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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8525201" data-attributes="member: 42582">Your hp example seems similar to what I described, upthread, as "D&Ders' code" - ie describing a scratch is a conventional way for the GM to signal that only a small proportion of hp were knocked off by the attack.But the scratch is just colour. You can't do anything with it, at least by 5e RAW as I understand them,Another contrast: in my 4e game, when the PCs went purple worm hunting, they first took a whole lot of lime (? I think it was) with them, so that if they got swallowed it would help them neutralise the stomach acid. I just did a search, and here is the actual play report (which confirms that it was lime):There's a lot of rightward arrows there:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The lime partially neutralises the acid, reducing the OG damage;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The dirt and rock in the worm's gullet allows conjuring up a pillar of earth, which is a power with a specific fiction-based requirement;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Rod being an artefact of Law allows redirecting the elemental chaos, among other things changing who takes a certain amount of damage;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The worm's mouth being forced open establishes line of sight, permitting a teleport.</li> </ul>This is also illustrates what I was trying to get at earlier: whether or not a particular approach to a system actually exemplifies a principle like "fiction first" depends on what the system actually provides for in its technical details.At least in respect of the comparison that you are drawing here, DW and 4e are as different from one another as 4e is from RQ or RM.In DW, fiction is everything as you say.in RM and RQ, the mechanics aspire to "manage" and mathematise all fictional inputs and outputs, so that (eg) in RM the crit result tells you that you suffer a -10 bruise (which is both fiction, and a mechanical specification of it) or that you bleed at 5 concussion hits per round (again, both fiction - you're bleeding badly - and mechanical specification). And the jumping resolution chart tells you what the bonus is for (eg) having a springboard to leap from. This is why, in RM, there can by no real "say 'yes'" - every spell casting, for instance, no matter how trivial, demands a check because in the fiction that check corresponds to the possibility of the magical forces escaping the caster's control.In 4e, the fiction is often "loose" in relation to the mechanics, which is more like DW. But the mechanics have all the referents you mention that set up the parameters and constraints and minimum implications for the fiction that results from the mechanics.I would say that DW is "fiction first", that RQ/RM are not (neither are they fiction last; fiction and mechanics happen simultaneously), and that 4e sometimes is (as per my purple worm example) but sometimes is not (eg when it comes to the ranger's turn, and the player just Twin Strikes the most dangerous opponent on the map).I don't know what an encapsulated mechanism is.But here's an example of a key element of a resolution system that is conditioned purely on other mechanical states of affairs: basic T&T combat resolution.Another example: this can be an issue in a BW Duel of Wits, where for many of the "moves" the resolution does not depend on or change based on the narration of the character's action; so that the narration that the game tells us is a necessary precursor to rolling the dice becomes a "voluntary" act of the sort that Vincent Baker talks about when describing In a Wicked Age.Another example: a player in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic is meant to narrate how their PC incorporates a Scene Distinction into their dice pool, but nothing about the resolution process will falter if they don't. They can just add the die to their pool and roll away. Another example of a system that, in this respect, permits "lazy play" (in Baker's sense) no matter how much one might wish that play begin and end with the fiction.I don't know if any of these is an illustration of an encapsulated mechanism.For my part, what would make 5e* clearer - and hence might also address [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER]'s point about whether a GM, reading your essay, would have a real shot at running it as you envisage - would be to provide actual examples of what beginning and ending with the fiction looks like, that illustrate how a GM is determining (out of combat) whether or not to call for a check, and how narration, in combat, is actually feeding back into action declaration and resolution.I don't understand how what you describe here is consistent with the 5e D&D, RAW, systems for resolving combat and spell casting.By RAW, a player casts a spell and this can trigger a roll - an attack roll by the caster player, or a saving throw by another participant's character, are the most common ones.By RAW, a successful attack roll triggers a damage roll demands a change in the hp tally, and then the action moves via the action economy and initiative sequence rules, and then if the next participant declares an attack they make a roll.I'm extremely familiar with these processes from other versions of D&D (B/X, AD&D, 4e) and in the 5e RAW see nothing that is fundamentally different, in the processes presented or the descriptions of them. Where, in 5e*, does the fiction factor in?</blockquote>

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