D&D General Combat Against Player Engagement: A Systemic Challenge

[I'm A Banana]

Inspired by another thread on the topic, I decided to take a slightly different angle and dig a bit deeper into why players lose engagement during combat, exploring broader approaches—both structural and narrative—that can help keep everyone involved throughout.

Worth exploring!

Introduction
I consider the goal of every GM is to keep their players engaged, regardless of the system in use or the scene being played. Players share in that responsibility as well, by actively participating, preparing for their turn, and remaining mentally present. Yet some parts of the game inevitably break momentum and slow things down with procedure and technicality—most commonly, the combat phase.

I'd want to note that disengagement itself isn't necessarily a huge problem. In a 4-hour session, a little brain break isn't a bad thing. It's OK for a player to run to the restroom or go grab snacks. Engagement is important, but it should be expected to wax and wane over the course of a session.

When I think about engagement during combat, I focus on two dimensions: engagement with the rules, and engagement with the story. Rules define how the game operates, but they can also become obstacles if applied in ways that interrupt flow or pull players out of the moment. Many solutions for this are well-known and easy to implement once the issues are recognized.

The more challenging aspect lies in the combat itself. In systems like D&D, combat is a core part of gameplay, but it is often treated as a distinct mode that interrupts other types of play. The table often shifts from narrative and free-flowing to tactical and procedural. For some, this shift enhances the experience, particularly those who enjoy tactical play. For others, it is a pause to endure, with the outcome often predictable and the process feeling repetitive.

The issues are not simply “initiative is cumbersome” or “players need to describe mechanics more vividly.” They are symptoms of deeper structural and behavioral dynamics that shape how combat is experienced. Understanding these dynamics is the first step toward approaches that preserve both story momentum and player engagement—without resorting solely on surface-level fixes.

Yeah, I'm on board with what seems like your thesis here: Combat is a distinct mode from other D&D play, and that means its issues are bigger than "describe more" can fix.

Procedural Segmentation
Combat systems like D&D are inherently structured. Players enter these games knowing that battles will occur and that rules, options, and strategies are heavily focused on that mode. The challenge is not the combat itself, but how the system enforces sequencing. With multiple participants, each individual must wait for others to complete their turns, plus the GM who must resolve the actions of all adversaries as well.

The primary difficulty in keeping players engaged arises when it is not their turn. For the game to feel continuous and dynamic, every player must remain connected to the unfolding action. Decorating dice rolls or embellishing descriptions helps only the active participant; it does little for those who are waiting. True engagement requires that players feel their choices, abilities, or presence are influencing events even while they are technically “offline.”

The deeper question is how to structure combat so that all players experience a sense of participation throughout the sequence, preserving narrative momentum without breaking the rules or forcing artificial speed-ups.

OK, so far I'm on board. Yes, taking turns means that when it's not a player's turn, they can often mostly check out. At worst, you get a summary of attacks that hit you or healing that happened to you when you come back to your turn.

This to me feels connected to decision-making: there's no choices to make in a fight when it's not your turn.

It's also a symptom of TOO MANY choices to make ON your turn - things that make a turn take a while to resolve.

Passive Role Conditioning and GM Bottlenecking
When players perceive that they cannot meaningfully influence the game until it is their turn, disengagement often follows. They become spectators in their own story, watching others deliberate, consult notes, and roll dice. For some, the enjoyment comes from playing, not passively observing, which makes the downtime between turns feel tedious. Engagement during combat, therefore, depends not only on what each individual does, but also on how the actions of others affect the group’s shared experience.

Meanwhile, on the GM’s side of the screen, engagement presents a different challenge. Running a skirmish requires managing rules knowledge, arbitrating actions fairly, and controlling multiple adversaries in a way that is simultaneously threatening, entertaining, challenging, and strategic. These demands often force a shift in focus due to the added cognitive load straining against mental bandwidth. Narrative flow gives way to mechanical resolution, creating a bottleneck that can exacerbate player disengagement.

Some narrative-focused systems provide solutions by distributing part of that responsibility to players. Games like Genesys (Star Wars) or Daggerheart share narrative control, encouraging collaboration throughout every stage of play, including combat, and ensuring that all participants have opportunities to contribute—even when it is technically another side or player’s turn. By embedding engagement into the mechanics and narrative structure itself, these systems reduce procedural rigidity, maintain flow, and create an environment in which every player feels actively involved.

