NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8517799" data-attributes="member: 71699">Following further discussion and reflection, I feel it's possible to say more about "narrates". The core loop is Fiction > System > Fiction. It begins and ends in the fiction. The word "narrates" appears three times in the PHB, always in the same context (PHB 5, 6, 181): one interpretation fits all. DM can take "narrates" as an encouragement or admonishment to "produce narrative": narrating results signals a shift or arrow from system to fiction.Others have argued that the narrative that must concern us is nearest in kind to a story. It's not a plain restatement of system state or events. Narrate results means to say something other than or additional to "The die came up 5." Producing narrative normally changes the fiction.One concern that was raised is how to follow this rule? Is the rule broken and worthless if we can't uphold it to a hefty extent in every case? No. It's not a constitutive rule - DM already knows how to narrate (in technical terms, narrating is antecedent) - it is regulatory. It's a green light to go to fiction. It doesn't stop mattering just because I drive through it at 10 miles an hour, instead of 50. A green light doesn't force me to drive through it: it still matters even if there are times I do something else instead (maybe a U-turn.) Narrating is antecedent, "DM narrates results" is a green light to move to fiction.Form of narration is an art. The die comes up a crit and I'm silent: everyone at the table knows it means Horatio is dead.</blockquote>

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