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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8525241" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>To add to [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER]'s post, I think Baker is pretty clear that he's talking about the things said by participants that trigger responses from other participants. Statements that establish situations and prompt action declarations; statements that declare actions; statements uttered in the course of resolving those declared actions, including statements of outcomes and consequences.</p><p></p><p>In <a href="http://www.lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/456" target="_blank">his example of one character trying to get away from another who is trying to shoot them</a>, he says</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"><strong>What do the rules never, ever, ever require us to say?</strong> The details of our characters' actual actions. It's like one minute both our characters are poised to act, and the next minute my character's stuck in the room and your character's shot her, but we never see my character scrambling to open the window and we never hear your character's gun go off.</p><p></p><p>In standard D&D combat we see the characters on both sides enter the fray, and we see some of them fall and others emerge victorious - but the rules never <em>require</em> us to say what is happening to them. We don't see how a character is worn down. One can, as an act of supererogation, add narration as to what is happening - D&D GMs have been doing that for decades - but most of the time it is mere colour, in that it does not provide a basis for subsequent action declarations. It makes no difference to the parameters for action declarations to say "It takes 1 hp of damage; it's got a lot left" or to say "Your attack barely scratches it." The latter is more colourful, but doesn't shape subsequent play any differently.</p><p></p><p>Of course a to hit roll triggering a damage roll is cubes to cubes! I mean, it's there in the canonical example: see step 5 of <a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/427" target="_blank">the first of Baker's 3 example resolution systems</a>. We look at one cue - the attack die - and that tells us to do something with more cues - the damage dice - and then something further with a different cue - the adjustment of the hp tally.</p><p></p><p>In a game like RM, cubes and clouds are very tightly correlated - eg if a character is bleeding at 5 hits per round, there are a very specific range of spells needed to heal that wound. That doesn't make it cubes-to-cubes anyway. At nearly every point we know what is happening in the fiction, and that generates fictional positioning that can then factor into action declarations and resolution - eg "You're bleeding; I'll stitch your wound shut" <make Second Aid check>; or the GM says to the player of the character under an invisibility spell "You're bleeding; once you step away from where your blood is pooling, it will stop being invisible and everyone will be able to see it".</p><p></p><p>Narrating the 1 hp loss as a bare scratch doesn't establish any fictional positioning, at least in standard D&D play.</p><p></p><p>I don't follow the stuff about texts. "Fiction first" is not a property of a text. It's a property of a particular RPG considered as a type; or of an episode of RPG play that tokens that type.</p><p></p><p>As far as the constraint from Hack and Slash passed into the fiction: the most obvious would flow from failure results. Eg <em>Your sword breaks on the giant snake's scaly hide</em> seems to me to be a pretty immediate change in fictional position.</p><p></p><p>On a 7-9, and on some 10+ results, the GM gets to narrate the enemy's attack. If the enemy is an ogre, then this could include that the ogre's blow (which has the Forceful tag: DW p 272) knocks them over the cliff edge. That's a change in fictional position that (most likely, I would say) leads to a Defy Danger roll. Or it could knock them back, meaning they have to Defy Danger - the ogre's club - to get back in close enough to attack. Unless, of course, they have a Reach-tagged weapon - more fictional positioning.</p><p></p><p>On a 10+ result where the player chooses only to deal damage while avoiding the enemies attack, then we get cubes-to-cubes with no new rightward arrows resulting from the leftward one that establishes (in the fiction) a successful attack. But even here there is a fairly clear contrast with D&D - DW has a very narrow hp range (eg a dragon has 16 hp: p 302) and armour provides damage reduction, so it is much easier to treat rolled damage results as representing relatively light blows (eg 1 hp) or very heavy ones (eg 10 hp), and so the leftward arrows are generated more along the lines of RQ or Classic Traveller than in D&D, where a damage roll of 10 hp can sometimes still be a completely superficial scratch (eg if rolled against a dragon that has 100 hp remaining even after the damage is deducted).</p><p></p><p>The last paragraph has provoked a slightly tangential thought, which is why are you using 5e D&D as your chassis if those are your goals for play?</p><p></p><p>My non-tangential thought is that I don't know of a RPG that doesn't satisfy the characterisations you set out here. In T&T the combats may at least sometimes be motivated, and the GM can narrate the antagonists saying things to the PC. In my experience of RM, nearly all combats were motivated and as the GM I would frequently narrate my antagonists saying things to the PCs. The same is true of 4e D&D, Cortex+ Heroic, Classic Traveller, and Burning Wheel.</p><p></p><p>But these are not all the same game. They are not all fiction first all of the time. If 5e* boils down to <em>As the GM, periodically remind the players why the ingame situation matters</em> then I don't see how it really bears upon processes of action resolution, or even the basic cycle of play, at all.