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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8356221" data-attributes="member: 42582">I was poking around <a href="https://adeptplay.com/" target="_blank">Ron Edwards's Adept Play website</a> and found this interesting video:[MEDIA=youtube]C92CBFkdSxY[/MEDIA]The notional topic is about torches in tunnels in dungeon-oriented RPGing, and if/how we might want to think about fire and smoke and air quality. But there is a lot that he talks about of a more general nature.He uses two (non-literal) labels to characterise, and contrast, elements of the fiction:furniture - elements of the content that are mere colour but not really dynamic aspects of play (eg typically the leaves of the trees in a forest, which appear only as part of the GM's atmosphere-establishing narration, might be like this; also the guards who are narrated as standing on the parapets when the GM narrates the PCs' entry into a walled city); people -  elements of the content that have, or are expected to have, some sort of "life" in play - like the NPCs who push back against what the PCs want (or attack them, or whatever) or the doors which get in the way of the PCs and the traps which attack the PCs and so on.One point he makes is that a lot of furniture is implicit - eg if the GM has narrated those guards it probably follows that they have helms and some sort of arms and armour, even though the GM hasn't actually spelled that out. Or if the GM narrates the ruins of a banquet hall with its tables and wooden seats and fireplace with a mantlepiece, even if an old candelabra isn't mentioned it's easily understood as implicitly there.A second point he makes is that furniture can "awaken" and become a person. Eg if a player has his/her PC insult a guard that was merely furniture then the GM (exercising authority over the guard as an element of the fiction) might have the guard speak back or even strike back. A lot of the interest and excitement of RPGing comes from this sort of thing. But maybe it's also a point of potential conflict at the table, if it's not clear what the principles are according to which furniture "awakens", especially if it "awakens" into adversity to the PCs?A third point he makes is that a lot of what we might call "skillful" play - or that, in D&D, might fall under the heading "creative use of magic" - occurs when the players identify implicit elements of the furniture, and "awaken" them. Some of that is old hat by now, like standard uses of Transmute Rock to Mud, but this is where a lot of creativity in problem solving is to be found. The video doesn't say anything about how this sort of action declaration might be resolved, but I think it's interesting just to have it called out as a distinctive and important aspect of RPGing.</blockquote>

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