For those of you running pre-made or other people’s adventures, how much of the “Read of paraphrase the following to your players” do you read aloud, how much do you exclude, or generally how do you handle this?

I have found a few of the official missions have excessive text that my players (and it may just be my group!) get bored listening to me read a significant chunk of exposition and so I am either letting them read directly or (more commonly) rewriting and condensing down what is communicated to them.

curious how the rest of you handle this?

I paraphrase. Hearing text read aloud to me by a GM always takes me out of immersion since it's my GMs typically switch out of their normal "GM Voice".

30 minutes ago, kaosoe said:

I paraphrase. Hearing text read aloud to me by a GM always takes me out of immersion since it's my GMs typically switch out of their normal "GM Voice".

What do you mean they switch out of it? Do you mean they just start reading you bland text in a boring voice?

For me, it depends on the context of the information. I tend to read it for them, as I put emotion and emphasis into the text, giving it more life. My friends are....not so extroverted as to try and do that kind of thing. If they tried to read "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope", it would sound like Spock was doing it, and not a woman who was trying to convey as much need and desperation in her voice as possible.

No not a boring voice, but there is a distinct difference in tone and cadence between their read-aloud text, and them mouthing off content they know by head and heart (or otherwise just improving). The difference is jarring.

Yeah, or like words of phrasing styles that you wouldn't normally use.

In any case, if you know what you'll be reading ahead of time, I find it helps to practice in a mirror, or take a video of yourself with a smartphone. It is painful watching yourself, but I've found it works wonders to improve your presence.

1 hour ago, awayputurwpn said:

Yeah, or like words of phrasing styles that you wouldn't normally use.

In any case, if you know what you'll be reading ahead of time, I find it helps to practice in a mirror, or take a video of yourself with a smartphone. It is painful watching yourself, but I've found it works wonders to improve your presence.

You guys are great. I do a lot of public speaking “in real life” (presented to 700 people last week) so that isn’t the issue, but I think i am reading stuff to Get through it, and I believe that’s probably the issue – I’m just going to paraphrase and re-write the exposition “in my own voice” to make sure I’m engaging my players

I don't use prepared gaming modules but I DO create text blocks in the way of Mission Briefings. THESE I text to my players between sessions (when possible).

Otherwise I try to describe things off the cuff.

I do have some theatrical training but haven't considered the option of reading text blocks. I'd definitely want to practice reading those beforehand if I did read them to the players.

23 hours ago, Bojanglez said:

You guys are great. I do a lot of public speaking “in real life” (presented to 700 people last week) so that isn’t the issue, but I think i am reading stuff to Get through it, and I believe that’s probably the issue – I’m just going to paraphrase and re-write the exposition “in my own voice” to make sure I’m engaging my players

My trick is to try and either speak as if I am the character who is saying the phrase in question, or if it's a descriptive type thing, to try and remember that I'm telling a story in a Pulp Science Fiction setting. So it should be somewhat dramatic and energized, because that's the genre. Sort of like the introduction bit for every episode of The Clone Wars sounded like an old timey radio announcer guy. Of course you don't have to go that hammy with it, but adding some energy has yet to be a bad call at my table.

54 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

Of course you don't have to go that hammy with it, but adding some energy has yet to be a bad call at my table.

I disagree on you there. ... hamming it up is a must! You need to have just as much fun as the players! Plus, being able to pull out an obscure and random voice that you used 5 sessions ago for the same NPC helps to trigger the players memory as to what happened.

Never read as a GM. I always Paraphrase and use the text as guidelines. In few occasions (pre-recorded message or document) I have a copy of the text in order to read, or to provide to the players.

24 minutes ago, Randy G said:

I disagree on you there. ... hamming it up is a must! You need to have just as much fun as the players! Plus, being able to pull out an obscure and random voice that you used 5 sessions ago for the same NPC helps to trigger the players memory as to what happened.

I merely meant you don't HAVE to replicate the radio announcer from the 1940's style voice. I was simply using it as an example of how someone could inject some animation into a text read.