I don't think shared narrative control is the ideal solution for D&D, but it is a solution, and one that I think D&D could learn some lessons from. Part of that is because D&D encourages players to be in an "actor stance," where they're not writing the script or staging the scene, or manipulating the world, but performing their character. This is a valuable form of engagement that more narrative control often works against. Narrative games tend to try and put players in "author stance" or "director stance" alongside the DM, and that's not really the kind of fun I'm looking for when I play a TTRPG character. But, I'd wager that there's some wiggle room here.

Expectation Mismatch and Lack of Immediate Stakes
Even within a system like D&D where the rules are heavily combat-focused, not all players approach the game the same way. Some lean toward narrative exploration, roleplaying, or social interaction, valuing those elements over tactical skirmishes. For these players, no amount of initiative tricks, descriptive flourishes, or mechanical workarounds will fully sustain engagement during combat. Their investment lies elsewhere, which can create a disconnect when the game pivots into the “gamier” mode of fighting.

The deeper issue is often not combat itself, but how combat is positioned relative to the story. Battles that exist in isolation, without evolving or external consequences, can pause the narrative for some participants. For players who prioritize story, this creates a perceptual gap: “their game” is on hold while others indulge in mechanics-driven play. The result is either disengagement—checking out mentally until the action concludes—or a drive to expedite resolution, sometimes at the expense of meaningful tension or challenge.

Even when combat is narratively meaningful, structural rigidity in turn sequencing can still undermine engagement. When the stakes evolve alongside the story and players perceive that their actions affect the larger world, the game maintains attention for everyone. Without that integration, even skilled GMs and clever pacing cannot fully resolve the engagement gap.

I'm not sure I'm totally on board with the WHY here. I'd wager that combat is just not what some players show up for. Those players are happy to tolerate some of it, engage as necessary, but they're not going to find a lot of joy in a fight. That's fine...as long as fights move and resolve fairly quickly (which they don't in 5e).

Rule Adherence vs. Game Flow
Even when combat is narratively meaningful, structural rigidity in turn sequencing can still undermine engagement. Many commonly offered solutions—initiative tweaks, minor mechanical bonuses, or incentivizing descriptive flourishes—address only surface-level engagement. They may help players who are already invested stay focused, but they do little to resolve the systemic issue embedded in the structure of the game itself. Combat is designed around predictable loops: roll initiative, act in sequence, wait, repeat. Even when turn order is varied each round, the fundamental problem remains—players experience downtime and a sense of passivity.

The more effective approach requires breaking that expected loop and creating moments of reactive opportunity. For example, consider a moment when an orc lands a critical hit on the party fighter. Traditionally, everyone else continues waiting for their turn, unable to react in the moment. A more dynamic alternative is to grant the rogue, positioned nearby and yet to act, an opportunity to respond in the moment. This response is contextual—it must target the threatening enemy or aid the endangered ally—and must be decided immediately. If the player hesitates or wish to act outside the narrative context, they defer to their normal turn order.

By embedding these reactive options to respond to events as they occur instead of forcing everyone to wait patiently for a spotlight, the GM preserves the integrity of the game while simultaneously keeping players engaged. The system’s rules remain a framework rather than a prison: momentum continues, narrative stakes evolve, and every player experiences agency even when it is not formally their turn. This principle—prioritizing flow over strict procedural adherence—provides the foundation for a combat experience that is both mechanically coherent and narratively compelling.

Reactions are one way to mitigate this, but they ironically lead to more grindy, exhausting combat. Every die roll and decision point extends the time of combat. If the goal is to increase engagement, then ultimately, we need to decrease table time spent in combat.

Which means fewer decision-points, fewer options, less time spent in a turn.

We'd probably still want the ability to turn these on (for "boss fights"), but the more we require rolling initiative every time a goblin takes out their pigsticker, the more we're going to lose folks who just aren't into that side of the game.

Conclusion
Combat engagement is not a simple problem of initiative rolls, descriptive bonuses, or minor mechanical tweaks. It is a systemic issue rooted in how turn-based play structures attention, divides agency, and isolates players from the story. Downtime, passive roles, and predictable sequences are symptoms of this deeper design reality.

