How to Manage Combat Like a True Game Master

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May 31, 2023

This article is yet another in my long-running master course, True Game Mastery. The series is best followed from the start so, you know, start there. Here’s a link to the course index:

The True Game Mastery Series Index

Not only is today’s lesson of continuation of all the ones before it — which are required reading now; no more rehashes — but it’s also one of several lessons to do with running things that you aren’t supposed to call Encounters. And it’s also the second of two lessons about running combat non-encounters.

If you ain’t done the prerequisite course work — and you’ve not been practicing your Initiative game — you’re gonna get lost today and no one’s coming to save you.

Proceed at your own risk…

How to Manage Combat Like a True Game Master

Welcome back… uh… I have no idea how to finish that sentiment. I’ve been coming up with different clever addresses at the start of each of these lessons. But a few weeks ago, I made the mistake of calling you Adepts or somesuch thing like that, and the dumbasses in my supporter Discord server lost their frigging minds over the apparent and unexpected praise. Some thought I’d gone soft or gone off my gourds. Others dropped to their knees and chanted “We’re not worthy.” It was a whole big annoying thing.

All because I needed a word and grabbed the official title for 2nd level clerics in the Mentzer revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons.

So that little game’s over now. From now on, I’m just gonna call y’all dumbasses.

Welcome, dumbass.

Today, I’m continuing the two-part lesson I started last time about how True Game Masters resolve things when an Encounter turns into a Combat. Because that’s how True Game Masters say it, right dumbass? There are no Combat Encounters. There are Encounters that turn into Combats. And they need to be resolved.

The last lesson was all about the moment when Encounter turns to Combat. About how to start a Combat. This lesson’s about how to keep Combat running past that moment. How to narrate and pace Combat once a fight’s started and Initiative’s been determined.

Long story short, you manage combat…

The Same Way You Manage Everything Else… But Better

Combat’s no different from any other in-game situation. And the reason Mere Game Executors get tripped up resolving Combat is that they try to treat it differently. True Game Masters know managing Combat’s the same as managing the rest of the game. It’s just way less forgiving. True Game Masters know they’ve really got to be on the ball when a fight breaks out.

Why? It’s like this…

Combat must be tense, exciting, fast-paced, and demanding. If it’s not, it turns into a dull, overly-mechanical, mathematical slog of a board game. Fortunately, the skills I’ve already taught you will let you deliver a top-notch Combat experience. But you’ve really got the nail your Speed, Ownership, and Clarity.

Keeping Up the Pace

You know you can’t let your game sink into the swamp of mechanical slog. But when you’re resolving Combat, it’s really easy to find your game sinking into a suffocating mire like a beloved horse in a children’s fantasy movie.

The problem’s that Combat is pretty much the most mechanically rigorous thing you can handle in any roleplaying game. But combat’s also supposed to be the fastest-paced, most exciting situation in any roleplaying game.

See the problem?

Owning the Game

You know your job’s to describe everything that happens in the world. And you know that nothing happens unless and until you describe it. Your players don’t describe actions or outcomes; players declare intentions. They tell you what their character wants to do — what they’re trying to do — and not what they actually do.

The problem’s that, in Combat, players tend to get overexcited and speak in terms of what their characters do instead of what they attempt. And they like to show off. Meanwhile, Game Masters, in their zeal to keep combat moving, tend to skip describing outcomes narratively. Especially because the mechanical resolutions seem to do it for them.

If the player’s already described their attack and the dice said they hit for seven damage, what’s really left to describe?

Speaking Clearly

You know you must tell the players — clearly and concisely — everything their characters see, hear, perceive, and know. That’s vitally important in combat. The players will use every bit of information you give them to make strategic decisions with the lives of their characters at stake. And yet, many Game Masters utterly starve their players of information.

Why? How long have you got? The problem is, it happens for lots of reasons. Some of it’s down to the aforementioned narration-skipping — of both the scene-setting and outcome-describing varieties — and just letting miniatures, maps, and mechanics do the talking. Some of it’s down to Game Masters getting so trapped in the abstraction of turn-based action resolution that Game Masters literally imagine the game like an old-school Final Fantasy fight with creatures taking turns bonking each other on the head and then waiting for an ATB bar to fill.

If you’ve got minis, maps, grids, dice, hit points, initiative trackers, and fancy status indicators, what more do the players need to know anyway?

Declare-Determine-Describe… In Combat

You fortunately already know to do the shit you need to do to resolve Combat right. It’s all the shit you’re already doing. You don’t even have to do it differently; you just have to do it well. And if you’ve been religiously following the Declare-Determine-Describe Cycle as I told you to, you’re probably already doing it pretty well.

And you don’t even have to sweat that principal character crap when resolving Combat. That’s what Initiative is for.

Inviting the Principal Character’s Player to Act… In Combat

Minis and Maps Aren’t Narration

Whether running in meatspace or on the grid — as in the digital frontier, not a map marked with squares — True Game Masters know pretty maps and fancy terrain and tokens and minis are all just visual aids. And True Game Masters usually run their fights as if the minis and maps weren’t there. At most, they’ll sometimes say, “One of the goblins — this one here — charges Ardrick!”

You must be able to resolve a Combat — any Combat — without nothing but your voice, some dice, and a piece of paper. All the other shit just helps clarify what you’re saying and provides a visual record.

If you’ve never run a fight without visual aids, it’s time to start. Run one fight every session with nothing but your Game Mastering skills. From now on and forever after. It gives your players some practice listening and remembering, too.

Whatever game you’re running — unless you’re running a stupid game like Dungeon World — there are rules about who goes first in Combat. Those rules — the Initiative rules — tell you which character’s the principal character at any given moment. That’s why you use them. Thus, Inviting Action is as simple as saying, “Adam, it’s Ardrick’s turn. What does he do?”

That said, during Combat, things change a lot and there’s a lot to keep track of. So True Game Masters often use their Action Invitations as an opportunity to remind the active player of any conditions, statuses, buffs, debuffs, or ongoing issues affecting their character as well as any imminent threats that might affect their turn. And if they’re resolving combat without a grid — or resolving it as if their visual aids didn’t exist — True Game Masters also remind the active player where their character is and what’s around them.

