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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nagol" data-source="post: 5701550" data-attributes="member: 23935">First, I did not say no narration takes place.  Just that the dice add an additional medium of data input for the players to use as they see fit.  Why do I feel that extra medium is valuable?  It'd take me 20 minutes to say everything I feel for 6 seconds on a rollercoaster -- the distance of the people, the colour, the sounds, the smells, internal perceptions, what I see, what I don't see, how my friends are reacting, how the bystanders are reacting, how the strangers around me are reacting, how warm it is, etc.The upshot is verbal communication is a poor substitute for being in the scene yourself.  The players are starved of the data we treat as routine everyday.  It would be diffciult and (very) time consuming for me to complete a single combat if I were to try to describe everything to each player from their character's perspective.So what happens?  The data gets homogenised across the whole player base.  But, there is still too much.  So now you prioritise and drop all the data you don't think is relevant or you think hasn't changed since the last update..  But now we have a single actor deciding what's relevant to the player.  Each player remembers the scene slightly differently.  Each player interprets the new description differently.  Each player fills in the holes in the scene for himself.  Something  the DM thought would be a cue word goes without notice.  Something else said innocently is seized on as a clue.Additionally, each player can decide what, if any calculations he wants to perform on visible die rolls.  By and large the initial gut reaction ("He missed with a 14?  That's a  relief!")  is enough.  If a player really wants to work out that that means his attack bonus can't exceed +30 with the sword, it's not a big deal.  All it means is he can get a better estimate of success for combat options against that attack if nothing changes for the opponents.</blockquote>

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