Our limitation begins with understanding language in terms of it's rigid structure, because that's how we've been taught language. The teacher begins by writing a sentence on the board and then strictly describing what is a subject, a verb, and an object ... stale terms with which we have no attachment. We're given too much information about what the words do as part of a sentence than how specific words affect our thinking and comprehension. Words themselves can be taken apart thematically as well as etymologically. I'll take some time to discuss how, while addressing questions about how to manage the game's wilderness without depending on dividing the setting into hexes like a dungeon is divided into room. For this, we'll keep to little words.
Prepositions are words that govern nouns and pronouns, expressing relationships related to place, time, movement and manner. For example, the preposition "through" describes the motion of a person or thing as it passes from one side to the other of an opening, channel or location. We move through a crowd or through a forest. The word suggests a confrontational element, in the sense that to move through requires threading our way through obstructions. For example, I might tell the players they are moving through the brush. This is different from the word between, that more often suggests rigid boundaries with a definite opening. We say that we move between the posts; we don't say we move through them. The latter feels less clear than the former, if passing through the channel created by the posts is the meaning. Through suggests we butt up against the posts as we try to move through them.
So, for example, if I tell the party they're moving through the city streets, habitually we create a crowd that the party encounters. The sense is different than my saying the party moves across the city. Through has a 3-dimensional element, whereas across flattens the environment through which we're moving. We say through a forest, not across a forest. At the same time, we move across a meadow and not through it. A forest is three dimensional. A meadow is flat. If the grass is high enough, we say we move through it; but if the grass is short, we say we move across it.
Thus, by choosing to say the players are moving through a city, we give the streets three dimensions; if say across, we demote the city to how it appears on a map: two-dimensional. But there's no definite right or wrong here. Telling the players they have to cross the river acknowledges their wish to remain upon the river's flat surface. Through a river is very different; it means the players will get wet. Over or above the river is better for them, as they can avoid the water altogether; thus we give the players a bridge and stress it's overness when the players are told to look down at the roiling, flooding waters they've avoided. Under the river suggests we're going through the rock and silt, completely under the river's course; so we say underwater, which means the players will get entirely wet.
These are very common words, used every day ... but the manner in which they're used and stressed during game play matters. The players must envision what happens, so we are specific about words that have exact meanings for this effect or that.
For example, getting involved is implied by moving into or toward something. In the question, "Do you move toward the door," it's the positional word that affects, as the player grows more cautious as they approach more nearly to dangerous things. Into the dungeon equates with in trouble, or trapped. Out of conveys the opposite.
We can move through the streets, but we can also say that the party moves into the streets. Through implies direction; into here implies that we're wandering, without going specifically anywhere; that there is some kind of confusion. If we say to the party, "You move into the city," this calls for the players to suggest a specific direction, while suggesting the city is a sort of maze. Because there's only so much into that's ever available for movement, since sooner or later we'll reach the center or the bottom, the word itself has claustrophobic overtones.
Out of suggests the opposite. We free ourselves by getting out of things. But out also has a sense of coming to a rest at some point, since once we're out of the city, we can stop. On the other hand, away from suggests an ongoing process. We just keep moving away.
This should be enough to get across some of the sense I mean when choosing a word. English has something like 175 prepositions, all of which can be used in some manner to define the player's movements or placement in the game world. Prepositions relating to time include before, after, until, during and since, all of which can be stressed when characters take some action, or want to. "Until you get the door open, you're stuck." "Before the monsters attack, there's an air-shattering shriek that everyone hears." "After the last squid dies, the ink-filled water begins to clear."
Prepositions relating to manner or phrase, or context, include contrary to, except, like, instead and including. These are words we'll use to remind the players of something they've forgotten, or ought to think about, or is suggested by something they've decided and so on. When giving advice to players, if you're not used to expressing your mind, it helps to clarify our thinking in terms of what concerns there are, or what bars the player's intent, or what acts in the players' favour. "Instead of that, what might work better?" "Including these things you've discussed, is there anything else?" "That might work, except for this detail you've forgotten."
As I said, we use these words all the time without a thought. But thinking about the words gives clues as to what we ought to be addressing as a DM ... or what things we might want to include in the game world spatially. Players stand above a valley, a descending slope, a cliff, a river bank, or sights that can be seen in the distance. The pathway meets a wall or an outcropping, moves along it, or around it ... likewise, that same route might confront heavy vegetation, and outpost, a hostile or ruined village, an enormous hole, a lake or a pond, a river, etcetera. We move nearer to things in the distance, or away from other things. We move between the rocks, the canyon walls or the fields. We're beneath the hilltop, the cliff, the forest canopy, the flying birds, the overhang, the waterfall. We go up or down the hillside, the valley, the rough-cut stairs.
What can the reader imagine that the party moves over, or up against, or upon? What is the landscape without? What's hidden behind a thing, or beneath it, or among these features? Create something for the players to find. They won't notice that you keep saying up, up, up, as you urge them up the valley, up the stream gulley, up the outcropping, up the scree slope, up between the cliff faces, up and across the glacier, up into the gap between the mountain peaks ... they'll merely understand that the theme of what's going on, especially as the scenes are peppered with opportunities to slip, slide, tear a boot heel, match wits with a mountain goat, find tracks of some kind and get doused with freezing rain by a flash storm ... and all the while catch glimpses of something unlikely just beyond sight or reach.
The words themselves are only a crutch ... but an important one. The collection of moments and scenes that we've accumulated through our lives must be collated and managed so they can be used to enable us to create things at will. Imagination is no more than an immense database located in our minds, enabling us to produce sounds and images from the immense noggin source book we've stuffed full. Language is the program that opens the cabinets and drawers, with the things you're looking for, when put on the spot to "come up with something" when the players reach the summit. Language isn't an obstacle ... it's a process.
Ha! You should teach a language class ;)
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