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With Respect to the Door and Expectations....The REAL Reason 5e Can't Unite the Base
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5993256" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>This is true only if we assume that the outcome of the situation turns on a single check - an assumption that is not true in combat, and not true in a complex non-combat resolution system either.</p><p></p><p>If the king goes inside to protect his suede, the player of the dwarf fighter now has further options: to push past the king's guards and go inside too (leverage's the fighter's good stuff - pushing past people - rather than weak stuff - talking to people); to try and drive off the rainclouds (this will work better in some fantasy set ups than others); even to whip out a Daern's Instant Fortress and invite the king to continue the conversation inside.</p><p></p><p>Exactly. Different patterns of narration open and close different doors for players. My view is that narrating failure at the task due to insufficient skill (especially in social contexts), rather than narrating further complication that leaves the player with room to keep engaging the situation via his/her PC, is a quicker path to a total shutdown.</p><p></p><p>Of course. That's not in dispute.</p><p></p><p>My point, as Patryn of Elvenshae noted, is that different ways of narrating the consequence of a failed check can open up or close of a range of different possibilities.</p><p></p><p>Perhaps. That is an empirical question. Just as my own experience informs my view about what sorts of narration are more or less likely to shut down situations, and more or less likely to encourage players to engage situations without always just defaulting to their best numbeers, so it suggests to me that this risk is not all that great.</p><p> </p><p>I'm from the school that treats the character sheet as first and foremost a player resource. A high bonus in a skill or stat means that when you, as a player, declare actions for your PC that leverage that ability, you are more likely to succeed. Conversely, when you delcare actions that do not leverage that ability, you are more likely to fail. The narration of success and failure is a secondary matter, but I tend to follow the Burning Wheel approach of narrating success primarily by reference to the player's declared action for his/her PC, while narrating failure by reference to the player's declared intention.</p><p></p><p>This tends to preserve the sort of association between CHA attribute and personality that you point to in you post. Players whose PCs have high CHA bonuses will tend to succeed on CHA checks, and therefore get narrations that explain how their strong personalities won the day etc. Those whose PCs have low CHA will tend not to succeed on CHA checks, and therefore will not get such narrations. Thus, the general vibe of play will be that they do not have strong personalities that win the day.</p><p></p><p>To generalise this: I'm a big believer that the character of a PC, in the fiction, emerges out of play rather than straight off the sheet. What establishes the fighter as a master at the wielding of great honking axes and hammers is not that the PC sheet says so, but that, in play, the player is declaring actions involving those weapons, and is succeeding at them (and having success narrated by reference to the declared task, of beating enemies up with big honking axes and hammers). Conversely, what establishes, in the fiction, that a PC is not very charismatic, is that few or no actions by that PC result in narrations about how his/her force of personality turned the tide of argument or battle.</p><p></p><p>In a system like 4e, which lacks some of those BW-style incentives, I use two techniques in combination. One is the approach to narrating failure that I've discussed in this post so far. The other is to narrate situations such that, if the player doesn't take his/her PC into the genre-appropriate risk, the PC will be in a worse position than if s/he does take the risk and fail. That's my version of the Forge technique (which is also discussed in the BW books) of "pouring on the pressure".</p><p></p><p>It's still a version of "looking good in the fiction", and so isn't going to work for every game and every player. It depends on the relevant elements of the fiction, and the stakes attached to them, being (i) fairly clearly and richly described, and (ii) being important to all participants. In my view, (ii) is related, to some extent, to the notion of immersion. This is partly why I find [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION]'s repeated assertions that so-called "dissociated" mechanics are, as such, a barrier to immersion, bizarre: not only have I posted an actual-play experience that refutes the claim (namely, the paladin-polymorph example), but "dissociated" narration of consequences (the rain-ruining-the-king's-suede failure narration) is a key technique I use to maintain a positive feedback loop that is based on and sustains immersion: pour on pressure, generate player engagement with situation via PC, narrate consequences (both successess and failures) which heighten the stakes and draw the player further in, resolve new check, etc, etc.</p><p></p><p>It's not the "being there as a spectator of the GM's story" style of immersion, sure. But that's not the only way of being engaged and immersed by RPG play.</p><p></p><p>Interesting. I posted a bit of actual play upthread - about the paladin who got polymorphed, and then was turned back by his god (as narrated by the player in the course of playing his PC). You still haven't responded to that example, or explained whether or not you think it fits with your claim that immersion is not possible using metagame-heavy mechanics.