Thus, it’s more like Invite the Principal Character’s Player to Act and Remind Them What’s Going On

Declaring Actions… In Combat

After your Action Invitation, the Faberge Egg is in some player’s hands and it’s up to them to toss it back by properly declaring their character’s actions for the round. True Game Masters would absolutely love it if games kept that shit simple and if players declared all their actions for an entire round before any got resolved, but modern roleplaying games don’t give a crap about what True Game Masters want. So you’re gonna have to find your own groove here.

Likely, you’re going to spend each character’s turn resolving a string of actions, resolving one at a time, each with its own little miniature Declare-Determine-Describe Cycle. That’s just how it be.

Whatever your system due jury demands, make your players declare complete actions before you start resolving them. None of this, “I attack [die roll] 17 [die roll] six damage” horseshit. Slap that die out of your dumbass player’s hot little hand. “I’ll tell you when to dice! Who are you attacking and what are you using? Do you plan to move within melee range first or are you throwing your greatsword? Don’t answer that! It was rhetorical! No, you can’t throw a greatsword!”

Also, stop your players from getting prosy and describey with their actions. If they want to add relevant details that affect the outcome, fine, but players aren’t narrators and — as you’ll see below — players aren’t privy to the information necessary for proper narration. Especially before any dice are rolled.

Players declare their character’s intention to act; they don’t describe their character’s actions.

Determining the Outcome… In Combat

Minis and Maps Aren’t Action Declarations Either

Players love fiddling with minis. So much so that they’ll often move minis on the map rather than verbally describing their character’s moves. True Game Masters put the kibosh on that shit.

Make your players use their words. Don’t let them touch the miniatures until they’ve properly declared their character’s intent to move. Or don’t let them touch the miniatures at all. The miniatures are visual aids. They enhance your narration. It should be on you to move them around as you narrate.

And if that pisses you off, just wait until you see the next sidebar.

There are lots of good reasons to listen to me on this, but the most important one is this: if the players spend their turns moving playing pieces on a game board, they start treating the game like a board game.

With actions declared — either a full round’s worth or one little action at a time — it’s on you to determine how each plays out. Even Mere Game Executors get this mostly right. After all, there are chapters full of rules to help you get this shit right.

The difference between a Mere Game Executor and a True Game Master is that the True Game Master recognizes this as the least important, sloggiest, crappiest part of the process and does their damndest to get through it as quickly as possible while involving the players as little as possible.

Some of you have asked why I skip over the die rolling and mechanical resolution crap in my examples. This here’s the reason. Because a True Game Master does everything to let that shit sink into the background.

Describing the Outcome… In Combat

As I said above, most Mere Game Executors skip this step. Oh, sure, they apply the results of combat actions — they tick off hit points, apply conditions, move tokens, and knock over dead creature’s miniatures on the map with gusto — but they don’t actually properly narrate action outcomes.

Until you describe something narratively, it hasn’t happened. And minis and maps aren’t narration. Neither are game mechanics.

You don’t have to be big or flashy or prosaic. Unless the action deserves it — because it’s a killing blow or turning point or something — keep it short and simple. Just say what happened.

And remember, even moving across the battlefield counts as an action.

Will this slow your game down? Yeah. Especially if you ain’t been doing it thus far and you’re just starting now. But it’s one of those paradoxical slowdowns that makes the game feel faster. Besides, as I’m gonna explain below, you need to describe outcomes so you can provide some actual useful information.

The Turn Transition

Once the active character’s taken all the actions they can take, their turn is over. It’s time to Invite the Next Principal Character’s Player — based on the Initiative and Turn Order — to Act. And this tiny little transitional moment is the most important thing to master if you want your combats to flow properly. I shit you not. Master your transitions and everyone will crow about your combat pacing.

The tricks to smoothly and seamlessly move from Outcome Describing to Action Inviting in one deft move that reminds everyone that combat is a chaotic mess of near-simultaneous action.

Ardrick charges the goblin and slashes with his longsword; a spray of blood and the goblin collapses, dying. Nearby, Danae squares off with two goblins, her shimmering shield of faith protecting her as she… what? Dana?”

When the Pacing Egg Gets Dropped… In Combat

Managing combat’s about keeping everything flowing smoothly. Unfortunately, when you’re resolving Combat, the Faberge Egg of Game Pacing gets tossed back and forth a lot. And we all know players have butterfingers. Especially when death’s on the line.

I Didn’t Know What to Do with the Egg, So I Dropped It

It’s common in Combat for players to panic when their turns come up. So, when you Invite a Player to Act, they’ll sometimes emit a sound like uhhhhhh and gradually trail off into silence. That ain’t great for pacing.

Much as I’d like to tell you to slap any player who doesn’t immediately declare an action when asked and then take their turn away, True Game Masters need to show a little restraint. But they also can’t let analysis paralysis — I hate that dumbass term — take hold.

If a player doesn’t speak up or starts shuffling papers when called on, it’s okay to prod them. And prod them immediately. Count three… two… one in your head, then reinvite them to act and remind them of the urgency of the situation.

“Chris, what does Cabe do… three… two… one Chris? With combat raging around him, Cabe must act fast… what does he do, Chris?”

If you’re feeling particularly nice — because some of you are soft — you can call attention to situations that demand the character’s attention to prod them into action. But don’t do that too much or else you’re essentially playing the game for the players.

“Beryllia is unconscious nearby and likely to bleed to death in short order, but Danae is also engaged with an angry goblin. What does she do?”

After another three-count, it’s okay to put them on hold or skip their turn.

“Ardrick catches his breath and assesses the situation around him. Meanwhile, Danae is locked in melee with two goblins, her bless spell empowering her. What does she do, Dana?”

I’ll Take That… Yoink!

Many games include talents, traits, actions, mechanics, and special abilities that let player-characters — and non- — act outside the normal turn order. Effectively lots of modern games let players snatch the Faberge Egg of Pacing out of someone else’s hands. And that’s especially true of a certain revision of a certain game that rhymes with Coprolith Emission.

There are game design reasons for that and they’re stupid. And obviously, I have strong opinions about the proliferation of interrupts and reactions springing up across games like…

Never mind what it’s like.

Look: lots of games have lots of rules that let players and monsters screw with the pacing whenever they want. And there’s nothing you can do but cope with that shit. Just do your best. Sorry.

