What is a "Narrative Mechanic"?

[FrogReaver]

You're supposed to pretend that they do exist and do things.

This is pretty basic stuff, my friend.

I agree. That’s why when others tell me that pc don’t exist they can’t do anything and then tell me they remember stuff it’s jarring.

 

[Emberashh]

This is how I would imagine blades best being played. For that matter. ‘Just doing stuff’ usually makes for a better d&d experience as well.

It is interesting for just how many people it never occurs to them to run trad games in this way. The books, especially in the DND heritage, don't usually really help that matter any but even so.

I suppose its because it never occurred to me, once I got into the hobby, to not take it seriously and to seek out best practices even if they aren't in the book of whatever it is I'm playing.

 

[pemerton]

I find this position jarring especially considering the previous times I’ve been told that PCs don’t do anything because they don’t exist.

Whose ever said that PCs don't do things? We declare actions for our PCs all the time.

I have said that PCs don't exert causal influence on any actual player, and hence do not contribute to processes of play. That seems obvious. For the same reason their knowledge does not exert any actual causal influence (but it does have imaginary causal affects in the imagined world - eg it leads them to say and do things).

But the fiction is full of things that we don't know - the colour of a character's hose, the length of their hair, the smell of their breath, and the contents of their memories.

 

[pemerton]

pc don’t exist

PCs don't exist. They're imaginary. As a special case of that, so is their knowledge. But we can (quite trivially) imagine them knowing things we don't know. For instance, I sometimes imagine my characters knowing how to cast spells. Or I could imagine a character who knows how to do tenser calculus and hence general relativity (although I don't).

To me, this seems fairly straightforward.

 

[clearstream]

This isn't right.

I don't know the lyrics to any Elven lays. But my BW PC does. I don't know the rites of the Iron Tower. But my other BW PC does. He also knows the layout and environs of his ancestral estate.

The same thing is true for fiction - King Conan knows much more about his palace in Aquilonia, for instance, than REH did or any reader does.

This speaks accurately of the pretence, and inaccurately of the reality.

 

[clearstream]

PCs don't exist. They're imaginary. As a special case of that, so is their knowledge. But we can (quite trivially) imagine them knowing things we don't know. For instance, I sometimes imagine my characters knowing how to cast spells. Or I could imagine a character who knows how to do tenser calculus and hence general relativity (although I don't).

To me, this seems fairly straightforward.

Could you then have that character perform tenser calculus? No. Rather you - the player - can act as if they have.

It seems like we ought to be agreeing, given the bolded part, so I'm curious what cashes out from the disagreement?

 

[clearstream]

I agree. That’s why when others tell me that pc don’t exist they can’t do anything and then tell me they remember stuff it’s jarring.

Knowledge checks help us decide what to pretend they remember.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Much as I allow use of techniques for retroactively bringing things, I genuinely dislike them. It's not a lack of imagination, it's that I now have to reimagine the inbetween... and that some players use it to avoid Encumbrance penalties...

No, you don't. In Blades in the Dark, you have to select your Load prior to the Score. So you have to determine if you have a Light, Normal, or Heavy Load. This choice determines how encumbered you are, and it affects how your character appears, and potentially any moves that may be affected by the amount of items you're carrying... speed, maneuverability, and stealth.

There's really no need to reimagine anything.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I have said that PCs don't exert causal influence on any actual player,

Do I really need to dig into what Bleed is here and that it happens?

But the fiction is full of things that we don't know - the colour of a character's hose, the length of their hair, the smell of their breath, and the contents of their memories.

Definitely agreed.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Do I really need to dig into what Bleed is here and that it happens?

Definitely agreed.

But even bleed is not 'caused by a character'. I mean, I guess you could say that The Brothers Karamazov 'caused' my father to question the existence of God, but he still had to READ THE BOOK for that to happen, it wasn't literally the book which did it. So, perhaps, figuratively we can say characters cause bleed, but I think we should be cautious about such reasoning as it can hold a couple types of pitfall. Not that I would quibble with it in informal conversation up to a point.