Having trouble with combat descriptions and NPC dialogue/voices - Help Wanted!

[gizmo33]

Today I seem to be possessed by a demon of contrariness, so rather than drink holy water and hope for the best, I'll just go with it. To that end:

Combat Descriptions: How many different ways can you describe whacking someone with a sword? Who cares? I can understand it if something interesting were happening. My advice is to play out combat like a game and get to the interesting parts. Now if something interesting happens during combat (like someone casts a never-before-seen spell), wax eloquent. By why describe the same fireball effect for the 100th time in a row? Telling me that something is exciting doesn't make it so.

NPC Interactions: Most people who do impersonations actually only have a limited range, and if your campaign has more than 5 NPCs how many different Sean Connery voices can you do?

Instead - consider showing the NPCs personality through their actions. *What* it is they say to the PCs, what they seem to be interested in, who they seem to like or dislike in the party. These things can say more about personality as a funny voice.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Today I seem to be possessed by a demon of contrariness, so rather than drink holy water and hope for the best, I'll just go with it. To that end:

Combat Descriptions: How many different ways can you describe whacking someone with a sword? Who cares? I can understand it if something interesting were happening. My advice is to play out combat like a game and get to the interesting parts. Now if something interesting happens during combat (like someone casts a never-before-seen spell), wax eloquent. By why describe the same fireball effect for the 100th time in a row? Telling me that something is exciting doesn't make it so.

NPC Interactions: Most people who do impersonations actually only have a limited range, and if your campaign has more than 5 NPCs how many different Sean Connery voices can you do?

Instead - consider showing the NPCs personality through their actions. *What* it is they say to the PCs, what they seem to be interested in, who they seem to like or dislike in the party. These things can say more about personality as a funny voice.

Fair enough comments. In response to your thoughts on combat descriptions, I find that that it helps to draw the players into the game and into character if they can visualise what is happening. This is a little difficult to do when there is little more description than he whacks you with his club for 6 damage. It start to make the game revert back to a tabletop minatures wargame. This may be fine for some but I prefer my game to be a little bit more towards the middle of the roleplaying vs. rollplaying scale.

Also, in my experience I find the more the game becomes like a tactical wargame, the more some players get into a "I must beat everyone else and win the game" mode. Also, some players start to care less about whether their character lives or dies (I can just make better one anyway) and start to do stupid campaign disrupting things. This is something that I want to avoid, hence why I want advice on how to make my combats more descriptive.

Olaf the Stout

P.S. It may have taken me nearly 2 and a half years to do it but I finally reached 100 posts! Yay me