Declare-Determine-Describe… In Combat… For NPCs

Players Describing Outcomes

Some Game Masters — you know who you are — think their game’s somehow better when they let players spurt their own little blobs of crappy player narration all over it. And that sentence probably tells you exactly what I think of the practice.

To put it politely, I strongly discourage you from rewarding players’ killing blows and critical hits — or whatever — by inviting them to describe the action. Why? Well, there’s not just one reason, there are dozens. There are lots of ways — from risking the game’s consistent tone to robbing you of the opportunity to convey useful information instead of improbable awesomeness and a host of others — that the practice can screw up your game and the benefits are dubious at best.

Hell, most players don’t even consider it a prize when you put them on the spot and force them to narrate. Yeah, yeah, I know… your players are different.

This is one of those things that’s totally fine and fun until the day it ain’t. And that’s the day you discover what you traded away and that you can’t get back it. I’d say, “Trust me,” but I know you won’t listen.

Unless you’ve got some serious intraparty conflict issues, your players’ characters ain’t the only critters on most battlefields. There are probably a few enemy combatants across the way and there may be a few summoned beasts, pets, allies, and henchpersons scattered around. And while they ain’t player characters, they still get turns.

How do True Game Masters handle NPC turns? As quickly as frigging possible; that’s how.

First, remember that NPCs don’t take actions the way players do. People have asked me about the Declare-Determine-Describe Cycle for NPCs. And that’s technically a stupid question because there’s technically no such thing. Game Masters don’t have to declare actions to themselves, do they? An NPC’s action is just another thing that happens in the world.

This…

Suddenly, a huge wave explodes over the ship’s rail and surges across the deck. [Rolls dice] Ardrick, standing beside the port rail, is thrown off his feet and sent sprawling. 20 damage, Adam. He’s being driven by the wave across the deck… the starboard railing is coming fast… and beyond a 30-foot plunge into a raging sea. What does Ardrick do, Adam?

Is no different from this…

The dragon rears up, towering above the party. Its head snakes out suddenly… how can anything so big move so fast… its maw opens as it plunges toward Ardrick! He’s bitten for 20 points of damage and knocked prone. The dragon rears up for another strike… What does Ardrick do, Adam?

NPCs don’t declare actions. You decide what they do, you describe it, and you roll whatever dice you’ve got to roll to make it happen. Crazy as it sounds, an NPC’s turn is just one long bit of scene-setting and transition that comes between one player acting and the next.

That said, if you do it artfully — describing actions as they come, rolling dice at the right moment, and then describing the outcome — it’ll look a hell of a lot like an abbreviated Declare-Determine-Describe Cycle.

Telegraphing: Never Attack Unannounced

If you master the Combat version of the Declare-Determine-Describe Cycle described above — and take to heart the sidebar advice — you’ll be resolving Combats with all due Speed and Ownership. But your Combat narration will still be missing something vital: Clarity.

And Clarity is about resolving Combat with honor. It’s about giving your players all the information they need to fight fair and win. It’s about Telegraphing.

Telegraphing Defined

Video gamers know that Telegraphing is all about enemy attack animations. Specifically about a part of every attack animation known as the Windup or Anticipation Phase.

  • When Grim Matchstick takes a long, deep breath, you know a fireball coming.
  • When Mucktorok pops onto the surface and faces you, you know he’s going to send a sweeping spray of sludge across the battlefield.
  • When Margit the Fell raises his staff thing above and behind his head, he’s going to do a downward strike and then spin.

Telegraphing’s how you know what’s coming. And knowing what’s coming is what lets you make tactical decisions.

General Patton: True Game Master

Yes, I’ve read my Keith Amman and the dude’s right. Monsters are smart; they should fight to win. But running combat’s about pacing first and strategy second. So, while you should play your monsters to the best of your strategic abilities, you should also play them like you’re playing Speed Chess. And that’s why it’s important to know what your monsters can do and why they’re fighting. It helps you make good decisions fast.

Monsters must act immediately. Your narration shouldn’t pause between the previous player’s turn and the current monster’s turn. And that sometimes means unleashing the monster’s strongest move on the most convenient target.

As General Patton said, “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan that takes fifteen fucking minutes of thinking and square-counting and page-flipping to work out.”

Telegraphing ain’t just about announcing attacks. Not even in video games. Telegraphing actually uses enemy animations to blast players with useful information about their foes. Without Telegraphing, the best a player can do is spam their favorite attack every round. Does that sound familiar?

In tabletop roleplaying games, you can’t use animation to Telegraph so you have to use Narration. And you have to use Narration. If you don’t Telegraph — and Telegraph constantly — you ain’t a True Game Master. Get your water wings and head back to the kiddie pool. Sorry.

And if you ever complain that your players just race their foes to zero hit points, my first question won’t be, “What system are you using; is it a crappy one?” Nope, I’m going to say, “Do you Telegraph pretty much every time you open your mouth?” If your answer is no, it ain’t the system screwing up your game, it’s you. You’re the reason your combats suck.

Every bit of Narration in Combat is a chance to Telegraph so never, ever skip — or outsource to your players — even one tiny little bit of Combat Narration.

Narration, Not Numbers

You may be thinking, “If Telegraphing is good, sharing statistics is better.” It isn’t. Telegraphing isn’t something done with Gamespeak. It’s Narrative. Why? For two reasons.

First, if you tell the players flat-out the mechanical facts of the situation, you’re robbing them of the chance to deduce, guess, experiment, or feel out the facts from the narration. “The creature is immune to piercing damage” leaves the players nothing to figure out. “Your arrows bounce off its hide; they’re not penetrating its armor” leaves questions. Does the creature resist piercing damage or does it resist all physical damage? Or all nonmagical damage? What are the limits of its abilities? And should we stop wasting valuable resources until we work them out?

Second, as I’ve stated before, speaking in numbers and mechanics reinforces the idea in the players’ subconscious minds that they’re playing a highly mechanical game of random numbers, statistics, and pawns on a grid. Every bit of Gamespeak chips away at the very idea of a roleplaying game in every player’s head.

True Game Masters use Narration to imply mechanics; they don’t blurt out numbers.

Stats, Status, and Strategy

Proper Telegraphing techniques are about communicating three broad kinds of information in your narration: enemy statistics, enemy status, and enemy strategies.

