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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8524099" data-attributes="member: 42582">Given the argument you state in the first quoted para, the response to your examples is not mere quibbling. It's at the core of the "fiction first" claim!D&D combat is notorious for not being fiction first; for being, in phenomenological terms, dice-roll "bingo" (ie a lot of calling out of numbers and comparing them to pre-given numbers on bits of paper). Some of the earliest RPG designs (C&S, RQ, later RM, GURPS) were reactions to this. Gygax is aware of the reaction, and responds to it, in his DMG - with his criticism of hit location tables and damage types, for instance, and his extremely non-simulationist approach to the resolution of attacks by poisonous monsters and blades (see pp 61, 81-82).The core of 5e D&D RAW combat resolution is the same as AD&D's: take one's turn within a strict action economy, roll to hit vs AC, if successful roll damage which is applied as a depletion of a hit point tally. This is not fiction first. It's mechanics. I appreciate that 5e* mandates that the mechanics be accompanied by GM narration (I assume that this is why your list of examples didn't include the GM saying The giant now has 125 hp left. But until some account is given of how that GM narration than affects downstream resolution (as in the examples I suggested: a bonus to save vs Thunderwave, or an AC penalty) then we don't have fiction first, we just have D&D combat with colourful narration overlaid. That may be a good thing, in terms of producing a more engaging or enjoyable play experience (and some D&D GMs have been doing it for decades for just that reason) but it doesn't make the game a fiction first one.Contrast Rolemaster: when one of the PCs in our game suffered a crit result of a severed hand, that meant something in the fiction: he could no longer shoot his bow!Here's an example of fiction first in D&D combat resolution: in our session the weekend before last, the Epic Defender who is infused with earth power stolen from the Primordials was under an effect that, so long as he stays in contact with the ground, grants temp hp at the top of each round. In a discussion about where the PC should move to, I suggested that if he were to step up onto a plinth that sits above the floor of the building he is on, he would no longer be in contact with the ground. That suggestion was readily acceded to. So here we have fiction to mechanics (a rightward arrow, in Vincent Baker's framework).And another example: in the same combat, a Huge Primordial Colossus tried to smash a PC (also Huge, being an Emergent Primordial in Primordial form) who had fallen into the water. The Colossus missed - I rolled a 1. The water had a current specified, that would slide the character a particular direction at the start of their next turn. The players suggested that the waves caused by the great splash of the Colossus striking and missing should amplify the effect of the current, washing the PC further down the map. I agreed with that suggestion, and we resolved the wave effect (the player failed an Acrobatics check, and so in fact the wave disturbed the current and reduced rather than increased the PC's movement at the start of the turn). Again, this is fiction to mechanics, and back to fiction.My own view is that it's not a coincidence that I'm providing these examples from 4e - 4e has a very robust set of system tools (eg a variety of keywords; level-by-DC chart; a standardised framework for forced movement; etc) for translating fiction into mechanics and then back again. My own knowledge of 5e makes feel that it is not as robust in this respect. Perhaps 5e* adds to that robustness, but from the examples you've given I'm not seeing where or how. And as I said, I don't think this is just quibbling.My knowledge of Fate is modest, and my experience less than that. I do know that, for reasons similar to MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic which I know well, it creates controversy about the relationship of resolution to mechanics because the fiction needs to be "sytematised" - as an Aspect in Fate, as a Distinction in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic - before it matters, and often needs to be further paid for to invoke it or include it as part of an action's resolution.Both systems, therefore, can tend towards what Baker describes <a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/427" target="_blank">here</a> as Case 2:Case 1: 1. When you want to describe the weather where the characters are, roll. On a success, say what the weather's like there. (On a failure, it's 76°, few clouds, with a pleasant little breeze.) 2. When your character's taking strenuous action, if it's oppressively hot where your character is, you get -2 to your roll. That's boxes to cloud, then cloud to boxes. Case 2: 1. When you want to give another player a die penalty, make a roll. On a success, a) say what's making life hard for their character, and b) give them a -2 to their roll. That's a) boxes to cloud, with a simultaneous b) boxes to boxes. (So, Guy: no, it doesn't count as a rightward arrow.) <snip> Rob: You seriously read that to mean that the (unmentioned) oppressive heat the character's suffering is responsible for the -2, not the successful give-a-penalty roll? How do you want me to write it so that it's rock-solid-clear that the successful give-a-penalty roll is responsible for the -2? Maybe this: When you want to give another player a die penalty, make a roll. On a success, give them a -2 to their roll. (Also, incidentally, say what's making life hard for their character.) An arrow cubes to cubes. (Also, incidentally, an arrow cubes to cloud.) Right?To me, the narrations of the giant pressing forward, or couching her club, look a bit like the incidental narration of what's making life hard for the character: the heavy lifting is being done by the mechanics (boxes-to-boxes) an the narration is epiphenomenal.In Fate or MHRP, the more that (i) some fictional context for the "impose a -2 penalty check" is required as a precursor to making the check, and (ii) the more that fictional context is constrained by prior narration, the less the play will look like Baker's Case 2. In 5e D&D, no fictional context is required to impose hit point loss other than the distance requirements necessary to declare an attack with the given weapon or spell. The GM's narration of how a NPC responds to an attack is not part of those fictional constraints, at least by RAW.The issue of being told expressly seems a bit of a red herring. In Prince Valiant the GM has extreme freedom - more than a D&D GM - to narrate what happens when a check is resolved. But that narration will then matter to subsequent resolution - eg certain narrations of what happens as a character suffers a reduction of their pool in a duel might provide the opening for an Agility or Dexterity check to wrongfoot them or disarm them or similar.That is what makes a system "fiction first": the fiction that flows from "cycle N" feeds into the framing and resolution of "cycle N+1".How does the giant pressing forward, or couching her club, or the 1 hp loss being a scratch, feed into the declaration and resolution of actions on subsequent rounds? This is where, to me, it seems to be purely epiphenomenal.I don't think so. It was about what is distinctive, in 5e or 5e*, compared to (say) DW, as far as making the setting seem "real". To me this seems orthogonal to whether or not it can be played "story now"; although there are some techniques for making the setting seem "real" that are not available in story now play.This provoked two thoughts in me.First, the Lumpley Principle has been stated differently at different times, and those statements aren't all equivalent (either semantically or functionally). <a href="https://big-model.info/wiki/Lumpley_Principle" target="_blank">This page</a> states two formulations. The first is the one I encountered when I first encountered The Forge: rules and their consequences only take effect when taken up and assented to by the group. The contrast, here, might be with rules of mathematics which (at least on some mainstream accounts) generate consequences even if no one has yet worked out what those are.The second one is that systems is a means for agreeing on the content of the shared fiction. I think that is what you are meaning by it.Anyway, on this second formulation of the principle, it does not require anything more to explain why different systems produce different experiences. They are different means.A vehicle, we might say, is a means for getting from A to B. Using different vehicles will produce different experiences of getting from A to B. This doesn't require adding anything to our concept of a vehicle beyond what is stated in the first sentence of this paragraph. Likewise for system.For instance, a system that allocates ownership of different elements to different participants will produce different experiences. (Contrast, say, AD&D and Burning Wheel as far as ownership of backstory elements is concerned.) A system that determines what happens next by polling the participants, or inviting them to bid, will obviously produce a different play experience from one which determines it by rolling on a chart or one that determines it by allowing one privileged participant to decide. Etc.</blockquote>

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