Narration in Combat
LOL for Initiative featured a post yesterday that touched upon an issue common among Dungeons & Dragons game masters: adding more narration, and therefore more excitement, to combat.
Chances are, if you’ve played for long, you’ve seen combats whose transcripts would read a lot like a bingo game. “15. Hit. 3 damage. 17. Hit. 8 damage. 4. Miss. 20. That’s a crit, 15 damage. 6. Miss.” Not very exciting, is it? That’s probably not what you want the characters’ pitched battle against the evil Baron Von Badguy and his minions to sound like.
LOL, building on an inspirational post over at At Will, advocates allowing characters to describe the death of a minion when they hit (and therefore kill) it. Various comments to these posts further suggest expanding the narrative control to any killing blow. That’s the method I usually use. But I’ve also taken it further…
I like to have my players narrate both their attack intentions and the results. This is similar to the example LOL provides for “PC describes attempt, DM describes result”:
PC: I want to run up to him and try to stab him from behind through the chest, so that he doesn’t even know I’m there until he looks down and sees the point of my longsword.
DM: Ok, gimme a roll.
PC: 15. Does that hit?
DM: Sorry, no. You run up to him, but he hears you coming, and manages to dodge out of the way at the last moment.
One method I use could be called “PC describes attempt, DM declares result, PC describes result.” Using the same example, it might look more like this:
PC: I want to run up to him and try to stab him from behind through the chest, so that he doesn’t even know I’m there until he looks down and sees the point of my longsword.
DM: Ok, gimme a roll.
PC: 15.
DM: Sorry, that’s a miss. Describe it.
PC: Hmm… I run up to him, but he hears me coming and manages to dodge out of the way at the last moment.
Not a big difference, no, but the narrative ball is now back in the player’s hands. He describes what the attack looks like, and then how it lands (or fails to land). He decides whether the enemy heard him coming, whether he stumbled as he ran and swung wide, or whether the enemy’s armor deflected the blow.
This still has the result of separating the “attempt” narration from the “resolution” narration, though. So sometimes I use a second method, which handles the mechanics first, and then the narration:
PC: I’m attacking the guard with sure strike. A 15… I hit AC 25 for 7 damage.
DM: You kill him. Describe the attack.
PC: I run up behind the guard and run him through. He looks down in surprise at the tip of my sword, sticking out of his chest, and faintly gurgles in surprise. Once I withdraw the blade, he falls to the ground, dead.
The mechanics are a sort of necessary evil, and I find these two approaches work best at integrating narration. (A third option is to roll the dice yourself and inform the player whether it’s a hit or miss, asking for the result. I don’t recommend this — most players have fun rolling dice.)
Sometimes a player needs to be encouraged to narrate, instead of sticking to the bingo style. Often I do this through attack bonuses. A good description could get anywhere from a +1 to a +4 bonus on the roll. I’m very generous with these bonuses with players who need to be coaxed away from a purely mechanical form of combat; as they get used to narrating their actions, I gradually become more strict with the number and magnitude of the bonuses I hand out, until they come only for particularly inspired description.
With the first method (mechanics in the middle), I can apply the bonus to that attack; with the second (mechanics first), I can give the bonus on the next roll, or I can apply a bonus to damage instead. Sometimes, instead of providing a bonus, I’ll adjust an element of the encounter to reflect the action; if the player describes the way his maul is battering the opponent’s shield and knocking it aside as he rains down heavy blows, I might declare that the shield is damaged. That enemy then suffers a -1 to AC.
The bonuses do serve to advantage the PCs in combat. I don’t find this a problem; I don’t mind enemies dying a little faster, especially when they’re doing so in interesting ways. Plus, I can generally be assured of some dramatic description when someone uses a daily power.
The only real caveat is that, in order to keep things working most smoothly, the GM must also narrate the NPCs’ attacks. Otherwise, the carrot of bonuses might still work, but the situation’s likely to lead to some eye-rolling. Which is entirely fair, really, but it’s one more thing for the GM to be conscientious about.
Related posts:
- Hacking Skill Challenges
- More on Skill Challenges…
- PHB Chapters 9-10: Combat and Rituals
- Action!
- Heroic Effort
Categories: Advice, Philosophy and Rants | Comments (8)
What a great way to describe combat and keep all the players involved. Sometimes players get sidetracked if it’s not their turn to attack/defend/etc. Good job. Love the blog.
4e is particularly nice in that you will hardly ever merely attack, but will usually use a power that tells you :how: you attack. Characters get to select powers that reflect the fighting style they want to develop. I’ve also been encouraging my players to rename their powers and rewrite the fluff so as to make them their own.
Patriarch917′s last blog post: Killing Minions with Style
@Jim: Thanks!
@Patriarch: I love redefining the fluff myself, when I play, and so far my players have jumped at the chance to do so while I’m GMing. We make minor modifications to the mechanics if it seems appropriate, too.
How fun to follow this topic around to everyone’s blog! Hearing what other people are doing is pretty awesome. As a GM, I really get into describing the actions sometimes, so holding up my end of the bargain is no problem.
Howdy – I really like narration in my battles, but I started wondering if I was overdoing it. No GM worth a copper piece ever has trouble coming up with a vivid description of an attack. Instead, I think the reason battles degenerate into “I rolled a 15. It hits. 10 damage. Next” is because the GM (or the players) have to come up with descriptions round after round, encounter after encounter, adventure after adventure.
I’ve had battles with a BBEG and some sidekicks last 12 rounds. With 5 PCs and the same number of villains that’s somewhere between 65 and 120 attack rolls. Assuming you can come up with that many attack descriptions, if you figure 15 seconds per attack to come up with and speak each of the “attempt” and “resolution” narrations, that adds up to 16 to 30 minutes of real time. At a certain point, narration becomes more of an excitement drag than a boon.
I wonder if the narration challenge is really about balance? When to use narration, why, and how often? In addition to how you go about adding narration (I like the idea of putting more of it on the players!), I’d be curious to hear peeps ideas on the proper dosage of narration in your games.
I think you have a point there. I narrate just about everything — but my games are fairly light on combat, for the most part. Most fights do take a while. I always assume an hour for a fight scene, although it’s usually closer to 40-45 minutes.
I like your second method of resolving the mechanics first before going to the narration.
I don’t quite agree with you on giving modifiers for good combat narration. I do that for good roleplaying for social skill checks but giving modifiers for combat description feels like the Storyteller system, which I don’t think D&D is made for.
Questing GM’s last blog post: Word of Wizards – 12/9/2008
It isn’t, really. But if a player’s been trained to come at combat from a purely mechanical/wargaming standpoint, the attack bonus will help him take notice, and reward him for making the effort. Once he gets into the habit of describing attacks, it becomes rarer, but it’s still a little extra encouragement.
A lot of players probably don’t need the extra motivation, but when you have one who does… well, lesser of two evils.