All the shit on the stat block — attacks, defenses, ability scores, saves, resistances, vulnerabilities, traits, challenge rating, and everything else — all the shit on the stat block? That’s Statistics. Remember, everything on that stat block represents a fact about the monster in the world. That means, in the right circumstances, a character can perceive or deduce every one of those stats. Qualitatively at least. Thick hides, shells, and equipment hint at Armor Class. Muscle mass and size convey Strength and Constitution. Movements reveal Dexterity. Word choice, alertness, and the look in the creature’s eyes; they all demonstrate Intelligence and Wisdom. And so on.

There is no piece of information on a stat block that the right creature in the right situation can’t perceive, deduce, or guess. Not one.

The creature’s status is all about how it’s doing. Sure, that includes its current health — healthy, battered, critically injured, hovering on death’s door — but it also includes afflictions, conditions, and magical enhancements. Moreover, status includes mental state. Is the creature enraged? Is it fighting tenaciously or is it getting ready to nope the Hell out of there? Is it cowering? Is it cowed? Is it an enchanted thrall?

Strategy is all about how the monster’s fighting and how it plans to fight next. Is it going to keep fighting on its next turn or is it ready to withdraw? Is it about to change targets? Is it getting ready to cast a spell or unleash a powerful area attack?

The truth is, revealing a creature’s strategy is basically about vaguely pre-declaring the creature’s next-round action. Doing so allows the players to react to the creature’s actions instead of just unleashing attack after attack. Maybe taking defensive actions against big attacks or else readying countermeasures. Those are good things. You want your players to thwart your enemy’s strategies. That’s way more fun than just throwing out another flurry of eldritch blasts, isn’t it?

How to Telegraph Like a True Game Master

Telegraphing’s easier than you think, though it does take practice. It’s like this: whenever you deliver some Narration in combat, ask yourself, “What can I tell the players about their foes now?” Every bit of Narration’s an opportunity to Telegraph. Never pass it up.

In theory.

In practice, you won’t really blurt out new information every time you open your mouth. Sometimes, there won’t be anything to say. Sometimes, you’ll end up repeating yourself. Which is fine. Repetition is good.

It’s really just a matter of saying, “Before I describe this outcome or as I set this scene or whatever, what information can I include” and then… you know… doing it. Weaving it in. Mindset’s everything here. You want to train yourself to see Narration as a chance to share information, not a way to make fights fun and exciting.

That said, when you Telegraph is more important than how you Telegraph.

When to Share What

I know I basically said to follow the ABCs of Telegraphing: Always Be C… Telegraphing. And I meant it. I want you to change your relationship with combat Narration. But it’s important to Telegraph the right shit at the right time. So after you’ve spent a few sessions practicing the mindset, then — and only then — is it time to think about when you Telegraph what.

First, always Telegraph Status information when it changes. Immediately when it changes. Don’t wait for a critter’s turn to reveal it’s gone from Scratched Up to Full-On Hurting. That’s why Bloodied and Staggered conditions are so useful. As is just telling players when a creature’s one good, strong hit from death. Roughly speaking.

No, don’t ask. Just eyeball that. Come on.

Don’t neglect other Status changes. When the slaver dies and the goblins’ morale breaks, tell the players. Immediately. Let them know the second that hobgoblin hits the ground that the goblins’ morale balloons have deflated and they’re looking for an out.

Likewise, whenever a foe changes its Strategy, Telegraph that shit. If the foe’s doing the same thing round after round, don’t say anything. But when it’s about to change targets, change attacks, do something different, or do something big, warn the players.

This is where Telegraphing goes from skill to art. The earlier you Telegraph a foe’s Strategy, the more time the players have to react. Or, rather, the more players’ turns will come up before the foe enacts the Strategy. Telegraphing is a hidden difficulty slider, but it’s also a balancing factor.

The bigger the action, the sooner you Telegraph it. To the point where boss monsters’ biggest, most powerful, most iconic actions — breath weapons — should be declared when the boss finishes its previous turn. Use the frequency with which the foe can use the attack as a guide. Attacks that can only be used once per combat should be Telegraphed early. Big attacks that can come every round only need a turn or two of Telegraphing.

In practice, Telegraphing a foe’s big attack might look like this:

Ardrick’s attack slays the goblin easily; these pathetic creatures are no match for your party. The goblins realize it too; they’re looking nervous. The hobgoblin warlock is angry. He’s raising his staff and screaming invectives. He’s preparing something big. Beryllia sees it too… it’s her turn; what does she do, Beth?

Strategic and Status Telegraphing are about calling out changes and providing warnings. Statistical Telegraphing, on the other hand, is something you sprinkle wherever and whenever you can. It’s the sort of thing you use to explain actions and events. You’ve got to be opportunistic about it.

Okay, Cabe’s attack missed… how can I describe the outcome in a way that says something about the monster’s stat block?

So really, Telegraphing’s down to three basic things:

  • Something changed; I’d better tell the players!
  • Something big is coming; I’d better warn the players!
  • Something happened; what can I reveal to the players?

That’s how you Telegraph.

The End… Or Is It?

Know Thy Monsters

Running Combat masterfully is a high-pressure thing. It ain’t enough to know the rules and keep turns moving. You’ve got to pick your enemy’s actions quickly, but strategically, and you’ve got to resolve them fast. Preferably without breaking your Narrative flow. And every word should Telegraph something about the bad guys.

It’s impossible to run a good Combat if you don’t know your monsters. You can’t run a good fight if you haven’t seen the stat blocks before the fight starts. And if you find yourself trying to do so, pause your game for two minutes and read the stat block from top to bottom. A two-minute delay is worth avoiding a twenty-minute sloggy suckfest of a fight.

Better yet, review the monsters in your upcoming games. Review them actively. Don’t just read their stat blocks, take notes. Highlight shit that seems important. Actively prepare your game. If you ain’t prepping with a pencil, some note paper, and a highlighter, you ain’t prepping at all. You’re cramming.

So that’s it. That’s how to manage Combat like a True Game Master.

