Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
5e* - D&D-now
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8534807" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>The bits that I've bolded aren't all in the fiction.</p><p></p><p><em>The air elemental is an ally</em> looks like fiction.</p><p><em>The air elemental is adjacent to the atropoal</em> may be fiction or may be a description of a cue, depending on if/how you are using a battlemap in combat resolution.</p><p><em>The rogues gets +Nd6 damage vs the atropal</em> is not fiction. It's a fact about the cues and the mechanics.</p><p></p><p>The basic structure here is the same as Baker's example if <em>I take the high ground and so get +2 to hit</em>. It's a rightward arrow. (See steps 1 and 3 in Baker's first example resolution system <a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/427" target="_blank">here</a>.)</p><p></p><p>The bits I've bolded look, to me, like propositions about cues and mechanics. I don't see how Drusilia, in the fiction, is talking about movement rates and action declarations (dash vs shoot) and action economy (cunning action). Those to me look like the sorts of things a player says when talking about the mechanical scope for action. They seem no different from a player saying <em>We should retreat because my PC has only got 10 hp left.</em> Similarly, the reference to damage. The reasoning is not clouds-to-clouds (because Drusilia is exhausted, her shots are feeble). It is cues to cues (because <em>exhausted</em> is noted on the PC sheet, a certain mechanical process is applied to the player's attack and/or damage roll).</p><p></p><p>This does not seem to describe any action resolution. I can't tell how much of this was actually state by Clement's player. But this seems to be a player reminding themself and/or their fellow players of their PC's motivation. In the fiction, it may also be Clement reminding Drusilia of his motivation. But I don't see (eg) a CHA (Persuasion) check to life Drusilia's exhaustion, or grant a morale bonus to attack or defence; the sorts of things one might see in (say) Prince Valiant or MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic.</p><p></p><p>A fair bit of this is cubes: crossing of Clement's spell slot; resolving Clement's action "I cast a spell"; changing Drusilia's PC sheet (I am assuming that the spell has been used to reduce her exhaustion level by one - that's all cubes-to-cubes).</p><p></p><p>This looks to me like a description primarily of cube-to-cube reaoning.</p><p></p><p>Even though the wail is itself an event in the fiction, I'm not sure if every time the being wails it generates this effect; or only if the GM chooses to have this be an enervating wail. So even the fact that the wail is an enervating one may be a decision made by the GM in the arena of cues.</p><p></p><p>What you describe does not, in its basic structure of play, seem very different from my AD&D 2nd ed play, or my Rolemaster play, or my 4e D&D play. Players declare actions for their PCs that are consistent with the motivations they are imagining for their PCs. No one else at the table seems to contest those motivations ("The player decides what their PC thinks and feels.")</p><p></p><p>In the granular details we see the cubes-to-cubes typical of D&D - action economy, attack rolls and damage rolls, the use of healing magic, etc. The motivations don't generate particular features of the action resolution process, nor constrain them, by way of rightward arrows. I don't see any "beginning and ending with the fiction" in the DW sense - for instance, Clement's action ends with mechanics (Drusilia's changed exhaustion status), not fiction.</p><p></p><p>Any RPG not played in pure pawn stance involves imagined and imputed character motives. But this does not mean that a player's decision to have their PC cast a spell to reduce the opponent's hit point, or improve an ally's hit points, involves clouds-to-cubes. Clouds-to-cubes is a framework for analysing action resolution (hence the heading, <em>3 Resolution Systems</em>, not for describing <em>why</em> players declare particular actions.</p><p></p><p>All this is doing is restating that the players are not in pawn stance. It tells us nothing about whether or not their are rightward arrows in action resolution. Baker introduced his clouds-arrows-cubes framework to, at least in part, critique various RPG designs, including his design of In A Wicked Age, and systems (perhaps like [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER]'s favourite ultra-lite game PACE) that resolve only intent but do not actually reveal/exhibit what is was that took place to produce the desired outcome. The way you are using F >S > F those critiques become impossible to state. Eg F (the characters have motivations) > S (some sort of bidding system) > F (one of the characters now has what they want). The critique of resolve-only-intent systems disappears. Or F (the characters have best interests that motivate their players to declare actions) > S (the In A Wicked Age dice roll system) > F (now we know which character is closer to realising their best interests). The critique of In A Wicked Age's lack of rightward arrows has disappeared. I've already pointed out, in several posts upthread, that your framework makes it impossible to state the difference between D&D combat resolution and the combat resolution rules found in the simulationist reactions to D&D like RQ and RM.</p><p></p><p>In other words, and as [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] suggested upthread (post #322), I don't think that you are using the notion of arrows linking cubes and clouds to one another in the way that Vincent Baker is. My usage is following Baker's. And that's because I think his framework is useful: it captures some fundamental differences between RPG systems. I don't see the point of an account of the fiction-mechanics relationship in which these various different ways of establishing that relationship can't be stated. </p><p></p><p>Overall, I am not seeing what is distinctive about 5e* as a RPG, other than the particular mechanical processes that it inherits from the 5e rulebooks. Your F > S > F seems to be a repudiation of pawn stance RPGing, but I don't see how it goes beyond that.