Hello there,

my first post in this forum (I have been lurking here quite a while… seeing how discussions flow, I really like the atmosphere!), and it’s all about a very basic question. Think of it as a poll:

Who, in your group, gets to narrate the dice results? (i.e., the things a player character (not an NPC!) does and how he does it, succeeding or not and why, the whole visual thing...)
The player? The GM? The entire group?
I suggest most groups take a mixed approach, but my question is: Who dominates?

I plan to explain to you in a further post why I asked the question in the first place… Until then, thanks for your contributions!

Stefan

PS: Being from Germany, I apologize for any obstacles you might encounter deciphering my cryptic messages! :-)

I think it adds a lot to the general fun and atmosphere if the players themselves narrate the results (at least when there is a known outcome). But it's very individual, some players can easily do it others not so easily (often people less experienced with roleplaying I'd say). In our group it's often also a collaborative effort with the player who rolled taking the lead with the GM and other players coming with suggestions.

But in the end I think it is the responsibility of the GM to narrate. After all, he has all the information to interpret the results. And, as I wrote above, sometimes it's not possible for the players to do it (e.g. observation checks).

Our GM sometimes just give us the basic result (i.e., "you spot a beastman in the forest") and then let us narrate the specifics ("Dieter has a weird feeling that someone is looking at him with murderous intent. Looking up into the forest he spots a beastman crouching behind a tree stump"). That works nice, and also has the benefit that the player doesn't have to do it, it just adds to the fun if he does.

I [GM] usually end up doing it but would be glad to have each player narrate the results they get.

Usually it falls to me (the GM) to narrate the results in my group. On occasion one of my players will give it a go (often quite well) and I almost always award a fortune point to the party sheet for this to try to encourage them to get more involved with it. Oddly enough, they seem to really enjoy throwing out wicked suggestions for Chaos Stars, going so far as our courier player suggesting that the mechanical effects of his scar critical wound become permanent after he rolled double Chaos Stars and no successes on his Resilience roll to try to heal it.

Well I would have the players come up with a clever way why they failed horribly or succeeded with above average results, but there is a GM for a reason. Being a GM for Dark Heresy too, I find it a lot easier to keep control of the game if you always narrate the results. I would only narrate special cases though, like a failed attempt to solve a puzzle that opens a door to save the players asses. Simple combat tests do not need to be narrated, that gets to time consuming.

At my table, I let the players narrate as often and as much as they can, with input from me and I encourage everyone else to come in with a good idea if they have one. Success is the players' to narrate, and I can nix anything that goes too far, but I usually give them all the leeway I can. I often allow the players to narrate failure too, which can be very interesting - some will screw themselves much worse than I would. What I want ideally is a creative feedback loop. I very often get it.

The WFRP dice system is great for this sort of thing, in a way that just plain old numbered dice are not. We all enjoy reading and interpreting the results of the rolls.