Addressing it requires thinking beyond surface-level solutions. Momentum must be preserved, narrative stakes must evolve alongside action, and opportunities for meaningful participation should extend to all players, even when it is not formally their turn. By prioritizing flow and player agency over strict procedural adherence, GMs can transform combat from a repetitive loop into a shared, dynamic experience that sustains engagement for the entire group.

Ultimately, keeping players engaged in combat is less about changing the system itself than about leveraging its flexibility to support collaborative storytelling. When players feel their choices matter, when actions carry narrative weight, and when everyone has a chance to influence the outcome in real time, combat ceases to be a pause in the story and becomes an integral, exciting part of it.

I agree that it's about changing the system itself, but I think we need to dream bigger than a "more off turn reactions" solution. We need a D&D that isn't ABOUT fighting monsters, but that considers fighting monsters part of a larger gameplay loop. A D&D where we can spend 10 minutes in a fight instead of 1 hour (but also where sometimes, when we're ready for it and know what we're doing and value that, we can spend 1 hour there, too).

I'm tempted to say we need two different combat modes: a "skirmish mode" that is, say, as fast as running a trap. And a "boss mode" that's more like what 4e and 5e have.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I've been trying to incorporate this video's advice, where you dip in and out the narrative elements, stop to describe the scene (especially after a player takes a long time on their turn), in between the tactical combat rounds:

I think a lot of the "slog" of combat in 5e is the fact that PCs can do too much on their turn each round. I consider Mythras to be close to 5e in mechanical complexity when comparing the combat engines, but it doesn't seem to "slog" because a PC can only do a single thing at a time. I mean, they can still do multiple things in a combat round, but it is split up, and the spotlight jumps around more often, making everyone stay engaged better.

I kinda feel like the bonus action was a design mistake.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Exactly—and that’s the distinction that matters. Systems like Dungeon World or Daggerheart are built to reward narrative reactivity. The GM’s “offer an opportunity” or the use of spotlights is baked into their core feedback loops.

What I’m talking about isn’t importing those systems into D&D or rewriting how CR or reactions work. It’s closer to a behavioral shift for the GM: recognizing narrative openings that already exist in play and allowing players to step into them without mechanical invocation. It’s not a house rule so much as a flexible interpretation of the scene.

In other words, D&D doesn’t need to become Dungeon World to capture a little of that energy. It just needs GMs to lean into narrative cause and effect when the moment calls for it, rather than defaulting to the turn sequence as the only valid time for agency.

The systems you mentioned, though, touch on something we hadn’t discussed yet—getting more results from every turn taken.

In D&D, every turn could move the narrative forward by showing the result of a character’s actions. The caveat is that progress often depends on success. If a character makes an attack and misses, nothing happens. The only real consequence of failure is that the clock extends and everyone waits longer for resolution. The turn is effectively wasted.

This, I think, is the core lesson games like Dungeon World and Daggerheart learned early: the story economy can’t afford wasted turns. In Dungeon World, the world responds to player actions regardless of success or failure—every roll changes something. That effectively folds the “adversary turn” into the same action, maintaining flow and keeping the fiction alive.

Daggerheart achieves a similar result through flexibility. Dice outcomes ripple across the table, and both GMs and players are empowered to invite participation between turns. The design makes it harder for anyone to disengage because the story keeps moving even when the mechanics pause. More importantly, both systems respect the players’ time and active presence at the table.

Just to clarify: when I refer to “narrative,” I don’t just mean the overarching story or campaign arc—it’s the story within the combat itself. We often see fights through the lens of gamers: exchanges of blows until one side falls. Even when we add dynamic terrain or shifting objectives, we can miss that each combat is its own story of immediate struggle—of position, risk, and evolving intent. Each turn, successful or not, should contribute to that unfolding tension beyond “Is it my turn yet?” or “How much longer is this going to take?”

When systems or GMs structure combat around that continuous narrative flow—when player actions naturally provoke the world’s reactions in real time—engagement becomes self-sustaining. Expediting resolution by merging cause and effect into the same moment, as these systems do, keeps players proactive and emotionally tethered to the scene. They’re not waiting for the game to come back around to them; the story is already happening with them.

