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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 9667460" data-attributes="member: 2629">Now, now.  There is room for everyone's beliefs here when it comes to approach.  That is my belief and you have no choice but to accept it.  (This place definitely became a lot more feisty during the year I was away).  My approach was always more on the narrative side, but it did kick up a bit after watching Critical Role.  Before that I'd ask people to really get into saying what their PC was doing and I'd try to tell a story around NPC actions - but it was a tennis game that went back and forth.  After watching Critical Role and thinking about some of the DMs I'd seen at conventions that did things differently than me, but ran an amazing game, I started to attempt to give players some more narrative control.  If the fighter rolled a critical that was going to finish off the BBEG, I'd encourage them to tell me what their PC did, but also what the NPC did that opened them up to  the lethal blow. In the end, I realized that sometimes that worked, and sometimes it didn't.  Some players felt put on the spot and didn't know what to say - and that can be uncomfortable for them.  Others wanted more opportunity to chip in.  In general, I settled on gauging the response based upon how invested the player was at the moment.  If they're excited, I give them more narrative attention and if they're more withdrawn, I pull back a little (but use some to try to bring their levels back up - it is a balance).  This rolls back to 1s and 20s and giving the players more voice because those tend to be the most evocative of rolls - and pull players into or out of the game.</blockquote>

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