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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8287328" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here are two things that a player who has fireball written on a list of available character abilities can do:(1) Make it true that one or more participants have to adjust the hp totals for characters under their control, subtracting Xd6 from them (where X is a function of the spell rules - in classic D&D it is equal to the caster's level). If hp reach zero then this triggers further application of rules like death/dying; and in some cases if hp cross a threshold (eg 50%) this might trigger a morale check.(2) Make it true that in the fiction a great explosion of fire has occurred in a certain area. Obviously that fire might set things on fire, melt ice, vaporise liquids, etc.I think the best discussion of the difference between, and relationship between, (1)-type stuff and (2)-type stuff is Vincent Baker's <a href="http://www.lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/427" target="_blank">here</a>. (And more links <a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/599" target="_blank">here</a>.) A clear feature of Gygaxian skilled play, as exemplified in modules like B2 and S1, is a lot of arrows from clouds to clouds (eg poking things with 10' poles is like this) and from clouds to boxes (eg I listen at the door is like this). And the clouds are very granular around some recurrent topics like architecture and geography; and the action declarations that generate arrows from clouds to boxes are correspondingly granular and focused on those sorts of topics.Some contrasting RPG approaches:* My Classic Traveller game has arrows that run from clouds to boxes, but not at that level of granularity; and it has many fewer high stakes cloud-to-cloud arrows. Generally if things are high stakes than dice get rolled.* Cortex+ Heroic/MHRP has very few cloud-to-cloud arrows because nearly every action declaration that matters gets treated as an opposed check; and it has considerably fewer arrows from clouds to boxes because it doesn't readily allow fictional positioning to matter unless it has already been "mechanised" (eg by being turned into an Asset). If we compare to Baker's analysis of DitV and D&D, Cortex+ Heroic has rightward arrows that resemble the ones for including a trait or belonging (does the current situation permit an Asset or Resource to be brought to bear?) but not ones that resemble taking the high ground and not really ones that resemble changing the arena of conflict as in DitV.</blockquote>

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