That’s the bridge back to my essay’s argument: engagement issues aren’t always fixed by speeding up rounds or tightening mechanics, but by designing (or running) systems where every turn meaningfully contributes to the evolving story. When momentum and consequence are unified, even failure serves the narrative—and no one at the table is left waiting for their chance to matter.

I want to note that I think it's a mistake to say that these kinds of "reactive narrative" action opportunities given to PCs in the circumstance aren't a houserule. Quite frankly, that's not how the combat system works, so allowing it is a houserule, and one that can add a non-negligible amount if power to a PC. That's fine, but there's no benefit IMO to pretending it isn't a houserule.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

As someone who doesn't enjoy D&D combat (I'm more than fine with tactical minigames in general, I just find dnd combat loop to be sleep-inducing), I'm perfectly fine with just going for a smoke break during a combat scene.

I think rather than building experience around engaging everyone, it's more worthwhile to build it around allowing players to opt out of stuff they don't care for. Rigidly structuring sessions like "3 hours of exploration, 1 hour of tactical combat" (with any fighting outside of that hour being handled with simple rules working exactly like all other non-combat ones) will allow players who just don't enjoy combat to leave early. Giving a non-combat player something to fiddle with—like a big loredump document or a cryptic puzzle—is another quite effective approach.

In general, even if there's nothing for the player to do in the game, there's always stuff to do outside of it—there are notes to structure, long-term plans to think about, riddles to solve, dice and other doodads to gather and snacks to refill. Utilizing players who can't/won't participate in a specific scene for such logistical chores is a good idea that makes games go smoother, and also builds the sense of being part of the process.

I really appreciate you bringing this perspective—it’s one that doesn’t get voiced often, and many would dismiss as unrealistic simply because it doesn’t exist at their table. Or worse, they’d argue the player is “playing the wrong game.” In my experience (and from a similar place of understanding), that’s not always a matter of choice. Sometimes we play certain games because they’re accessible, familiar, or because the parts that do work still make the experience worthwhile.

There’s a segment of the D&D audience that leans toward the “RP” side of the RPG equation, and that’s often seen as being at odds with those who lean toward the “G.” But there’s no wrong side here—most people enjoy both aspects to varying degrees. The real issue, as I’ve written elsewhere, is that D&D tries to be everything for everyone, which inevitably leaves gaps that no single table can fully close.

So while I absolutely agree that letting players step away during parts of the game that don’t interest them can be a valid option, I struggle to see it as a viable solution at large. If combat in D&D feels so disengaging that sitting out entirely is the preferred alternative, that says something deeper about the system’s balance of interest. Because once you strip away combat, there isn’t much in D&D’s framework that supports sustained narrative play. The parts between fights often rely more on social chemistry than system strength—and that’s not a great safety net for keeping everyone invested. It may work for some groups, but I can't imagine this being very effective or popular across the board.

If you don’t mind my asking, what is it that you do enjoy about D&D? There’s no right or wrong answer here—just your honest take on what keeps you coming back to it. I’m also curious what, if anything, could make combat more interesting (or at least less uninteresting) for you, if you’re inclined to share.

 

[payn]

So while I absolutely agree that letting players step away during parts of the game that don’t interest them can be a valid option, I struggle to see it as a viable solution at large. If combat in D&D feels so disengaging that sitting out entirely is the preferred alternative, that says something deeper about the system’s balance of interest. Because once you strip away combat, there isn’t much in D&D’s framework that supports sustained narrative play. The parts between fights often rely more on social chemistry than system strength—and that’s not a great safety net for keeping everyone invested. It may work for some groups, but I can't imagine this being very effective or popular across the board.

Yeap, ive run into more "wake me up when combat starts" types than combat disengagers!

 

[Jacob Lewis]

I guess I take issue with the idea of "wasted turns." The character tried to connect with the enemy and end the fight, but didnt accomplish that and now the fight rages on. It actually feels a little worse for a caster becasue they dont get to at will all day long (in most editions) with their spell slots. I guess getting a potential bigger bang for their buck makes up for it. Though, that miss matters still alot. How much longer will this fight go now? What jeopardy is in store for this delay? I dont really accept the idea that only success drives the fiction, I see it more as a matter of perspective.

