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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hillsy7" data-source="post: 7165607" data-attributes="member: 6689191">Lots of great advice so far. Especially consider the use of language and implicit narrative (The boss of the Goblins, the Doppelganger, issues all the orders for actions and the Goblins all shout back and forth trying to impress her/asking for direction). This increases immersion, which will help your players visualise what their characters are physically doing, not some abstract mixture of commands to be issued.You can also nudge and incentivise with "How?" and "What does that look like?"....One of the best things I saw was Chris Perkins running a game and he kinda got the wizard to describe his spell - and the player sort of panicked and said hummingbirds appeared and zapped the enemy (magic missile)....Chris Perkins then said "Oh. Do all your spells take the shape of birds? That's cool!"....from then on, almost unprompted, the player was describing spells using birds (Ray of frost as waddling penguin bombs of cold was particularly hilarious). A prompt "Describe the spell" and reward "That's so cool", et voila! Description.Now it might not be as simple as that. As someone said GM-ing can be exhausting, especially with lots of little encounters....throw into that you're taking a bold step GM-ing - much kudos - and with leading inexperienced players....and it is a bit front loaded with effort. But once you get them going, they will take some of the strain off narratively, and they'll start making fights more exciting and dynamic....There's a natural flow to cooperative narratives where adding in details gives the other person something to react off of. Simply putting a goblin on a tree branch means the player, to attack the Goblin, has to ask if he can reach. Now mechanically, the goblin is just on the floor and the player can reach them easily - but the player doesn't know that. Either straight off the bat they'll ask about reach, or you can prompt them, at which point you can offer suggestions and make them pick one.....so something like this....."I'd like to attack that Goblin Archer.""This one, here, up in the tree.""Yeah, I'll attack him.""Melee or ranged? He's up in a tree after all.""Err....can I reach him with my sword.""Hmm....well you could try and jump and stab him, or climb the tree...."[At this point you can chose if there's any mechanical skill check involved - to begin with I'd say not]"OK. I'll try and climb the tree.""Good plan - How are you doing that?""......?""Your holding a sword after all. You going to jump off something, hold your sword in your teeth like a pirate....?""There a rock or something I can jump off?""Sure.""Ok I'll run and jump off the rock and swing up onto the branch.""Like gymnastics style?""Yeah.""Cool! And then?""Then I'll attack.""How?""Well....with my sword, obviously""Ok...anywhere in particular?""Err....ooh the knees!""Nice! So you dash across the forest floor, arrows whizzing by. Using flat rock as a step you jump through the air, over another goblin who's running underneath, grab the branch and do a full 360 around the branch. You land on it and sweep low at the legs. Roll an attack....."Now in their head at least they're up in a tree - so their next move and attack must almost automatically involve jumping out of a tree.....and having been prompted by you to construct a cool action, there's a good chance they'll try it themselves next time.Like it's been said, it can be hard work to begin with, but you are basically training your players to have this sort of back-and-forth in their own head without having to bounce it off of you first. This might take a bit of time and prompting, you are after all basically training someone to use their imagination, but sooner or later they'll relish the freedom that provides. Once that happens, then you can start to build mechanical obstacles and variations to better make the dice match their actions.</blockquote>

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