Creating Quick Cutscenes for your D&D Game
Your players have just achieved a major milestone — they’ve defeated one of the villain’s main henchman, or reclaimed the magic sword while successfully escaping the crumbling dungeon. The players are on a high from this climactic action, and are ready to be led around while they figure out their next move. This is a perfect time for a cutscene!
I’ve been creating short little cutscenes for my players for the last few years, and they’ve become quite the hit. I often use them as act breaks, but also when I see an opportunity for a video to give more information in an engaging way. They’re a different way to experience the fantasy world we’re creating together, and as long as they aren’t overdone, they can serve as a fun diversion from regular tabletop gameplay.
Sometimes, I just want my players to get a certain “feeling” from something. Before, I referred to how I like to think of myself as a director when I DM. Cutscenes are one way to use different tools to attain this “feeling.”
Adobe Premier is a great tool for this, even if you only have rudimentary editing skills. I can’t draw original art, or animate anything, and I have no After Effects background. I definitely felt pretty limited, but it just made me get creative! There is a wide, wide world of gorgeous fantasy art, and video game soundtracks, and free sound effects that are ripe for the picking, and I shamelessly “borrowed” all of them (hey, we’re not selling anything over here — it’s just personal use!). So I set about creating montages with all of these elements combined together.
For example, I wanted my players to get a different impression when they first entered the city of Yartar as opposed to when they entered the city of Waterdeep. I could just describe it to them, but that only accomplishes part of what I want.
So I made this quick video:
After getting over how my voice sounded, I was pretty happy with the final product. Here’s how I went about it.
Voicework
- First, create a script. For Yartar, I basically just took parts of the description from Storm King’s Thunder, and added some bits that are freely available online.
- Then, record your narration. You don’t need a fancy microphone or a recording booth or any recording software. Quicktime with the built in MacBook Air microphone works fine. I remember listening to a podcast where an audiobook reader said the closet is the best place to read from for sound quality, so I read there. It takes a few tries. When you stumble, don’t start all the way from the beginning. Just re-read that part — you’ll do the cutting later.
- Convert it to an MP3, and toss it into Premier, where you can see your whole performance on the timeline. Then re-listen to it, and chop out all the crap like the stumbles, and any dead air. You want this to be punchy and quick. You should be left with just the good “takes.”
- And if you really hate your voice, you can always tweak it. Throw a PitchShifter on to change how your voice sounds. Also, you can take the whole MP3 file you dropped and increase the speed to make your voice higher, or lower the speed to make your voice lower. Just changing the speed to 90% can make your voice come out way lower and does a great job at making it seem Giant-like. Just make sure you do that to the whole file before you cut it up, or the change in all the clips won’t be consistent.
Visuals
- This part is really fun — you get to create your montage. Basically, you have to go between listening to your voice clips, and searching for fantasy art that pairs well with it. There is so much fantastic art out there, that it is unbelievable. Obviously it’s hard to get art that will consistently end up looking like your specific PCs, so instead you need art that sets the mood and tone for what you’re describing.
- I end up doing a lot of Googling of “fantasy art frost giant battle” or “d&d art forest scary” or things like that, and you can find a vast variety of gorgeous artwork this way. If you know other easily searchable ways of finding art, let me know! There are lots of artwork databases out there, but being able to find specifically what you’re looking for is the key part.
- Finding one great piece of art isn’t the problem, it’s finding a bunch of them to tell your story. Change the pictures to match the narration. The script will have a sort of “beat” and you’ll need to change the pictures to match that beat. My Yartar video is just over one minute long, and it used 18 pictures, which averages to a bit over four seconds per picture. Your voicework will dictate your pace.
- Static images are very boring. You’ll want to use keyframing, or the Ken Burns Effect with some subtle zooms and pans, to add a little life to the video. Click on your clip, head to the Effects Controls panel, and click on the Motion Tab. Set up the Position and Scale for the starting point of your picture. Click the stopwatches beside both options. Drag the cursor to get yourself to the end of the clip, and choose a new Position and Scale to end on. Voilà! Re-watch your clip and see how smoothly it moves. Tweak it to your liking, and don’t be afraid to keep it subtle. Just a small movement that slowly reveals a new element in the picture can be really effective.
Soundtrack
- Once you’ve got your pictures locked down, now you can add in a soundtrack. There are lots of fantastic soundtracks out there that are perfect for this. There are classics you could go with, like Skyrim, or Neverwinter Nights. Here are some more recent soundtracks that would well too:
Banner Saga 1 & 2
The Witcher III
Pillars of Eternity
Baldur’s Gate: Seige of Dragonspear
Tyranny
- If you have the MP3s, then just toss them into Premier, but make sure to turn down the decibels so the music doesn’t drown out your narration.
Sound Effects
- If you can get your hands on some free sound effects, they can add a nice component to your videos. A helpful site I’ve used is https://www.freesound.org/ which only makes you sign up with your email for free to get access to their sound effects. Adding sound effects like swords clanging and horses galloping always come in handy, but the site also has a bunch of eerie tones and creepy atmospheres that can portray a sense of foreboding that can make your videos extra memorable.
And That’s It
Render that beauty and export it, and suddenly you’ve got a gorgeous cutscene ready to show your players when the time is right.