While I think “wasted turns” is usually a term you hear from the player side—someone spending a resource, power, or opportunity only to see nothing happen—I think it can apply to the game itself. If a turn requires a player to act, but only produces change when the action succeeds, that’s wasted effort for everyone.

What if a failure did something other than miss the mark? What if it represented more than a binary hit or miss? Maybe it’s an exchange between opponents—a shifting advantage that defines who currently holds momentum. Were the characters skilled, lucky, or heroic enough to press the attack, or did their adversary seize the moment instead? The idea is that the pendulum should potentially swing both ways on every turn, rather than stay fixed until the dice finally allow something to happen.

I like your ideas but think we depart quite a bit here. I dont really care about the combat narrative. Its actually the part of the RPG that I like being gamey and quick as possible. So, quickening results, lessening complex rule confusion are acceptable answers for me. Get combat the hell over so we can get back to the interesting narrative bits which is the rest of the game.

While I get that you are not trying to copy mechanics from DW and DH, you are trying to emulate the experience they provide. I dont think thats a bad idea, but I do think its one thats going to be tough sledding against traditional expectations of D&D. I think you would lose as many players as you would gain in this approach. Though, maybe regardless of game folks are playing, the combat game and narrative approach and expectation is an important session 0 topic?

I think it’s not just acceptable, but expected that we approach this differently. The game doesn’t play the same at every table, so the solutions can’t be universal, either. I’m not trying to solve everyone’s problems—only to explore alternatives for groups who aren’t satisfied with the usual options. The goal is simply to get ourselves thinking beyond what’s already repeated in echo chambers.

Where I think it gets interesting, though, is that for a lot of tables, combat is where the most time and emotional energy tends to go. So when the system makes that experience feel like a pause rather than a progression, it can leave players disengaged even if they’re otherwise invested in the story.

You’re right that expectations play a big part here, and I agree—it’s definitely a Session 0 topic. The “right” approach might just come down to aligning the group on whether combat is meant to serve the story or interrupt it. Either option is viable if met with a consensus.

 

[loverdrive]

If you don’t mind my asking, what is it that you do enjoy about D&D? There’s no right or wrong answer here—just your honest take on what keeps you coming back to it. I’m also curious what, if anything, could make combat more interesting (or at least less uninteresting) for you, if you’re inclined to share.

I don't really enjoy dnd and don't play it much haha, basically only when one of my friends' campaigns is several players down and they need a ringer
But the situation where I don't really have anything worthwhile to do is a reasonably common scenario in all games, I just learned how to live with it and utilize such downtime effectively.

I would enjoy combat if it was more involved mechanically for martial characters, because as of now it mostly is just dice rolling. I zone out because "just walk towards nearest target and keep attacking it until it drops" encompasses the vast majority of cases in a combat scene. It can be done through sweeping mechanical changes, it can be done through troupe play and me having a whole squad to control, there are many options.

I, personally, am very much a G person. My rule of thumb for evaluating combat rules is "would I want to play it as a skirmish wargame, without any narrative context beyond orks vs elves?"

 

[loverdrive]

(I apologize, I accidentally clicked "Post reply" before I finished my though lmao)

I really appreciate you bringing this perspective—it’s one that doesn’t get voiced often, and many would dismiss as unrealistic simply because it doesn’t exist at their table. Or worse, they’d argue the player is “playing the wrong game.” In my experience (and from a similar place of understanding), that’s not always a matter of choice. Sometimes we play certain games because they’re accessible, familiar, or because the parts that do work still make the experience worthwhile.

I'm running a big 50+ player organized play (not D&D, but D&D-esque, soo I think it's relevant here), so the subject of many different players with wildly varying preferences finding their place in the same campaign is a very acute problem for me.

To borrow player taxonomy from Magic, we have a Timmy ("power player" that just enjoys big flashy things, and is looking for the thrill and excitment first and foremost) covered, just by virtue of the fantasy setting combined with straighforward narrative rules. Timmy can play a big strong fighter, or a powerful wizard, or a dashing rogue, and get to fight big scary monsters. "Hell yeah! I HIT HIM WITH MY SWORD!", that's exciting!

