Questions tagged [narration]
For questions primarily about narration, the act of describing the events that unfold in the game world, either as player or gamemaster.
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How do I narrate a player's PC's actions without causing unintended consequences for the PC?
Daxius: "I'd like to roll an investigate check on Statue 1." Rolls. "Solid... 19."
DM: "You walk around the statue, gliding your fingers along the rough outlines of it's crisp, defined ...
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How do I rein in a player who talks over my descriptions?
I am a new DM (although I have played D&D before), and I was very excited to play with my friends, but as we started playing I realized there would be a problem.
As I would describe either ...
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Punishing a player for instant-actioning
I GM a home-made D&D-style game which my friends and I play, and we had a scenario go as follows:
After a player-character threw something at the wall, the players rolled a one and I was ...
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How to improve my descriptions of the health status of monsters
A bit of background; I'm a new GM to two players, one of whom played a bit of 3.5e and 4e while the other is a complete newbie. The veteran is used to knowing when creatures are "bloodied", as per 4e, ...
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How do I respond to players who keep asking powerful NPCs to help them in ToA?
I'm playing Tomb of Annihilation(ToA) with my group right after playing Waterdeep Dragon Heist. The group have met powerful characters like Vajra Safahr, the open lord Laeral Silverhand, Mirt, Artus ...
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How do I narratively explain how in-game circumstances do not mechanically allow a PC to instantly kill an NPC?
Inspired by this question, in particular this aspect:
. . . how do I handle realism and one-shotting bosses out of combat?
My understanding is that any creature, even a "normal person", cannot be ...
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As a GM, how to react to players challenging contradictions in your narration?
As with any position of power, responsibility is bestowed onto a GM when running a game. Because good GMing has a lot of impact on overall enjoyment, the GM carries a certain amount of weight behind ...
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How can I communicate feelings to players without impacting their agency?
As a Game Master I'd occasionally like to communicate premonitions or sensation to my characters, as a benefit of their backstory, or as a means to give them opportunity to be deeper tied into the ...
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Narrativist Gaming: How do you transition more traditionally-trained players into them?
This was obviously inspired by the corresponding question on GM-less gaming.
For the past couple of years I've become really interested in RPGs that are less about dungeon-crawling and combat and ...
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How to begin a role-playing scenario in medias res?
If I am running a pre-planned role-playing scenario, how and when can it work to start the session in medias res? The narrative technique can work so well in literature, film and video to increase ...
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Is D&D a suitable tool for fleshing out my own fictional world?
So I've gone around on the web, trying to figure out exactly how D&D works, and still I'm befuddled. Let me first start by stating what exactly it is I'm trying to achieve.
So, I'm an aspiring ...
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How can I narrate Charm/Fear/Rage/etc effects in a liberating manner?
Or, How can I implement behavior-centric status effects without giving the players a sense of having lost their autonomy?
It's something I have found to be a personal agitant as a roleplayer, and ...
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What techniques can I use to improve flavor text?
I've been improving my GM skills lately, but there is one area in which my skills are very weak, and that is flavor text. For example, if my players go into the woods, I tend to say something stupid ...
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How do I telegraph the difference between life-hating and faithful-guardian undead at a distance? [closed]
(In my world...)
Some undead are raised for evil purposes, and are motivated to extinguish any life they encounter. But some undead were so dedicated/faithful in life that they do not leave their ...
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How can I describe hit point damage without talking about wounds?
The PHB's description of hit points (p. 196) says:
Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck. Creatures with more hit points are more ...
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How can I be more descriptive about actions and events in my game?
Whenever I'm running or playing a game, I consistently run into an issue of setting atmosphere. I've realized the best way to do this is through more effective, engaging descriptions of settings, ...
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How to deal with an overly-specific GM
So we started a new game tonight, and only an hour in I was bored out of my brain. The GM kept ranting about where each of our characters were from, the heritage of the area, etc. It could be argued ...
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Third-Person Limited Narration or Third-Person Omniscient Narration?
What are the advantages/disadvantages to using either a kind of "Limited Narration" or an "Omniscient Narration" style when running a game?
i.e. Does saying...
None of the characters notice the ...
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How to fight the unseen, and still keep things interesting?
In a horror themed campaign with a Lovecraftian feeling, a big part of the game is a constant feeling of threat, but without any visual stimuli other than glimpses, or sounds vaguely heard of things ...
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Am I allowed to cut away from the player characters to show things happening elsewhere?
Instead of focusing solely on the protagonists (aka the players), would it be permissible to cut away from what they're doing to show (out of character) what else is going on in the world, ...
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How to design and run cinematic combats that move between zones?
I've been running D&D for a few years now, and I just want a little more from my combats. I've already got a very solid handle on designing environments to make combat more dynamic, but what I can'...
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How to become better at descriptions of what your character is doing?
A (very) common GM question is "What is your character doing?"
How do you, as a player, describe effectively what you character is doing?
What techniques do you use to evoke wonder and spark ...
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How do I reveal the Big Bad only by foreshadowing, without the reveal being too early or late?
What I plan for my campaign is to drop hints about some greater evil, and whenever my players reach the natural point of realization, have them go off on a search to stop it. I wanna do it naturally, ...
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Is there need for messengers in DnD 5e, if spell Sending exists?
In my campaign (DnD 5e) I would like to send players on a quest to save a kidnapped person. The person has high value information. He/she was ambushed and taken prisoner.
My question is: is there a ...
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Fantasy and magic in a primarily realistic setting
I'm running a game that's best described as "medieval fantasy," in the sense that we're actually trying to have the lives of people in the setting strongly resemble the historical Middle Ages. There ...