  • Managing Combat is about Speed, Ownership, and Clarity.
  • Master the Declare-Determine-Describe Cycle. Never skip a step. Fully Narrate your combats like the dice, minis, and maps don’t exist. Get through the mechanical bits as quickly as possible and bookend them with Narration.
  • Transition from one turn to the next smoothly — preferably without pause — and recognize that monster turns aren’t turns; they’re just part of the Narration between player turns.
  • Every time you open your mouth to Narrate in combat, ask yourself what you can reveal — Narratively — about the foes’ Statistics, Statuses, and Strategies.
  • Tell the players when Statuses and Strategies change and give the players plenty of warning when big actions are coming.
  • Sprinkle Statistical Telegraphing throughout your Narration as the chance arises.

I know that’s a lot to think about. And I know, also, that lots of you appreciate the examples I’ve provided of Game Masterful Tabletalk. And I know this lesson would have benefited from way more examples. And that’s why I’ve got some bonus content coming in the next week.

I’m going to publish a big ole example of Combat play. It’ll show you what a few rounds of Combat should sound like when you master these skills.

So, look forward to that.

Meanwhile, next time’s about Traps and Hazards, which are a lot easier to handle than this Combat shit and barely worth a lesson at all.


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59 thoughts on “How to Manage Combat Like a True Game Master

  1. Such a great article! I might be wrong but I’m getting the idea that rolling behind the screen can also help with the mechanics sinking into the background. Even though I like rolling in front of the screen. Any ideas?

    • Not sure, they still see you roll dice after all.

      I’d have to try it out and see , although my preference for open rolling is because of reasons not directly related to pacing.

    • I prefer rolling behind the screen because that’s usually where I’m positioned and I’m not moving around every time I have to roll some dice. But I don’t think it necessarily matters if your players see the dice as long as you can roll them and determine the outcome without missing a beat in narration. Whether they can see your dice or not, if you start saying things like “okay, I’ll roll for his bite now, let’s see who’s closest, I guess Dave, OH! an 18, plus 7 does that hit Dave, and then he does 2d10 damage for a total of….” and so on, you’re nosediving into boring boardgame territory.

    • It can, but remember, there’s always lots of reasons to make a choice. As I mentioned back in my article on Die Rolling — and in several other articles — it is important that players see most of the dice rolls for psychological and gamefeel reasons. Thus, unless you absolutely must hide a roll because the roll would reveal information or wreck the game’s pace, you should roll in full view of the players. Especially in combat.

      More succinctly, Game Masters who roll most of the die rolls in front of their players engender trust and project fairness and players are therefore more willing not only trust them when they hide their rolls, but also when they make rulings with no die roll at all. It’s true.

      • One of the worst things I encounter when playing is combats where there’s no narration, or open dice rolling. Just being told “you get hit for 5 damage” is the worst of both worlds. If they tell me how much they hit for, and I at least get to reply “it’s a hit” I feel engaged.
        Likewise if I’m being narrated to that “the goblin swings it’s rusty sword at me, slicing me across the chest – you take 7 damage” I’m also engaged.

  2. I enjoyed this article, another one I’ll need to come back to now and then to remind myself of what’s in it.

  3. Another seemingly quite actionable article! This Game Mastery series is pretty great. Going to focus on not skipping DDD steps in combat next session! The “monster turns are actually just narration” thing is… something to ponder, for sure.

  4. Something just clicked when it comes to my issues with combat narration in D&D5E which is all resolved by the DDD cycle. I find checking constantly with the players, “So anything else on your turn? / Are you done? / Did you have any bonus actions you wanted to use?” is sluggish from a pacing perspective, but seems more resolved by the Confirming Actions part of the DDD cycle: summarise their declaration in its totality including something like, “…and you don’t have any other bonus, movement or reaction you intend to do now?”
    Though I’m sure there’s a line between Gamespeak and Worldspeak that I can improve upon.

    • With movement, bonus actions, etc. a player may make different choices based on the outcome of an action. This sounds like the kind of thing that allows players to mess with pacing, rather than something you can consistently roll into a single declaration.

  5. Examples of Game Masterful Tabletalk?! YES! My soul has yearned for this for millennia.
    Seriously, though, this is very welcome. I can’t overstate how much so.

    • Absolutely would love this. Was thinking as I read the article that this would be helpful.

      Angry – do you make any recordings of game sessions available? I think it’d be really helpful to see a whole session play out.

  6. Sorry for the extra comment, but a question popped up.
    Regarding players breaking the pace by describing one action/movement/bonus action/etc. at a time, is it even feasible or at all warranted to require a player to describe their entire turn’s actions in one go? How would you recommend we do it?

    • I’m not 100% sure what you mean, but here goes:

      Angry has said that you don’t want players narrating their own actions, because they might make stuff up that doesn’t fit your world (e.g. narrating themselves doing something goofy right in the middle of your Very Intense Dramatic BBEG Fight).

      He has also said that you get your player to Declare their intention, and then you Determine the outcome. It sounds like you want to know if Angry thinks you should go through a full Declare-Determine-Describe cycle for every part of a player’s turn, or have them Declare their entire turn, then Determine-Describe all of it, piece-by-piece.

      I think Angry would say that you use your judgement to decide for each situation.

      If your player wants to run across the room towards an enemy, well, you’re better off waiting to Describe that until after you know what they’re going to do next- partially because running across a room usually won’t require much Determining, but also because it’s going to tell you HOW they’re going to run across the room. It will look different if they are running to shove an enemy, versus if they are running over to cast a short-ranged spell.

      However, if your player wants to do something that’s going to require you to Determine something with dice, or something that might change the situation substantially, you resolve and Describe the outcome of that before you get them to Declare the other stuff they want to do. A player is unlikely to use their Bonus Action to cast a spell on an enemy if they just found out that their first attack on it was enough to kill it.

      There are examples of this in Everyone Doing Everything All At Once (https://theangrygm.com/everything-all-at-once/), where Angry talks about interrupting a player who’s trying to describe several actions, in part because they don’t know if one of their actions will change the situation.

  7. Excellent article as always, Angry, but I especially liked it because telegraphing is one of the things I never got put together. I knew I needed **something** but I couldn’t have said what, exactly.

  8. Excellent article. One thing I love about the True Game Mastery series is that it often elucidates things that I had picked up in a fuzzy, inconsistent way from past articles or from my experiences at the table. Things like the Action Queue and Combat Telegraphing that I was already doing, but without understanding the full utility of the thing or grasping the nuances of how to best/most consistently apply it. All that to say, I’ve really felt the benefit of these lessons in my games recently – looking forward to the rest of the series!

