you're tussling with a giant steam-clank on an ocean liner in the middle of a thunderstorm.
But to answer your question, I think the best advice I could give, is, yes, use narrative to short-circuit the game mechanics if that helps with the pacing, or if the outcome is practically a foregone conclusion, but be careful to narrate outcomes that could legitimately have occurred if they had been laboriously played out between DM and PCs. Don't deny the PCs the opportunity to do creative stuff that makes the session memorable, but equally don't let them pronounce outcomes that bend the plot too much in their favour. Perhaps use it sparingly, until you and your players are comfortable with it.
Come back and tell us what happens
I'm not saying I want to switch to it full time but just for those crazy moments that should be epic but that the combat rules don't really support.
I'm not saying I want to switch to it full time but just for those crazy moments that should be epic but that the combat rules don't really support.
. . . "narrative combat" sounds to me more and more like... somewhere between laziness and slavish adherence to a desired outcome . . .
I've actually played games where the players are almost doing just that. The mechanics are all about fighting over control of the narrative. It actually worked quite well as a game, depending on your tastes. The weirdest part was that strategy happened in the player space more than the narrative space. Everything, including combat, was handled quasi-abstractly.Ahh, I was thinking it was combat between narratives - two DMs battling to assert their own realities upon the gameworld, with the players caught in between. One moment you're battling a dragon on the lip of a volcano, the next you're tussling with a giant steam-clank on an ocean liner in the middle of a thunderstorm.