We sort of have a Jenny ("creative player" that uses the game as a vehicle for self-expression) covered—I mean, it's a roleplaying game. She gets to create her own character and forge her own story! IME most GMs are pretty receptive to incorporating backstory hooks and whatnot, but what the game as it exists right now lacks is any mechanical tools for self-expression: my fighter will be just like your fighter, and I will do mostly the same actions in combat. Yawn. Jenny has fun out of combat talking to NPCs and struggles to stay awake in a fight. "Ah, right, it's my turn. I hit him with my sword, I guess?"

Spike ("competitive player" that wants to win and show off their skill) is just completely stranded in most RPGs. Playing to win is just boring, because most RPGs are broken and will immediately fall apart if you play them to win. I don't really have a solid solution here (and frankly I don't know if there is a need for one—there are plenty of outright competitive games to play) but hard victory conditions and tighter balancing tend to help.

But at the end of the day, you can't catter to them all at once in every scene and every session, and even if you could, preferences shift over time—player maintaining the exact same mindset for the whole four hour session sounds unreasonable to me. Sometimes, they will look at each other and think "wait this looks fun, I should try this too!". Sometimes, they will just come tired and want to yell "I HIT HIM WITH MY SWORD" in funny voices. And that is all okay.

I think, wider play experience needs to be structured around player opting in and out of things, with something to make them busy if they do opt out.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

You are on to something here. I run a lot of Traveller and I tend to have narrative driven combats a lot more than I do with D&D/PF. Part of that is the Traveller system is different. At first, I thought I was more comfortable experimenting as a GM with how to run the game. Then, I realized a lot of it had to do with my players willingness to experiment with the game too.

D&D sets expectations and they are hard to buck on both sides of the screen. In my Traveller game, I often let players pick through their skills to narratively impact a combat. For example, a Traveller might not have any appreciable combat skills, but maybe they are an expert in computers. A player may ask if they could hack a terminal and set off a fire suppression system on the foes temporarily blinding them. "Sure, give us a roll and see!". In D&D shortcutting the robust combat system like that begs the question of having a nuanced mechanical system if this type of play is in order? How do I get the players on board narritively without undercutting the combat mechanics of the system?

That’s a great example of how player and system expectations shape what we even try at the table. I’m not very familiar with Traveller, but it sounds similar to another system I’ve used—FFG’s Star Wars RPG—which encourages improvisation because its mechanics assume flexible use of skills in dynamic situations. D&D, by contrast, conditions us to look for codified options—to act through the verbs the system explicitly supports. So even when everyone’s open to more narrative engagement, the structure itself tends to narrow what feels “legal.”

When I first decided to learn how to run Star Wars, I invited my regular D&D group to figure it out with me as players. My first mistake was bringing our expectations from D&D into a game that plays by very different principles. I was comfortable improvising and playing scenes out, but my players—many of them DMs themselves—struggled with crossing the traditional GM/player line to take creative liberties and shape the world in motion.

It also took time for me to retrain my own D&D instincts—to approach a system that cared more about telling a story collaboratively than about executing structured procedures. It took the better part of a year before things started to click, and it only came together when I found a group that both understood the system and loved Star Wars. That campaign ended up being one of the best I’ve ever run, and more importantly, it changed how I look at all game systems.

One quick example: during a D&D combat encounter, a player once asked how high the ceiling was. It’s not something I usually note down, but he clearly had something in mind. Rather than risk guessing wrong and shutting down his idea, I just asked him how high he needed it to be. The world wouldn’t collapse if that room’s ceiling changed from nine to twelve feet—but it would change how that moment played out for him.

I know that doesn’t speak directly to any mechanics of the game, but I think it illustrates the same principles we’ve been discussing here—how narrative framing and player agency can shift the experience even when nothing mechanical changes.

For me, the question isn’t about bypassing or undercutting D&D’s combat system, but about reframing what that system serves. If the mechanics exist to resolve uncertainty, they can still do that while being prompted by narrative intent rather than tactical procedure. The challenge, as you said, is alignment—getting both GM and players to agree that narrative flexibility isn’t a violation of the system, but an evolution of its intent.