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5993256, member: 42582"] This is true only if we assume that the outcome of the situation turns on a single check - an assumption that is not true in combat, and not true in a complex non-combat resolution system either. If the king goes inside to protect his suede, the player of the dwarf fighter now has further options: to push past the king's guards and go inside too (leverage's the fighter's good stuff - pushing past people - rather than weak stuff - talking to people); to try and drive off the rainclouds (this will work better in some fantasy set ups than others); even to whip out a Daern's Instant Fortress and invite the king to continue the conversation inside. Exactly. Different patterns of narration open and close different doors for players. My view is that narrating failure at the task due to insufficient skill (especially in social contexts), rather than narrating further complication that leaves the player with room to keep engaging the situation via his/her PC, is a quicker path to a total shutdown. Of course. That's not in dispute. My point, as Patryn of Elvenshae noted, is that different ways of narrating the consequence of a failed check can open up or close of a range of different possibilities. Perhaps. That is an empirical question. Just as my own experience informs my view about what sorts of narration are more or less likely to shut down situations, and more or less likely to encourage players to engage situations without always just defaulting to their best numbeers, so it suggests to me that this risk is not all that great. I'm from the school that treats the character sheet as first and foremost a player resource. A high bonus in a skill or stat means that when you, as a player, declare actions for your PC that leverage that ability, you are more likely to succeed. Conversely, when you delcare actions that do not leverage that ability, you are more likely to fail. The narration of success and failure is a secondary matter, but I tend to follow the Burning Wheel approach of narrating success primarily by reference to the player's declared action for his/her PC, while narrating failure by reference to the player's declared intention. This tends to preserve the sort of association between CHA attribute and personality that you point to in you post. Players whose PCs have high CHA bonuses will tend to succeed on CHA checks, and therefore get narrations that explain how their strong personalities won the day etc. Those whose PCs have low CHA will tend not to succeed on CHA checks, and therefore will not get such narrations. Thus, the general vibe of play will be that they do not have strong personalities that win the day. To generalise this: I'm a big believer that the character of a PC, in the fiction, emerges out of play rather than straight off the sheet. What establishes the fighter as a master at the wielding of great honking axes and hammers is not that the PC sheet says so, but that, in play, the player is declaring actions involving those weapons, and is succeeding at them (and having success narrated by reference to the declared task, of beating enemies up with big honking axes and hammers). Conversely, what establishes, in the fiction, that a PC is not very charismatic, is that few or no actions by that PC result in narrations about how his/her force of personality turned the tide of argument or battle. In a system like 4e, which lacks some of those BW-style incentives, I use two techniques in combination. One is the approach to narrating failure that I've discussed in this post so far. The other is to narrate situations such that, if the player doesn't take his/her PC into the genre-appropriate risk, the PC will be in a worse position than if s/he does take the risk and fail. That's my version of the Forge technique (which is also discussed in the BW books) of "pouring on the pressure". It's still a version of "looking good in the fiction", and so isn't going to work for every game and every player. It depends on the relevant elements of the fiction, and the stakes attached to them, being (i) fairly clearly and richly described, and (ii) being important to all participants. In my view, (ii) is related, to some extent, to the notion of immersion. This is partly why I find [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION]'s repeated assertions that so-called "dissociated" mechanics are, as such, a barrier to immersion, bizarre: not only have I posted an actual-play experience that refutes the claim (namely, the paladin-polymorph example), but "dissociated" narration of consequences (the rain-ruining-the-king's-suede failure narration) is a key technique I use to maintain a positive feedback loop that is based on and sustains immersion: pour on pressure, generate player engagement with situation via PC, narrate consequences (both successess and failures) which heighten the stakes and draw the player further in, resolve new check, etc, etc. It's not the "being there as a spectator of the GM's story" style of immersion, sure. But that's not the only way of being engaged and immersed by RPG play. Interesting. I posted a bit of actual play upthread - about the paladin who got polymorphed, and then was turned back by his god (as narrated by the player in the course of playing his PC). You still haven't responded to that example, or explained whether or not you think it fits with your claim that immersion is not possible using metagame-heavy mechanics. [/QUOTE]
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