  9. I recently bought a 3rd party compendium for Worlds Without Number: Those Outside the Walls. It’s a Bestiary, but it’s very well organized with a focus on the GM to play the monsters “correctly”
    Each page contains the different monsters within the group, so all Goblins are on the same page. Then there’s a small paragraph describing the creatures, and one about their tactics. (As well as some encounter tables)

    It’s just very easy to use in my opinion, a far cry from the 5E manual.

  10. Great article. I am now going to fixate on one small aspect but it’s all great.

    For me “How would you like to do this?” is one of the worst phrases in gaming today. Mostly because people seem to misunderstand the purpose of it.

    Putting aside the pacing issues a lot gets said about how it’s great for players because it’s nice for players to have that kind of agency. But players don’t have agency over how a bad guy dies any more than they had agency over if a bad guy dies. They can choose to attack it and they have full agency there but it dying and the nature of it’s death is the result of the choice, not the choice.

    If someone rolled really well on a lockpicking roll I’m not going to suddenly ask them to describe what’s in the chest. And players would be rightly annoyed if I responded to a Nat 20 on an Arcana roll with “Great roll? What does your character learn?” Equally I’ll tell you how the bad guy dies…. because maybe I have a specific plan. Maybe as they die they whisper “Operation Rose… is coming….” and if you just spent five minutes talking about how you pulversied the guy’s skull I’m either going to look silly or I’ll have to overrule you on something I should never have asked for (or I need to find a work around for a problem I made myself).

    Now I might allow a player some agency over their own death. If they were prepared to fail their last death saving through so they could grab the details of which train the accountant is escaping on so their friends might know, I’d be prepared to honour that wish. Because that’s dramatic.

    And drama is why I hate getting asked how I want to do this. The most dramatic choices as a player are ones you haven’t decided how you’ll respond to or are locked into but don’t know the outcome for. When I attacked the bad guy that was exciting. I might miss. I might not kill them. Fun! But how do I want them to die? Don’t care…. you’ve already resolved the tension for me… I know they’re dead now.

    But GMs saw it on Crit Role so it must be good…

    But Crit Role is a show first, game second. And the question works to highlight to the audience that something notable has happened and trains them to pay attention to key moments. Exciting moments even so they keep watching. It’s not for the players. It’s for the viewers. And the cynic in me can’t help noticing that it’s also conveniently very marketable. But if they do it it must be good for all games, right?

    • Absolutely. I normally GM, and enjoy making up narration, but a few months back I was playing and killed a big monster, and the GM asked me to describe it, and … I HATED it with a passion. It’s not that I don’t enjoy making up narrations, it’s that it’s not my job to do so when I’m a player. If I’m reading a book I don’t expect to find blank lines to fill in my own descriptions!

    • Oof. I had to do this the other night too. As a DM, I’m decent at narration, but as a player, it’s not at the forefront of my mind. I was completely caught off guard.

    • See I don’t really see the narrative situations in your fourth paragraph as comparable: We allow the non-decision “I attack him” to stand in for a declaration of some kind of actually non-moronic and not immediately doomed tactic because mechanizing the reasons why people who live a long time don’t just generically attack in fights is pretty tedious with a play group that doesn’t have some collective interest in a sport like boxing or judo. Narrowing in when it does narratively matter retroactively is a compromise between a generic declaration of death as pure gamespeak and mandating your players declare a high guard versus a darkside in order to make attack rolls. In the case of lockpicking it’s much closer to making the player narrate through each individual tumbler of the lock than it is narrating what’s inside of it.

      Following beyond that the scenario you describe with an npc’s cryptic last words has such high structural fragility it can really only be called bad gming to have your entire structure jumping off something like that. If you’re going to give the bad guy last words after he gets pushed off a cliff or hit with a disintegrate you might as well let him have them after having his head compacted. Or maybe let your player’s decisions have consequences they couldn’t have predicted, or maybe design better encounter structures.

      Everything you have to say about narration and drama in this post, and in all the other replies in this thread, is really just reminding me how many different paths their are that people take to enjoying these games, and how glad I am that I only have to respect them from a distance as a community member, and not put up with them in my home games.

      • Paragraph by paragraph response.

        1) No response. I genuinely have no idea what point you are trying to make. I’ve reread the paragraph several times. No idea.

        2) I don’t rely on the scenario described to further my story. Nice strawman you have there. I even mention that I’ll find a workaround. I do make plans ahead of time and I do think that limiting my options so someone can describe what’s already been determined is a bad idea. I’m the GM, I’ll do that bit.

        3) I mean…. yeah. If you love “How would you like to do this?” then great I guess. But that could have been your whole response since there’s no discussion of why it’s a positive thing. And I have GMs that use it and I, begrudgingly, go along with it in their games. But I can still hate it and find it absolutely cringe worthy.

    • Huh. This clears something up for me a lot actually. I , like many of the comments below, hate when I’m asked HDYWTDT when I’m a player. BUT, that was only really when “I” was asked it. When a gm asks another player the HDYWTDT question it was only annoying as a matter of empathy (“Id be real annoyed if that was me that was asked that”) but it actually does a good job of grabbing my attention and bringing me into the moment. This is probably because when it’s not their turn, players are essentially audience members, and having a reliable way to signal to the audience that things have changed and a climax has been reached is very nice. Though I wonder if there are ways to do this that don’t sacrifice as much as a HDYWTDT does.

  11. Fantastic article! Long time reader, first time poster. I’ve been in a number of games lately where combat is just “roll to hit. Rolled a 12. Miss. Next thing goes. Etc…” And it just takes me out of the game so much. I miss combats being narratively interesting – almost no one does that.

    I also wanted people’s thoughts on the following two ideas I nabbed a while back as DM. 1) When my monsters attack, I just use average damage (speeds things up, I don’t need to roll anything, and I get to telegraph exactly how much damage my baddies are doing). 2) When I attack players, I have them roll armor checks. D20+AC. The DC they have to meet or exceed is 22+attack modifier of my monster. So if my giant spider has +5 to hit, they gotta roll 27+ to avoid/block/parry/dodge, etc….

