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<blockquote data-quote="BoldItalic" data-source="post: 6780881" data-attributes="member: 6777052">The game is more fun if you treat it as collaborative story telling and adapt the combat mechanics to the narrative, rather than hoping to infer the narrative from the mechanics.Here's a paragraph of narrative. It's a slice from an encounter between a party of PCs and two giant hawks, and it comes from the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?472100-Tap-Tap-Tap&amp;p=6770944&amp;viewfull=1#post6770944" target="_blank">Tap Tap Tap</a> thread.Now translate that into 5e combat mechanics.<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">The hawk moves flying and makes a grapple attack on Clotbert. *DM rolls dice* It succeeds. It then moves the remainder of its fly speed upwards.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">On his turn, Clotbert casts a spell *rolls dice* and saves versus the grapple *rolls dice*. He takes falling damage and *rolls dice* is unconscious.</li>
</ul>All legal 5e stuff, but ... a lot less dramatic. That's because although you can infer the underlying mechanics from the narrative by stripping away all the technicolor stuff, you can't go the other way and infer the narrative from the mechanics because the interesting bits aren't there inside it. There is more to the story than just the mechanics. If all you do is play through the mechanics, of course it will be dull.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="BoldItalic, post: 6780881, member: 6777052"] The game is more fun if you treat it as collaborative story telling and adapt the combat mechanics to the narrative, rather than hoping to infer the narrative from the mechanics. Here's a paragraph of narrative. It's a slice from an encounter between a party of PCs and two giant hawks, and it comes from the [URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?472100-Tap-Tap-Tap&p=6770944&viewfull=1#post6770944"]Tap Tap Tap[/URL] thread. Now translate that into 5e combat mechanics. [LIST] [*]The hawk moves flying and makes a grapple attack on Clotbert. *DM rolls dice* It succeeds. It then moves the remainder of its fly speed upwards. [*]On his turn, Clotbert casts a spell *rolls dice* and saves versus the grapple *rolls dice*. He takes falling damage and *rolls dice* is unconscious. [/LIST] All legal 5e stuff, but ... a lot less dramatic. That's because although you can infer the underlying mechanics from the narrative by stripping away all the technicolor stuff, you can't go the other way and infer the narrative from the mechanics because the interesting bits aren't there inside it. There is more to the story than just the mechanics. If all you do is play through the mechanics, of course it will be dull. [/QUOTE]

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