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How to deal with the differences in perception between group characters?
I struggle with the following :
You enter the room and a dark, old man dressed with a humble and threadbare mantle is prattling in a corner. When he sees you, he stands up and comes forward, ...
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How can I limit my second-person POV narration?
I have come to the conclusion that in materials I am preparing myself, I want to add more variety to narration by introducing information to the players without using second person point-of-view ...
user52772
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How to describe that an enemy can avoid opportunity attacks?
I'm the DM of my group. When we are playing I try to describe the effects and actions of enemies and npcs without spelling out exactly what they are to keep some mystique to the actions. Like ...
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Can you safely assume that Beholder's rays are visible and audible? (based on rules / lore / novels / famous campaign streams, etc)
Some context:
We're running Dragon Heist and the party is facing Xanathar himself. This question actually was caused by this discussion about the tactics of a party trying to distract the Beholder and ...
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How do I communicate to players that a room is unimportant? [duplicate]
Recently, I DM'd the "Death House" one-shot from Curse of Strahd where the players explore a haunted mansion. A lot of the rooms have great descriptions about their contents (e.g. a dining room with ...
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Co-operative story-telling mechanics
What are some existing or potential game mechanics that encourage players to "take the reins" a bit more and involve themselves in a story-telling perspective? Specifically, are there any examples of ...
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NPC-only interactions by player request
So, my players want the NPCs to communicate with one another more, and I don't know how to handle that without taking spotlight away from the PCs... Anything I can do to compromise?
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How to convey the tone of Shadowrun?
Reading the core book I realized how different Shadowrun is from my usual game of Dungeons & Dragons. We usually play the good guys saving a village from a tribe of goblins. Most of the time we ...
user4000
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Are there specific descriptions of what each of the racial languages sound like?
Running adventures with varied races of NPC, I run into a lot of times where I simply say "It sounds like they're speaking Elvish/Orcish/etc etc". I'd like to know if perhaps there are descriptions of ...
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How to flavor my narration of a fight in a creatively plausible way without affecting mechanics?
I'm DMing a recently-started campaign with 5 new players. They are completely new to RPGs and roleplay.
In a combat, they often phrased their attacks in ways such as "I aim at the eyes in order to ...
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How big is a gemstone in the DMG gemstone table?
Context
The DMG treasure tables (DMG p134) describe six categories of gemstone: 10gp, 50gp, 100gp, 500gp, 1000gp, and 5000gp. What does this mean? An agate can be worth anywhere between 10gp and ...
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How can a GM control their use of specific words?
Often times when I am running a game, I find that plot points, characters, and setting features require the use of specific wording to be properly explained, develop identifiable characteristics, or ...
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A Rogue dilemma: to roll for Stealth, or not to roll?
I need some guidance about how to best use Stealth checks for a campaign.
When it comes to Stealth, say of a Rogue*, would it be better to allow players to roll for their own Stealth skill check, or,...
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Can giving players "target numbers" like AC improve narration, and with what side-effects?
My players aren't narrating their actions as much as I want them to. Oftentimes, the narration is left solely up to me, the DM, and it's exhausting to come up with every successful (and failed) ...
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What are the techniques for writing descriptive posts in a timely manner as a game master?
To clarify, especially after Covid I have become an exclusively text based game GM and I am looking to improve my description of events (and maybe add a bit of an artistic flare) but that results in ...
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Are there guidelines for how to narrate different degrees of success/failure?
I find myself getting caught up in a story and sometimes when players roll skill checks I give them the information or allow for a success depending on several factors(their description, their ...
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How to improve the variety of narration in my text-only game of D&D?
I, and one of other players in my play-by-chat group, have expressed a desire to improve the narration of our character's actions.
When they brought this up, I noticed the sort of unvaried ...
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Can I use a trap that will kill a character, if the party can either find a creative solution around it or cast Revivify?
We're running a series of one-shots with differing DMs every session, keeping the same characters and only swapping out the person who is DMing. The party is a little overpowered, and I wanted to do a ...
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How do I make my hacking narration more interesting?
I'm GMing Eclipse Phase. I can describe most scenes and put my player in the mood, but when it come to hacking I'm at a loss for words.
I try to concentrate on the impact of the outcome, but my ...
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Properly describing enemies: how much detail to provide?
Faced with a group of enemies, players in our group tend to ask for enemy descriptions in some detail--the kind of armour/clothing they're wearing (to get an idea of who are the casters, the nimble ...
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Are there any sources more concretely describing the Shield spell?
This question stems from an exercise in rule interpretation that happened in a friendly brawl after our game ended. A Dragonborn blasted an acid breath at a mage player who blurted out "I use the ...
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How do I keep the narrative alive during combats?
For years, I've had trouble keeping the players engaged in the narrative of combat and what happens during their turns.
After the first 4 turns or so, it becomes hard to imagine what everyone does and ...
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Tricks allowing continuous narration during a fight [closed]
I used a lot of tricks that allowed to skip the counting of every swing and blow and dodge.
I think people should share such solutions. My favourite tricks:
Roll a bunch of dice and just take look at ...
11
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2
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How do you convey the feeling of a crowded area?
Recently, one of my players suggested that streets and buildings felt too empty when we are playing Shadowrun. Other than many RPG, a lot of Shadowrun takes place in crowded cities, with the ...
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How to run a D&D urban campaign
I'm currently in the middle of DM'ing a city campaign. I've found it's quite a bit more difficult than a dungeon. I have the city mostly planned out (type of city, the ruler, the districts, centers of ...
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