    Those two things A) speed up my game B) have me as DM rolling less dice while also involving my players a bit more. After the first monster attack they get info on how hard it is to avoid being hit by them and how hard they hit. I also try to incorporate popcorn initiative, and always, ALWAYS have my combat initiative go Player, Monster (which attacks next player unless good reason to do otherwise), Player (who was just attacked), Monster, etc…Thoughts?

    • I would strongly discourage using average damage. The variance and uncertainty of rolling damage does a lot of subtle work for the good of the game. One exception is if you have many creatures (a dozen or so) doing small amounts of damage. The amount of damage a player takes between each of their turns should be variable and non-binary.

      • Why “should” it be variable and non-binary? I can just take into account that I have many more monsters, and lower their damage output. Frankly speaking, it tends not to be a problem. I will run, at most, a number of monsters equal to PCs + 3. I find that it is a good balance, and try not to exceed that #.

        • Why roll dice at all for anything? You could just assume average roll for attacks, for skills, for literally everything. The answer to that question is pretty much exactly the same as the answer to “Why ‘should’ it be variable and non-binary?”.

          That said, diceless games exist. Maybe that’s what your group is looking for and I’m not gonna judge. Nor would I judge that you can’t go halfway and only remove only some dice rolls… such as damage… if that’s what your group is interested in.

          But variable and non-binary results are good for creating suspense and surprise, and provide a level of uncertainty requiring on-the-fly adjustments to plans, just like all the other dice rolls. So that’s likely why whiskyboat said what he said.

          • Angry discussed the idea of dice and randomness previously, but I wonder if that need of variability is worth it in 5e combat, vs what you lose in pacing. That’s partially why I’m disagreeing with whiskyboat – I don’t think it’s worth it for damage. For a lot of other things, sure; but not for damage.

            It doesn’t make it more suspenseful if instead of 7 damage I take 12 or 2 (2d6), but it does speed the combat up a helluva lot if after my monsters hit I can just declare the damage and move on with the descriptios.

            Remember, all that matters is that last hit point – not to mention players can always do the healing boomerang where they keep giving a downed character +1hp, bringing them up. 5e combat is poorly designed (think of the poor way they made CR), and making a normative claim based on “we should trust the designers” is suspect to me – I already have to homebrew so much for it hahaha.

            My broader point, and that of Angry I think, is that suspense and excitement could come from somewhere other than dice, especially in combat. That’s where the whole bit on telegraphing comes in. My monsters can change up their tactics, their forms, etc…The excitement is less the randomness and more how my players react to the ever changing landscape of combat, as well as to my descriptions of what is happening.

        • Answering here, you response below. There are plenty of difference between 2 damage and 12 in 5e. 2-3 damage may left a low level live another turn, while a 12 may instakill a injured rogue or sorcerer. Asides, when you take into account resistances, like the barbarian rage, there’s is plenty of difference between halving 2 damage, 4 damage, os 12 damage. As said above, averages are useful for large numbers of enemies, but the swing esse of the damage is part of the system design. It makes a crit fells special when you roll almost max damage and down an enemy with a hit. And a low crit roll from the boss, can save a characters live. It’s this randomness that make the results uncertain. You may be losing a fight, but you can always hope for a really big damage in your favor or a really poorly rolls from the enemy.

          • It goes beyond variance and uncertainty though. Rolling damage produces a distribution of similar numerical values which are applied in a well defined mathematical way to change the game state in a way that is visible to the players. The outcomes are uncertain, but they are also consistent, and they accumulate towards a clearly defined outcome: when you have zero hit points you can’t act in the game anymore. Rolling damage accomplishes things that rolling to hit simply can’t.

            If I’m playing a character with 8 hit points I would definitely find 2d6 damage more suspenseful than 7. Beyond that though, “I can survive another hit” is analysis, whereas “I can probably survive another hit but I don’t want to risk it” involves your values. Rolling damage helps to push players away from trying to make optimal decisions and towards using their judgement and values to make choices.

            The last hit point is the one that matters the least. If you have any hit points you can choose to act in the world, and your current hit points will influence your choices. Having zero hit points doesn’t influence your choices, it takes away your ability to choose at all. It’s really the idea of losing your last hit point that matters, and it only matters because of the meaning it gives to all your other hit points.

            Rolling damage does not affect pacing. Pacing has nothing to do with how fast you do things. A novel has the same pacing whether I read a chapter a day or blow through the whole thing in an afternoon. That said, if you want to speed up the process of rolling damage you can roll it at the same time as the attack roll (which also comes with some psychological effects I enjoy). You can also adjust some of the more ludicrous damage distributions. For example, I would probably roll something like 4d10+70, rather than 26d6, for an ancient red dragon’s breath.

    • I like rolling dice. I’m a gamer. And I’m way faster at rolling dice and figuring the results than my players are. So, no, I do not “let the players roll everything” and I kind of hate systems that do that.

      Variable damage is great. It isn’t just a pacing versus balance thing, but also the way players respond to damage rolls, both on their own hits and when a monster hits and they now have to wait to see how bad it is. And considering how quick a Game Master gets at summing dice — with practice — and tabulating results, it ain’t monster damage that’s slowing shit down in most cases.

      Given all of that, no, I’ll roll my attacks thank you and average damage can fuck right off.

      • As a side note, this is precisely the danger of assuming there’s ever just one factor to consider. There’s more to a game than pacing and pacing isn’t the same as speed. The key is a game that doesn’t FEEL boring or slow.

      • Is you position on average damage a condemnation of fixed damage and damage tied to attack roll systems or only against averaging variable damage, especially in d20 systems?

  12. Ok, I will bite; which RPG is the one whose name rhymes with “Coprolite Emission”? I can’t think of any that I’m familiar with.

  13. Damage resistances and immunities deserve some extra clarity in my mind, as they’re a very different form of defense from the blocked-by-AC kind which many descriptions conflate. I greatly appreciate Pokémon games for this; I can say “not very effective” without describing the type combination of something unusual, which I find to be the sweet spot between revealing statistics and vague description.

    As with any of these communication approaches, part of the mastery is in determining the tells which the DM thinks convey information. This is why it’s important to mention the reasoning and intent behind actions, to give the DM a chance to course correct if something that should be obvious in world is getting lost in description.