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8534807, member: 42582"] The bits that I've bolded aren't all in the fiction. [i]The air elemental is an ally[/i] looks like fiction. [i]The air elemental is adjacent to the atropoal[/i] may be fiction or may be a description of a cue, depending on if/how you are using a battlemap in combat resolution. [i]The rogues gets +Nd6 damage vs the atropal[/i] is not fiction. It's a fact about the cues and the mechanics. The basic structure here is the same as Baker's example if [i]I take the high ground and so get +2 to hit[/i]. It's a rightward arrow. (See steps 1 and 3 in Baker's first example resolution system [url=http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/427]here[/url].) The bits I've bolded look, to me, like propositions about cues and mechanics. I don't see how Drusilia, in the fiction, is talking about movement rates and action declarations (dash vs shoot) and action economy (cunning action). Those to me look like the sorts of things a player says when talking about the mechanical scope for action. They seem no different from a player saying [i]We should retreat because my PC has only got 10 hp left.[/i] Similarly, the reference to damage. The reasoning is not clouds-to-clouds (because Drusilia is exhausted, her shots are feeble). It is cues to cues (because [i]exhausted[/i] is noted on the PC sheet, a certain mechanical process is applied to the player's attack and/or damage roll). This does not seem to describe any action resolution. I can't tell how much of this was actually state by Clement's player. But this seems to be a player reminding themself and/or their fellow players of their PC's motivation. In the fiction, it may also be Clement reminding Drusilia of his motivation. But I don't see (eg) a CHA (Persuasion) check to life Drusilia's exhaustion, or grant a morale bonus to attack or defence; the sorts of things one might see in (say) Prince Valiant or MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic. A fair bit of this is cubes: crossing of Clement's spell slot; resolving Clement's action "I cast a spell"; changing Drusilia's PC sheet (I am assuming that the spell has been used to reduce her exhaustion level by one - that's all cubes-to-cubes). This looks to me like a description primarily of cube-to-cube reaoning. Even though the wail is itself an event in the fiction, I'm not sure if every time the being wails it generates this effect; or only if the GM chooses to have this be an enervating wail. So even the fact that the wail is an enervating one may be a decision made by the GM in the arena of cues. What you describe does not, in its basic structure of play, seem very different from my AD&D 2nd ed play, or my Rolemaster play, or my 4e D&D play. Players declare actions for their PCs that are consistent with the motivations they are imagining for their PCs. No one else at the table seems to contest those motivations ("The player decides what their PC thinks and feels.") In the granular details we see the cubes-to-cubes typical of D&D - action economy, attack rolls and damage rolls, the use of healing magic, etc. The motivations don't generate particular features of the action resolution process, nor constrain them, by way of rightward arrows. I don't see any "beginning and ending with the fiction" in the DW sense - for instance, Clement's action ends with mechanics (Drusilia's changed exhaustion status), not fiction. Any RPG not played in pure pawn stance involves imagined and imputed character motives. But this does not mean that a player's decision to have their PC cast a spell to reduce the opponent's hit point, or improve an ally's hit points, involves clouds-to-cubes. Clouds-to-cubes is a framework for analysing action resolution (hence the heading, [i]3 Resolution Systems[/i], not for describing [i]why[/i] players declare particular actions. All this is doing is restating that the players are not in pawn stance. It tells us nothing about whether or not their are rightward arrows in action resolution. Baker introduced his clouds-arrows-cubes framework to, at least in part, critique various RPG designs, including his design of In A Wicked Age, and systems (perhaps like [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER]'s favourite ultra-lite game PACE) that resolve only intent but do not actually reveal/exhibit what is was that took place to produce the desired outcome. The way you are using F >S > F those critiques become impossible to state. Eg F (the characters have motivations) > S (some sort of bidding system) > F (one of the characters now has what they want). The critique of resolve-only-intent systems disappears. Or F (the characters have best interests that motivate their players to declare actions) > S (the In A Wicked Age dice roll system) > F (now we know which character is closer to realising their best interests). The critique of In A Wicked Age's lack of rightward arrows has disappeared. I've already pointed out, in several posts upthread, that your framework makes it impossible to state the difference between D&D combat resolution and the combat resolution rules found in the simulationist reactions to D&D like RQ and RM. In other words, and as [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] suggested upthread (post #322), I don't think that you are using the notion of arrows linking cubes and clouds to one another in the way that Vincent Baker is. My usage is following Baker's. And that's because I think his framework is useful: it captures some fundamental differences between RPG systems. I don't see the point of an account of the fiction-mechanics relationship in which these various different ways of establishing that relationship can't be stated. Overall, I am not seeing what is distinctive about 5e* as a RPG, other than the particular mechanical processes that it inherits from the 5e rulebooks. Your F > S > F seems to be a repudiation of pawn stance RPGing, but I don't see how it goes beyond that. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
5e* - D&D-now
Top