excitement, engagement, and urgency in our D&D games.