  14. Just wanted to put in a comment about how well thought out this series is. As I put each lesson into practice, I reach a point where I go, “Huh… I feel like I need to do this other thing to really make this work best.” Then lo and behold, you come out with an article on that very thing I was thinking.

    Today it’s telegraphing. I was clumsily figuring that out in my last session and then this came out.

  15. I’m pondering the best way to implement this in games that break combat rounds into distinct sections (e.g., the movement phase, the missile phase, the melee phase), where every character is taking multiple mini-turns of different action throughout the round.

    My first impulse is to keep the RAW turn structure in such a system and layer narration over it to help guide the transitions, but it seems like the combat Declare-Determine-Describe cycle would work best when each character is taking an entire turn rolling off the back of another creature’s turn, rather than when they’re taking part of a turn.

    Do you have any insights on this? Would it be best to paste on a more classic turn structure where each character moves and acts in turn?

      • To add on to the list “Dungeons and Dragons”. Combat by phases was one of the early initiative variants that got culled from the game because no one reported using it- similar to what happened to weapon speed, armor matrixes, and domains.

    • Angry has already stated in an earlier article that this approach doesn’t work in those systems, and he’d rather just never run one of them than figure out how to apply it to his style, so his personal advice if he gets around to giving it will be to rip that game’s combat initiative system out and paste D&D’s combat initiative system in its place.

        • That’s a relief to hear. I wasn’t looking forward to having to try to hack a system (especially after you said in a prior article that it’s generally best to stick with prepping and running games instead of wasting all one’s time hacking and houseruling).

          Upon reflection, I don’t think that the phased combat rules in Swords & Wizardry are incompatible with your techniques here. Using the process from Everyone Doing Everything, I can easily run a movement phase like when someone says they’re going to go open a chest: “Auburn breaks into a run, sword held high, headed towards the green-skinned slinger. Bella, what does Brabston do?”

          I don’t think the players even need to be aware of the fact that there’s an official Move Phase(TM) if I’m running it this way, because I’m just weaving in people’s declarations and can call for the next action once the PCs get where they’re going.

          I haven’t gotten a chance to test this at the table yet because I’m between regular gaming groups, but I’m looking forward to trying it out!

  16. Great advice! The telegraphing part is especially helpful and I’m going to endeavor to incorporate it into my game as soon as possible, next session. As far as preventing the players from simply announcing rolls and damage… good advice, but it might be tricky to break the habit when we’ve been doing that for literally years.

    How do you tell a group to stop doing the obvious thing that they’ve been doing week after week after week as long as they’ve been playing? How do you enforce it? It’s one thing to start out with this expectation. Start from session one or even zero, and your game is golden. But session 56? It’s a big change and it sounds really difficult to get everyone on board!

  17. I always knew that mechanics only talk turns into a boardgame, but the commonly found everywhere else combat improvement advice of flowery narration was equally unsatisfying filler. Telegraphing was the missing piece of delivering actionable information to intellectually challenge the player’s ability to draw conclusions and follow up on them.

  18. This article once again invokes the observation that Telegraphing and Clarity and “Don’t Play the Game For Your Players” are goals in tension, and just saying “well give them all the facts but none of the conclusions” is actually not useful advice and pointing this out isn’t playing gotcha or nitpicking on some kind of strawman: In basically every single example of table speak in this article the players are being handed nothing BUT conclusions and that’s not because the advice in this article is bad but because ‘don’t hand your players any kind of conclusions’ isn’t the operationalization of angry’s actual table behavior.

    • This entire article is about combat. Considering how precise the information flow for this specific portion of the game itself needs to be, it is unavoidable to give the players “conclusions”. They need to know whether they have managed to Hurt a target, Inflicted a Condition, Killed it outright, Demoralized it or managed to bungle up their offense so badly, the enemy is laughing their collective behinds off while slapping them silly. They can’t properly act otherwise.

    • There’s a difference between conclusions and observations. Conclusions are consciously arrived at through reason; observations, derived from biology and experience, are arrived at without conscious thought.

      In TTRPGs players can draw conclusions on behalf of their characters, but they can’t observe what their characters observe, so DMs have to convey that information.

      It’s important to note that observations depend on experience. If I entered a room with a parrot, I would see a parrot, and the DM would say “as you enter the room you see a parrot”. But if I had never seen or heard of parrots before I would see a bird with colourful feathers.

      • I agree with you, but I have read Angry differently. One will eventually narrate conclusions, specially to keep pace and to avoid unnecessary confusion. Angry says a you should always only narrate facts, I think it is a solid tip, that one must keep in mind (and with a post-it on the gm screen), but you will eventually break this rule when common sense for pacing and confusing avoidance must come first, but the natural place of the GM mindset should be “only narrate facts”.

        This is part why being a GM, or a true GM can be hard, and not easily emulate by a robot, one must feel the table in order to define which rule should take precedence in the scene.

        For example, if you narrate the parrot as a colourful, feathery, winged, beaked creature who just said “hello”, it will definitely take their attention, and if the parrot was not relevant to the story it would be easier to conclude that it was a parrot from start.

        Another example is time constraint, if my session is coming to an end just before climax I increase the pace and allow more conclusions to be made so that the session ends at the right spot. This are two rules entering in conflict and you have to use your game flow 6th sense to determine which should take precedence over the other.

        • That… is very well put. A very keen understanding of the point of aiming for an ideal. And also, buried in there is a solid point that pretty much all narrative description is, on some level, providing a conclusion to the reader or listener. Even describing something as “green” is providing some degree of subjective conclusion.

          In short, I hereby present you with an Angry Award for Totally Getting It.

  19. Hot dang folks, I am so stoked. After having flirted with some of Angry’s advice in my game the last couple of sessions- most notably taking ownership of my game a lot more substantially- I went deep on the True Game Mastery series this last week or so.

    Put lots of energy and focus into nailing down Declare-Determine-Describe, Inviting the Principal Character to Act, and the Action Queue, and DANG, had one of them saying it was maybe their favourite session so far of our ~15. The others were all saying they felt really immersed and engaged, and I can tell that having actions occur simultaneously, resolving things using the Action Queue concept, was what did it for them.

    Keeping the pace up in combat a lot more and just generally trusting my judgement really paid off too.

    So stoked for them to fight Nezznar next week Thanks Angry!

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