Game Master Combat Narration Help

[jptheron]

Hi guys. I am pretty new to these forums. I used to be a DM in my younger days with the old D&D boxed sets. I played a bit of 3.5 in my University days. But now I would like to start a serious PRPG campaign using the Kingmaker campaign to start with. I find players get bored playing the same campaign forever so I will probably start another campaign later on.

However I have two questions which I hope exxperienced GMs can answer:

(1) I am much more confident now and I roleplay very easily using accents and voices. I would like to know how do most GMs narrate the story and talk as NPCs... Do you give lavish descriptions everywhere the PCs go or only at important places? Also do you talk in the first person with ALL NPCs or only the most important ones? I remember my very first D&D games EVERYTHING was in the 3rd person - even the players talked in the 3rd person.

(2) Regarding combat. I always found it very hard to narrate combat in a way that fits in with RPG novels. In D&D combat sometimes MANY blows can be traded before an opponant falls. Your left knee can only be slashed so many times before being reduced to ribbons. What I used to do was to ignore the HP and AC in narrating combat and only described crippling blows and heoric strikes once HP were very low. So the reduction of HP was more a reflection of fatigue during a fight. However this does not fit in easily with the rules of the game though? Any thoughts/ideas?

Regards,

JP

[jptheron]

Surely there must be some GMs out there with ideas regarding this? Or is this question in the wrong forum?

[Katt De Grey]

I use a combo of all like you have outlined in your post.

Combat goes a little different as much parrying and such goes on
so I just really describe the big hits or the big fumbles.

[Gorbacz]

HP are an abstraction - they don't represent just your body and blood, but are something of an amount of fight that a hero can take before the killing blow lands. So your approach is pretty much valid.

[Tom Qadim]

jptheron wrote:

(1) I would like to know how do most GMs narrate the story and talk as NPCs... Do you give lavish descriptions everywhere the PCs go or only at important places? Also do you talk in the first person with ALL NPCs or only the most important ones? I remember my very first D&D games EVERYTHING was in the 3rd person - even the players talked in the 3rd person.

I generally only go into deep detailed descriptions for important areas. Our group slips back and forth between first and third person all the time. Don't let that bother you.

For encounter descriptions, one thing I like to do is make sure I include at least one or two of the five human senses in every important encounter description - sight, smell, sounds, touch, taste. If the PCs are entering a tavern, describe the furnishings and occupants of the common room and then tell them the place smells of unwashed bodies and cheap ale, and that the noise from a table of rowdy mecenaries makes it hard to hear normal conversation.

jptheron wrote:

(2) Regarding combat. I always found it very hard to narrate combat in a way that fits in with RPG novels. In D&D combat sometimes MANY blows can be traded before an opponant falls. Your left knee can only be slashed so many times before being reduced to ribbons. What I used to do was to ignore the HP and AC in narrating combat and only described crippling blows and heoric strikes once HP were very low. So the reduction of HP was more a reflection of fatigue during a fight. However this does not fit in easily with the rules of the game though? Any thoughts/ideas?

We've stolen the concept of "bloodied" from 4th Edition D&D and use it for our PFRPG combat descriptions. Though it doesn't impact the game mechanics, we assume that damage doesn't show until someone goes below 50% hit points. At that point you're "bloodied", which means you are actually bleeding from a wound. We also put a red marker chip under each miniature on the battlemat to represent bloodied characters and monsters. I normally don't describe a devastating hit until someone drops below 0 HPs.

[jptheron]

Great ideas. I love the 'bloodied' idea and also the idea of using at least 2 senses in a description of an area.

[Dante_Ravenkin]

This is great advice all around! Definitely stuff I'll attempt to use in my next game!