There’s nothing more frustrating in a game of Dungeons and Dragons than a prolonged combat with uninteresting and flat action descriptions. “You hit,” “That’s a miss,” even descriptions in the vein of “Your sword swings wide, narrowly missing the enemy,” all feel unsatisfying, especially in unchanging repetitive doses. As DMs, we already have a lot of moving pieces to manage in our games, especially when running combat. Between tracking initiative, managing monster and NPC statistics, maneuvering physical or digital maps and tokens, moderating rules quibbles, our plates are full to overflowing. Is there a way we can improve the narrative quality of our combat without significantly adding to our mental load? I’m going to attempt to codify an approach that has helped me informally in my games, which once understood can be easily integrated into our combat management workflow.
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