The big next step is to give them names.

No more bandit 1 or bandit 2 moves up to attack you. they Are Gilion of Rory moves up to attack you.

And when Gilion dies his friends wails in either pain or screams in anger their name. Because the key is to make them seem like flesh and blood.

And humans have different reactions to seeing their friend dies.

I DMed a campaign for several first time players a while back. Early on, they were tasked with retrieving an item from a kobold den. They we expecting a video game style dungeon complete with treasure chests and clearly marked places to rest. They were expecting monsters who charged at them howling and fought to the death.

They got winding tunnels with choke points that were rigged to cave in and an organized defense focused on retreat and protecting the young. One of the players drew a map of the tunnels and even caught on to the fact that they were collapsed in an intentional order to delay them reaching the nursery chamber until it had been evacuated.

Lol, I never made the link between them.

But yeah.

Lets say its just jpegs and narration, but I picked the cutest kobold kid I could find (my players are kobolds) and placed her near an undead mindflayer.

Sadly my players couldnt be fast enough. Althought to be fair I did used wall of force… mouhahahahaha

It’s great having mistreated townspeople show back up later, catching the players flat-footed.

“Are you serious? You don’t even remember?”

I’ll specifically dunk on video game mentality:

“I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing! It’s like I’m not even a real person to you!”