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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8511413" data-attributes="member: 42582">OK, that is one of the things I asked upthread.Well, if the verb narrates occurs then can't we safely nominalise and refer to the narration being performed by the subject of that verb?And we can move from "narrates" to "narrate" fairly easily, too, can't we? I mean, if the book, instead of saying the DM narrates said DM, at this phase of play you narrate we might judge it to be written better or worse, but the content of the instructions wouldn't change.Anyway, on page 2 of the Basic PDF there is this:The DM creates adventures for the characters, who navigate its hazards and decide which paths to explore. The DM might describe the entrance to Castle Ravenloft, and the players decide what they want their adventurers to do. Will they walk across the dangerously weathered drawbridge? Tie themselves together with rope to minimize the chance that someone will fall if the drawbridge gives way? Or cast a spell to carry them over the chasm? Then the DM determines the results of the adventurers’ actions and narrates what they experience.Compare that to page 3:The DM describes the environment. . . . The players describe what they want to do. . . .  The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions. Describing the results often leads to another decision point, which brings the flow of the game right back to step 1.To me, the most natural reading of those two passages together is that the page 2 the DM determines the results of the adventurers' actions corresponds to the page 3 the DM narrates the results of the adventurer's actions while the page 2 the DM . . . narrates what they experience corresponds to the page 3 bring[ing] the game right back to step 1 (ie a description of the new/changed/subsequent environment in which the PCs find themselves).In other words, I don't think the rules text is hanging very much weight on the choice of the word narrate - just as on page 2 we are told the players decide what they want their PCs to do while on page 2 they describe that - where describe is basically a synonym for narrate!I've got no objection to the idea that the GM should narrate meaningful consequences of action declarations much, perhaps most of the time. But I don't think that can be the sole narration the GM engages in, or even the bulk of it given the other demands on the GM to contribute to the shared fiction.(And that's before we get to cubes-to-cubes stuff: if the GM narrates fiction to accompany the successful hit on the Orc, I don't think that is going to be meaningful to the players if they don't also know that hit point tallies are being properly maintained. You can't use the 5e D&D rules as written and declare combat actions for a PC with nothing but fictional accounts of Orcs reeling, parrying etc. The contrast with non-combat, which often can be engaged with fiction first, seems pretty stark to me.)</blockquote>

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