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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6676722" data-attributes="member: 42582">Obviously (except in some self-referential games like Over the Edge). From the point of view of the gameworld, it has its own internal causal processes.But considered as the fictional thing that it is, everything in it is a consequence of a choice of authorship made in the real world. It doesn't write itself.But your formula here contradicts your own rule about no crossover. In the fiction, the orc's death is not a fiction - it is a fact. And in the fiction, the fact of the orc's death follows from the fact of him/her being stabbed, or decapitated, or whatever.But how is that fiction authored? In D&D, the mechanics of a damage roll in and of themselves don't dictate anything - nothing at all about the fiction follows from a damage roll of "7" rather than "2". (Note the contrast with, say, Rolemaster, where a damage result of "foe decapitated" does directly tell us what the damage is; and also where the loss of (say) 10 concussion hits does correspond directly to a particular degree of bruising and blood loss.)Even when you compare the damage roll to the NPC's hit points remaining, all the rules tell you is that the NPC is now up, or now down. They don't tell you anything about the sort of blow that was struck, nor the cause of death. (Again, games like RQ, RM, and even BW are quite different in this respect.)The GM of the D&D combat has to make an authorship decision. (Or else no one at the table will know what happened in the fiction.) You don't have to call it an "agreed upon narrative power control arrangement" if you don't want to - I don't. I just call it playing the game within the parameters set by the rules.There is no disagreement here. In BW, for instance, having a high Perception score expresses a truth about the PC - namely, s/he is perceptive. The action declaration "I look for a chink in the armour", and the ensuing dice roll, corresponds to an attempt by the PC to find a chink in the armour.Likewise a Circles check - having a high Circles score expresses a truth about the PC, namely, that s/he has many social contacts (having moved in many social circles - hence the label). The action declaration "I check Circles to see if someone has come to rescue me", and the resulting roll, corresponds to the PC hoping and looking for a rescuer.In other words, the point of difference is not about whether the PC sheet tells us something about the PC, nor about whether action declarations relate to events in the fiction. It is about who gets to author the fiction - both backstory and current events - and under what sorts of constraints. This also plays into related issues about framing.To focus just on the "chink in the armour" example, for instance, you take the view that only the GM can author this, and that the GM must do so (perhaps secretly) before the action declaration to look for it can be declared. (And if the GM authors it as "no chink", then that action declaration will result in failure even if the GM lets the player roll the dice.)This is why, in my reply not far above to [MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION] and [MENTION=1465]Li Shenron[/MENTION], I concluded by asking some questions about what is meant by "the story being told" or "the adventure". The key issue here seems to me to be about who enjoys what sorts of privileges of authoring the fiction, and related issues like secrecy vs transparency of backstory.</blockquote>

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