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8525241, member: 42582"] To add to [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER]'s post, I think Baker is pretty clear that he's talking about the things said by participants that trigger responses from other participants. Statements that establish situations and prompt action declarations; statements that declare actions; statements uttered in the course of resolving those declared actions, including statements of outcomes and consequences. In [URL='http://www.lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/456']his example of one character trying to get away from another who is trying to shoot them[/url], he says [indent][B]What do the rules never, ever, ever require us to say?[/B] The details of our characters' actual actions. It's like one minute both our characters are poised to act, and the next minute my character's stuck in the room and your character's shot her, but we never see my character scrambling to open the window and we never hear your character's gun go off.[/indent] In standard D&D combat we see the characters on both sides enter the fray, and we see some of them fall and others emerge victorious - but the rules never [i]require[/i] us to say what is happening to them. We don't see how a character is worn down. One can, as an act of supererogation, add narration as to what is happening - D&D GMs have been doing that for decades - but most of the time it is mere colour, in that it does not provide a basis for subsequent action declarations. It makes no difference to the parameters for action declarations to say "It takes 1 hp of damage; it's got a lot left" or to say "Your attack barely scratches it." The latter is more colourful, but doesn't shape subsequent play any differently. Of course a to hit roll triggering a damage roll is cubes to cubes! I mean, it's there in the canonical example: see step 5 of [url=http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/427]the first of Baker's 3 example resolution systems[/url]. We look at one cue - the attack die - and that tells us to do something with more cues - the damage dice - and then something further with a different cue - the adjustment of the hp tally. In a game like RM, cubes and clouds are very tightly correlated - eg if a character is bleeding at 5 hits per round, there are a very specific range of spells needed to heal that wound. That doesn't make it cubes-to-cubes anyway. At nearly every point we know what is happening in the fiction, and that generates fictional positioning that can then factor into action declarations and resolution - eg "You're bleeding; I'll stitch your wound shut" <make Second Aid check>; or the GM says to the player of the character under an invisibility spell "You're bleeding; once you step away from where your blood is pooling, it will stop being invisible and everyone will be able to see it". Narrating the 1 hp loss as a bare scratch doesn't establish any fictional positioning, at least in standard D&D play. I don't follow the stuff about texts. "Fiction first" is not a property of a text. It's a property of a particular RPG considered as a type; or of an episode of RPG play that tokens that type. As far as the constraint from Hack and Slash passed into the fiction: the most obvious would flow from failure results. Eg [i]Your sword breaks on the giant snake's scaly hide[/i] seems to me to be a pretty immediate change in fictional position. On a 7-9, and on some 10+ results, the GM gets to narrate the enemy's attack. If the enemy is an ogre, then this could include that the ogre's blow (which has the Forceful tag: DW p 272) knocks them over the cliff edge. That's a change in fictional position that (most likely, I would say) leads to a Defy Danger roll. Or it could knock them back, meaning they have to Defy Danger - the ogre's club - to get back in close enough to attack. Unless, of course, they have a Reach-tagged weapon - more fictional positioning. On a 10+ result where the player chooses only to deal damage while avoiding the enemies attack, then we get cubes-to-cubes with no new rightward arrows resulting from the leftward one that establishes (in the fiction) a successful attack. But even here there is a fairly clear contrast with D&D - DW has a very narrow hp range (eg a dragon has 16 hp: p 302) and armour provides damage reduction, so it is much easier to treat rolled damage results as representing relatively light blows (eg 1 hp) or very heavy ones (eg 10 hp), and so the leftward arrows are generated more along the lines of RQ or Classic Traveller than in D&D, where a damage roll of 10 hp can sometimes still be a completely superficial scratch (eg if rolled against a dragon that has 100 hp remaining even after the damage is deducted). The last paragraph has provoked a slightly tangential thought, which is why are you using 5e D&D as your chassis if those are your goals for play? My non-tangential thought is that I don't know of a RPG that doesn't satisfy the characterisations you set out here. In T&T the combats may at least sometimes be motivated, and the GM can narrate the antagonists saying things to the PC. In my experience of RM, nearly all combats were motivated and as the GM I would frequently narrate my antagonists saying things to the PCs. The same is true of 4e D&D, Cortex+ Heroic, Classic Traveller, and Burning Wheel. But these are not all the same game. They are not all fiction first all of the time. If 5e* boils down to [i]As the GM, periodically remind the players why the ingame situation matters[/i] then I don't see how it really bears upon processes of action resolution, or even the basic cycle of play, at all. [/QUOTE]
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