I'm relatively new to roleplaying and I generally really enjoy it. However, when I am GMing I feel such anxiety when it comes to interpreting the narrative dice. I feel like I have to come up with the perfect narration when it comes to advantage/threat etc. What tips do you experienced players have?

Are you doing all the interpretations? If so, you're doing more than necessary. First of all, the players should be interpreting their own positive results, with approval from the GM, of course. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't take suggestions from the players.

A couple of suggestions: First, don't forget the chart in the book with suggestions for this stuff. It's not the be-all and end-all of interpretations possible, but it's a nice fallback if you're stuck for something. Have a copy handy when you GM.

Second, listen to a live-play podcast of the game. Dice for Brains is a good one. You'll hear the players and GM do all sorts of suggestions for the narrative dice, and it should give you lots of ideas for your own game.

Oh, and third, check out Skill Monkey. He takes one skill at a time, so it may be more granular than you need, but the ideas for using the narrative dice are top notch!

First bit of advice. Relax. It's just a game with friends, meant to have fun. If you are getting that stressed out about it, you aren't doing yourself a service.

I second Bob's suggestion of listening to Skill Monkey. He's a great primer on how to interpret the dice, and narrate them.

I was like this when I first started with this system. It helps that we consume adult beverages during our games and that helps to loosen me up and get the creativity going.

I cannot agree with SavageBob more on this. Especially #2. Ever since I started listening to Live Plays, I've become far more confident in my skills.

For me. I first try and think of the narrative possibilities. If I cannot think of that in any short amount of time, I then think of what would be fun to happen in the current situation. I only default to the chart if I cannot think of anything else.

As others have said, the characters can interpret their own rolls, pending your approval. I also don't pretend to be perfect as a GM. Even on my own rolls I come up dry sometimes, and then I'll go to the players and admit as much. "I'm having trouble coming up with something, any of you have an idea?" Quite often my players come up with worse things to do to themselves then I would.

edited for punctuation.

At one point, someone had a thread going titled 'Interpret this roll', or something similar to that. People would post a situation, and the outcome of the dice rolls, and then someone else would post how they would interpret the roll, and what the resulting action (or complete and utter disaster of face-palm proportions) would be. It may take some hunting, but if you can find that, or if someone can find it and link it, that might give you ideas on how to interpret your dice.

On 23.6.2017 at 2:37 PM, KungFuFerret said:

First bit of advice. Relax. It's just a game with friends, meant to have fun. If you are getting that stressed out about it, you aren't doing yourself a service.

I second Bob's suggestion of listening to Skill Monkey. He's a great primer on how to interpret the dice, and narrate them.

This. Also, I feel that the game's dice pools can already narrate circumstances quite precisely, so there should only be a handful of options providing advantages and threats that make sense, depending on other necessary circumstances for the success of the mission (i.e. threat establishing being spotted while climbing during a stealth mission).

On 6/23/2017 at 9:04 AM, kaosoe said:

I was like this when I first started with this system. It helps that we consume adult beverages during our games and that helps to loosen me up and get the creativity going.

I cannot agree with SavageBob more on this. Especially #2. Ever since I started listening to Live Plays, I've become far more confident in my skills.

For me. I first try and think of the narrative possibilities. If I cannot think of that in any short amount of time, I then think of what would be fun to happen in the current situation. I only default to the chart if I cannot think of anything else.

I was just going to say: do what I do, GM tipsy. But I was beat to it!

Really, you do just have to relax. The tables in the book help. The chapter on skills has generic ideas what to do with those symbols (including extra successes!). Generally, stick with the idea that more success either doesn't have to mean anything or gives them a greater depth of success on their main topic (less time, more money, more info on the stated search term) and advantages generally open up side benefits (boosts later, information on a different but helpful topic, another avenue towards success pointed out). Threat complicates things (maybe some of the information they get is misinformation, maybe someone notices what they're doing, maybe it causes strain).

When in doubt, cause and heal strain, or provide boosts and give hints. They're not the most creative, but they move things along.

Now, there are really strange pools. Two failure and seven advantage. Two triumphs (with no table giving advice). Mostly, I let looooots of Advantage just kind of wash over the failure and lead to limited success (but as with threat), but I'm lazy. Also, you can always go for humor in the heat of the moment. I wasn't sure what to do with a second Triumph after my player used the first to disable the canons on a TIE Interceptor. She wasn't either. We eventually settled on "she replaced the 'fire' command with a really obnoxious laugh track" and moved on. Every time the TIE pilot tried to fire the disabled weapons, I played an over-the-top comedy laugh. It was perhaps too slapstick for most games, but we had fun.

On ‎23‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 3:14 AM, Blackbird888 said:

Are you doing all the interpretations? If so, you're doing more than necessary. First of all, the players should be interpreting their own positive results, with approval from the GM, of course. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't take suggestions from the players.

Pretty much this. Let the player describe narratively what they want to do - "take the shot whilst diving for cover", "knock their target down as well as injuring them", "drive them into a comrade's line of fire", that sort of thing. Then it's a lot easier to come up with what that actually means in rules terms.

Thanks everyone... awesome advice.